Breaking Light

by Karin Altenberg

  He nodded; he trusted Uncle Gerry to know about good and bad.

  Then Mother was at the door. ‘Look at you. Do you have to get yourself into such a state every bloody day?’

  He sighed.

  ‘Well?’ Mother sounded tired and he knew it was because of him.

  Reluctantly, he turned his attention away from the American lady’s singing and back into the confined room. ‘Sorry.’ He tried to smile at her with his eyes, as his mouth was no good for it.

  ‘You fell out of a tree again, right?’ Uncle Gerry suggested.

  He nodded again, too vigorously. There was blood, he could taste it but wasn’t sure whether it was coming from his nose or his mouth.

  ‘Aw, don’t let it drip on the floor,’ Mother wailed. She left the room but returned a moment later with the dishcloth. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting it into his hands. ‘And look at those clothes – do you expect me to mend and clean them every night?’ She did look tired; her eyelids were pink but there was something disturbingly colourful about her too, something to do with the lips and the cheeks.

  Holding the vile cloth over the hole in his face, he looked down at his clothes. He couldn’t see anything immediately wrong with them, but the wool of his socks had dark patches where his scabbed knee had bled through the yarn, and the bark of the oak tree had settled like dust over his shorts and school blazer. Mother took a step towards him; for a moment he thought she was about to stroke his hair but her hand took hold of his shoulder and turned him this way and that. She pulled the cloth from his face and scrutinised the damage. She avoided looking into his eyes. He let his own eyes drop to her feet. Her ankles in the beige stockings had swollen and bulged over the side of her courts. He felt very tired suddenly and wished he could have rested his head.

  ‘Filthy!’

  The force of her remark made him blink.

  ‘For pity’s sake. Can’t you see that the lad’s hurting?’ Uncle Gerry’s face looked scrubbed and his eyes did not quite seem to have the room in their sights. It was like that sometimes in the evening. ‘You’re a bloody bitter bitch these days, do you know that? Where’s the old Celia I used to know? She was a really nice girl, and it wasn’t that long ago …’ he faltered.

  ‘Finished?’ She turned her back to them, smelling perhaps of rose water.

  Uncle Gerry sighed and pulled a face; the boy smiled quickly, to make him feel better.

  ‘Right,’ she said, briskly, over her shoulder, ‘take those rags off and put on your pyjamas. There’s some stew on the stove.’

  *

  He ate his bowl of stew standing by the stove, his bare feet aching against the flagstones. The memory of blood in his mouth made the lamb taste of rusty bog water, of dark caves, perhaps of death. He shuddered every time he swallowed a mouthful.

  Afterwards, he returned to the front room. Uncle Gerry’s chin had slipped on to his chest, but he recovered it as his nephew knelt to put some more peat on the hearth. The fire glowed and glowed, smelling of earth scorched in battle.

  The boy spoke first: ‘Uncle Gerry, trees are good, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yeah, they are good, all right,’ said Uncle Gerry.

  ‘Nothing bad about them?’

  ‘No, not that I know of.’

  They were quiet for a while as they pondered this; the only sounds the breathing of the peat, the wind in the chimney and the subtle wash as Uncle Gerry sipped his Bell’s. Mother’s resentment persisted in the scullery, as quiet and dense as packed snow. The boy moved closer to the armchair, cautiously resting his head against the older man’s leg.

  ‘Hey, lad.’

  The boy looked up at his uncle, whose face had grown vague in the dull light.

  ‘You must learn to stand up for yourself, you know.’

  Whatever could he mean? The boy was stunned and stared in disbelief. ‘What?’

  The uncle cleared his throat and looked deep into his glass. ‘You know what I mean – not take any rubbish from them.’

  ‘Who?’ Suddenly he felt the old anxiety rising inside him, tightening its grip around his throat. It wasn’t meant to come in here, not into this room where he sat with Uncle Gerry by the fire, where sounds were low and words were soft.

  ‘Don’t play the fool; you’re a smart boy – the other kids, of course. Don’t give them any opportunity to be nasty to you.’

  He felt hot behind the eyes. Was he about to cry? What a freak he was. Repulsive. How much did Uncle Gerry know? Had he guessed at something? Somehow this made it all worse and he wished he were back in the tree. He was choking and stared hard into the fire. He must be better; he must try harder to be normal. Don’t give them any opportunity. He could feel Uncle Gerry looking down at him and shifted away from the armchair.

  ‘I saw a lot worse in the war, you know,’ Uncle Gerry muttered. ‘At least you have never known another way.’

  Never known another way? He had heard them talk about him when they thought he wasn’t listening. ‘Poor kid, used to be so carefree,’ they would say. ‘So anxious and withdrawn lately. Stiffening like a cat when you walk past.’ Stiffening? No, I’m just vigilant. Mustn’t let the guard down. Not now. Not ever.

  *

  A few weeks later, he was eating grass again. This was one of their favourite games. Billy came up from behind on the playing fields and tripped him so that he fell on to all fours. Jim then put his boot on the back of his head and hissed, ‘Go on, Bunny-boy, eat your grass, it’s the only dinner you’ll get today.’

  From where he lay, his cheek pushed hard into the grass, he could see the new boy in the class below his own, watching from a few yards away. There was nothing unusual about this – their play often attracted an audience – but the look on the new boy’s face was different. There was no smirk; instead, his features were closed and unflinching. His eyes were dark, which made his face look very pale. Suddenly, he started forward. He was quite a small boy but his feet were fast and he reached Jim and Billy in a few steps. They were both taller and much bigger. The new boy pushed Jim of Blackaton hard in the side. ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘Let him go!’

  They were all stunned but there was something about the new boy’s gaze at that moment which made Jim of Blackaton lift his foot from his head. Jim spat on the grass, only just missing the new boy’s polished boots, and muttered some obscenities. ‘Ah, how cute. Look at them, Billy. Bunny-boy has got himself a fluffy little friend,’ he leered, but he was more uncertain now and, when the new boy continued to glare at him, he spat again – the corner of his mouth was a bit unsteady – and motioned to Billy. Together, they moved off towards the other boys who were playing football nearby.

  During all this, he had stayed as he was, flat on the ground, but now the new boy bent over him and pulled him up by the arm. The new boy looked at him, intrigued rather than accusing. ‘Why did you just take it? Why didn’t you try to get away?’

  He shrugged and shook the new boy’s hand off his arm. He looked around quickly. The others would not approve; they must not see.

  ‘Why were they trying to make you eat grass? It’s disgusting, I tell you. Even my dog wouldn’t eat it – he tried once, but it made him throw up. You should have seen the colour of the puke. He’s dead now.’

  He would have liked to have a dog. He averted his face but knew that the new boy had seen it already.

  ‘I would have kicked back at them, if I were you,’ the younger boy persisted. ‘Right here.’ He pointed at his shins.

  He didn’t know what to say but dug the heel of his boot into the lawn. Then, because he had no better alternative, he scrambled after the new boy, who was now walking back towards the schoolhouse. The situation was altogether unsettling and he did not know what to make of it. The boy had seen for himself; he must know by now that he was a freak.

  ‘I’m Michael.’

  He looked up and then quickly down again. What did it all mean? He could feel a warm patch where the boy’s hand had rested on his
arm.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the boy who called himself Michael asked helpfully.

  ‘Gabriel,’ he whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gabriel –’ this time a bit louder – ‘but my uncle calls me Gabe,’ he managed and at once regretted revealing the nickname. It sounded awful. And his voice.

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘I am a mutant,’ he volunteered, in case this was what was wanted.

  ‘A what?’

  Did this new boy, who looked so normal – pretty even – really not know what a mutant was? It amused him and he decided to take a more scientific approach.

  ‘I am a harelip. That’s why I have the face of a bunny. My palate is cleft. That’s why I speak like an idiot. Sometimes.’

  ‘Oh,’ Michael said, and after a moment’s hesitation, ‘Can I see?’

  Gabriel recoiled as Michael’s face came up close to his. No one, apart from Mother and Uncle Gerry, had ever been that close to him before. He tensed as Michael looked at the hole that ran like a dark gutter from his mouth and into his malformed nose. Suddenly he wanted to protect Michael from it all.

  ‘It won’t happen to you,’ he assured him, and added, ‘I was born this way.’

  ‘Fab!’ said Michael.

  They started walking again. A group of daisies had opened their eyes to the grey day but the March wind was chilly. Gabriel glanced sideways at the boy who walked beside him across the grass. His school uniform seemed very clean and he had thick brown hair that curled a little at the temples. It was like a tight woolly hat or like the painted-on hair of Pinocchio, Gabriel thought. His eyes were brown, almost familiar.

  Michael looked up and smiled. ‘Would you like to come back to my place one day after school? You can try my friendship machine, which decides whether we can be friends or not.’

  ‘I’d like that very much.’ ‘Tomorrow then,’ he said and started running.

  Gabriel remained, dumbstruck, but suddenly remembered: ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Oakstone,’ Michael called back without stopping.

  Then all was quiet again, apart from the river, which whispered to Gabriel. ‘Stick to your own kind,’ it sang. ‘He is too good for you.’

  *

  Mr Askew pushed open the metal gate in the low wall that surrounded his new home. He had left the gardening implements in the allotments, as he hoped to be back after lunch. He didn’t really need an allotment, of course – the garden at Oakstone was so large – but he preferred to keep the lawn, which stretched from the house to the garden wall, intact. It was the kind of lawn where gazebos were raised and ladies got their heels stuck after too many glasses of Chardonnay and where you couldn’t find your mini gherkin when it fell off the canapé. To Mr Askew, it served as a barrier and kept him apart from the community, perhaps even safe. It was fringed by a screen of ancient elms and oaks, which rustled gently in the summer and creaked hesitantly throughout the winter. He walked up the gravel drive and recognised that his old, beaten-up Skoda looked out of place. There were weeds in the gravel and the house itself looked curiously unlived in. The green door, so familiar by now, opened up on to the lovely hallway with its floor of diagonal limestone tiles inlaid with black marble diamonds. He sighed as he looked around at all the boxes still waiting to be unpacked. He lifted one, marked ‘my books’, and carried it into the drawing room. The drab winter sun filled the room with an acceptable light. He pulled out his penknife and cut the Sellotape around the box. There it was, the backlist of his academic career, thirty years of research, his only defence against the ‘publish or perish’ device. He smiled as he read their titles – how ridiculously pretentious and wide-eyed they all seemed now:

  We Who Are Not Like ‘the Other’

  Physical defects in England, 1250–1600

  Once We Were Stars – changing perceptions of malformation

  Display of Abnormality – malformation and the self

  The Bequeathing Beauties of Biddenden – charity in the twelfth century

  Duality – a social construct

  He opened the last book at the title page, where he saw his own name: an apparent achievement. He hesitated briefly before moving on a few pages; there, solitary in the middle of all that whiteness, was the dedication. He could see now that it looked wrong, exposed and exposing. He shut the book and dropped it back into the box, pushing it into a corner of the room where he might forget about it.

  He felt drained suddenly and settled into one of the armchairs by the cold fireplace. He might have nodded off for a moment and the room seemed bleak when he opened his eyes. No, my world is not dull, he thought to himself. It is alive with the thoughts I feed into it. In the shallows of my mind I paddle in the pools of memory. Will somebody come and find me here or have I been abandoned, left behind at the end of the day? Sometimes, he realised, he could not distinguish between the floating of his dreams and the wash of the wind across the moor.

  A bird was singing outside the French windows, perhaps an optimistic blue tit or a blackbird showing off. He thought about what to have for lunch. His appetite was no longer what it once was and food now bored him. Ah, well, he thought, I’ll have some soup from a tin. Retirement didn’t bother him – in fact, he relished it. All those years of commuting on the bus from his flat in Swiss Cottage through the congested capital had been hateful. The bodies of strangers, pressed against his, their morning breath on the close air. He had been a timid teacher and the various institutions, departments and centres that had hosted his subject over the years had realised that they would be better off keeping him on research grants. He had never been ambitious in the way his colleagues were. Nor did he feel that his time in academia had been wasted – his focus had always been on finding things out. And it was so much simpler to live in the intellect. His accomplishments, which were largely based on an early experience of what his colleagues called ‘fieldwork’, had been achieved over a long time. His reputation had initially only been acknowledged within the small group of academics who shared his interests and so he had somehow managed to hold on to his privileged position as a relatively vague, easily forgotten and anonymous figure on the periphery of academia. It was easy to convince others that he lived for his research, so that no one ever asked the question, ‘What else?’ His natural curiosity and urge to understand had resulted, almost accidently, in an international reputation.

  Mr Askew smiled grimly as he thought of his leaving party the previous year. It had been held in the senior common room at his latest hosting institution. A bewildered group of staff and a few postgraduate students, whom he may or may not have come into contact with, had turned up to slump against the wood panelling. A selection of drinks had been put out on a table, closely monitored by Mrs Bail, the secretary who was unusually good with figures. The furniture was the usual mix of standard-issue convenience and mock medieval. On entering the SCR, he had shuffled straight to the drinks table and asked for a glass of red wine.

  ‘Will that be Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay, Professor Askew?’ asked Mrs Bail, pulling at her cardigan to cover her large bosom.

  He looked down at the dismal array of bottles and Tesco juice cartons and sighed. ‘I’ll have the Cabernet Sauvignon, please.’ Lowering his voice, he suggested, helpfully, ‘The Chardonnay is white, my dear.’

  Mrs Bail looked up at him with steely eyes. ‘Is it, now,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t quite see why one has to make a fuss about it.’ She poured the wine. ‘The nibbles are over there.’ She pointed towards a table at the other end of the room where a couple of the postgrads had lost themselves over plastic salad bowls of salt and-vinegar crisps and Bombay mix.

  He thanked her and looked around for somebody to speak to. Professor Bradbury, the current head of department, was being talked at by Dr Chatterji, an eager visiting researcher specialising in transvestites. Bradbury, who was a head taller than Dr Chat-terji, was looking far into another world where people did not bother hi
m. He had a great vision for the department but no one quite knew what it was. His near-black hair was permanently tousled, as if his gebiet was adventure sports rather than the early history of leprosy.

  Dr Rochester, wearing ostentatious red corduroys and a green tweed jacket, was sharing a joke with one of the male research assistants, Mr Wilson, who wore a low-cut T-shirt, showing some of the hair on his chest. Rochester was the current star of the department. His professorship would not be far off, although he was still in his thirties. He had written a book on the inter-breeding of Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, which had been made into a TV documentary by Channel Four. Rochester himself had presented the documentary, striding tall along dried-out wadis in Jordan. He had worn a linen suit and a panama hat, which, at the time, struck Askew as pretentious, but which had earned him – Rochester, that is – quite a following amongst the postgraduates. Presently, he was leaning over the handsome Mr Wilson, whispering something very close to his ear.

  ‘Professor Askew?’ Askew recognised one of the postgraduates he had supervised on occasion. Was it Catherine – or Kate? He smiled at the young woman, who could helpfully be described as frumpy; he thought he recognised in her dress his own efforts at indistinctness.

  ‘I just wanted to say that I’m very sorry that you’re leaving.’ She said it quickly, but could not prevent the blushing spreading from her throat.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s … that’s very nice of you.’ He was taken aback. ‘Thank you, but I’m sure this will be a livelier place without my dead freaks.’ It was meant as a joke, but Catherine or Kate looked up, appalled.

  ‘How can you say that? Your research has changed my life,’ she said earnestly.

  Askew didn’t know what to say; she looked like a normal enough person. Was she mocking him? He frowned and she saw it.

  ‘Now, I’ll have to deal with him.’ She nodded towards Rochester.

  He followed her gaze. ‘Dr Rochester is a man of some standing now, you know –’ he did not know what else to say – ‘and of such positive colours,’ he managed.