Luca, Son of the Morning

by Tom Anderson

  ‘What?’ She stopped short of the door and faced me again. Her face looked open, and ready to listen.

  ‘Gabe. Back there, at Jackdaw’s – I know you probably don’t like this, but it’s been bugging me – you said something to me in the kitchen, as you ran by, like. You said, “If you’re in on this, I’ll kill you”, or something like that.’

  ‘Jeez, Lukee. Your memory!’

  ‘I bet you remember the important things too.’

  ‘Well, this thing isn’t important,’ she said. ‘That’s just me when I’m possessed. Think of it as if someone else said that to you. Someone who doesn’t usually exist, and who never says or does the right things. I’m working on getting rid of that person for good, though. We need to imagine her away. Seriously, LLJ – imagine that didn’t happen. Please? For me? Coz if we imagine it that way hard enough, the two of us, then it’ll become true. It actually could disappear from history. Stop existing. Can we please try to do that?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s a deal.’

  Chapter 22

  Right then, let’s see how this goes. Let’s see if I’m any good at it.

  So, the weather was nice, and it was sunny outside. When my parents came to see me in the afternoon after I’d met the girls, I asked to see my dad on his own.

  I did this because I needed to be honest and tell him how…

  Ha ha ha. I’m crap at it, aren’t I! Thing is, that’s all I need to do; just let flow a bit of nice, safe stuff about how I’m learning some simple lessons about the hazards of being young. That I need to keep his little blue book with me in order to cope with the pressures of growing up and being ready for the adult world etcetera, etcetera. Come on though, would anyone in my place really give someone like Wentloog the real version of how I faced my dad like a day later?

  From Dad and the doc’s point of view, this was the biggest issue of the lot. I suppose it makes sort of sense, if you try and see it from their perspective. Son throws hammer at his dad, goes to school the next day like nothing’s wrong, isn’t in when parents get back – from the pub, of all places, which is kind of dodgy when they’ve got a son who freaked out the night before like I had done – and then the next they hear is that call they got from the police.

  So, yes, maybe it was reasonable for my dad to be as nervy about this one as I was – but either way, this is the non-Wentloog version of how that one panned out in the real world:

  Me: Dad, what the f…

  Him: Luca, what the f…

  Me: I’m fed up with this now.

  Him: I’m also fed up with it.

  Me: With what?

  Him: With whatever you’re fed up with.

  And it flowed from there. One moment we’re dancing around whatever it is we have to say and then, next minute, I hear him saying how glad they were when I was born, and how the gold would allow him to provide for me, how that’s all he ever wanted to be able to do, and how he’d give anything to just be able to understand each other again like every other parent and their kids.

  Obviously, even a fifteen-year-old kid under surveillance from guys in white coats is wise enough to know that every other parent and kid in the world doesn’t find everything easy either. Once I told him this, he seemed to almost leap out of his seat – we were in the room with the TV, which I’d left on purposely – and started talking fast and happy.

  ‘You’re right, Lukee,’ he said. ‘It’s so difficult. For all of us, isn’t it! So let’s all stop lying and just say what we want from each other.’

  And then old Stevie Lincoln-James went full-on with the story of his life like I’d never had it before. I don’t know why he said that about lying, first, but it is amazing the light that truth can shine on the world. There’s no need for gilded metals or precious jewels when people can say what they mean. He went on a bit about having a kid so young – which kind of made me doubt the bit about being glad for half a second – before he said how he must have made loads of mistakes because he didn’t know better, like ‘Lucifer son of the morning’ and all that.

  That was when I tried to tell him, again, that those guys selling the gold in Birmingham seemed dodgy – which made him straight away say that he’d already paid in a grand now and he didn’t want to lose that… Yeah, stupid, isn’t it? I was still trying to talk about that deal when he had much bigger stuff he wanted to bring up.

  ‘Luca,’ he said, looking straight at me like he had something big to ask. ‘What’s the purpose of it?’

  His eyes were right on me, dark and lost.

  And so I laughed. I don’t know how, or why, but that was the only thing I could do to answer him. I mean, who asks their teenage son a question like that?

  For a moment, his face flicked through being angry, then shook for a nanosecond like it was going to cry. And then – of course he did – Steve Lincoln-James looked straight at me, and started laughing too.

  It took us – the laughter – floating us around the room. It had us yelling and giggling and shouting at how stupid everything else was other than the fact that the two of us were there, together, and happy to be so.

  The money, I thought, again, as he leant back in his seat again.

  ‘Dad. What’s a grand when they want you to pay in another trillion sometime soon?’

  And then the laughter passed and we seemed to be on the same topic, without really knowing it:

  Me: But I’m still fed up.

  Him: What with?

  Me: Not knowing.

  Him: Not knowing what.

  Me: Not knowing if we’re gonna have money or if you really are glad I was born.

  And that was what got us both. This time it wasn’t laughter. This time it was silence, and things I’ll never, ever forget – how he suddenly looked more human than I’d ever seen, and how he turned for a few minutes into a kid as young and as scared about the future as me. How he sat there admitting he didn’t have any ideas, and how we sort of agreed it could be fun not having any idea as long as we were willing to be honest about it.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, and he promised he would.

  He did more than that, though. My dad had pulled out of the gold deal and forgotten his stake by the next morning. In fact, he did a whole lot more. He went looking for work that paid by the week, month or even year, only a couple of days later – and when Jeff nagged him to come back in and push on with the gold deal he did something Steve Lincoln-James had never, ever done in his life.

  ‘Cutting my losses, Jeff,’ he said.

  Whatever Jeff said back down the phone, it had no chance.

  ‘Salaried work now for me,’ said my dad, some shiny day later, looking at me across the same visitors’ lounge, this time with the TV off, as my mum packed up for me to come home. ‘My boy needs to know the bread is coming home with him. Need him to be proud of me, innit. Not that he wasn’t, with the sole-trading, like, but maybe something new is on the cards, buddy. Maybe it’s time. You understand, don’t you?’

  I’m sure Jeff Rafferty didn’t understand, but that didn’t matter to my dad. Stevie Lincoln-James had my mum right behind him, and anytime soon he was going to have me in his corner too. I mean, why not?

  Of course, in a perfect world, Gaby – when she wasn’t fighting with or threatening a set of parents herself – could have maybe asked her folks to fit him up with something quite respectable. Something shirt-and-tie, with a plan and responsibilities. Something that matched a life that meant you had people to look out for. She could also have helped make sure the Carraneros spotted that, from all Dad’s time selling and talking crap, he had a bit of ‘charisma’. Gaby’s parents might have then thought he’d be good for a ‘front of house’ job in one of the family’s new hotels or gyms – one of the ones up the motorway that had been bought with Gigi’s evil money. The same money that me and humble little Gabri
elle were now sworn to a lifetime of goodwill to try and repay – without actually giving it all away to those posh families he probably nicked it from in the first place, obviously. That was surely how Gigi would have wanted us to play it. Yeah, the same money me and her were going to repay with random acts of kindness for as long as we lived – something Joe Poundes would also be doing from now on.

  But this might not be a perfect world. I will be ready for that, too. That’s the point of getting the real version of it all down somewhere, somehow, isn’t it? This is about facing up to the things that go right and the things that don’t. Still though, why not try to make it a bit better every day, anyway?

  Why not? Because I like what Gabe said about old Gigi when she first drew him – so much that I reckon it’s actually true: once you imagine it, then that’s how something might actually start to look.

  Chapter 23

  She kept drawing. She just stayed away from drawing anything like him. It seemed simpler that way. Anyway, with me sat next to her in Art now, she didn’t want to risk setting off any of the stuff the teachers had been warned about in my ‘file’.

  ‘Keep that picture back for a better time, anyway,’ said Gaby. ‘It’ll count for more, one day.’

  Kleener, Wentloog, all the other professionals who pretended to care – they had a file on her too, of course. It’s just that hers wasn’t as fresh as mine, complete with references to the blue notebook that held all and none of the answers anyone teaching me might one day need if I decided to go off on one again. Yeah, we must have made quite a pair, sat there with pastels and paints in Rogoff’s room, trying to get on paper, canvas and into wire frames the mad stuff from inside our heads. Gaby’s vision was worth more marks maybe, but I knew by then to value whatever came out of my mind just as much.

  ‘What d’you think of Ella’s plan, then, LLJ?’

  We had three weeks left in Year 11 now – plus exams – before the summer rolled out ahead.

  ‘What? The End-of-Life Beach Party?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s given it a kinda morbid name, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘That’s what it’s gonna be, according to Ella,’ I said.

  ‘I know. Did you ever imagine her getting antsy about the end of school?’

  ‘She’s fine with it. She’s just called it that to rip into all the serious kids who are gonna get spaced out by the whole school thing finally finishing after all these years.’

  Gabe agreed: ‘It’s the end of their lives, maybe. For Ella, it’s just gonna be the start of turning slowly into a clone of her sister.’

  ‘That’s not a bad thing, is it?’ I suggested.

  ‘Maya? She’s bonkers, LLJ.’

  ‘What, and Ella isn’t?’

  ‘Nah. If she was, she’d never have come up with calling the end of school the end of life!’

  ‘Fair point.’

  Gaby leaned over the table to carefully smear a charcoal edge on the ‘self portrait’ she was finishing today. It was her own face but with all the shades in negative, and held tight by a pair of hands. Her normally light hair was scratched in the darkest strokes, while her eyes burned white hot in contrast. She’d done a series showing the reversal of light and dark happening. The first pics were of her normal face in black and white, before an eight-image strip where the shades gradually swapped places until the one she was finishing today, which shone with brilliant black. Each pic had been stuck into a wire frame, with a sculpture of hands holding them up out of a plank that supported the whole thing. For the last picture, though, the wire hands had grabbed the head hard by the temples and were squeezing it. The way the 2D and 3D came together made you feel kind of dizzy. She wanted it that way.

  I watched her teasing the charcoal with her thumb, then leaning back to check her work.

  ‘End of life,’ she chuckled. ‘How are you about that stuff, anyway, Lukee?’

  ‘What, the end of…’

  ‘School. End of school. Obviously.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Whether I get Maths or not, there’s plenty to do out there in the world.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Ooh. Depends what I’ll be able to fit into my schedule,’ I laughed.

  ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. All those meetings with Wentloog, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, can’t wait,’ I said, rolling my eyes but smiling.

  ‘Hey, Lukee, did he get you to do one of those blue book thingies in the end?’

  ‘Sort of. Did you have to do one as well?’

  ‘Yeah, but it wasn’t worth much to anyone, I don’t reckon.’

  ‘Nah, mine neither.’

  ‘The meetings are okay too,’ she added.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not too bothered by it,’ I said. ‘And he’s gonna have to get in the queue too, anyway.’

  ‘What? Behind all your busy volunteering stuff?’

  ‘Exactly. There’s dolphins to save from those Japanese trawlers. Congolese metal miners to protect from mobile phone makers. Fire eaters and farmers to keep safe from armed militias…’

  ‘Dude, you’re only folding secondhand clothes down the local Oxfam branch! How d’you know they’re gonna save the dolphins or pay the fire eaters more?’

  ‘They help in the Congo,’ I said, ‘and anyway, we need to learn the ropes from somewhere before we set up this worldwide putting-everything-right organisation with your dad’s inherited kidnap money. Charity shop floor’s a start, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is. I’ll give you that, LLJ.’

  ‘What are you doing about the “end of life”, anyway, Gabe?’ I made the inverted commas with my fingers. It seemed safer to say it that way.

  ‘Nothing at all. Just gonna let it come for me and then probably panic when it’s time to make a decision.’

  ‘That’s perfectly normal,’ I said.

  ‘I know. Sad innit. Remember when I said you and me were passing each other on the way to and from being normal?’

  ‘Oh yeah!’

  ‘Well, we messed that up, didn’t we! “Swapping Places”… What was I thinking?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Hey!’ she said, jumping up from her chair, excited about something. ‘That’s what I’ll call these pics! I’ve got my project title: “Swapping Places” – like from being normal to not normal.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘The people who look at it can decide which is which.’

  ‘You mean which pic? That’s easy, Gabe. Normal… Well, it’s all of them and none of them,’ I said, and she banged me with her shoulder, like she’d always done.

  ‘That’s such an LLJ thing to say,’ she grinned. ‘Come on, bell goes in a minute. Let’s go and find Ella. I wanna hear more about her plans for the end of life.’

  ‘Gabe, shh. Rogoff hears you say that and takes it the wrong way, she might call You-know-who and then we’re both going away for a long time.’

  ‘Good point. Better warn Ella, then. That mouth of hers. It’s gonna get us all into trouble one day.’

  ‘What more trouble than…’

  ‘Ah, come on, LLJ. Of course we can get in more trouble than that. I thought we were all just getting started?’

  * * *

  She chose the longest day of the year, Ella, to call the End-of-Everything Beach Party officially ‘on’. And, guess what, she also managed to find the one day of the century when Bunkers had no mist at all and a gloopy, red sunset. Instead, I remember the silhouettes of her and her sister, the boys they went round with and a few other randoms, all lining the square shapes of the toppled concrete, as that burning ball lit up the western horizon.

  For hours the night stayed warm, and that fading swipe of yellowy dusk held on to its traces of the summer day. The stars dropped into view softly, as the heat slowly evaporated into the emptiness overhead. Somewhere beyond, the se
a chopped carefully at the shore, reminding us all it was there with its steady, rhythmic rounds.

  It was on the way home, and only just before turning at the halfway rocks, that I got the idea. What if…

  And right then, feeling embraced by the warm, summer night, I knew the answer.

  The shore carried on bending round, until the streets that led to my house showed up on the left. Turning right instead, towards the gravel path, I could make out the rises and dips of the dunes as an extra shade of dark coming up ahead. The mini-hill was still there, but the hedges and plants on its brow were full of leaves now, and I heard them shake gently in the breeze that was pulling off the land behind.

  Without the moonlight, everything had to be done by feel – but my eyes still made them out as soon as I came over the pebbles and onto the sand:

  Nineteen of them, uniformed and stood to attention, all waiting just beyond the shoreline. In water up to their waists, they waited shoulder-width apart, spread out either side of one figure who had stepped forward just a little more than the rest.

  You’re still here! I said, and old Gigi began to raise his right arm.

  The darkness was fizzing around him, and I could only make out his movements a moment after he’d made them. With his wrist drooping low, elbow rising first, he lifted his hand up, along the centre of his chest and across his face. When it reached his head, another part of the night seemed to rise with it. His hat. He was lifting his hat. Then, from the way his silhouette crumpled slightly, I could make out the softest of bows, before the hat went back into place and he straightened into a perfect salute.

  I raised my right arm too, and as I did the other eighteen lifted theirs with it. When my hand got to the side of my head ready to salute, I stopped, and waved instead. Eighteen hands sent the same signal back.

  Have we done it? I asked, whispering so quiet it could only have been for me to hear. Of course not. And I stepped closer to the shore, taking off my shoes and leaving them on the pebbles behind.

  The foam lapping against the tide-line carried on marking out the beat of the night, as I waved again. This time Gigi joined them too, as he stepped backwards and took his place in the line.