Luke and Jon

by Robert Williams

  Duerdale

  Duerdale: It’s about an hour away, to the north-west. It’s tucked between hills and moors, almost hidden, like a mole tucked between rolls of skin. I had never heard of it. Nobody I knew had heard of it. When we went to sign for the house the estate agent told us, ‘Make sure you have provisions. It was cut off for three days when the last snow fell. When the rain finally washed the snow away they found two old people dead in their beds in one house.’ My dad looked up at him, then back at the contract, and signed.

  It was raining and windy the day we moved. It was one of those dark days that never quite fully emerge from night. The journey took nearly two hours, an hour longer than it should have done. Dad wouldn’t drive on the bypass or busy roads and he drove slowly. Tense and edgy, hunched over the steering wheel. We spent most of the journey in silence. The rain fell hard and the windscreen wipers squeaked and wobbled with little effect and I watched the rain hit the road and bounce back up. We eventually reached the outskirts of Duerdale, but our house was on the far side and we had to drive through the early-evening deserted streets. It isn’t the best time to judge a town – a dark day, black and raining. I tried not to shiver as we passed the unfamiliar houses and shops. It looked like a town from an old black-and-white film where the characters hardly speak and the wind bangs the gate open and closed in the night. I concentrated on the road ahead. As if reading my mind, Dad said, ‘It will look better with the morning sun on it.’ He didn’t sound convinced. We reached the far end of town and the foot of Bowland Fell. We braced ourselves for the climb and the car strained against the gradient and the buffeting wind.

  We passed a few houses and farms lower down the fell. They looked in better repair if no more welcoming than our house. Although it was only early evening, most already had their curtains drawn, closed to the incoming night. The trees at the side of the road grew thicker the further we travelled up the climb. They branched over the road from either side and embraced each other in the middle and it felt like driving through a tunnel. We turned off the main road and onto the uneven track that led to our house. The trees were gone and we had fields on both sides. The rain attacked us from all directions. We were jostled and bounced in our seats as the car lurched over the pits and holes of the track.

  My dad was leaning forward in his seat, a concentrated frown on his face. The rain had started coming down harder and faster, like lines of thin steel from the sky to the ground. Tiredness hit me from nowhere. I slumped. I felt Dad turn to me, a glance to see if I was OK. I was about to return the look with a smile. I didn’t. Just as my head turned, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow appear in the road. I shouted. The car screeched and tensed and slid to the left. Stones from the track jumped into the air. We scrambled to a halt.

  Standing in front of us, inches in front of us, was a boy. Dripping wet, mouth open. It was hard to tell through the dark and the rain, but he looked a couple of years younger than me. He stood with his arms at his side, white skin, glassy-eyed and no expression. Mouth open. He looked at me for a second, turned his head and looked at my dad. Then he was gone. Running hard and fast across the fields and disappearing through the pouring rain. We watched him go. ‘Jesus,’ my dad said, ‘we nearly killed our first local.’ He was sweating. We sat there for a couple of minutes. He laughed nervously, trying to lose the shock. He put the car back in gear and we set off, even slower than before.

  We drove for a few more minutes, rounded the final bend and I could see the house, silhouetted against the hillside. I tried not to focus on it too much. We pulled to a stop and stayed sat in the car, unsure of the next move. Dad sighed and roused himself and I followed slowly. We climbed out of the car, he unlocked the front door and we stepped into the house as the new owners.

  This is my house

  I remember the print-out we had been given the first time we came to view:

  Some structural work needed. Good opportunity for renovation. Interiors need updating. An ideal chance to buy a detached country property at a realistic price.

  It was a hole. We had been told that the previous owners, the Thornbers, had lived there all their lives. They owned the land around the house and it had been a working farm. For the last fifteen years though Mr and Mrs Thornber had just lived in the house and rented the land. They refused help from the council and refused to move, even when they found it hard to get about. I thought about how grim it must have been stuck on top of a hill, unable to move, hanging onto each other and seeing out their last days. Waiting to die. From the state of the house it looked like they spent the last few years living in one room and I found out later that they were the couple who died together in bed when Duerdale was cut off. It didn’t bother me much to be honest. I don’t believe in ghosts. I quite liked Mr and Mrs Thornber. If you are going to die, die in old age in your own bed with your lifelong partner. Good for them, the stubborn old sods. Their house stank though – it really did.

  Nobody had bothered to clear out any junk. The estate agent probably assumed whoever bought the house would knock it down and start again. So we were left with the Thornbers’ heavy, dark furniture and collected junk. I should have been grateful; we didn’t have any junk of our own. It didn’t feel like a home. Most of the floors were just wooden boards, but not like the floorboards a lot of my friends had in their houses. These were dirty and rough and uneven; you couldn’t walk barefoot. The walls were painted a dismal grey and the curtains were thin and stained and none of them fitted properly. In some rooms they were pinned to the window frame so you couldn’t even open them. There were odd chairs and pieces of furniture scattered around. Everything mismatched.

  I lay in bed on the first night. The rain battered the walls and the wind chased itself through the holes and into and around the house. The windows rattled and shook as the wind rushed them. I was worried I would wake up on a pile of rubble looking up at the stars. I hadn’t thought of the boy in the road since we got to the house; we had been too busy. But as sleep started to come, I saw him again. Standing in front of the headlights, straight-armed and open-mouthed in the pouring rain. I tried to work out why he looked so unusual. In the last seconds, before tiredness finally covered and carried me away, I realised – he was dressed like my granddad in his old school photos. My sleepy mind tried to claw itself back to the surface, to think some more, but it was too late. I had already surrendered. I was asleep dreaming of storms, strange-looking boys and car crashes.

  Primary colours

  My mum was fun. She was bright. She was clever but I don’t mean bright like that. She was sparky.

  When I was a little kid and I got picked up from school she was always easy to spot amongst the crowd. In the winter I just looked for her red hat, bobbing amongst all the other heads. A traffic-light red. In the summer it would be her daisy hat. Her toenails and fingernails changed colour at least once a week. She’d ask me, ‘Iguana green or orange?’ Sometimes she would alternate, one toe orange, one lizard green. For special occasions she had nail varnish with glitter in it. My dad had made a cabinet just to hold all her little bottles of varnish. She added the fairy lights.

  She had a huge collection of ear-rings, bracelets, necklaces and bangles. None of them were expensive. She picked them up at market stalls, craft fairs and charity shops. She sometimes made her own. Her ear-rings were her favourite. Some of them were daft to be honest. There were massive hoops, bright-pink flowers, yellow suns. She even had a pair of snow-globe ear-rings she wore every Christmas Day. My friends loved her. She was a lot younger than a lot of other mums and it showed. She talked about music and TV and stuff like that to them. Sometimes I had to drag them away.

  I will tell the truth. It wasn’t always like that. She would be bright, bright as she ever got and then suddenly there would be a crash and tears. Dad would say, ‘Your mum’s tired, let’s give her a rest, eh?’ There would be no ear-rings and no coloured nails. Lines on her forehead and thinner lips. She would be in bed. Dad wouldn�
��t be in his workroom as much and we would have Chinese or chips from the takeaway. I wouldn’t really see her. Then after a few days I would come downstairs in the morning and she would be sat at the kitchen table, hugging a cup of tea. Ear-rings, bracelets and bright nails. She would pay me too much attention, grab and tickle me. She was back.

  It’s not what I asked for

  The first morning in the new house was uncomfortable. I felt self-conscious, like the first day with a new haircut. We ate breakfast, stiff and still, like we were strangers in a hotel. Dad tried to brush the atmosphere away: ‘We’ll paint your room first and sort out the spare room. You can use that for your painting. Loads of natural light – it’ll be perfect. I’ll have the outhouse as my workroom. We’ll be straight in no time …’ He was sat in his dressing-gown, thin and tired, staring ahead. Dark eyes and stubble like passing clouds in front of his face. I nodded. He was trying hard. I looked around the kitchen at the jumble of chairs and the stained table, at the damp patches on the far wall, the pile of junk in the corner and the filthy windows. I smiled at Dad and tried not to think about the old house and our old life.

  He collected the bowls and cups off the table and said, ‘When we have the house sorted out a little we’ll go into town, get our bearings, find out where the shops are and get your new blazer.’ A small shiver ran across my back. With everything that had happened the thought of starting a new school had been buried at the back of my head, deep down. Suddenly it rose up for a second and I was surprised to discover that I even cared. I think Dad noticed me tense, he didn’t say any more, just rested his hand on my head as he left the room.

  My old school was OK. First I went to the primary school at the end of our road and made friends there. When it was time to move to the high school we all went to the same one – there was only one in town. Before the summer holidays we had a practice day. We all left the primary school together and met the children from the other schools. There was an assembly, we met our form teacher and found out where our classrooms were. I even knew some of the kids from other schools already from around town, from friends of my parents. It was bigger and noisier, but I got used to it. I settled straight away.

  There were loud kids, quiet kids, funny kids, stupid kids, leaders and geeks. There were the sporty ones, the clever ones and the useless ones. I wasn’t one of the popular kids but I wasn’t with the nerds either. I was the art-room kid. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the best clothes or that I had strange eyes or that my dad didn’t do a job like the other lads’ dads. I was OK. I was accepted I suppose. I had a few friends and we were mainly left alone. I spent most of my time in the art room and that was accepted. That was my role.

  I even started getting a bit of interest off some of the girls. Shy looks and giggles, that kind of thing. My mate, Ian, told me they thought I was mysterious. He told me that girls loved artists, ‘They think they’re mysterious … you think you could teach me a bit of drawing?’ He slapped me on my back and laughed.

  I was glad it was the summer holidays, but I knew that as far away as the school term seemed now, it would come and one day I would be climbing into a different uniform and walking down strange crowded corridors and I would be the new boy with the dead mum. But what worried me most was having to start again. Everything was settled at my old school. It wasn’t always brilliant but I knew who to avoid and who to trust. I knew my way around. This would be a new school in a strange town and everyone would be established. I would have to start again, earn my position from scratch and I didn’t know if I had the energy. I didn’t know if I cared enough any more. But still, every now and again for the rest of the day, a cold sliver of fear shot through my stomach.

  We settled into some sort of routine for the rest of the week. I would help Dad in the morning as we half-heartedly painted, scrubbed and chucked out junk. It didn’t seem to make any difference to our tumbledown house though; however much we cleaned and tidied it looked a wreck. After lunch I would help for another hour and then dad would send me off. ‘Watch TV– do something kids are supposed to do.’ He needed to drink and brood. I chose to paint. A pile of rocks and stones.

  Painting rocks

  Our house was almost at the top of Bowland Fell, but not quite. There was one more rise. I could leave our back door with my art stuff strapped to my back and push up over the final climb. It was a steep climb, but worth the effort; at the top I looked down onto the roof of our house, and further down onto Duerdale. It was an impressive view of tight streets, low houses and dark mills. The blackness of the buildings settled like a scar on the floor of the valley. To the left of the town stood the local cement factory, grey quarries, like giant moon craters spreading out behind two tall chimneys.

  The rocks were in a pile at the very top of the fell, marking the summit. It was the colours that first attracted me. I didn’t realise how many different colours you could have in stone. There were shades of brown, green, grey, black, even faint reds and blues if you looked carefully enough. They felt as different as they looked. Some stones were as smooth and round as marbles and had soft patches of moss you could use as a pillow. Others were coarse and pitted with edges that could rip your skin. There was a lot of different texture. ‘Texture is vital’ – the wisdom of my dad. He could tell a type of wood purely by feel. He told me it was important to think about the material I was painting. To consider how the object felt to touch and to try and convey that onto the paper. He said I should use all my senses to paint, not just sight. I was learning what he meant and painting the rocks and stones was good practice. I set up each afternoon at around the same time, but always in a different place. A pile of rocks and stones sounds static, I know, but these really weren’t. The light changed hour by hour and the stones changed colour. Shadows came and went and the stones seemed to shrink and grow.

  I paint quickly. I started and finished a painting in an afternoon. The finished paintings were lined up against a wall in my bedroom. My dad didn’t normally go in my bedroom but I caught him looking at them. There were three so far. He stood for a long time. Considering. He told me they were good. He meant it. My mum said all my paintings were brilliant and she meant it too, but Dad could tell the really good ones. I’d decided to paint one each day for as long as I stayed interested. It kept me busy. It kept me blank.

  A hug on a hill

  It was a Wednesday afternoon. I’d set up with my back to the house. I looked up at the sky to see what kind of light I had. It was a low, liquid grey sky and you couldn’t see the sun, but I knew it was behind the cloud; I was squinting and when I looked back down at my paper dots of colour flickered and darted across the page. I blinked them away. I looked at the stones for the first time and saw the envelope. It was unavoidable. I paused, brush in mid-air.

  The envelope had been pushed into the pile, wedged between two stones. I had to edge it out carefully so it wouldn’t rip. I prised it out safely and turned it over. My name was written on the front, in black ink: Luke Redridge. The writing was thin and shaky, like a seismograph had spelt it out in a force eight earthquake. I looked around quickly, to see if I was being watched. I was stood alone on top of a hill and felt like a licked finger in a cold wind. I didn’t see anybody. I opened the envelope and turned the paper written side up and read.

  Death is nothing at all

  I have only slipped away into the next room

  I am I and you are you

  Whatever we were to each other

  That we still are

  Call me by my old familiar name

  Speak to me in the easy way you always used

  Put no difference in your tone

  Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow

  Laugh as we always laughed

  At the little jokes we always enjoyed together

  Play, smile, think of me, pray for me

  Let my name be ever the household word that it always was

  Let it be spoken without effort

  Without
the ghost of a shadow in it

  Life means all that it ever meant

  It is the same as it ever was

  There is absolute unbroken continuity

  What is death but a negligible accident?

  Why should I be out of mind

  Because I am out of sight?

  I am waiting for you for an interval

  Somewhere very near

  Just around the corner

  All is well.

  I felt sick. And dizzy. The ground lurched up to me and fell away in a second. I stuffed the paper back in the envelope and shoved it deep into my pocket. I grabbed my paints and paper, strode down the fell and into the house. I slammed the back door shut and went straight to my room and climbed into bed. I slept through until the next day.

  Funeral

  I remember the details more than anything. The sound of the funeral car’s tyres on the road as it slid to a stop to pick us up. The small puddles in the pits and hollows of the church’s cracked old pavement. I was surprised to see how they had almost dried up by the time we came back outside, how bright and warm the sun had become. I remember feeling shocked when my gran hugged me. She was wearing the perfume she always wore to church and that didn’t seem right. I remember everyone standing for a hymn, the silent pause, the organist’s arm mid-air before the hymn started and the breath-filled second before everyone started to sing.

  The church itself seemed different. I had been there many times before: christenings, weddings and harvest festivals. It was quieter today. It felt more useful somehow. Like it was fulfilling a purpose. I’m sure nobody checked a watch, nobody’s thoughts wandered and nobody thought about what they had to do later. Everyone was focused.