Breaking Light

by Karin Altenberg

  ‘Now you sound like an old bag. You should go around with Michael, of course,’ Uncle Gerry replied, with genuine surprise. ‘Gives you a new interest to share with him, doesn’t it? Boys your age need a bit of adventure and freedom, eh?’

  There was a thickening in his throat and he felt hot behind the eyes. ‘I can’t go cycling with Michael,’ he muttered and kicked his heel at the gravel in the yard.

  ‘Come on, now, Gabe; you should be ashamed of yourself. I have never known you to be ungrateful before …’

  ‘No, it’s not that. I like the bike; it’s just that—’

  ‘I know it’s not a new bike, like Michael’s, but I was going to give it a lick of paint. I found some tractor paint in Green’s barn and he said I could have that, too.’ Gabriel could tell that Uncle Gerry was very upset – there were spits of saliva coming out of his mouth as he continued. ‘I was quite excited about this, you know, quite determined to make something good out of it, and now you have spoilt it … Metallic blue is what I was going to paint it. But you can do the bloody work yourself, if you think you can do it better.’

  Gabriel could feel weeks of dammed pain and frustration welling up inside him. ‘You don’t get it!’ he screamed and kicked the bike so that it fell over. ‘You don’t get anything. None of you do!’

  ‘Whoa! Hang on a minute. I think you’d better tell me what it is that I’m supposed to understand. I’m no mind reader, you know, and you never speak to me these days.’

  Through his tears, Gabriel looked up at Uncle Gerry and, for a moment, he hoped that there was perhaps a way, after all, to tell his uncle about the badness, about the wrong that lived inside him like a black beetle in a tree stump. But as the moment stretched – thinner and thinner – he realised that it was not possible, that it would never be possible, and that Uncle Gerry would be better off going back inside the cottage to his bottle of Bells than staying here trying to understand Gabriel.

  ‘Go on, lad. Is there something you want to tell me about?’

  ‘No, there’s nothing,’ he muttered and managed a smile – which did the trick.

  ‘Ah, well, in that case I think I’ll go inside … to read for a while,’ Uncle Gerry said vaguely, and turned his back on the failed bike project.

  As the boy watched his uncle’s departing back, a ray of sunlight found its way through the canopy of trees and got entangled in the spokes of the wonky back wheel, which was still spinning, although ever slower, on the upturned bike.

  *

  In the end, Gabriel painted the bike himself and, although the back wheel was never to be quite right, he learnt to ride the bike in Uncle Gerry’s yard on a sunny Sunday morning. The early autumn dew made the grass in the nearby meadow look as fresh as spring and the brightness of that morning would forever be linked in Gabriel’s mind with the exhilaration of freedom. Once he had got the hang of it, Gabriel wobbled towards the lane, where the very first of the fallen leaves stuck to the tyres and attached themselves to his sodden plimsolls. The bike was too large for him and he had to stand up in order to reach both pedals but, after a while, as he got more confident, he would sometimes sit on the saddle to go down gentle slopes, and let the pedals turn on their own.

  For a while, the bicycle offered boundless delight and, as the boy looked upon the world anew from the elevated position of the saddle, the wind smattering through the red and green ribbons he had tied around the handlebars, it all seemed fine – as if he was part of life’s adventure, after all; as if he actually deserved to be. Once or twice, like on the day when he first dared to let go of the handlebars, he cycled past Oakstone, slowing down in the place where the large trees opened on to the gravel drive. One afternoon when he made the detour past Oakstone after school, he thought he saw Mrs Bradley in an upstairs window, her soft shape further indulged by the smoky glass. But Michael was never to be seen. Gabriel could not stop thinking about Michael’s bike. Uncle Gerry, who had seen it, had told him that it was a Raleigh in racing green with three gears. Gabriel did not have any gears, but he had the streamers that Uncle Gerry had helped him make, and the blue metallic colour was unusual.

  Deciding to make the streamers for Michael was certainly part of bringing to life that magnificent Raleigh, which he had never seen but which, in his mind, had taken on extraordinary properties. He set about the task with unusual fervour. He found the fabric in a pile of clothes at the back of his mother’s wardrobe. There was an old skirt or slip of a soft crimson silk. It was the kind of thing Uncle Gerry’s American singers would wear while singing in their soft, husky voices. He had never seen his mother wear the garment and reckoned that it would be okay if he cut the fabric horizontally along the hem – he did not need much, anyway. It proved more difficult to find the gold fabric needed for the project, but then he remembered the old sofa in Uncle Gerry’s cottage. It was dirty now and piled with stuff which Uncle Gerry had once left there and never removed, but once, a few years ago, when Gabriel had looked under the sofa to retrieve some lost object, he had been struck by the colour that the fabric had preserved out of the light. Turning over one of the seat cushions, he was thrilled to see that the deep golden colour was still there. He hesitated for a while before cutting into the sofa cushion, but reasoned that Uncle Gerry never had seemed too bothered about it and the cut-out area would not show unless you turned the cushion over. Once Uncle Gerry had fallen asleep in his chair, Gabriel started shredding the two pieces of fabric. ‘Just like Captain Marvel’s uniform,’ he breathed, as he cut into the crimson and the gold. And, as he tied the ends of the bands together, he was again consoled by the simplicity of things.

  Hiding in the undergrowth on the periphery of Oakstone late one evening, he waited until he was sure the house was asleep. Then he ran through the shadows like a pathfinder until he reached the end of the lawn. Here he stopped for a moment, panting, and listened beyond his own heartbeats; there was only the wind in the elms and the sound of a small animal fidgeting under last year’s leaves. He walked slowly now, softly through the smell of mushroom and ivy, but his footfall on the gravel seemed to cut through the blackness. Arriving by the porch at the back of the house, he stubbed his toe on something rubbery, which could only be one of the tyres of the Raleigh. A rattling confirmed this. It was too dark to make out the colour, but he knew exactly what shade of green his hands touched as they felt along the frame for the handlebars, trembling ever so slightly. Quickly, he tied the streamers to the handles, one on each side. He knew that it looked great: just right. As he ran back to the road, he did a few skips and took a flying kick at a pebble or a fir cone that disappeared into the night.

  For days after, he felt a tingling thrill in his stomach as he pictured Michael finding the streamers hanging from the handlebars of his three-speed Raleigh. In his mind’s eye, he saw Michael riding to his school in Ramleigh in the morning with the red and gold flaming either side of him. For once, he felt quite proud of something he had done. But after a couple of weeks, when he had still not heard anything from Michael, he began to despair; because, deep in his heart, he realised that he had made the streamers as an offering of atonement – or at least in the hope that he might see Michael again. But, when he finally did, it was in circumstances that he could never have imagined and would never have wished for. As he eventually stood face to face again with Michael, after over six months of separation, it was to the sound of a door closing on their shared life.

  *

  In the classroom, the light which spilled through the tall windows was thick with dust that refused to settle. From the back, Gabriel watched as a patch of sweat spread slowly, like a continent, over the silk of Miss Simmons’ blouse. He tried to imagine what her armpits must smell like. Even at thirteen, he knew that she might be the kind of drab woman who kept a collection of old lipsticks, never having found quite the right shade. He was so deep in thought, he did not hear the knock and, when he looked up, all the children’s heads were turned towards the door, where Uncle Ge
rry stood talking to Miss Simmons. Gabriel got up to collect his things before the adults had time to address him. Uncle Gerry held open the door for him, but did not speak until they were out of earshot.

  ‘There has been an accident,’ he said, not looking at Gabriel. ‘Mr Bradley came off the road in his car.’

  ‘Oh,’ Gabriel said, not knowing quite what to feel about it.

  ‘You need to go and fetch Michael from Ramleigh straight away and bring him back to Oakstone. I’ll stay with Mrs Bradley.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘He’s dead, Gabriel. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Mr Bradley is dead?’

  ‘Yes. I’m terribly sorry. You never got to know him. It’s … just awful.’

  Gabriel did not answer this. His mind was confused. What did it matter that he had never got to know Mr Bradley? And then he thought about Michael, who had just lost his dad. Never having had a dad, Gabriel found it impossible to imagine what it would be like to lose one.

  ‘Hurry up! You need to cycle as fast as you can. Mrs Bradley needs her son by her side and we don’t want Michael to hear from anybody else.’

  ‘Alright,’ he said, and started running towards his bike, which he had left leaning against the willow by the river. ‘I’ll ride as fast as I can.’

  He raced along the lanes, where the hedges had grown thick and tall all summer. It was like going through a tunnel and he leant into every bend like a Tour de France champion. It was exhilarating and he soon forgot the purpose of his outing. Not until he skidded to a stop outside the school in Ramleigh, his cheeks flushed with the wind and the speed, did he remember that, on this day, he was not a racer but a grim messenger. It was a small school with only two classrooms, both on the ground floor. Hesitating in the yard outside, Gabriel tried to look in through the windows where classes were in progress. Suddenly, he saw Michael, who was sitting next to one of the windows. He raised his hand in a greeting, but at the last minute he stopped himself from calling out. Luckily, Michael hadn’t spotted him yet. He paused to think. How could he tell Michael about his dad’s death? Would he be upset? Gabriel suspected he would. He himself would have been very upset if it had been Uncle Gerry who had crashed his car into a tree and died. Perhaps there would be a scene. He did not want that to happen. And anyway, hadn’t Michael made it quite clear that he did not want to see Gabriel? If he had wanted to talk to Gabriel, he could have come and found him at Uncle Gerry’s cottage any time during the past six months. But he hadn’t.

  Carefully, trying to avoid attracting attention from any of the other children, he sneaked up towards the window where Michael sat. They were all crouched over their books. The teacher, at the front of the room, was marking papers with a red pencil. There was no dust in the air and the desks were of polished wood. The boys wore blue blazers with a crest on the pocket. All these details registered in Gabriel’s mind as he peered through the window. One or two of the boys had spotted him by now and glanced up uncertainly from their reading, keeping an eye on the teacher at the podium, but Michael was still absorbed in his book. At once, Gabriel realised that he did not know how to deliver his message; there was no way to do it. He turned to go, but stopped again and kicked angrily at a pebble by his feet. He was suddenly cross with Michael and Mr Bradley and Uncle Gerry for putting him through all this and he despised the other boys in the classroom with Michael. They were quite hateful, he decided, the boys and their combed hair. But somehow he knew that he would be a coward if he didn’t carry out his task and Michael’s dad, who was now dead, thought that cowards deserved to die.

  With a beating heart, he walked right up to the window where Michael sat and breathed at the cold glass. Michael looked up from his book in astonishment but Gabriel did not meet his eye. He breathed again until the glass was all misted up and then he wrote with his finger, Your dad is dead. Michael stood up from his seat, but Gabriel breathed on a new patch of glass and continued without looking at him: Mrs B upset, he began, but realised that he had to do it back to front for Michael to be able to read. He started again, breathing on a new patch, writing in reverse, whilst biting his mended lip: By now, several of the boys had run up to the window to see what was going on. They were crowding around Michael, pushing at him to get a better view. Michael did not move; he stood alone amongst the shouting boys until the teacher cleared them away and, reading the fading message, took hold of Michael’s shoulders and led him out of the room. Neither of them paid any attention to Gabriel, who was running now, back towards his bike, which he had left by the school gates. As he ran, he saw something out of the corner of his eye: there, neatly parked on its prop-stand, was Michael’s green Raleigh with three gears. Gabriel hesitated; should he go up and have a proper look at it? He glanced over his shoulder, back towards the school building, and ran on; he did not want to be there when Michael appeared. But, as he mounted his own bike, he felt again that lovely warmth inside him – a warmth that was reflected in the flaming gold and crimson ribbons he had noticed attached to the handlebars on the parked Raleigh.

  *

  It is odd, thought Mr Askew to himself, a few days after the village market, as he passed the little churchyard on his way to the allotments, how memory leaves long gaps – black holes in one’s own mind. Years and years are lost in thick folds of time and then tiny details come back with such clarity as to give one a headache. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling quite dizzy. It was Mr Bradley’s funeral that had suddenly surfaced in his mind. ‘Why now?’ he asked himself, grumpily. Things had been so different after that. Since leaving, all alone, to put that world behind him, his life had been an endless odyssey – until now.

  It was a rainy day in October, he remembered, as he sat down to rest for a while on the low wall that surrounded the churchyard. ‘No, I’m wrong, quite wrong,’ he muttered aloud. ‘It was a sunny day, and there was still dew on the grass in the shadow of the gravestones.’ He grimaced in concentration. ‘I must at least try to get it right.’

  A lot of people whom he had never seen before turned up to the funeral, people from outside the village. Their faces looked wrong, like Uncle Gerry’s after a bottle of Bell’s – all vacant, with big, blubbery lips. Others looked stiff, their white, pinched faces strangled by their black ties. These strangers avoided your eyes, staring instead at their newly polished shoes, frowning.

  But what he remembered most clearly was the fury hidden under the masks of the people he did know – of Mrs Bradley and Michael, and even his own mother. Fury at the injustice of it all and fury at the absence of the main character – the terrible forlorn weight of what was not there. Fury that they should have been left behind in this way. Uncle Gerry, too, was furious, although quite why that was, Gabriel could not understand. Not then, anyway.

  *

  The church was lit only by the sun, streaming through the south windows. Sitting between Mother and Uncle Gerry in the pews, Gabriel looked at the bosses on the oak beams that curved above him like the hull of a ship. There were images on the bosses, he realised – little animals, which he had never seen before: a pelican dipping her long beak towards her heart and three hares running in a circle, with only three ears between them. They were comforting and he was relieved that he could look at them rather than at the people around him. The minister, however, could not be ignored. Gabriel noticed his thinning hair and large protruding ears; it was as if the ears had been growing to make up for the loss of hair. The minister’s voice suggested truths with the frail conviction of a believer: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.’

  What did it mean? Could it be that Mr Bradley was not quite dead, that there was still a chance that he might live? One could never be quite certain, could one? After all, no one had been allowed to look inside the coffin. Perhaps it was a ploy; perhaps the coffin was empty or perhaps Mr Bradley was inside but not dead. He shivered in the cold church when he thought about what it must be like to be left inside a
box like that.

  ‘… neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us …’

  Gabriel was beginning to feel quite annoyed with the minister. Why was he saying those things when they clearly weren’t true? Everyone was quite separate, sitting in the pews, as if on a bus, each one staring in front, into their individual pocket of space. Even Uncle Gerry, who was sitting so close Gabriel could smell his aftershave and the sharper, fetid alcohol smell it was trying to hide, was distant. He kept his eyes closed but Gabriel knew he was awake, as he would open his mouth every now and again to mumble in unison with the minister.

  Michael was sitting next to Mrs Bradley across the aisle on the first pew. He looked shrivelled up inside his new suit and there was a white band at the back of his bent neck where his hair had been cut to reveal skin that had not been exposed to the sun all summer. He was looking down into his lap. Gabriel wished he could whisper to him not to worry about what the minister said, but to look up instead, at the pelican and the hares.

  Then they all stood to follow the coffin out into the graveyard. Six men, wearing uniforms laden with medals, carried it slowly, high on their shoulders.

  ‘Who are they?’ Gabriel whispered to Uncle Gerry.

  ‘They are men who fought with Mr Bradley in the war.’

  ‘Are they heroes, like him?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘Uncle Gerry?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Were you a coward in the war?’

  ‘Hush now,’ he answered, and put a finger to his lips.

  At the graveside, the minister announced that he was committing Mr Bradley’s body to the ground. That would be the flesh and blood, Gabriel reckoned, but what about the soul? What happened to the soul? Perhaps it was committed to the Holy Ghost, who otherwise seemed to have little purpose in the overall scheme of things. Or perhaps it just faded after a while, he thought to himself, like the fabric of an old deckchair.