Breaking Light

by Karin Altenberg

She suddenly looked close to tears and, to soothe things, he added, ‘Quite on the make.’

  ‘Well, exactly,’ hissed the earnest girl. ‘He’s a self-obsessed, narrow-minded prat who sleeps with everything in trousers.’

  ‘Oh.’ Without thinking, he looked down at her full skirt and sensible shoes.

  ‘You, on the other hand,’ she continued, ‘are an awkward dear with no ambition and that’s why you have never been of much interest to anyone except people like me.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said again.

  ‘And I mean that in the best possible way,’ she added.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course you do,’ he said politely, but wasn’t quite sure.

  ‘Ah, well, I must dash,’ she said, suddenly cheerful. ‘Mustn’t miss my karate class.’

  He nodded; he had obviously got her wrong.

  ‘Anyway, it was great talking to you – I feel a lot better now.’

  He watched with a sinking heart as she left the room, her wholesome canvas tote bag bumping heavily against her thigh. Too enclosed from the beginning, the senior common room seemed further reduced by his sudden loss of poise. Yet he could not bring himself to leave; something was expected of him. He needed to stay so that they could settle their minds and do their reluctant duty towards him. He swallowed the rest of the wine and looked towards Mrs Bail, who was still guarding the drinks table, her face and body blown up with the importance of her task. Fortunately, he caught the eye of Dr Lamont, a sweet man of insubstantial presence, red hair and intelligent gaze. Lamont winked at Askew and picked up two glasses of red from the table.

  ‘That Bail woman is a fearful old brute, isn’t she?’ said the wizened Scotsman as he handed Askew a drink.

  Askew raised his eyebrows and took a sip of the wine.

  ‘So, do you think the Dark Lord will make a speech?’ Lamont nodded towards the head of department, who had managed to detach himself from Dr Chatterji and was currently training his opaque eyes on Caroline Manners, an American postgraduate with ample endowments, including a healthy grant from a Midwestern college.

  ‘I’m afraid he might …’ Askew sighed unhappily.

  ‘Ach, cheer up, old pal; you’re out of all this now.’

  He frowned.

  Lamont clinked his glass against Askew’s in a solemn toast. ‘Congratulations. You have survived thirty years in the beehive of academia.’

  ‘Yeah, well …’ Perhaps he and Lamont could have been friends; the thought made him feel sad.

  ‘What are you going to do with yourself?’

  ‘I’m going back to where I started to try and figure things out.’

  ‘Ah, this is what we all hope to extract from retirement: an end – a conclusive end – to the long wait for fulfilment; a revelation of truth …’

  Askew laughed. ‘Well, it’s either that … or I’ll go for long walks on the moor and sit down and look at it as I imagine one would look at the sea.’

  ‘You’re lucky to have learnt how.’ Lamont looked at him closely with curious blue eyes. ‘I imagine our childhoods to have been quite similar,’ he tried. ‘How did you grow up?’

  Askew didn’t answer, but the wine trembled in his glass.

  ‘Where were you at school?’ Lamont pressed on. This was a common enough question and one that could even be expected between two people who had been acquainted for several decades.

  ‘I cannot remember where I was taught – or what – only what I have learnt.’

  ‘Aye.’ The dried-up Scotsman nodded, but still he would not give up. He tried another avenue: ‘Anyway, you protected yourself well; your strategy of integrity is one of the most successful I have ever witnessed.’

  He looked up, surprised.

  ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘It takes some practice,’ he said vaguely. He never wanted to fail Lamont.

  It was the Scotsman’s turn to laugh, but kindly. ‘Yes, I imagine it does.’

  They were quiet for a moment, looking into their wine.

  ‘Would you have wished it otherwise?’ Lamont asked softly.

  ‘There was no other way.’

  ‘There always is, in the beginning,’ he proposed.

  ‘There was never a beginning.’

  ‘What about later on? You had a wife …’

  ‘Well, no,’ he admitted, because Lamont was the only person he had been this close to. ‘That is, never in any proper way. There were girlfriends … early on. Not that many.’ Very few, in fact – if any. It was not that he wasn’t able. No, nothing like that. Nor was he disinclined; he still woke with an erection most mornings. It was just that time had passed him by, so that now, when he was asked what he had been doing with that time, his time, he could not answer. It was as if he had taken a running jump forty years previously and never landed.

  ‘Well, conventions are of little importance these days.’

  He could not offer more, but Lamont was bolder.

  ‘The important thing is that you loved.’

  ‘Yes,’ Askew agreed elusively.

  ‘Not everybody is that fortunate.’

  ‘No,’ Askew realised, and looked up at his friend. ‘Were you never in love?’

  Lamont shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not sure … but I did get married and we had a couple of children – they make it all worthwhile, you know.’

  Askew looked miserable and Lamont tried to compensate: ‘I used to envy you so; you seemed always to have some other purpose – what was it … a hobby of some kind?’

  ‘Oh,’ he hadn’t realised that anyone had noticed. What else? He looked around the room as if he might find an answer. ‘I was … gathering information for a while … Private research, if you like – trying to clear some old debts,’ which was more to the point than it sounded, he knew.

  Dr Lamont looked surprised but did not press on. He searched instead for safer ground. ‘Any other relatives?’

  At one stage there had been suddenly many. ‘There is someone –’ this was more than he had admitted before – ‘somewhere,’ he added.

  ‘Well, I may drive out to see you some time. It’d be good to get out of the city,’ said Lamont, who had finally realised that this was as far as they would go.

  *

  Now, in the armchair at Oakstone, Askew thought that perhaps he should ring Lamont and ask him to come down for a weekend. He sighed – it was so difficult to know about friends. How did you know for sure that somebody was your friend? It was not as if it happened by general agreement; there was no certificate or decree to make it credible.

  Suddenly he remembered something from long ago and got up from the chair. His limbs were a bit stiff, but no worse than could be expected at late middle age. As he climbed the stairs to the first floor, he was glad of all the running he had done as a child – all that exercise had kept him fit. Another flight of stairs, not as grand as the first, brought him on to the second floor, which had once housed the servants. He faced a narrow corridor of closed doors, each one opening on to an identical small room, but he knew which one to go for. He hadn’t been up here since he moved in – there was no need with so much space to heat up elsewhere. He turned the handle but the door did not give. He put his shoulder to it and tried again. This time the door budged and opened on to a dark room with a single, curtainless window facing the moor. The paint on the windowsill was chipped and there was dust and dead flies on the floor. There was no hint as to what the previous owners had used the room for – if at all. He looked around, almost expecting to find a superhero poster on the wall. And the broken club chair as it had been on that day, pulled into the middle of the otherwise-empty room. The friendship chair.

  *

  ‘Right,’ said Michael brightly, ‘this is where you sit.’ He gestured towards a large leather chair in the middle of the room. The seat and armrests were torn in several places, but it was still an impressive piece of furniture and Gabriel hesitated.

  ‘Go on; there’s nothing to be afraid of. I assure you tha
t the procedure is very safe.’

  Gabriel wondered where Michael had learnt to speak like that. ‘All right,’ he said and sat down in the chair. It engulfed him and his feet did not touch the floor but stuck out at an awkward angle.

  Michael looked sceptically at his plimsolls that were dangling in mid-air. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘it would have been good if your feet touched the floor so that you were earthed, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.’

  ‘Earthed?’ Gabriel asked anxiously.

  ‘To ground the current if something goes wrong,’ Michael said with all the confidence of his age and added, ‘Not that anything will, of course.’

  Gabriel swallowed and wished he could hear Michael’s mother somewhere in the large house. Michael was rummaging about close behind him and Gabriel climbed on his knees to look around the high back of the armchair. A Little Electrician’s kit box lay open on the floor. There were red and black leads scattered around it and next to them a black box with buttons on it and some metal clips.

  Michael raised his head and frowned. ‘You’re not supposed to look – it may ruin the experiment,’ he said with a hurt expression.

  Gabriel settled back into the chair, his heart beating harder now. The palms of his hands were cold and clammy.

  ‘If you pass the test,’ Michael was saying from behind, ‘we can have some pancakes for lunch.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ Gabriel said in a small voice.

  ‘Well, then you need to do your very best.’ Michael was standing next to him now.

  ‘Yes.’ This was always the case.

  ‘’Cause you do want us to be friends, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded and, because it suddenly felt very important, he added, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Put your arms like this,’ Michael instructed and pulled Gabriel’s arms along the armrests, ‘and your legs should be apart, like this.’ He stood bowlegged like a cowboy who had just got off his horse.

  ‘That’s it; hold it like that and remember not to move, as that may mess up the results.’

  Gabriel nodded carefully so as not to move his body.

  ‘And, by the way, you must keep your head still.’

  He tried to sit absolutely still while Michael attached one of the red leads with a metal clip to his finger. It nipped a bit but did not hurt. Michael looked up and smiled encouragingly. ‘There; it’s not too bad, is it?’

  He blinked his eyes as a signal.

  ‘Good. I need to put the electrodes all over your hands and feet and ears and chest ’cause these are the best places to measure.’ Gabriel was aware of his heart beating harder and he had a thick sensation in his throat. Michael was leaning over him and he could feel his warm breath as he tried to attach one of the electrodes to his ear. He smelt of buttered toast and sand. ‘Hmm –’ Michael stood back and held his chin – ‘I think I’d better use some tape to attach it to your temples. That’s how the guy did it in Frankenstein.’

  Gabriel had never been to the cinema, but Uncle Gerry had told him that Frankenstein was a horror film. He frowned involuntarily.

  Michael patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’s nothing to worry about; it’ll just make it a bit more real. Just wait here for a minute – and try not to sweat; water and electrics don’t mix.’

  But Gabriel was sweating now. In spite of the chill in the un-heated room, he could feel his flannel shirt under the slipover sticking to his back and a bead of sweat was trickling along his temple. He breathed deeply and tried not to move. There was a Captain Marvel poster pinned to the wall in front of him and he wondered where Michael had got it; he had never seen a poster like that at Wilkinson’s. The poster showed Captain Marvel, the gold flash glittering on the chest of his red bodysuit, fighting against a giant spider. Gabriel looked away quickly and his eyes fell on a low stool on the floor below the poster. There was nothing special about the stool – Michael had probably stood on it to attach the poster to the wall – but something about it made Gabriel feel peculiar. It was painted light blue with a slit in the middle so that it could be carried around. In a flash he saw an image of himself trying to climb on the stool and heard laughter as somebody picked him up and carried him away. It was an odd sensation and he wondered if it had anything to do with the electrodes that were attached to his hands and feet. Just then, Michael returned with a roll of tape.

  ‘All right, let’s get going.’ He bit off a couple of strips of tape and stuck them to his left index finger while his right hand fitted one of the remaining electrodes to Gabriel’s temple. At first, the tape wouldn’t stick to his damp skin but on the second attempt it worked and Michael quickly attached the last electrode to the other temple. He stood back and admired his work. ‘Perfect!’

  Gabriel was not altogether reassured, but remembered the pancakes and strained to smile with his eyes.

  ‘Now, try not to swallow while I attach the leads to the battery.’

  The saliva was collecting in his mouth and his throat was aching as he waited for Michael to stick a black and a red lead to each of the metal tongues of the large battery.

  ‘There! Now I’m going to switch it on – only a little, at first – and you must tell me when it hurts; these are dangerous things to play with …’

  Gabriel’s throat made a strange sound and he stared in panic at the black battery box as Michael turned on the switch. He shut his eyes and waited for whatever was in store. But nothing happened. He opened his eyes.

  Michael was looking up at him expectantly. ‘Well?’

  He could not answer.

  ‘Blink once if it hurts and twice if it doesn’t.’

  Gabriel hesitated and blinked twice.

  ‘Darn!’ Michael muttered and turned the switch to the next setting. ‘If you don’t feel anything, it may not work and we cannot be sure to be friends.’

  Gabriel wanted to cry but knew he must not. His entire life depended on this.

  ‘Now, you ought to feel this.’

  He shut his eyes again and tried to feel that sensation that would herald their friendship. It wasn’t there. His eyes were welling and he shut them harder.

  ‘Remember, blink once when you feel it.’

  Perhaps there was a slight tingling in his spine? Oh, was there? He couldn’t take it any longer and, abruptly, he blinked – once.

  ‘I knew it!’ Michael shouted. ‘Jolly good. I knew we could be friends.’ He jumped up to the chair and shook Gabriel’s hand as if they were bankers sealing a deal.

  Gabriel swallowed at last and looked down at his hand where the electrodes were still attached. He hoped he really had felt enough. But, as he looked into Michael’s beaming face, he pushed all his doubts aside and laughed a throaty laugh. ‘Can we have pancakes now?’ he asked and pulled his sleeve across his face that was still damp with sweat and perhaps tears.

  ‘Yes.’ Michael was bounding with joy, either from the success of the experiment or his new friendship. ‘I’ll tell Maman we are on our way.’ He ran out the door and along the corridor, leaving Gabriel still attached to the chair. Carefully, so as not to damage anything, Gabriel picked off the electrodes one by one and put them on the floor next to the open box.

  The kitchen was bright but quite chilly when Gabriel entered. The light from a single overhead bulb was grating against the weak daylight that sieved through the diamonds of a row of leaded windows.

  Michael’s mother was standing by an Aga cooker. She had soft brown hair, styled in waves around her face, and she wore a stripy apron over a green woollen dress. She was very pretty, Gabriel thought.

  ‘Ah, there you are. You found the way on your own, then?’ Her eyes were large and deep like a deer’s.

  He nodded. It did not occur to him that this might be odd.

  ‘Come and sit down; Michael is just fetching the jam from the scullery. The maid is off today but I hope you will like the pancakes, all the same.’

  He hesitated for a moment; he could not remember ever sitting at a
table other than his mother’s or Uncle Gerry’s. There was a nice smell of frying butter from the stove. She looked up at him and smiled with her doe’s eyes. Michael must have warned her about him but he looked down just the same, letting his fringe fall over his face.

  ‘Hurry up – they are almost finished; you can have the first one if you sit down now.’ Her voice, too, was different and beautiful – it sang at the end of each word, like some small animal might, and her lips pouted in pronunciation. He thought of his own mother’s lips that grew thin and white when she scolded him.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he whispered at the table.

  ‘I’m Mrs Bradley, but you can call me Amélie, if you like. Michael told me that you’re his new friend at school. I’m glad you met; it’s not always easy to move into a new area.’

  He was baffled. She wanted him to call her a name he couldn’t possibly articulate and she was glad that Michael was his friend.

  ‘What are your parents called?’ she asked and put a measure of batter on the frying pan. It frizzled for a moment.

  ‘My mother’s called Cecilia.’ It felt strange saying a name he used so rarely.

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. ‘My father went away before the war and didn’t come back.’

  ‘I am very sorry to hear it. So many died in that awful war …’ She had turned away from the frying pan for a moment and her eyes looked at him in a sad way. It worried him and he wanted to put things right.

  ‘Oh, but he didn’t die,’ he tried to explain. ‘He didn’t want to come back because of my face.’

  She looked at him oddly. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I don’t know … Everybody, I suppose.’ He couldn’t remember who first told him.

  She was quiet for a moment. ‘What does your mother do?’

  ‘She works as a secretary for Dr Lennon,’ and, in case she did not know the word, he added, ‘She answers the telephone and takes notes on a pad and pops to Wilkinson’s for the milk.’

  Mrs Bradley put a plate with a beautiful golden pancake in front of him. It smelt delicious and he suddenly remembered: ‘I have an uncle – he’s called Uncle Gerry, but his real name is Gerald Askew. He used to be a doctor too, but he’s no good after the war and now he does odd jobs on the farms, taking care of sick animals. He lives up on the moor in a cottage, but often comes to see us.’