by Tim Lebbon
“Huh,” Ray said. He stood motionless on the pavement, stream gurgling by on his right. Ducks paddled there, kicking their legs to remain motionless against the flow, and he knew what they felt like. He’d been kicking for a whole year. Maybe now it was time to go with the flow.
When he blinked, the eyes of a broken soldier stared at him. He frowned and blinked again, and a headless Transformer watched from behind his eyes. Moving on meant packing up. Toby’s room needed work, and until he’d finished there, he still carried the ghost of his dead son around with him.
And that was the last thing Elizabeth would wish to see.
It took him a while to choose. He thought he’d simply return home and snap up the first toy that came to hand, but he believed that he’d need one with a strong memory attached. The action figures looked too similar — all bulging muscles, camouflage gear, and gripping hands. There was a remote-controlled car with a broken axle, but he couldn’t recall Toby ever having played with it. He supposed he must have for the thing to be broken, but maybe he’d played with it on his own. Or maybe I was so busy I never noticed, he thought. He chewed on a Chelsea bun, sugar speckling the carpet around his feet as he scanned the room for something suitable.
In the end, he sat on the floor and played with the toys himself. A small plastic warplane did circuits of his head, firing down at the action figures which all slipped for cover beneath the bed. A troop of plastic animals — there’d been a farm building, he was sure, but he had no idea where it was now — stood in line beside his leg, like cattle on parade. A Spider-Man motorcycle that had used to spin and run on its own was propped against the bed leg, Spider-Man nowhere in sight. He hadn’t sat and actively played with these toys for ages, and rarely even when Toby was alive. He remembered seeing his son on the living room floor with a riot of colours and shapes splashed across the carpet around him. He’d combine farm animals with Spider-Man, action figures with fluffy toys, and inside his head was a whole world. That world was gone now, and Ray had never been privy to it.
“He died with secrets,” he said, and the idea shocked him to the core. He froze, plastic pig in one hand and a yellow metal car in the other, and thought about Toby as an actual person instead of simply his child. He’d been a boy who played and dreamed, loved and imagined, and he had been so utterly wonderful. Ray had always mourned the death of his son as opposed to mourning the death of an individual, as if he’d simply lost something that belonged to him.
The loss of that unique potential was so much worse.
Toby once said he wanted to be a zookeeper when he was older, and there was a broken safari jeep on its roof behind his bedroom door. One door had broken off, long gone, and three of the rubber tires were missing.
“That one,” Ray said, vision blurring as he picked up the cold jeep. There was a tiny plastic man behind the wheel, and Toby had said, One day that will be me, Daddy.
He didn’t even bother with his coat. It was only just past lunchtime, and he had several hours of daylight left. The way was still muddy and slippery. Rain had fallen most of the night, and in steeper places the path showed where water had been flowing like a stream. There were no fresh footprints in this muddy flow, and he felt strangely like an explorer climbing the path for the first time. Behind him lay what he knew — Skentipple, and pain. Ahead . . . who knew what he might find?
It did not seem like the right kind of day to meet that shady old man.
He carried the safari jeep. Slipping a few times, he let go of it once and it stuck in wet mud. It took him a few minutes to clean it off, using a handkerchief from his pocket and drops of water from a rose bush hanging over a garden wall. When it was clean again, he turned around to look down on the village. There had always been a timelessness to Skentipple that progress could do nothing to take away. A hundred years ago there would have been no cars or modern fishing boats, but the seagulls would have still mobbed the harbour when fishermen came in, and much of the village would have likely looked the same. Some buildings had been reconstructed over time, and added to, but planning restrictions meant that there was rarely anything new being built. It was a village frozen in time, and in such a place perhaps anything was possible.
Maybe he’s down there now, wandering the streets and looking for us, Ray thought. The idea of his son lost and frightened was awful, and he didn’t know where it had come from. He turned and walked on, climbing harder until he was panting, concentrating on every step to avoid slipping again.
The path levelled out and became muddier. He took each step gently, arms held out to either side for balance, and so he only saw the man when he almost walked into him.
“Bit nicer this afternoon,” the old man said.
Ray stared at him, unable to reply. He was dressed in old jeans and a thick woollen jumper, boots that reached to his knees, and a scarf wrapped casually around his neck. A flat cap sat perched on his head, more for affectation than warmth. Sparse hairs sprouted from beneath it, and in daylight he looked even older than he had in the dark.
“I . . .” Ray said. “I didn’t think I’d see you.”
“Still brought that, though,” the man said, nodding at the safari jeep.
Ray looked at the toy in his hand, then away again. He hid it down by his side, behind his leg, like an alcoholic caught with a bag-wrapped bottle.
“Thank you for returning the Ben 10 watch,” Ray said. His voice was firm, definite, offering no chance for the man to deny it.
“A pleasure,” he said. “Took me all night. Wasn’t just the missing spring and its broken mounting. Turns out . . .” He waved at the air, as if searching for a word. “Circuit board thing was fried, and the LED was smashed from where the boy sat on it that time.”
“What?” Ray asked. The boy? Sat on it? What did he mean?
“Oh,” the old man said through an embarrassed smile. “Maybe he didn’t tell you.”
Ray wanted to rant and rage. He wanted to shout at the old man, grasp handfuls of his woollen jumper and swing him against the low stone wall bounding the path, where he would scream and beat the truth out of him. But something about that smile gave Ray pause, and he thought perhaps it was he who would end up being held against the wall.
“Why did you fix it?”
“To help you keep your promise to your son.”
“How can you know I promised to mend it?”
The man’s eyes grew a little darker, as if living an uncomfortable memory. “Because every parent promises that when a child breaks a toy.”
It’s all hidden away, Ray thought. He’s talking, but saying nothing. “So . . . how old are you?” he asked instead. He wasn’t sure where the question had come from, but he found himself examining the man’s wrinkles and sparse hair, distracting himself from difficult questions.
“Older than I look,” the man said. His face fell a little, and he glanced over Ray’s shoulders at the village behind him.
“I’ll walk back down with you,” Ray said.
“No, no need. I wasn’t visiting the village just now. Just come down to meet you.”
“You brought the watch back to me last night?”
The man smiled, nodded, shrugged, a master of mixed messages. And if I give him the safari jeep? Ray thought. Do I really want to?
“What do you know of my son?” he asked instead.
“That you miss him,” the old man said, and true sadness sculpted his face into something different. He looked down at the village again. “That your life has been different since he went. That your sadness marks you, just as surely as happiness or illness or the knowledge of violence marks other people. I know that the best way to reach people is through their imagination, and the most solid home of imagination is a child’s toys. And what I do has helped.”
Ray scoffed, but he thought of how he’d felt this morning in Toby’s bedroom, and down in the village, and how he’d found himself walking toward Elizabeth. To see her? To offer a hand of peace? He wasn’t sure, bec
ause he’d turned around and come back home.
And what harm could it do? Really, what harm?
“I’m walking,” he said, nodding past the old man and along the cliff path. “Join me?”
“With pleasure,” the man said.
Ray started ahead, walking hard. The old man kept pace with him, and Ray thought, If I walk fast he’ll wear out, and when he’s weak and sitting by the path I can question him more. But as the damp path slipped and squelched beneath their boots, and Ray felt his body growing hot beneath the layers, the old man hardly seemed to break a sweat. He followed on behind, and now and then Ray heard small gasps that might have been laughs. He did not turn around to see. He knew where he was going, though not why, and he was determined to reach there soon.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Don’t have much use for one.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have one,” Ray said, covering his surprise.
The old man was silent for a while, the thump of their footsteps the only sound. Above them a seagull called. Out at sea a speedboat thumped from wave to wave.
“So?” Ray asked.
“Hold up,” the man said, and Ray smiled to himself. Tired him out, he thought. But when he turned around, he saw that was not the case at all. The old man stood staring at him, one foot propped on a raised stone in the path, hat cocked at a jaunty angle, and a look behind his smile that said, I know exactly what you were trying to do.
“Not far now,” the old man said. “Up past that rise, then the hut’s down close to the cliff’s edge.”
“Hut?”
“The place you think I might . . . use.”
He was right. Ray had that place in mind, the overgrown stone structure he’d seen nine months ago when he’d made his way down toward the cliffs and death. Something about it had worried at him last night, a dream he could not recall that left dregs of itself imprinted, suggestions for the day by a voice he could not hear. And he had thought maybe the old man lived there, a relatively smart tramp. He looked him up and down, and though the clothes weren’t new or even expensive, they were certainly clean. The old guy took notice of his appearance.
“So what is your name?”
“Well,” the man said, flicking the hat back on his head and scratching his scalp, “I’ll bet you’ve not had so much need for yours lately. Have you?”
No, Ray thought. Elizabeth not there, I’ve closed myself off, and today . . . Down at the bakery, Rachel, that was the first time he recalled someone using his name for days, perhaps weeks.
“So my name is as important to me now as . . . where I was born. The shoes I wore three years ago. The dream I had a year ago last Christmas.” The old man shrugged, and in that dismissive gesture Ray saw a level of complete control, and calm confidence.
The safari jeep had grown warm in his hand, absorbing heat through his skin, and something made him look down at it. The last time it had been this warm was when Toby was playing with it, and a rush of emotions shuddered through him. That’ll be me one day, Daddy, he’d said, squinting through the scratched plastic window at the featureless man cast behind the steering wheel.
“You know I can help it,” the man said. He held out his hand. “There’s no need for you to . . .” He nodded sideways, toward the cliff edge and the mounds of undergrowth there, hiding whatever it hid. “Not yet, at least. Maybe next time, when you’re more settled, and you need to see so you can take it on. Maybe then.”
“Take it on?”
The old man looked tired, at last, and something else. Unsettled. Even nervous. “The toy?”
For a moment, Ray thought of throwing the toy jeep toward the cliffs and then running back the way they’d come. But he was scared that he’d arrive home and find it on his doorstop, broken door fixed, three bare tires rounded with rubber once more. So he placed it gently in the old man’s hand and mourned the loss of warm metal against his skin.
“Hmm,” the old man said in satisfaction. He nodded to Ray, then looked past him along the path. Time for you to leave, that look said. Ray wanted to defy him, to stay here and watch while he did whatever it was he did up here. But that would defeat the object. He’d brought the jeep here for this reason, and now it was time to go.
“Whatever it is you do . . .” he said, and the nameless man raised an eyebrow, a faint smile on his lips. He’s laughing at me, Ray thought.
“What?” the man said.
“It works,” Ray said. And he turned and marched back along the path, heading for the village and the safe comfort of his house. With every step he took, something drew him back, a desire to understand, to witness. It wasn’t long before he stopped and turned around.
The man stood where he’d left him, in exactly the same position. He waved Ray on. Ray, feeling like a schoolchild, continued on his way, but stopped again after twenty paces. This time, the man was gone.
His hand suddenly very cold, as if it had never held that jeep at all, Ray ran back up the slippery path. He reached the place where he and the old man had stood and there was no sign that he had ever been there — no boot prints in the mud, no scent of old clothes on the air. He stood on tiptoes to look toward the cliff edge, trying to make out the mound of undergrowth that marked the location of the old stone building. There was something . . . an intimation of regularity, though he could not quite see the stone itself. He tried pushing through the undergrowth — gorse, bracken, ferns fading away to winter — but they snagged at his clothing and pricked his skin. There was no clear path through, and the old man could never have forced his way past this quickly.
Ray looked up the cliff path, and it was empty as far as he could see. He supposed the old man might have run and reached the place where it turned out of sight. He might have. But he’d have had to run very quickly.
He pushed some more, stretching, tugging branches and clumps of gorse aside and pricking his fingers in the process. A dozen blood droplets formed on his hands, smearing as he tried to haul himself close to the cliff’s edge. But he was held back, and eventually he retreated to the path. He was panting from exertion, heart racing from something more.
“Damn it,” Ray said, looking around for the man, seeing the place where that old stone hut just might be. Then he turned and walked slowly back down to the village.
Later, as he sat waiting on his doorstep, he watched the old woman climbing up from the village. She smiled wearily, made no comment about his nakedness that morning, mentioned only the weather and the cold. And he watched her go, wondering what dreams would come.
4
After an unsettled evening trying to read, trying to watch TV, trying to concentrate on anything, but finding his attention drawn again and again out into the falling darkness, Ray went at last to bed.
When he woke up the next day he stretched, unwilling to relinquish the comforting warmth beneath the duvet for the chill bedroom air. He’d woken with an erection and a dissolving dream involving Rachel from the bakery, and he smiled at the brightening room, sighing contentedly. He supposed he’d always had a crush on her, like an excitable teen instead of the forty-something he was. He had no memory of the dream, just a feeling, and it shrank away in the promise of a new day.
At last he stood up from his bed, shrugging on a dressing gown and padding to the toilet. After urinating he walked back to his room, enjoying the feel of the landing floorboards on his bare feet. Wood was never cold, just cool, whatever the temperature outside. He had always liked being this close to things. Carpets were fine, but walking on them barefoot he always felt as though he were separated from the body of the house. The wood was its skeleton, carpet merely clothing.
Dressing, Ray frowned at a memory hovering just beyond his perception. He paused with one leg in, one leg out of his jeans. What was that? Something forced itself toward him, a memory he should clasp, and he blinked in surprise at the suddenness of the vision that struck him: Rachel from the bakery slipping off her blouse with flour-co
vered hands, her smile promising more. That’s not it, he thought, frowning the dream-memory away. There’s something else, it wasn’t that, it was never that.
It was halfway down the stairs, as he saw the yellow toy safari jeep sitting on the fourth step up from the bottom, that he remembered he’d once had a son.
And Toby was like a dream fading in instead of out. There was a boy without a face or voice, and he had gone somewhere. Then his face emerged in Ray’s memory, freckled in the summer, blond hair made lighter by the sun, and he shouted in glee as he tipped bucket after bucket of water onto the flower bed, mud pies much more interesting to him than daffodil bulbs.
“Toby,” Ray breathed as he sat down on the stairs. He bent forward slowly and picked up the jeep, wondering how the hell he could have woken up and not remembered his dead son. Every morning since Toby had died, Ray had surfaced with the boy’s laughter or tears on his mind, and the knowledge of his death pressing him down like the greatest weight. Some mornings he had risen from sleep that had itself been infected with that dreadful knowledge, and sometimes — the meanest of times — he had dreamed that Toby was alive and well and laughing, and the waking had been unbearable.
But this morning he had come awake like a contented man.
“Tobes,” he said, “I do love you so much.” He cried, but they were not bitter tears, nor even tears driven by anger at himself. They stopped quickly and he went to the kitchen, nursing the mended toy as the kettle boiled. A new door had been fixed on, and the three new tires exactly matched the one remaining — shapes, make, treads. He turned the jeep this way and that, trying to see any mark or clue the old man might have left as to how he’d done it. But there was nothing.