West took one carefully in his hands. ‘What has happened to you?’
The other boys stood around and peered in. Lewis pulled at West’s sleeve.
‘Some animal,’ Brass said.
West continued to stare into the thing while the others began to fidget. The wind rose and made sharp to Radford their exposure. They were right to be afraid.
‘Come on, we’ll be stuck,’ Lewis said with a measure of urgency.
They moved away in the direction of home and nothing more was said. They made quick time to the house despite the dark and when they came into the dining room they found Teddy eating soup by the fire.
After tea Radford came upon Lillian in her kitchen, a cigarette at her lips. He went for an apple from the basket.
‘Come here,’ she said and placed him by her side, digging in with her hip.
‘It’s just an apple.’
She took a cigarette from her bib and gave it to Radford. He waited as she struck a match and the two of them insisted on quiet, the only sound the hustle of air between them.
‘Teddy’s back,’ Radford said.
‘Correct.’
They continued puffing and when another boy appeared in the doorway Lillian snarled at him until he left. She stubbed out against the basin.
‘Thank you, my son. What you did for Teddy, your help.’
‘Please, no.’
He read forgiveness in her face.
‘You help,’ she said and silenced his disapprovals. ‘I see it. I witness all in this house and I see you help West. You help Teddy. This is a kind thing you do.’
‘I don’t do a thing, Lillian.’
‘You are there.’ She held his wrist. ‘That is no small affair. You stay. It is not as common as you must think. And it is Lil, please, my love.’
She brought him close and he shut his eyes, falling into a standing dream. She stroked his ear, his brow. She ran her fingers through his hair until he lost all feeling.
EIGHT
The thaw arrived with no apology. One morning warmth was simply present where the day before cold had been, and the earth creaked at its presence. The trees swayed a groom’s dance and shook their snow. Infinite tiny rivulets formed from the melting ice while the Manor listened to its radios and had confirmed what was plain fact out its windows. The Big Freeze was over. It had left only mud, its tracks obscured, and, with each passing day of that first thaw week, only more mud. Lil grew crazy with it being dragged through the house while Teddy took the assault as a playful thing. He roused the boys to scrub the slush from the floors while ensuring its return by sending troops out to make overdue repairs and to help with Gall and his fields. In the champagne of the new season Teddy was showing every sign of life.
Radford was with the others before tea when the announcement came on the news: it was the first morning of the year without reports of frost from any corner of Britain. Teddy came in rubbing his hands, delighted, and commanded West to the piano. The curtains were pulled back, the midday light remembered its task and West obliged with ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’. As the food arrived everyone was singing, even the sports boys. Radford stood on the long table with Lewis and led the chant while Lil screamed about the boots but sang along all the same. West came back to his seat and wore a look of tired pride, becoming unusually talkative. He pushed around the dishes of bread and butter and made it his job to serve the minced beef and boiled potatoes. Teddy decreed that they should enjoy this last leisured afternoon as from the next morning they would be going into the village to help with the clean-up. They would be an army and it would be a term of action like they had never known. The forgotten thing, spring. He continued to rub his hands.
At the wall ruins Radford stood with Teddy as dusk came. He felt some vacant pity for the Freeze’s demise, knowing it could not hold on to the evidence of its existence for long. The hills would rise as a green shadow, piercing through at their peaks and swallowing the winter’s remains.
West had gone ahead and was at the boundary of the next hill, walking across the top of its stone wall. He did this with no purpose, just skipping from flat to flat, and Radford and Teddy stopped to watch with as little aim. Manny was digging out the chicken coop behind them.
‘Did anyone tell you about the starlings?’ Radford asked. ‘We saw them flying around in a, what’s it called? Like a cloud.’
‘Wish I’d been there.’ Teddy kept his eyes on West, raising a hand to shield them from the sun. ‘You know why I was away?’
Radford would continue to be truthful. ‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Is there anything you’d like to ask?’
A bird flew low over his shoulder, startling him. The creature went on untroubled. ‘I’m not sure, Teddy. I’d like to know about it, and you can tell me if you like, but is that … best?’
He laughed. ‘I’m not certain I know. Still, I would like to tell you.’
‘Yes, then.’
‘I have a trouble that finds me often enough. When it’s too much to bear I go to stay in a place that’s helpful. This time it was the house in the city, where you left me. It really is quite straightforward. I’m treated as an invalid for a few days and some strength returns and I’m treated like a child. I talk for a time with my friend and when I begin to be treated as an adult it’s time for me to be sent home. It’s merely something that happens.’ Teddy turned away from the glare. ‘It is nothing to be ashamed of and I share this with my dear ones.’
‘Yes.’
They watched West bound against the pearl. ‘It is a great thing, to know what is yours,’ Teddy said. ‘This is mine to tell.’
The breeze that ran over them was almost lovely.
‘That first night,’ Radford said. ‘The first night I was here. I was going to throw myself out of the belfry window. Or some other solution, something as effective.’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t though, of course. And I won’t. As far as a promise like that can see into the future, I promise you I won’t.’
‘Then, as far into the future as that lasts, thank you.’ Teddy said. ‘Pointless, aren’t they? Promises.’
‘I’ve always thought so.’
Their laughter synchronised.
‘What day is it?’ Teddy asked.
‘Sunday.’
‘Oh right, that makes sense.’
Radford wondered if his answer had been true. He had never taken to Sundays in the way that others leapt at it. It was that day that should be rest, would be a holiday, if it wasn’t always poisoned with the promise of what came after. Not that Mondays ever really came. It was always that everlasting Sunday, the unending anticipation.
One decent winter survived and here he was, thinking himself profound. Radford laughed aloud at his philosophy.
‘The newspaper says it was the coldest season in three hundred years,’ Teddy said.
‘That makes sense.’
A second bird buzzed by Radford as it fired from the Manor grounds and ahead. He considered if they were all in fact in love with the cold, and now all would be exposed and all would be real. There would be no more excuses, and that thought terrified. The bird disappeared as it went straight for the shape of West, who in turn disappeared into the contour of the hill. Perhaps the thaw would take care of all this, one way or the other. Everything would fall away. The house, its people, the sky and its birds, all tumbling with the other remnants into the valley.
That night Radford woke in fright as if a book had closed beside his ear and he lay in the darkness for some time examining his dimming memories. He tried to draw a line between events, seeking a trajectory that made sense and would leave them in a configuration he could be comfortable with. Failing at this he dressed, checking his clock by the window light, and went softly into the hall. He would take West for a midnight smoke, and they would ta
lk if he wished it, and it would repair a little the tear that seemed to have formed in his friend. His friend. Radford warmed and steeled himself by those words.
West was not in his room and the journey downstairs was colourless though well lit. The excitement of the thaw had overtaken reason and throughout the house every curtain had been thrown open, despite the night. Full moonlight came in, showing all that was not. West would be in the kitchen scavenging or in the dining room devouring and that would be a welcome sign despite the sleeplessness.
So many questions rolled about Radford’s mind, colliding with one another. He wondered when exactly he had become brother to West’s comfort and whether it happened through sheer proximity and familiarity or only by the sharing of trouble. If love came on the back of violence then perhaps that was not love but fear. But fear was wanting not to be without, and that could be all love was, in truth. What was wrong with being scared? Or being thick or angry or hopeless. He would discuss all these things with West and they would come to conclusions.
Reaching the kitchen he discovered Lewis on hands and knees up against the frame of the pantry door. He was hovering above one of the mousetraps, inching down towards it with a dirty rolled towel. Radford held his breath. The trap was sprung and its hammer came down powerfully but almost silently against the fabric. Radford watched on as Lewis moved from trap to trap, disarming each in turn. So this had been the vermin’s salvation.
Radford stepped past the dining room, where a figure occupied the reading chair: he saw by the meagre firelight that it was Teddy. A book was open in his lap but his attention was on only his pipe as he chewed on its bit. No glow or smoke came from the pipe’s chamber and Teddy believed himself alone. Radford knew Teddy would hate the thought, but he wanted nothing but to find a course through life that would lead him to this place. It did not matter that Teddy was subject to weakness, that he possessed within him a vein of painful blood and that he spent midnights by a failing fire, chomping on his pipe. He was alive and had others to care for and this was enough to hope for.
Radford backed away as quickly as he dared and returned to the kitchen, now empty. That moon came through the freshly washed windows and fell on a dish of green apples resting beneath a muslin cloth. He saw the door leading outside was ajar. It let out a dull creak as it opened under the power of a wind that ruffled Radford’s hair. He checked his coat and went outside. West would be smoking around one of the Manor’s corners. Radford would find him and convince him up to their belfry, where time could still be made to run slower and they could begin the rebuilding of their thrones.
The gun was leaning against the trunk of a tree in such clear sight, in a way that seemed so natural, that Radford wasn’t startled. He picked it up as if collecting wood for the fire, but when he felt its weight and looked down its barrel to the grey earth a tremble ran through the grain of his muscles.
It was a shotgun and it could only have been Farmer Gall’s. For a moment it felt right in Radford’s possession – he forgot his confusion and revelled in the excitement of wielding this antiquated, all-powerful thing. He could make war. A king could be liberated to history with a single action. The cowboy games he played as a younger boy seemed now to have been training for this. He smiled at the thought and walked on, only then giving full thought to how this object could have ended up on the house grounds. The trigger guard brushed the blade of his finger.
He and Foster saw each other in the same instant and both were possessed by an equal measure of alarm. Foster stood from where he had been crouching at the foot of an ivory tree. Radford continued forward, raising the shotgun level by childish instinct.
‘Hello,’ Radford said flatly. ‘What’s there—’
Foster turned into the light and his whole front was covered in blood. Radford knew it could be nothing else, up the creature’s arms, across his chest, against the flesh of his neck. Foster held out a knife and the blade was dark and shone wet.
‘I know he told you.’ Foster spoke in a brittle tone.
‘What have you done?’
Radford continued to repeat this question, quieter each time, knowing the answer. On the ground behind Foster, reclined against the tree, was West, cut to pieces. His shirt had been torn from his body, leaving a chest that was all wounds and horror. The skin of his face was already pale beyond possibility; his features made no boundary with the earth.
‘I know he told,’ Foster said. ‘He had no right.’ He was growing brave now, standing at full height, his face twisting into aggression. ‘There were two of us in this.’
Radford thought only of the cold. How it would be burning West’s skin if he could feel it. Winter was slipping underground, taking with it its trouble. He understood what it had all been for.
Foster raged with all his untrue evil, raising the knife at Radford’s neck, lunging, coming at once to join him in the tree’s shadow. West could no longer speak and so neither would Radford. He instead kept the gun steady and pulled the trigger like he had done a thousand times as a playing boy and watched as its shot tore Foster apart. The animal’s body was flung backwards, landing soft among the slush and litter. The knife lay beside its open palm. Radford remained, his ears disabled by the blast and with the force of the gun’s recoil aching through his shoulder and chest. As if from a distance he saw himself doubled in the deserting snow. There was nothing to do. Nothing could happen now and so no action could have consequence. He stood in place and watched West return, beautiful and absolute, through the descending mist of pink.
Some quantity of time transpired before Teddy came from behind and snatched the shotgun. He spoke frantically and Radford could make no sense of it. Teddy knelt beside the bodies, first Foster’s and then West’s. He stood and held Radford at his throat, shaking him and shouting furious questions.
Radford explained.
Teddy was briefly silent before describing what was to happen. Radford was to forget all he thought he remembered of this. A series of linear events had taken place: Radford had been in the kitchen seeking supper when he heard the shot; he had run out to the grounds and come across this scene of two boys painted red and Teddy standing above them with the gun; Teddy had offered no reason for the spectacle and shouted at him to return inside. This was what had occurred – this, and only this. Radford was made to say that he understood.
Teddy turned away with the weapon. ‘So then, back to the house.’
These were the unremarkable words that Radford would remember. Such plain and fatherly sentiments, spoken so mildly. He would recall many things but it was this message of Teddy’s that would remain most clearly. So then, back to the house.
When Radford reached the kitchen he was met by boys coming the other way, ignoring him and rushing outside in search of the drama. Others would pass through the kitchen. Brass, Rich, Lewis. Lil and Manny too. All of the house, in time. There was screaming and tears. Talk and talk about causes. Mostly wrong, all so terrible. Radford corrected no-one. Through all that followed he would correct not one of the lies told by Teddy. His role was reduced to inconsequence, as Teddy had described, as he had agreed to.
Foster and West’s true story, whatever it had been, was lost. What past they shared – the mechanics of its destruction. Radford knew it in parts but still insufficiently. Two halves joined and yet whatever fullness they made had been taken with them.
Winter watched strangers come to the house and their arrival marked its final silence. There was no learning to be done. No message. It had come and done its work and for this coldest boy there would be no last words.
Radford had lost his chance to ask his friend questions on the likeness of fear and love and violence, so in the time that followed he built a conclusion of his own and settled on following the path it described. Whether it would exist in reality as it did in promise, he concluded it was as perfect a plan as any other.
If Winter had linge
red he would have shared with it his new belief.
But, now, he was alone.
That night he stood by the cold ovens watching the moon descend on trouble. He watched it come uninvited through the windows, to fall on the dish of shrouded green apples.
NINE
It was a little after midnight on a Sunday, a handful of weeks before the child Radford would be sent to the Manor. He could, naturally, appreciate nothing of that then. All he knew was the sensation of the carpet of his parents’ bedroom against his feet. The rest of the house was all floorboards and thin rug. This was rare, sacred ground.
Later, during his single season at the Manor, over its eternal nights, he would remember the thread of his parents’ carpet more sharply than any of the events that it preceded: his mother’s screams, his uncle and the police being called; the sobbing and accusations; his father, still alive and recovered as far as he would ever be, having to be restrained from apocalyptic revenge.
Radford knew only the carpet under his toes as he stood over his sleeping parents and, perhaps distantly, the feel of the old leather belt taut between his hands. His lone thought in that final act, and it wasn’t a thought that sat heavily in his mind: why don’t more sons kill their fathers?
TEN
The Indian watched a vulture flying high above a rabbit, so I equalled V over R. Radford found himself rehearsing this as he drove by the suburbs of London.
The motorway came to a standstill outside Heathrow and he took pleasure in this. He secretly longed for jams, red lights, anything that meant he could relax his attention from clutches and changing lanes. Driving never became that great conductor of freedom that the commercials guaranteed. For Radford, that job was fulfilled by daydreaming, something that was occupying more and more of what should have been his waking hours, and he was content with this. The lanes started up and he joined the crawl north-west, checking the address again from the open notebook on the seat of the passenger side. Beside this was a folded map with the destination marked with a cross. It would be maybe an hour and a half to Oxford from here, longer if he stopped at a bakery as he planned to.
The Everlasting Sunday Page 16