Breaking Light

by Karin Altenberg

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2014 Karin Altenberg

  The moral right of Karin Altenberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Every attempt has been made to attain licences to reprint lyrics from the following songs: ‘Put the Blame on Mame’ by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher, Sony ATV; ‘Crazy Man Michael’ by Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick; and to reprint the extract from Light in August by William Faulkner, Curtis Brown. Any omissions should be notified to the publishers, who would be happy to make amendments to future editions.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN 9781780877150

  TPB ISBN 9781782068105

  EBOOK ISBN 9781780877167

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Till mamma och pappa migliori genitori

  Memory believes before knowing remembers.

  William Faulkner, Light in August

  Michael he whistles the simplest of tunes,

  And asks of the wild woods their pardon.

  For his true love is flown into every flower grown,

  And he must be keeper of the garden.

  Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick,

  ‘Crazy Man Michael’

  PROLOGUE

  He stops for a moment, turning the keys in his pocket. A single car creeps past and his gaze follows the beams of its headlights until they pick out one of the oaks at the bottom of the street; its bare branches are veins feeding blood to the dusk. Then the car is gone and gloom settles again over the village. He listens into the drizzle. Nothing.

  He turns back into the fractured light cast from a couple of old-fashioned lanterns on either side of the door. Somewhere above, the wooden sign hangs heavily from its chain. He can’t see it now but remembers well the painted hare and fox. He pushes the door open and steps inside, on to a sludgy carpet. To his right, a fire is failing in the grate. There’s a faint smell of wet dog but the space in front of the hearth is empty now, where normally a beast or two would be resting after a walk on the moors. A thin man enters from the room behind the bar and for a moment, as the door swings open and shut, there’s the glare of strip lights and the hum of a dishwasher.

  ‘Evening.’

  ‘Can I have a pint of your local draught, please,’ he says, placing one arm on the polished wood of the bar.

  The barman pulls the beer. ‘It’s very quiet this afternoon; must be this God-awful weather.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees.

  ‘Here you go, sir.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He takes his first sip of the bitter and looks around the room. It’s as good as empty, except for a lonely figure in the corner, reading a paper. A TV with the sound turned off is flickering above the bar and both men stare at it as the news comes on. There’s a photo of a man in his mid sixties. You can tell he is heavyset, although the picture is only showing his face. It’s a bit grainy and the eyes look dull. There’s nothing much to him.

  He hears a rustle of paper as the figure in the corner looks up at the screen. It’s a woman – quite small and plump, he notices, but he cannot make out her features.

  ‘Good riddance,’ the barman snarls. ‘He was an unpleasant fucker; came in here a few times. Never liked the look of him.’

  He takes another sip from his pint.

  ‘They sent him down for ten years. Apparently a new witness came forward. About time, too.’ The barman shakes his head.

  ‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘it was about time.’

  The barman looks at him. ‘You from around here, then – or just visiting?’

  ‘I’ve just acquired a house down the road.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? Which one would that be?’

  ‘Oakstone.’

  ‘I see.’ The barman falters and looks at him again, more intently this time.

  Something touches the air between them, something damp and chill. He hears a dull thud behind him and turns towards the door. Then he stares into the corner again; this time there’s only a shadow – and a newspaper lying open on the table. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, he realises now that she is gone.

  He sighs. The clock behind the bar says five o’clock; two arms reaching out from the heart, one slightly shorter than the other, stunted, damaged.

  ‘I should get going,’ he says and feels in his pocket for some change.

  ‘Well, welcome to Mortford. I hope you will drink here again soon.’

  He smiles and nods and then looks at the clock again. Five o’clock does not look right, he thinks for the first time; not quite balanced, slightly askew.

  1

  Mr Askew looked up from the bed into which he had just pressed a row of scillas and snowdrops – the fragrant kind. Normally he would have planted the bulbs in the autumn, but there had been little opportunity until now. He stretched his back and looked at the neat track of tender blue and white. Like the skin on the inside of a young woman’s arm, he thought. He had decided to divide the small allotment into two parts of unequal size: the larger area would be dedicated to aesthetics – to colour and scent – and the smaller patch to produce, if only for the satisfaction and comfort of the sprouting. He loved the show of stealth and secret strength as the fingers and ears of tender vegetables stretched up through the crust of earth. The previous allotment holder had planted a couple of roses and a viburnum. The latter for a bit of evergreen, he suspected, but he did not care for it – it was a crude plant with little elegance and it had a sweet scent borrowed from more distinguished cousins. The roses were another testament to his predecessor’s lack of imagination.

  A woman was working in the allotment next to his. She wore a pea-green veil, partly covering her face, and a red dress with matching leggings showed from under an ugly padded jacket. She worked silently, methodically turning the fragrant soil. Every now and again she would reach for a bucket at her side and fetch a handful of orange peels, which she scattered over

  the hummocks of earth. Her movements were gracious as she balanced and swayed like a line dancer between the ridges and furrows of her miniature field. The frail February sun that had come out to warm the earth, taut and exhausted by winter, picked out the flowing fabrics around the thin woman. It played with the folds of her green veil for a moment before swathing her in a shawl of warm light. Mr Askew blinked once and c
leared his throat.

  ‘Ahem, excuse me, madam,’ he mustered, although his voice sounded hoarse. ‘What’s that you’re planting?’

  The woman seemed to hesitate in her movements but did not look up, pretending she had not heard. Mr Askew felt the chill of the ground seeping into the bones of his fingers and stood up stiffly to warm his hands in his armpits. He was a tall man with long, heavy limbs and large feet. One shoulder somewhat lower than the other, it was as if he was leaning ever so slightly away from something looming over him. The face revealed less. Unknowable. And the eyes, too dark to read, quickly averted, as if from a mirror. His hair was dark too, almost black under a Coney Island baseball cap, and he wore a neatly trimmed silver moustache that seemed curiously out of place – as if from another era; a forgotten joke. At his age, his joints were a consideration but they had not yet become major indignities and there was no sign of real weakness running through his bones.

  She was in her mid fifties, he reckoned, but surprisingly girl-like in her movements. There was a sapling in her lot – a young rowan tree – so tender it was barely distinguishable against the marbled winter sky.

  The frosted caw of a crow lanced the air and broke. He cleared his throat so suddenly that she looked up for a moment and the cold light seemed to expand. ‘Did you know that the moor used to be forested, thousands of years ago?’ It was a remark rather than a question. ‘Where are all the trees now? Gone, I tell you.’ Yes, he was telling her and it surprised him. His life was mapped in silence these days. If he had left it unexplored, it was less from idleness than from not wanting to know. Like a box packed long ago and left unopened, the string still tightly knotted.

  Now, he thought instead of how the trees had been cleared by prehistoric farmers and how what remained had been used up later as firewood in the blowing houses for smelting the tin, or as timber for shipbuilding. The subject interested Mr Askew, the relationship between human industry and nature. He might have been grinning as he took a shuffling step towards the woman. She pulled her veil closer around her face, tucking in an escaped strand of black hair.

  ‘So, you see, Dartmoor forest was a wood without trees. You couldn’t see the trees for the forest, aye?’ The joke made him snort but then he grew thoughtful. ‘When it comes to nature, man has only got himself to blame.’ It was the truth as he knew it.

  But truth was a tricky concept – one that he had never learnt to enjoy. He was used to being less certain. It was the state of trying to understand that possessed him. Perhaps this was why he persisted in wanting to tell this silently flowing woman about trees. ‘Do you know,’ he continued ardently, ‘that it takes two hundred years for an oak to mature?’ He could feel now that she despised him and that she wanted to leave but wouldn’t; for some reason of her own, she needed to know what he had to say. He said it quickly, as if reading aloud from a book. ‘So it grows for two hundred years, then it sits still, it rests, for another two hundred years and then it dies for three hundred years.’ He was gasping but could not stop himself. ‘I wish we were more like trees, you know. There’s so much in our lives we have to endure – and always in a hurry.’

  She had stopped in her track and he knew she had listened. Yet, when he finished talking she gathered her tools into the bucket that had held the orange peels and turned to go. Her movements were soft and floating, defined by the loose fabric under the dull jacket.

  ‘Ah, well,’ the tall man muttered to himself. He bit at his moustache and pulled down his cap, hoping it would hide his inadequacies.

  *

  They had seen him, although he was so insignificant against the bleak air, and now Billy Dunford and Jim of Blackaton were leading the chase. Normally, he would escape quickly – or hang back at the end of the lessons and wait until the others had left the classroom, then he would saunter down the hill and sit on the riverbank where he could be alone, concealed by willows and alder. As the river whispered to him, he imagined other children like himself – ones that were different. The ones who, as Uncle Gerry would put it, were not to everyone’s taste. The wrong kind. He would speak to these playmates as softly as the rustle in the leaves and he would use all the words that did not fit into his normal talk: cheerful words like ‘want’, ‘pretty’ and ‘party’, and more complicated and brittle ones like ‘me’ and ‘father’. Once, after having looked around to make sure no one else was there, he said the word ‘love’.

  But today, as Miss Simmons rang the hand bell, the underside of her large arm swinging like an udder with each flick of the hand, he had not been fast enough. Thoughtless, he had stopped in the middle of the yard as a flock of geese sculled north over his head.

  ‘Jump, Bunny-boy! Go on, you ugly freak. I said, “jump”!’

  He looked around in panic and knew what was by now inevitable. Going back into the schoolhouse was impossible – it would only make it worse if they thought he was running to Miss Simmons for help. There was a gnarled oak by the furthest wall. He took a deep breath and started towards it. But his legs were not moving as fast as they should. It was like running in a dream, when you run and run until you’re exhausted but your legs do not follow your brain and you realise you’re still in the same place. He could hear them closing in. Part of him just wanted to lie down right there on the tarmac in the yard and let them gather around him. Let their winter boots thump into his flesh and smash his teeth until the pain was so intense it would block out the fear. To be rid of the fear. But he was not brave enough and so he ran. He stumbled once, grazing his bare knees and the heels of his hands against the loose gravel on the tarmac, but he was soon up again and the tree was getting closer.

  ‘Look at him run, the ugly shit! We are the foxes, coming to get you, Bunny-boy.’

  He reached the tree and stretched to grab hold of the lowest branch but his hands were shaking badly. He was sobbing and wiped his wet face on his sleeve as he looked over his shoulder to see his pursuers closing on him. Whimpering with his mouth open, he managed to gather enough strength to swing himself on to the branch, hanging like a koala with his arms and legs clutching the limb of the oak. It made him feel even more exposed and, with a last, desperate effort, he managed to sit up and pull himself, hand by hand, towards the trunk. From there it was easier, so that, when the first of the boys reached the tree, he was already out of reach. Tears and mucus ran into his mouth through the open gap under his nose. It was appalling and made him want to throw up. He knew he was disgusting.

  ‘Look, he’s crying,’ he heard from below. ‘Bunny-boy is drinking his own snot again. What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you close your mouth like normal people?’

  He hugged the tree, his cheek pressing against the bark, which smelt of lichen and dog shit. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine another place – a place where someone would keep him safe.

  ‘He’s so horrid, his own father couldn’t stand him – he just stayed away when the war was over so that he wouldn’t have to see his freak-boy again.’

  Where was the whisper of the river?

  ‘Why don’t you stay up there until your face grows human?’

  ‘He’ll stay for the rest of his life, then!’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Let him stay there until he learns to speak properly.’

  They all laughed at that and pinched their noses with their fingers, mimicking his voice, their tongues pressed to the roofs of their mouths: ‘Ga, ga, ga.’

  ‘Hey, gimp, tell us something funny. Ga, ga!’

  They were looking up at him, the discs of their awful faces grinning. He might have thrown something at them, an old acorn perhaps, or one of his boots. He could have taken off one of his boots and thrown it down into one of those faces, smashing it so that there was blood everywhere and teeth and pulpy flesh. He would have, if it hadn’t been for Jim of Blackaton, bigger than the others, blond, handsome, holding back, watching over their heads, staring silently with that smile. Looking straight at him and yet somehow avoiding meeting his e
yes. It made his skin creep, as if little black beetles with curly legs were walking all over it. What did Jim of Blackaton see when he stared like that? He whimpered again, although he had decided not to, and hit his head against the tree to make it stop making those revolting, vile noises.

  ‘Well, do you want to say something, eh? Ah, go ooon.’

  There was the bell again, and the sound of the boys departing, their laughter and their feet kicking at stones and dry leaves. But he could no longer hear the river. He let himself down from the tree.

  *

  There was a chill in the air, as if winter had turned on its heels and come back, when he walked down the lane towards the cottage. The façade had been pebble-dashed to give it a durable finish. It made it look harsh and uninviting – like the kind of surface that would rasp your knees if you were pushed on to it. He would have found it less threatening if it had been washed in lime, like the other cottages along the street. He could see the light from behind the drawn curtain in the front room and knew that somehow he would be in trouble. Carefully, hoping to curtail whatever was in store, he pulled down the brass handle and pushed open the door.

  Uncle Gerry was smoking in the armchair by the peat fire, a glass at his hand, his long legs stretched out towards the grate.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Gerry,’ he said with relief.

  ‘Evening, lad.’ His uncle sounded cheerful. ‘Lost track of time?’

  The boy shrugged and dumped his satchel by the door.

  ‘Good day at school?’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘Hungry?’

  He couldn’t say.

  ‘Isn’t this music sublime?’

  He listened to the voice on the wireless. It was a big band and an American woman singing; she sounded beautiful and jolly. Every now and again she repeated, ‘Put the blame on Mame, boys.’

  ‘Perfection!’ sighed Uncle Gerry and leant back his head so that the lank hair stuck to the antimacassar. The boy’s hair was thick and dark, not fair like Uncle Gerry’s.