The Sandfather

by Linda Newbery

  ‘Still are.’ Hal pulled a face.

  Mum smiled, and said, ‘I remember being told off for making Blu-Tack marks on the walls, and having my music too loud.’

  ‘I know - seems like yesterday,’ said Aunt Jude. ‘There’s plenty of room for all your things, Hal. This is empty, look.’ She opened both doors of the wardrobe, showing a hanging rail one side and shelves the other.

  ‘I almost expected to see all my old clothes in there,’ Mum said.

  ‘It was full of Brenda’s things, till last week,’ Aunt Jude told her. ‘I’ve just had a big clear-out to the charity shop. Thought I’d do it while Gerry was away - I asked him first, of course. Anyway, Tina, do you want to help Hal unpack and settle in? Lunch in about twenty minutes.’ She left them to it.

  ‘It’s so lovely and quiet here.’ Mum began to take things out of the holdall, hanging clothes in the wardrobe or putting them folded on shelves. ‘That’s what I remember. Hearing birds in the garden, and the gulls. Always the gulls.’

  Too quiet, Hal thought. It’d be like prison. What was he meant to do here, with no TV in his room, no computer? What if there was no computer in the whole house, no wireless broadband?

  ‘Mum, what am I—’ he began.

  She’d stopped unpacking, her eyes fixed on something in the holdall. She lifted out the bag of marbles and held them up.

  ‘What—’ She glanced at him, then opened the drawstring and looked inside. ‘I had no idea you still had these! After all this time! What are they doing in your bag?’

  He felt his face going hot. ‘I put them in. Don’t know why.’

  Mum smiled, and said lightly, ‘I suppose Aunt Jude might give you a game of marbles.’

  Hal shrugged, as if they were just toys. As if they’d got into his bag by mistake.

  5

  TWITCHY

  ‘Come on in,’ said Aunt Jude, down in the kitchen, ‘and meet Don.’

  Hal hadn’t realised there was another person in the house. Neither, to judge from her look of surprise, had Mum. A man stood at the sink, washing lettuce: a thin, wiry man with grey hair pulled back into a pony-tail.

  ‘My niece Tina, and my great-nephew Hal,’ Aunt Jude told him.

  ‘Know that, don’t I?’ said the man. ‘Saw them at the funeral.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t introduce you properly then,’ Aunt Jude said, lifting her chin. ‘You were being curmudgeonly. This is Don, Don Inchbold. He’s my lodger,’ she explained to Hal and Mum.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Mum.

  The man didn’t shake hands, just said something like, ‘Nnng,’ and gave a jerk of his head as if his attention was caught by something behind him. Then he flapped a wet lettuce-leaf at Hal by way of greeting.

  ‘Lodger and very good friend,’ said Aunt Jude, ‘though it’s sometimes hard to tell.’

  Hal stared at the man with interest. He must be quite old, but his grin was cheeky and boyish. He wore a navy fisherman’s smock with smears of paint on it, and baggy cut-offs that reached just below his knees, with thin brown legs showing beneath. On his feet were plimsolls without laces, and odd socks - one red, one blue.

  Mum frowned. ‘Don Inchbold? I thought I knew your name when I heard it before, but I still can’t think why.’

  ‘He’s an artist,’ said Aunt Jude. ‘Quite a famous one, back in the sixties.’

  Don made a tutting sound. ‘Don’t start on about that. They’re not interested in ancient history, are they?’

  ‘They might be!’ Aunt Jude moved over to the shelves and took down a bottle of olive oil, but Don elbowed her aside.

  ‘Give me that,’ he told her. ‘I’ll do it. You can’t rush the making of a good dressing.’

  ‘I have heard of you,’ Mum told him; ‘I knew it. I’ll do an internet search.’

  ‘Kuh!’ Don’s face seemed to contort; he made an impatient movement with one shoulder and arm. ‘Don’t waste your time. Load of old tat, I was turning out back then.’

  Hal saw Mum’s look of startled uncertainty; she didn’t know how to take this blunt-speaking, twitchy man. Was Don being rude, or just making fun of himself? And did he actually live here, if he was the lodger?

  ‘It wasn’t tat! You’re the only one that thinks so,’ Aunt Jude told him. ‘Sit down, you two, and let me fetch you a drink. We’ll be all day, this rate.’

  Hal’s grandfather had a special dining room, with shiny striped wallpaper and polished furniture; the food had been in there last time, all prissy, with flowered plates and napkins and sandwiches with their crusts cut off. Today they ate in the kitchen, which was much nicer: a jar of bright leaves and berries on the windowsill, no cloth on the table, and the various sections of the Sunday paper to be cleared out of the way. The food was good, too, when it came - lasagne, cheesy-topped, hot and runny with tomato sauce; herb bread, and salad with the tangy dressing Don had made.

  ‘Are you lodging here?’ Mum asked Don.

  He gave one of his funny jolts, accidentally tossing a piece of lettuce from his fork across the table; he reached for it with his fingers and put it into his mouth. ‘Lord, no,’ he said, crunching. ‘Me and her on top of each other all the time? We’d drive each other demented. No, I’m staying in the flat.’

  ‘My flat, that is, the one I’ve bought for myself, in Holly Drive,’ Aunt Jude explained. ‘I don’t need it while I’m here. Soon as I do, I’ll turf him out.’

  ‘She would, too,’ said Don, helping himself to more lasagne. ‘Out on the streets with just the clothes I stand up in. Doesn’t mess about, Jude doesn’t.’

  ‘Hal, have some more while it’s still going.’ Aunt Jude passed the dish. ‘He might as well live here. Always turns up at mealtimes expecting to be fed.’

  ‘Someone’s got to show you how to cook a decent meal.’ Don stopped chewing and looked straight at Hal, his small blue eyes peering from beneath bristly eyebrows. ‘You haven’t got much to say for yourself, have you?’

  ‘Uh,’ went Hal. It was hard to know how to respond when people said that.

  ‘Give the poor boy a chance,’ said Aunt Jude. ‘He’s only just met you. You take a bit of getting used to.’

  ‘In trouble at school, are you?’ Don went on. ‘Got yourself chucked out? What did you do, then? Get caught smoking? Call the headmaster a stupid prat? Set off the fire alarm? I did all those when I was at school.’

  Hal looked down at his plate.

  ‘No, you see—’ Mum began.

  ‘Now don’t start giving Hal ideas,’ Aunt Jude told Don. ‘He needs to put all that behind him. He doesn’t need you encouraging him, silly old fool.’

  Hal glanced at Mum and saw her expression, surprised and perhaps a little offended by the way Don and Aunt Jude talked to each other. Hal thought they were funny.

  And Don, now, had forgotten his question. ‘Rules, rules, rules, that’s all school was,’ he said, waving a piece of herb bread. ‘Never learned anything useful till after I left. Rules were only for breaking, that was my view.’

  ‘Now who’s talking about ancient history?’ Aunt Jude looked down her nose at him. ‘Schools have changed a bit since your day. Anyway, try talking a bit of sense for once. I’m not having you lead Hal astray.’

  Don gave Hal a sidelong look and a conspiratorial chuckle. He must be around the grandfather’s age, but he was like a naughty boy. Something odd had happened to Mum, too. She’d gone quiet and sort of girlish, as if the return to her old house had turned her back into the teenager who’d lived here years ago.

  And when she left, soon after lunch, Hal felt that he’d shrunk, too, slipped back a few years. Mum kissed and hugged him, reminded him to behave well for Aunt Jude and not to worry, then got into the driving-seat and fastened her seat-belt and sat looking at him. Almost, for a moment, she looked tearful.

  ‘Bye, Prince Hal,’ she said, very quietly, using her special name for him. ‘Bye, Aunty - thanks again for everything. Goodbye, Don.’

  Hal stood on
the pavement watching the blue Fiesta turn the corner and out of sight, and suddenly felt more alone than ever in his life. Mum had promised to phone as soon as she could; but first she had to get to the other side of the operation, which now seemed to Hal like a dangerous voyage. They’d put her to sleep and she’d sail into oblivion, while people did things to her. It’d be like Casualty. He pictured her lying unconscious on an operating table, masked surgeons bending over her and muttering to each other. Cutting her open.

  Mum had laughed when Hal asked her about that. ‘Oh, it’s very high-tech these days, Hal. They only make a tiny incision. I’m not going to be left like Frankenstein’s monster, with great bodged-up scars. I won’t know a thing, and I’ll be out of there in no time.’

  But - what if it went wrong? What if her heart stopped? What if she never woke up? Things like that did happen: it was no good saying they didn’t. Not when his grandmother had died that way.

  Reluctantly, he followed Aunt Jude indoors. There was lots of the day still left, and the two weeks stretched ahead like blank pages in a diary. OK, the week of school exclusion - he could put up with that. But half-term week as well! He hadn’t really made plans, but he’d have gone to football coaching with Osman (not Luke). Probably meet up with a few other mates (not Luke) and hang out in town, or at the sports centre. But here, where he didn’t know anyone - what was he meant to do? He’d probably die of boredom, and never make it back home.

  ‘Don generally has a snooze after lunch,’ Aunt Jude told him. ‘Working, he calls it. And I’ve got to clear up in the kitchen. Why don’t you have a look round the garden? When I’m done, we’ll walk down to the sea-front and you can start to get your bearings.’

  Hal wandered outside. The back garden sloped upwards and was quite large, bordered by trees and shrubs. The leaves and the grass dazzled, autumn-bright. It was an over-tidy sort of garden, with the lawn mown and severely edged, not a weed in sight. Hooped iron bordered the beds of roses and other prim flowers whose names Mum would know. There was a small greenhouse with more plants in it, a stepping-stone path and a pond covered over with netting. Hal couldn’t imagine being allowed to kick a football about, or pitch a tent. Course, this was the grandfather’s place, and he’d be the kind of old man who spent hours fussing round his garden, picking dead heads off flowers, removing snails, sweeping up leaves. He’d be quick to tell Hal off for breaking stalks or smashing a football into the greenhouse.

  Hal hated him. His jaw clenched tight as he thought of what Luke had said. Smashing a football into the greenhouse was exactly what he felt like doing - if only he’d had one.

  The house looked so big, so pleased with itself; its back door standing open, its diamond-paned windows, and a flame-coloured creeper climbing to the gutter. Hal felt wrong to be here, even if the old man himself was safely in Spain. It was only Aunt Jude who made it welcoming. The grandfather had tried to be friendly at the funeral, but it was too late now to make up for what he’d done before.

  ‘He’s racist,’ Luke had said, that Thursday, as they crossed the quad towards the Humanities block. Hal couldn’t remember now why they’d started on about the grandfather in the first place - it was somehow triggered by the book they were reading in English - but Luke’s speciality was probing where it hurt. ‘It’s a no-brainer! That’s why he chucked your mum out. He couldn’t stand the thought of her - you know! - doing it, with a black guy. With your dad.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Hal flung back.

  ‘ ’S true though. It’s got to be! Why don’t you ask your mum?’

  Hal hadn’t, because he knew it must be true and didn’t want to hear her say it. The grandfather had thrown his mother out - hadn’t spoken to her for more than thirteen years. Because of Hal.

  How was he meant to feel about that?

  It got worse. Hal started saying things about Luke’s mum, the number of boyfriends she’d had. Below the belt, that was, because Luke had taken a big dislike to his mum’s latest, a big bloke with a bullying air who’d started staying over at weekends. And in return, Luke said that Hal’s mum was obviously a lezzie because she never had any boyfriends at all.

  ‘Course she’s not!’ Hal retorted.

  Osman gave a theatrical sigh. ‘For God’s sake, you two! Leave it!’

  ‘Prove it, then. Go on,’ Luke taunted Hal.

  ‘Right, well, for one, there’s me. I’m evidence, aren’t I? Unless you’re even thicker than you look. Two, she has had a boyfriend. Dave, last year.’

  That had shut Luke up, temporarily. Osman shouldered his way between them and headed off towards the Humanities corridor. Which was where hostilities broke out all over again.

  Now, snapping the head off a smug red daisy-flower, Hal crushed it in his hand and let the scarlet petals flutter to the grass. Then he dropped what was left of the flower’s centre, and mashed it to pulp with his trainer. It was a pathetic little gesture, but somehow satisfying. He glanced up at the house windows to see if anyone was watching, but no one was.

  He didn’t want his mum to have boyfriends. When she’d been going out, briefly, with Dave - divorced, forty, kids of his own - Hal had fretted that they’d all move in together and everything would change. Then there’d been a time when Claire had tried to pair Mum up with a friend of a friend. Luckily Mum had decided he was the most boring man she’d ever met.

  They were OK as they were, him and Mum. But now he was stuck with family he didn’t want, forced to live in the grandfather’s house. The home of the person he disliked - despised - more than anyone in the world.

  The grandfather didn’t want him to exist. Hadn’t wanted him to be born. Preferred to cut his own daughter out of his life than to let Hal in.

  6

  TIDE

  ‘You can’t work all day long,’ Aunt Jude told Hal at breakfast, as if that was his declared intention. ‘If you do a stint this morning, you might like to go out later and see what Don’s up to. Looks like being a nice day.’

  Don arrived while they were finishing their toast, though he didn’t want anything to eat, only strong coffee. It seemed that he usually stopped off here on the way down to the beach hut where he did his painting.

  ‘Kuh! Wants you to check up on me,’ Don told Hal, with one of his uncontrolled jerks. ‘That’s what she’s after. Sticking her nose in.’ Coffee sloshed over his trousers from the mug he was holding. It must have been hot, but he didn’t seem bothered; just wiped at it with his hand.

  ‘Nonsense.’ Aunt Jude tore a sheet of kitchen towel from the roll, and dabbed at him. ‘I’ll be too busy, as well you know. Hal, my mobile number’s on the board there. I’ve got a meeting at the solicitor’s that’ll take up most of the morning. But I should be finished by lunchtime. Try not to worry about your mum - she’ll be fine, really she will. We’ll phone the hospital at tea-time. It’ll all be over by then.’

  ‘What’s this, then? Hospital?’ Don said sharply. ‘No one told me anything about hospital.’

  Aunt Jude gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Course I did! More than once. Why don’t you try listening? It’s the main reason Hal’s here: Tina’s operation.’

  ‘What? I thought he’d got himself chucked out of school and that was why.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Take no notice, Hal. Don’t know why I waste my breath.’

  ‘Hospital, you’d never get me near the place.’ Don reached for the toast-crust Aunt Jude had left on her plate, and crammed it into his mouth. ‘If you’re not ill when you go in, you will be when you come out,’ he said, chewing. ‘I’d rather take my chances.’

  ‘Only because you’ve never been really ill,’ Aunt Jude snapped at him. ‘What a thing to say, today of all days! Don’t listen,’ she added to Hal. ‘He hasn’t got the sense he was born with.’

  ‘Kuh!’ went Don, with a great shoulder-spasm, and turned aside in his chair as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.

  Hal couldn’t work them out. Why was Don always round here, if they were so impatient with each
other? And he wanted to know why Don did all that twitching and jerking, but couldn’t come straight out and ask.

  Before she left, Aunt Jude installed Hal in the dining room with his maths books. Don made a round of sandwiches, humming tunelessly all the while, then he looked in at Hal, said ‘Rather you than me,’ and let himself out, carrying his lunch in a frayed canvas shoulder-bag. Hal felt envious. Yesterday afternoon, out on their walk, they’d passed the beach huts, and Don had said that Hal could go down there whenever he liked.

  Now would be good, Hal thought. Better than sitting here with nothing to save him from his linear equations. It felt weird being left alone in the house. Silence and loneliness settled around him like dust.

  The dining room wasn’t a good place to be. Unlike the kitchen, which Jude had taken over with her own things and her cooking smells, and the cork board with postcards and Post-Its stuck all over, the dining room was a cold and formal place, in which he could only think of his grandfather. Not the stooped, tearful man he’d seen at the crematorium, but the grandfather of his imagination, the one who’d thrown Mum out of the house. Had it really been as drastic as that? Had he ordered her to pack her bags and leave? Even physically bundled her out onto the doorstep?

  All because he’d taken against Hal’s father. If what Luke said was right.

  Mum.

  On the wall was a square-faced clock of dark polished wood, ticking away, emphasising the house’s emptiness. She’d be at the hospital now, for tests and stuff, though her operation wasn’t till this afternoon. Two o’clock, she’d been told, so he must remember to think about her then. Things might go wrong if he failed to do that.

  His maths textbook was open in front of him, with the printed sheet of instructions sent by Mr Khalid, but his brain was reluctant to confront the exercises. The numbers and words might have been in secret code, for all the sense they made. Compared to this, school would be fun - the group work, the experiments and the cooking, the art and drama, the joyful release of PE, the kickabouts at lunchtime, the jokes and the laughing. He’d never expected to miss school, but now he did. If only he could have school without the trouble that seemed intent on tripping him up, like a dog getting under his feet.