Breaking Light

by Karin Altenberg

  Outside Wilkinson’s, something colourful stirred in the corner of his eye and he looked up to see the woman from the allotment holding a box of root vegetables in her arms. He was surprised, almost shocked, to see her there, out of their common element. Suddenly he was aware of the sour smell from under his pullover and held his arms closer to his body. She had spotted him and smiled as if about to say something. Just then a young man opened the door of the shop and exclaimed, ‘Wow, look at that. Thanks so much – that’s an amazing crop for this time of year.’

  ‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘I’ll say it is.’

  He saw that her wrists were too thin inside a cuff of gold bangles and wished he could have helped her carry the box. But the young man had already taken it from her and was turning back into the shop, gesturing for her to follow. He walked on then, but heard them behind him: ‘Who was that? A friend of yours?’

  ‘He lives up at Oakstone, I believe.’

  ‘Ah, the famous professor.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was a professor.’

  ‘Nah, he doesn’t look it, does he?’

  ‘Look it?’

  ‘You know … clever.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice-looking geezer, but he seems a bit … well, peculiar – as if he needs looking after.’

  ‘Don’t we all.’ She laughed.

  ‘Well, now, you see!’

  The door closed behind their gay voices and Mr Askew trotted on along the wet street, once again safely out of reach.

  *

  He had barely got into the house when she rang the bell; the floor was still wet where his mac had dripped. ‘Oh dear,’ he moaned. ‘I’m not ready yet.’ But there was no going back and there she was when he opened the door. She was peering out from under a clear umbrella dotted with hectic-looking ladybirds. Her blue eyes were the kind that would scan a room and not miss anything – and yet not quite see. He noticed that her face at that moment looked quite callous. He smiled at her and she looked appalled.

  ‘Afternoon, Mr Askew. It’s me, Doris Ludgate, come to clean the house.’

  ‘How do you do?’ He didn’t quite catch her name, but politeness was always a form of protection.

  ‘Can I come in, then?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ He stepped aside to let her pass. She was wearing a pair of wellingtons, but fished out the same white trainers from a plastic bag and put them down on the checked tiles in the hall. She kicked off the rubber boots with surprising agility and bent over to put on the trainers, her behind bulging dangerously and forcing him to take a step back until he was pressed against the wall.

  She stood to face him. ‘There. That’s better. Now, where shall I start?’

  This too was something he had failed to contemplate. Somewhere in a far corner of his mind, he heard his mother’s voice: ‘Don’t you dare come in here and mess up my kitchen!’ And just then, he remembered Michael’s mum dropping the pancake spatula by the old Aga – and the greasy skid mark on the floor tiles. For a moment, he could smell her beauty in the room – the perfume on her skin – something sweet intermingled with the woodiness of iris. She knew all along and she did nothing. And yet I can’t hold it against her. It was the first time I was persuaded by beauty in a person.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Oh, I beg your pardon, I was miles away.’ He wondered whether there was dandruff on the back of his jumper.

  ‘Were you, now?’ She looked at him in dismay and he could see that the blue in her eyes had hardened into slate. ‘Well, that’s no good, is it? I have never been employed by somebody like you before but, as a new member of staff, I believe that the very least I can expect from the management is that they listen to me.’ Strictly speaking, she had never been employed, of course, other than very briefly in a café and then by her husband, if you could call that employment. In the beginning, he had sometimes shouted at her to make herself useful and fix him some proper food for his tea and once or twice he had laughed hard and said that, if she hadn’t been his wife, he might still have hired her as his whore. At the time, she thought that was quite flattering, meaning that she was good at it; he wasn’t normally one to pay her compliments. But the thought of having a proper job again, like before she was married, had always been tantalising. Only last year, she had found a DVD in the Gazette with a free interactive induction course to corporate management for small-scale entrepreneurs. She had taken it into the village hall and put it into one of the computers. A nice young man from the college had helped her start it all up and then all she had to do was push the big button to the right. The young man had asked her if she was about to start her own business and she had said no, not really, but perhaps she would become employed one day.

  ‘Oh dear; but I’m not really your manager – I have just asked you to do some cleaning for a few hours …’ His voice trailed off as she turned to glare angrily at him, but there was no way he could recoil further into the corner by the door.

  ‘You may call yourself whatever you like, but what I mean to stress is that I still have my rights.’

  ‘Yes, yes, naturally …’ He nodded, albeit still hesitantly. ‘But what exactly are they?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The rights.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was beginning to sound – and feel – rather impatient and she spoke very slowly and clearly. ‘As I said before, I expect you to listen.’

  ‘Ah, of course … What was it that you said again?’

  She sighed deeply and shook her head. ‘Where would you like me to start?’

  ‘Didn’t I say?’ He blushed and laughed briefly. ‘In the kitchen, please, if you wouldn’t mind. The floor needs washing; it’s a bit greasy, I believe.’

  Once he had shown her to the kitchen and laid out a smorgasbord of cleaning products, brushes and sponges, he retreated upstairs to the small room he had chosen as his bedroom. His armpits were clammy and his heart was beating so hard he could see his chest juddering as he lay down on the narrow bed. Through the floorboards, he could hear the anger in her limbs as she moved around downstairs. The white trainers squeaked against the floor and her arms clanked a brush hard on the sink. Crash!

  He winced as he remembered the weight of the sledgehammer in his hand as he flattened the woodlice against a stone.

  ‘Let me try. Please, Gabe, let me.’

  ‘No!’

  Thud! Thud!

  *

  It was a day towards the end of that endless summer, the sun still warm; Gabriel was waiting outside the post office, where they had agreed to meet that morning. The plan was to make a new dam in the millstream under the bridge where the water was shallow and could easily be waded. Only Gabriel had been up early to buy a present for Michael in Mr Rowden’s shop. It was a little boat with a cotton sail that could be tacked and fastened to nails at the aft. The hull was dark blue and the keel was red and Gabriel thought it looked quite authentic. He had been eyeing it in the shop window for weeks. He had used all his savings, but he reckoned it was the right thing to do – to make up for making Michael cry that time when Mr Bradley had come to see Uncle Gerry.

  He had been waiting for a long time already; the sun had moved a little and he was now in the shade, so that he felt cold and a bit forgotten. He kicked a pebble across the tarmac and watched it settle in the middle of the road just as a car passed, coming in from the moor road. Then it was all quiet again. Waiting sometimes made him feel queer and he shuddered a bit. But, just then, he saw Michael on the other side of the street by Mr Rowden’s shop and he stepped into the sun, raising his arm, shouting, ‘Hey, Michael!’

  Michael looked up and waved. Then he turned and looked back over his shoulder once, before crossing the street towards Gabriel.

  ‘Hey!’ Michael said, skipping a few steps. You could tell he was in a good mood.

  ‘Here, I bought this for you.’ He handed over the little sailing boat, gently. ‘It can sail for real if you tie the sails to one c
orner. I thought we could try it in the stream today …’

  Michael took the boat and looked at it. ‘Wow!’ he said, and it made Gabriel feel good.

  ‘You like it, then?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s brilliant … But look, Gabe, I only came over to say that I can’t come to the bridge today.’

  ‘Oh?’ Gabriel shrugged.

  ‘Dad’s taking me to the beach. And afterwards we’re having fish and chips for supper, by the harbour, where the fishing boats come in.’ Michael was beaming.

  ‘All right,’ Gabriel said, and looked down at his shoes. Why should he care about the fishing boats?

  ‘Thanks for the boat, though. I’ll test it at the beach and let you know how it works.’

  ‘That’s okay. I don’t even like sailing boats. I prefer motorboats.’

  The words rolled out over the road as hard as the pebble before. Gabriel frowned and bit his lip. It was not what he had meant to say. He wanted to say something else. But Michael was in a hurry, already crossing the street to where Mr Bradley’s car was waiting, somewhere nearby.

  Gabriel felt cold again, although he was standing in the sun, blinking hard.

  And then he saw Mother outside Mr Rowden’s. He was suddenly glad to see her, although he felt he didn’t really want to talk to anyone at that moment – not to Michael, not to Mother – just put his head inside her summer coat where he knew it would be warm.

  ‘Oh, dear. But, Gabriel, what are you doing?’ Mother’s laugh sounded nervous. ‘In the middle of the street.’ So that he felt he had to pull away from her and, when he did, he saw Mr Bradley’s car parked just a few yards away and he saw Michael standing next to it and Mrs Bradley opening a door to put a hamper in the back seat, and he hoped that Mother hadn’t seen but he knew by her body, by the way she held her breath, that she had. Suddenly, Mrs Bradley looked up, and Mum looked too, and Mrs Bradley’s smile went strange and, for a moment, Gabriel thought she was going to say something – to call out to them. Only, he didn’t want her to. He felt a vague sense of panic rising inside him and he took Mother’s hand and pulled it hard and, for once, they both pulled in the same direction – away from the car where the Bradleys were getting ready to go to the seaside; away from Mrs Bradley, who wore a pale yellow short-sleeved summer dress. Her arms looked lovely and her dark brown hair, shining in the sun, was tied loosely with a yellow ribbon at the back. Because Gabriel had time to see all this before he pulled Mother away.

  As they turned their backs on the car and started in the other direction towards the church, Mother’s hand felt rubbery and strange, as if she too was cold and forgotten like he had been in the shade. He felt he ought to say something but he could not say anything, because of his mouth, the dryness that would smell stale and the feeling of alone that he remembered still, and what was there to say, anyway? It was very warm and the sun made sharp geometries of the world, triangles of light and dark, and Gabriel held on to Mother’s hand all the way back to the cottage, even though he was already nine.

  *

  Perhaps the memory of the incident in the street still lingered somewhere in Gabriel’s mind as he found himself at the back of Uncle Gerry’s cottage a few weeks later with the big sledgehammer. The summer was weary by now and so were their games. The weight of the sledgehammer felt good in his hand as he flattened the woodlice against a stone, his own desolation diminishing with each perfect thud. Michael was there, of course, a frantic shine in his brown eyes and his dirty fingers eagerly feeding more woodlice for the block. ‘Let me try! Please, Gabe, let me!’

  ‘No!’

  Thud! Thud!

  Michael with his rich dad, a father who afforded where others failed – and his hands the size of bulls’ hooves.

  Thud!

  Fish and chips by the harbour.

  Thud!

  And then Michael’s fingers were on the block, trying to steady a woodlouse for its sacrifice, but he did not pull his hand away quickly enough. Surely Gabriel would not have let the hammer fall on to those thin fingers? And yet this time there was a different kind of thud and a terrible scream. Gabriel stared at the fingers, which, for a brief moment, seem unharmed and abnormally white before there was suddenly blood everywhere. And, in all that bright panic and howling, there was a strange and terrible warmth inside Gabriel.

  And so, at the end of that first summer, they ended up in hospital together – Gabriel having his face fixed and Michael three of his fingers. Because they were the best of friends, they were allowed to recover in the same ward. And, although they were not allowed to lie together like they used to up on the moors, behind their closed eyelids they would dream the same dreams of roaming and adventure. The green and blue dreams that race along serpentine roads with eight cylinders or merge thickly out of underground caves. Although they were supposed to be asleep – and the nurses, with their beautiful, cool hands smelling of soap and their kind, kind smiles, had pulled the curtain around each bed – Gabriel could still feel the warmth of Michael’s heart against his, smell the nearness. Brothers in arms. Blood brothers.

  *

  The house was all too quiet. He must have fallen asleep but he was convinced that Mrs Ludgate was still downstairs. She would not have left without making herself known. He sat up on the bed and felt with his feet on the floor for his shoes. The room was cold and he rubbed his hands together and shrugged his shoulders before getting up. He pulled his cardigan down over his stomach but, to his dismay, this only made it ride up at the rear, exposing his lower back. How come my clothes are shrinking? he thought to himself as he started down the stairs. Yet another addition to the general catalogue of indignities. He found Mrs Ludgate bent over a framed photograph in the drawing room. It had been taken on the front steps sometime in the late forties or early fifties. He could feel an unreasonable anger rising inside him. ‘What are you doing? I thought you said you were here to work.’

  She stood back quickly, her throat reddening. ‘I was just admiring this photograph,’ she confessed. ‘Is that your family?’

  He glanced at the photograph, quickly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Aww! Then that cute little boy must be you, is he?’

  ‘Yes …’ He was beginning to hate her.

  ‘So you actually grew up in this house?’

  ‘I … I lived here for a little while when I was very young,’ he said, cautiously.

  ‘I can’t quite imagine a family living here – it seems so quiet …’ and, after a second’s thought, she added, ‘It’s a huge house for a single man, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wish you would mind your own business and get back to the cleaning.’ He could not stop himself any longer – and they were both a bit frightened.

  ‘All right, all right.’ She pulled at her fleece jacket so that the border of sheep bounced along her hips. ‘No bother; I was on my way, anyway. It took me all this while only to clean the kitchen – it was that filthy.’ Suddenly she snorted. There was a lot at stake here – something she had realised when she saw the advertisement on Mrs Edwards’ noticeboard. Yes, she had known straight away and she had ripped it down quickly, in case anyone was watching, and hurried out of the post office without staying for the gossip.

  ‘Good thing you hired me – you clearly can’t cope on your own,’ she said now, knowing it wasn’t quite true. In any case, she wasn’t particularly good at putting things in order. She gave a laugh, as if for emphasis.

  Mr Askew frowned. He wasn’t really listening, thinking instead about how he’d got himself into this situation. There was something vaguely familiar – although unkind – about her face. He realised that there was no preventing her from coming back. If only, he thought to himself as he watched her puffed face laughing, she could dissolve in a pit of cow urine and quicklime, her tongue shrivelling up in her throat.

  As she was leaving the room, her trainers making a squelching sound against the parquet, she looked back over her shoulder at the photograph. ‘Anyway, you were a very lucky boy t
o grow up with all this. You look like a happy child.’

  He went stiffly into the hall and opened the front door for her.

  ‘Perhaps you knew my husband back then? He would be about your age – a few years older perhaps.’ Her voice was too insistent, driving into his head like a screw.

  ‘Goodbye, now,’ he said, painfully, and, because she did not seem to have heard, he added, ‘Bye-bye.’

  When she had left, he stood for a long time in the doorway of the sitting room, looking at the photograph – at Michael’s brown eyes smiling back at him.

  3

  A single pink rose had come out since his last visit to the allotment and he was at once grateful for the lack of horticultural creativity in his predecessor, who had planted the roses – because the blowsy pink flower was pretty and, on this sunny Sunday in April, his equilibrium restored after Doris Ludgate’s Friday visit, he could allow himself to be at peace. The herbaceous border was coming along fine, its green shoots stretching eagerly towards the warming sun.

  ‘Good morning, Professor Askew.’

  He had not noticed her approach and blushed for everything about himself that might be wrong when caught unawares.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs … ?’

  ‘Sarobi,’ she answered gaily.

  ‘Oh, how do you do?’ He might even have bowed.

  Then they were quiet for a moment, not quite knowing how to proceed. She smiled at him and he remembered: ‘I saw you deliver the vegetables to Wilkinson’s the other day – they looked beautiful.’

  ‘Wilkinson’s? Oh, you mean the deli. Yes,’ she confirmed, ‘I sell him most of what I produce and can’t eat myself.’