Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  It was something Ben had asked himself often enough. He didn't have an answer.

  'I didn't ask for this. If your husband had been…' He was about to say 'reasonable', but that word no longer seemed to apply even remotely to Kale. '…had been different, I'd have settled for seeing Jacob once a month.'

  He wasn't sure if that was true, though. He couldn't think of any one point where things between him and Kale could have been otherwise. There seemed an inevitability about it, as though they were both chained by personality and events to tracks that had led to him being there, now, talking to Kale's wife in that room. And from there—where? He had a dizzying sense of standing outside himself, looking back on something that had already happened. He felt that the conclusion had already occurred, and was simply waiting for him to catch up with it.

  Then the feeling passed.

  'How did you meet him?' he asked.

  'Oh, please.'

  'No, I'd like to know. Really.'

  He meant it. He wanted to make her lower her guard, but there was also a genuine curiosity.

  She looked disgusted for a moment longer, then shrugged.

  'After I left Portsmouth I lived near Aldershot, not far from where he was based. I used to knock around with a lot of the soldiers. You know.'

  Ben thought he probably did.

  'I was working in this pub one night and two of the locals started giving me a hard time because I wouldn't go with them. I told them to fuck off, but they'd had a bit to drink and they started getting rough. So then John comes up and tells them to pack it in. I didn't know him, but you could tell he was a soldier. I don't mean just the haircut. There was something about him. He just stood there and didn't say a word while they mouthed off. It was after he'd been shot, not long before he got discharged, and his limp was pretty bad. Even so, they should have known not to mess with him. But they were pissed and he was by himself, so one of them took a swing.' She fell quiet, remembering. It brought a smile. 'They wouldn't have tried it on with anyone else for a while after that.' The smile died as she returned to the present. 'They'd got more sense than you.'

  Ben went to the window. It brought him closer to her. He could feel her watching him suspiciously as he looked out at the garden.

  'What's he doing out there?'

  'He's not out there, he's at work'

  'You know what I mean.'

  'No I don't.'

  The denial lacked conviction. He saw her shoot a glance through the window at the garden. Her mouth was puckered to one side as she chewed the inside of her cheek. Ben felt oddly comfortable with her.

  'Is he building something?' he asked.

  'Why don't you ask him?'

  'Because I'd like to see my next birthday.'

  The smile came back, but it was short-lived. He waited.

  She stabbed out the cigarette.

  'He's looking for the Pattern.'

  'The what?'

  'The fucking Pattern. With a capital fucking P.' She made it a mock proclamation, but there was no humour in it. 'He thinks that there's a pattern to everything. A reason for whatever happens, except we just can't see it. He says it's everywhere, it's just a matter of knowing what to look for.' She waved her hand at the window. 'That's why we've got all that junk out there. Because if he looks at it hard enough it might show him this Pattern. He thinks it's easier to see in anything that's been smashed up. Nearer the surface, or something. He's got one of those radio scanner things, so he can listen to the police wavelength for road accidents. Whenever there's a car crash he's always the one who goes out to bring it in. The bigger the better. There was a pile up on the motorway a while back, and he ended up having to borrow a lorry from the yard to carry all his bloody souvenirs home.'

  Ben thought about Kale moving the pieces of metal around, studying each new arrangement. Something nudged his memory, and he remembered the first time he had gone to the house to collect Jacob. Kale had said something then about him not being part of 'the pattern'. He didn't like to think what that could have meant.

  'What does he expect it to show him?' he asked.

  'God knows. Something that'll explain why everything's happened. His son getting stolen, his wife stepping in front of a bus, him being wounded and his mates killed in Northern Ireland. Even being brought up in an orphanage. He thinks there's got to be some reason for it all. And he thinks if he can see the Pattern it'll tell him.'

  She stared through the rain-smeared window at the distorted metal, as if hoping to see an explanation there herself.

  'Was he like this when you first met him?'

  Sandra shook her head without looking round. 'He seemed different to most of the other squaddies I'd met, but that was all.' Her mouth twitched. 'He didn't try and drag my knickers off in the first five minutes, for a start. That was one of the things I liked about him. And he was quiet. Not shy, just quiet. Most of them tell you their life stories at the drop of a hat, but he was more interested in listening to me talk about mine. I didn't tell him everything, not straightaway, and it wasn't until I told him what had happened with Kirstie—my little girl—that he said anything about what had happened to him.'

  She sniffed. Ben wasn't sure if she was close to crying, or whether it was the dry heat of the kitchen. His own nose was tickling from it.

  'When he found out about Kirstie he went quiet for ages. I thought I'd put him off, that he was blaming me the same as everybody else did. Then he started telling me about his son being taken from the hospital, and his wife killing herself.

  'He said people like us, who'd had their lives messed up, were damaged for a reason. That was how he put it, damaged. He was as excited as I've ever seen him. He said we must have been meant to meet, after we'd both lost our kids and everything. He said something then about it being part of a pattern, but I can't remember what. I just thought he was being romantic. A bit soft, but romantic.' She gave a short, bitter laugh. 'I was just another fucked-up piece of scrap.'

  He felt a desire to put his arms around her. He kept his hands in his pockets.

  'Was he as obsessed about it then?'

  'I don't know. I don't think so. Hang on a second, I'll show you something.' She went out of the kitchen. He heard her go down the corridor to the lounge. There was the sound of a drawer being opened. A few seconds later she came back, carrying a large, vinyl-covered photograph album. She set it down on the work surface next to him. He could smell her perfume, the tobacco odour on her clothes, a faint musk of underarm sweat.

  He took his hands back out of his pockets.

  'This is John's,' she said, opening it. She quickly flicked past the first few pages. Ben caught glimpses of a younger Kale, sitting on a motorbike, standing in a green army uniform, smiling with his arm around a pregnant young woman.

  He recognised Jeanette Kale, Jacob's mother, but Sandra had already moved on.

  'Here,' she said. 'He took these when he was in the Gulf. During the war.'

  She moved slightly to one side so he could see. He felt the heat from her hip, almost touching his, as he came nearer.

  There were four photographs, two on each page. One of them was a long-distance shot of a blazing oil well. The rest showed blasted areas of desert littered with debris. In one of them was a tank, its nearside track torn off. A charred body was folded over the blackened turret. In another was the wreckage of a helicopter, the limp rotor blades hanging like the veins of a dead leaf.

  'He took these before his wife was even pregnant,' Sandra said. 'Before everything went wrong for him. I don't think he'd got a thing about wrecks back then, these were just like souvenirs, you know? It wasn't until after we were married that he dug them out and stuck them in here.'

  They weren't the sort of souvenirs Ben would have chosen. If Kale's obsession wasn't yet formed, the seeds of it were evident. The pictures on the next page displayed the same morbid fascination. Most had been taken on a road instead of open desert. Military and civilian vehicles were scattered along it, b
urned, lying on their sides, tyres flat or melted, the bodywork crumpled like paper. In some shots the road stretched to the horizon—no sign of life on it, only the numberless wrecks. The bodies that lay among them looked insignificant.

  Ben went through the rest of the album. To begin with there were ordinary snapshots included—a Middle Eastern shop with grinning British soldiers outside, what looked like the same group outside a tent pitched on sand—but these soon petered out until the photographs were solely of wreckage.

  The desert was abruptly replaced by a colder, more familiar landscape. A troop carrier lay on its side in the road. Behind it were grey clouds, green hills and bushes. A shattered car, half in, half out of a bomb crater.

  'That's Northern Ireland,' Sandra said. He could feel her breath on his ear.

  He turned the page. More of the same. Now, though, the photographs seemed to have been taken with more care paid to angles and light. Whereas the earlier ones had been little more than snaps, dramatic only because of their content, there was a self-consciousness about these that suggested a new intent. In one the wreckage of some vehicle was partially silhouetted against either a sunrise or a sunset. The sun reflected off some parts while turning the rest black. It was corny and badly executed, but not ineffective.

  'Was this his last term over there?' Ben asked. 'After Jacob had gone missing and his wife had died?'

  'Yeah, I think so.' Sandra sounded more suspicious than surprised. 'Why?'

  'I just wondered.' He told himself he was reading too much into a few photographs. But he couldn't shake the conviction that, whereas the early ones had been coloured by a morbid curiosity, in the last few Kale had already started looking for something.

  He turned over again. There was only one photograph left. It was black-and-white and had been cut from a newspaper.

  It showed two army Land Rovers, The first was on its roof. The second, behind it, had its doors open and its windscreen smashed. There were dark marks on its bodywork that looked like bullet holes.

  'That was the ambush where John got shot,' Sandra told him. 'He should have been in the first car, the one on its roof, because he was the corporal. But its radio wasn't working, so he went in the other. About a mile after he'd changed the first car went over a landmine and everybody in it was killed. Then the bastards started on them with a machine gun.'

  Ben closed the album.

  'Don't see many of me in there, do you?' she said.

  The bitterness had given way to hurt.

  'When did he start bringing the scrap metal home?' he said, to get away from it.

  'Almost as soon as we came here.'

  She moved away. He wasn't sure if he was relieved or not.

  'He started looking for a job. I thought he'd get something in a garage, or somewhere. You know he's a qualified mechanic? He can fix anything mechanical, he's got a knack for it. That's why he joined the Engineers. But he came home one day and said he'd got this job in the scrapyard. I didn't mind, I thought it'd only be temporary. I didn't even take any notice when he started bringing bits and pieces back with him. I supposed he wanted to mess around with them. Hammer them out for spares, or something, I don't know. Then he started talking about this Pattern.'

  She glared at Ben as if it were his fault. 'It was bad enough before, but when he found out Steven'—Jacob, he thought—'was still alive he started bringing back twice as much. I told him the social services would have a fit if they saw it, but he didn't take any notice. And they never went out back anyway. They had a look round the house, but that was all. I just drew the curtains when they came in the kitchen so they wouldn't see it. Pricks.'

  There was no heat in the insult. Her skirt tightened around her thighs as she leaned against the edge of the table. 'Now John's not got time for anything else. He could get a job in any garage and earn decent money, but he won't. And he has to pay for everything he brings home. That fat bastard he works for takes it out of his wages, as if there's enough of them to start with. He won't listen to me any more. He hardly even talks to me. All he cares about now is his bloody wreckage. And the kid. Won't let his precious little son out of his sight. He's got this idea that he can help him see what the Pattern is, because of how he is with jigsaws and things.'

  'That's stupid! A lot of autistic children are good at puzzles. It isn't anything unusual!'

  'Try telling that to John,' she said, dryly. 'He thinks it all ties in. Steven's going to help him first, and once he has he'll be able to make Steven better. Or something like that. It's all part of the Pattern, isn't it?' Her tone was loaded with sarcasm.

  Ben remembered how Kale set pieces of metal in front of Jacob, as if waiting for his reaction. Waiting for him to help decipher whatever he thought they held. 'Oh, Christ.'

  'Oh, you don't know the half of it,' Sandra said. She was smiling again, but it wasn't a pleasant one. 'He exercises until he's sick. He tries to work himself into a state where he can "see" this fucking pattern of his. I mean, he hasn't managed it yet, obviously, so that just means he has to go at it harder. He says he's "purifying" himself. Well, that's what he said once. He doesn't talk about it at all now. Not to me, anyway, but you can hear him telling the boy sometimes. As if he can bloody understand him.'

  'Is that why he lifts the engine over Jacob's head? To push himself harder?'

  An expression of suspicion smoothed her face, then was gone. 'I suppose so,' she said, examining her nails. 'I haven't asked.'

  She still hadn't asked how he knew what Kale did in the garden, either. Ben wondered if she didn't want to find out what else he might have seen.

  'What does he do in the shed?' he asked.

  The look she gave him was a mixture of fear and dislike. It was quickly replaced by resignation.

  'You can see for yourself.'

  She brushed past him and went to the back door. He began to follow and walked into her as she stopped suddenly.

  He stepped back, blushing.

  'Sorry,' he mumbled.

  'I forgot the key.'

  There was a satisfied air about her as she took a keyring from a drawer in one of the kitchen units, as though she had somehow proved something to herself. Ben felt the advantage had been subtly taken from him. A gust of rain and icy air swept into the kitchen as she opened the door.

  He clutched his coat around him as he went out, conscious that Sandra hadn't even bothered to put hers on. The garden was muddy. Broken paving slabs had been embedded in the grassless soil like stepping stones. Through the rain Ben saw the encircling wall of metal. There was more of it than he remembered.

  He skirted a jagged piece of bodywork that protruded from one side of the pile. The seat where Jacob had played while Kale suspended the engine over him looked wet and abandoned. In front of it sections of broken cars had been left like parts of a dismembered animal.

  Sandra unlocked the padlock and opened the shed door. It tore out of her hand and banged against the wooden side.

  Ben went in after her.

  There was a pungency of bitumen, pine resin and stale sweat. It was dark and cramped, forcing him to stand close to Sandra. Her hair was flattened against her head by the rain. He could feel water from his own trickling over his face and neck. He blinked it out of his eyes, trying to work out what the object that filled most of the interior was.

  At first he thought it was simply an exercise machine, a multi-gym of some sort. There was an impression of a steel frame, pulleys and ponderous weights. Then he took in the straps attached to the long wooden bench and dangling from cables, the oil-covered cogs of what appeared to be gear wheels. It looked like something designed to tear apart rather than exercise.

  'This is why he comes in here,' Sandra said. She was shivering. 'He built it himself.'

  Ben was still trying to work out what it was. He thought he knew, but couldn't quite believe it.

  'What is it?'

  'It's a rack, what's it look like?'

  There were small straps for wrists an
d ankles, and a larger harness that had a forehead band and a chinstrap. Each was joined by cables to the weights, which hung like steel fruit at the head and foot of the bench, and were connected in turn to the heavy gear wheels. Sandra ran her fingers lightly over the frame. Her nails were bitten and ragged.

  'He fastens himself into it and takes the brake off the weights. The gears stop them just smashing straight to the floor, but once they've gone past a notch you can't pull them back. He's worked it so the further they go the heavier they get. The only way you can stop them's by that.' She pointed to a mechanism at the top end of the bench. It had a smaller set of weights, and was attached to the head harness. 'It's a clutch, or something. But you have to use your neck to lift those weights off the floor far enough for it to trip in.'

  'Jesus.'

  'John lets it go as far as he can, and then just holds it there. Tries to keep himself at breaking point for as long as he can. When he first built it and I came and saw what he was doing I panicked and made him lose concentration. It nearly killed him. When he managed to get out he threw up and told me never to come in here again. I thought he was going to hit me, but he didn't. Not then.' There was a deadness in the way she said it. 'I've never watched him since, but I can tell by how long he stays in here and what he looks like when he comes out that he's taking it further and further. One of these days…' She didn't finish.

  Ben tried to imagine what it would feel like to be strapped into the machine. 'Why does he do it?'

  'To help him see the Pattern. Why else?' She hugged herself and rubbed her arms. 'He thinks the pain focuses his mind. All part of being "pure". Can't be impure if we want to see the Pattern, can we?'

  He stared at the sweat-stained straps. In places the edges of them were marked with what looked like dried blood. 'Are you sure he isn't just trying to punish himself?'

  Sandra looked at the rack as though she were frightened of it. 'I'm not sure about anything.' She turned away suddenly. 'Let's go in. I'm freezing.'