Luke and Jon

by Robert Williams

  The night before the meeting Dad asked Jon if there was anything his granddad particularly liked: was he partial to a particular brew of beer or brand of whisky? But that idea was quickly dismissed when Jon’s face turned from its usual white to a death white. It turns out that Arthur wouldn’t have drink in the house, had never had a drink in his life, and probably wouldn’t want to start now. Dad managed to calm Jon down; he promised he wouldn’t take any alcohol and it was agreed that it might be best to turn up empty-handed anyway.

  I was impatient to know how the meeting had gone, but I had to wait until the end of school and endure the bus trip home and then the long walk down the lane to the house. I hurried inside and found Dad in the kitchen, nursing a coffee. He looked up, guilty, like I’d caught him skiving or something. He said that he’d tried to get on with some work when he’d got back from the hospital, but he hadn’t been able to settle to anything, he couldn’t stop his mind wandering. I bombarded him with questions but he waved me quiet and said if I gave him a second he would tell me what happened.

  He made himself another coffee, I sat down, and he told me the conversation they’d had, sat on the wooden bench. Dad had done most of the talking and it went OK, he said. Sad, but OK. He told Arthur that they were neighbours and that Jon had been visiting us for a few months now. Arthur nodded. Dad said he was sorry, the situation they found themselves in was hard. It was horrible. He stopped talking as an old lady with two walking sticks approached. She passed slowly. Her tongue stuck out of the top left corner of her mouth. She was concentrating hard. Focused. They stared ahead until she passed. He’d grown fond of Jon, he said, and would like to help if he could. Arthur still didn’t respond and they sat in silence; Arthur occasionally looked up to the sky and the slow-moving clouds. Dad turned to him and asked if he knew about the idea, the thinking, that Jon could maybe live with us. Arthur nodded that he did and then, finally, he spoke. He asked if that meant Jon would be staying on the fell. Dad replied that yes, if it went ahead, it did mean that, for the foreseeable future at least. Arthur considered this and said that was good, that it would be good to be able to think of him up on the fell, in the fields, walking the lanes and tracks. They sat quietly then, watching people in varying states of health walking, wheeling and wobbling the circuit of the hospital garden. ‘And then I started blathering,’ Dad said. He said that it was to fill the silence more than anything; he couldn’t leave so soon, and they couldn’t just sit there in silence all afternoon.

  He said he told him about the horse and the forest and dragging the pieces there, the toys he made and the markets he visited. He told him about me and Jon, how we were good mates. How good we were for each other. The odd couple.

  ‘And I told him about your mum. About how daft and beautiful she was. How much fun she got from being alive and knitting a scarf, or going on a trip to the seaside, something simple like that. I told him that her joy made me feel glad to be alive, made me enjoy everything more. And I told him what a good wife she was, and what a wonderful mum she was.’ He stopped. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so useless since she died, Luke.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I have been. What have I done? How have I helped you? Have I spoken to you about her? Checked how things are at the new school? Helped steer you through a difficult time? No, I’ve got pissed and built a bloody massive bloody wooden horse to shove in the corner of a forest.’

  ‘It’s bloody good though, Dad,’ I said.

  He looked across at me. He considered. He nodded slowly and said, ‘It is good, at least there’s that.’

  Climb and slide

  In the evenings, in the hour before we went to bed, we’d started playing snakes and ladders. It was an accident how it started really. The board had been amongst all the junk the Thornbers had left and we found it during our half-hearted clearing out. For some reason Dad hadn’t chucked it away and it had been lying on top of a pile of stuff we had no idea what to do with in the corner of the kitchen. One night Dad picked the board up, waved it at me and asked if I fancied a game. I shrugged and said why not. There was a dice knocking around, but no counters so Dad used a ten-pence coin and I was a twenty. We played about ten games the first night; Dad started to keep score, and it became a ritual that took place at the kitchen table most nights.

  It was deep winter now and the kitchen was the warmest room. And it was the one room where Dad had got round to doing some work. He’d painted the walls and ceiling and stripped the kitchen cabinets and painted those too. He’d sanded the floorboards and varnished them and now there were no sharp bits of wood or rusty nails waiting to tear at your feet. He’d even hung some new curtains he’d bought cheap at one of the markets where he ran a stall. And it looked good. It was almost cosy. Dad drank coffee, me tea, and we would play game after game.

  I’m not sure why I enjoyed it so much but it was part of the day I looked forward to. It occupied me. And I found it relaxing, probably because there’s nothing you can do to influence the outcome so you just sit back and watch how things turn out. And the worst thing that can happen is you are a roll of the dice away from winning and you land on the biggest snake on the board and slide back to square number three. We were playing so many games that it didn’t matter anyway. And some nights it would all go your way. Every throw of the dice would dance you directly to the foot of the ladders, sending you skipping over each snake’s flickering tongue, shooting you to the top of the board. And then there were the nights when you couldn’t get above the third row. So you’d sit back and watch yourself slip back down to the bottom. Over and over again. And in some ways that was almost as much fun as winning. I discovered that the acceptance of defeat is quite satisfying. We would play until Dad would think that enough was enough, and he would tell me one more game then bed. But as long as I was quick enough to start the next game as soon as we finished the last one, he would forget he’d said anything and we would play another five times before he would remember, grab the dice and fold the board away. At the end of each night he would add up the scores and pin the sheet to the back of the kitchen door. I was winning by 211 to 185, but that didn’t matter. It was just satisfying to talk about nothing in particular, keep rolling the dice and watch the score grow ever bigger every night.

  Mr and Mrs Theobalds

  Jon was discharged. He ended up with Mr and Mrs Theobalds. A middle-aged couple who live in a semi on a boring street in Duerdale. He works at the bank in the middle of town and she’s an administrator for Tunnel Cement. On Thursday nights they play badminton in a mixed league at the local sports centre. They aren’t very good really, but they enjoy the social side of it and it helps keep them fit. They have two grown-up kids who’ve left home and moved away and who only make it back for Christmas and big birthdays. For the last twenty years they’ve offered short-term foster care to children whose lives are in limbo, whose lives have reached a crisis point. They provide shelter for a few days or weeks before a decision is reached and the child disappears. Sometimes it goes well, everyone gets on and the child remembers them fondly and grows up and sends them a card at Christmas and then photos of their own children. Other times it’s trickier. Fifteen-year-old Julian Rodgers smashed every window in the house and pissed on their bed when they at were badminton one Thursday. They had to stay at a hotel that night. Even the Theobalds’ legendary patience was tested to the limit on that occasion. But like Mr Theobalds said the next day when the glaziers were fitting the new glass and their scrubbed mattress was drying in the back garden and he’d had time to reflect: if what’d happened to Julian had happened to him, he said, he’d probably smash a load of windows and piss on a bed.

  Red arrows

  The day after the fight in the empty classroom Kieran Judd approached me in the main corridor, pulled me aside and told me that it wasn’t finished. He seemed distracted and spoke calmly, like he was saying that maybe the weather could turn to rain. I asked what he meant but he just said that I would see and walke
d off. I tried to stay in busy places and made sure that I wasn’t left alone. I braced myself. I jittered and jumped every time someone brushed past or a hand was rested on my shoulder. And for day after day nothing happened. So I persuaded myself to forget about it and I let my shoulders drop. We’d had a fight and I’d smashed his head open and that was all I needed to remember.

  Now Jon was living in town it was easy for him to walk to school and we agreed to meet on his first day back outside the front gates. It had been three weeks since he’d been discharged from hospital and he was looking stronger and healthier than I’d seen him. Dad dropped me off as usual and I stood and watched the gaggle of burgundy blazers rush and dawdle and splinter and group, as clumsy as a herd of cattle, up the road towards me. Even this early there were arguments and shrieks, squeals and flirting, everything being set up for the day. I tried to ignore the hubbub; I was on the lookout for one lone head amongst it all, bobbing along, eyes to the floor, with a too-big bag slung over his shoulder. Gradually the pack thinned and now it was just down to the stragglers, racing up the road, not even glancing at me as they shot past, intent on beating the bell. I was about to give up and answer the bell myself when two sprinting figures slipped into focus and I saw Judd and Laycock charging towards me. They swept past like red arrows and just for good measure Judd gobbed in my ear. I was reaching into my pocket to find something to mop it out when he shouted back to me, ‘When you find him, make sure you tell him it’s your fault.’ I shouted, ‘Where?’ but they were already gone and my question only banged into the closed doors of the school.

  I rubbed at my wet ear with my sleeve and set off. The Theobalds’ house was on Cowper Avenue which was a ten-minute walk or a five-minute run. I ran straight down the school road, right past a couple of scruffy tennis courts, across an old iron bridge over the River Hodder and onto waste ground where some falling-down garages stood. Cowper Avenue started just two roads behind here and I threw myself along these quiet morning streets as fast as I could. But I made it to the end of Cowper Avenue and had found nothing. I stopped and tried to think and wondered for a second if it had been a wind-up. The only place I could think where I might have missed him was the wasteland with the tumbledown garages so I ran back and started trying the doors of the garages, shouting his name. I peered through mucky windows into dark spaces full of crap and nothing but he was nowhere about. Unless they’d had time to drag him further away he was safe at school and I was late. I turned to walk back to school and heard the shout.

  Under the iron bridge

  The voice came from the direction of the bridge. I ran and stopped halfway along and listened again. I heard nothing but a roar in my head and the booming stomp of my heart. I went to the left-hand side, jumped up, clung on, and looked over and saw only the grey river shouldering its way underneath. Then I heard another shout. It came from behind, from the opposite side. I crossed the bridge in three steps, jumped up again and peered over and looked down onto the top of Jon’s head.

  He was stood on a thin ledge, with his back flat to the bridge, with about an inch to spare to the drop. He was staring down at the river. I asked him what the hell he was doing and his head tipped back and terrified eyes stared up at me and I could see from his face and the state of his clothes that they’d only left him on the ledge as an afterthought, after the beating. I told him to give me his hands and I’d help him climb back, but he turned carefully to his left and showed me that his hands were tied behind his back with his school tie. I climbed over onto the ledge and untied him and he managed to scuffle himself back onto the bridge but he didn’t stop shaking for a good twenty minutes. The beating was a bad one and he had marks on his face and scrapes on his legs and broken blood vessels were probably already flowering into bruises underneath his skin. We slowly walked back to Cowper Avenue. After we’d been sat for a while and after the shaking stopped I told him the truth. I told him what happened that day in the empty classroom and what Judd had said to me that morning. I asked him what he wanted to do next and his answer was a definite nothing. He said maybe now I could see that this is what happens when you try and do something This is what you get for fighting back.

  Ramshackle

  Dad put the phone down and said ‘Bollocks.’ All the forms had been filled in. All the checks were being made. All the references written and signed and dated. He thought he just had the final interview to get through and that would be it. But there was another hurdle and it was the equivalent of the water jump on the last lap of the steeplechase. It was something neither of us had even thought about and it was something that for most people wouldn’t be an issue. But for us it might be … They were coming to check the house. Dad went back to his file and pored over all the forms and pamphlets, and sure enough, there it was, in the WHAT TO EXPECT booklet.

  26B INSPECTION OF PROSPECTIVE CARER’S ACCOMMODATION

  A carer’s home must be warm and furnished and decorated to a high standard. All rooms must be kept clean and hygiene must be seen as a priority by the prospective carer. The home and immediate environment must be free of hazards and anything that might expose a child to any risk of injury or harm.

  I looked around at the state of the place. Suddenly the stains on the walls seemed darker. Nails poked out of uneven floors. The furniture looked ramshackle. There were gaps in the banister. There were loose and ancient plug sockets. Hazards leapt out like never before. Dad had tackled the kitchen, it was where we spent most of our time, but nothing else had been touched since we moved in. The leaflet set out in detail what was expected of a carer’s home and as Dad read down the list his head-shaking grew more intense. He passed the list to me and I saw he was right to be worried. But at least they’d rung. At least we’d been given a warning. We had two days until the visit. And it wasn’t like we lived like animals; we weren’t unhygienic. It just seemed impossible to make this house look clean. The walls were too dark, there were too many old and badly decorated rooms. And even though we’d already made two trips to the local dump, clutter still congregated and clung in every corner. And maybe we had let things slip a little. Maybe we weren’t quite as conscientious as we should have been. Perhaps our clothes weren’t washed quite as often as they used to be and the washing-up wasn’t done as regularly as it could be.

  Dad walked from room to room. Kicked a piece of furniture. Stroked a patch of wall. He came back into the kitchen and told me he was going out and he would be about an hour. He banged out of the front door and I watched our battered old Volvo disappear down the fell track with smoke belching out from the exhaust. I thought about making a start on the house but didn’t know where to begin. So I did half an hour of washing-up and put some dirty clothes in the machine. Just as it was kicking into mental spin Dad returned and shouted to the house for my help.

  The boot was open and the car was filled with tin after large tin of bright white economy paint. We lugged them into the hallway and Dad put the kettle on. He sat me down, and told me the plan. For the next two days I had gastric flu. He would ring the school and explain why I wouldn’t be attending. I asked why it had to be gastric flu but he waved me quiet. We would move all the old junk that we hadn’t got rid of yet and dump it behind the outhouse and have a bonfire. Then we would paint every room white. We would, he said, just slap it on. We weren’t to worry about neatness, about tidy edges and masking tape. We didn’t have time. We were going for the bigger picture, creating an impression of cleanliness and space. If he got time he would try and look at the floors, sort out the plug sockets and other smaller jobs. It would be hard work, but hopefully, with the two of us working flat out, it could be done. After two hours of dragging heavy and dirty furniture from every corner of the house to the back of the outhouse I thought of Jon. Tucked away in his warm, clean bedroom. Rereading Planets, Stars and the Universe for the twentieth time. And I thought to myself, the lucky bastard.

  Interiors need updating

  It was knackering. But we got rid of all t
he junk and the house looked ten times better already. We kept some of the chairs, the kitchen table and the ragged and stained three-piece suite. I thought there was no way Dad would want anyone to see that but when he saw me dragging the settee towards the back door he shouted at me to stop, pulled it back to the lounge and said, ‘Throws, Luke. Five quid each at the market. Cover a multitude of sins.’

  I managed to bite my tongue and not ask why, if they were that cheap, and he saw them every other day, he hadn’t bought them six pissing months ago. Almost everything else went on the pile though. We were ruthless and it only seemed a shame that we had missed November the 5th. The bonfire was the fun bit. We stood and watched years of battered and tatty Thornber history go up in flames. We toasted the old couple with cups of tea and watched as the flames crackled and spat and then burnt into smoke and drifted across the fell.

  Then the real work started. There had been a change of plan and I was to start painting by myself. Dad was going to make a start with the floor sander he’d hired. I thought that was unfair, that he’d got the fun job. But then I saw how hard and slow it was, and how much floor space he had to cover, and I was pleased I was on painting duty. I slunk away and left him sweating and swearing and covered in dust.

  I started in what would be Jon’s bedroom and thought I was doing OK until Dad came into the room and laughed when he saw the progress I’d made. I thought I’d done a pretty good job but we needed to be quicker, he said, and we should only use the brushes on corners.He poured half a tin of paint into a tray, grabbed one of the big rollers and rolled it over a section of the wall. He covered as much in thirty seconds as I’d done in my half an hour. After I’d been shown the trick I cracked on and finished Jon’s room in a couple of hours. I finished upstairs at about nine that night.