Читать книгу The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer, Nathan Filer - Страница 16

The night before my dead brother should have turned thirteen years old I was woken by the sound of him playing in his bedroom.

I was getting better at picturing him in my mind. So I kept my eyes closed and watched as he reached beneath his bed and pulled out the painted cardboard box.

These were his keepsakes, but if you’re like Simon, and the whole world is a place of wonder, everything is a keepsake. There were countless small plastic toys from Christmas crackers and McDonald’s Happy Meals. There were stickers from the dentist saying, I was brave, and stickers from the speech therapist saying, Well Done, or You are a Star! There were postcards from Granddad and Nanny Noo – if his name was on it, it was going in his box. There were swimming badges, certificates, a fossil from Chesil Beach, good pebbles, paintings, pictures, birthday cards, a broken watch – so much crap he could hardly close the lid.

Simon kept every single day of his life.

It was strange to think of it all still there. In some ways it was strange even to think of his room being there. I remember when we first got home from Ocean Cove, the three of us stood in the driveway, listening to the little clicking sounds as the car’s engine cooled. We stared at the house. His room had stayed put, the first-floor window, with his yellow Pokémon curtains. It hadn’t the courtesy to up and leave. It stayed right where we’d left it, at the top of the stairs, the room next to mine.

Hugging a pillow to my chest and keeping my eyes shut tight, I could see him searching through his memories to find the most important one – a scrap of yellow cotton. It was this he was first wrapped in as a tiny bundle of joy and fear, and it became his comfort blanket. At seven, eight, nine years of age – he always had it with him, forever carrying it around. Until the day I told him that he looked like a baby. I told him he looked like a little baby with his little baby blanket, that if he wasn’t so thick all the time he’d understand. It disappeared after that, everyone proudly accepting he’d outgrown it.

I lay listening to him, sleep drifting back over me as he climbed into his bed. Then breaking through, not enough to wake me, but at the very edge of my awareness, another sound – Mum was singing him a lullaby.

Spring sunshine painted pillars of white across my carpet.

It was Saturday, which meant breakfast around the table. I put on my dressing gown, but didn’t go downstairs straight away. I wanted to check something first.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been in his room.

Dad hadn’t wanted me to feel afraid or weird about anything, so after I got back from staying with Nanny Noo, we went in together. We shuffled around awkwardly and Dad said something about how he knew Simon wouldn’t mind if I played with his toys.

People always think they know what dead people would and wouldn’t mind, and it’s always the same as what they would and wouldn’t mind – like this time at school when a really naughty boy, Ashley Stone, died of Meningitis. We had this special assembly for him which even his mum attended, where Mr Rogers talked about how spirited and playful Ashley was, and how we’d always remember him with love. Then he said he was certain Ashley would want us to try and be brave, and to work hard. But I don’t think Ashley would have wanted that at all, and maybe that’s because I didn’t want it. So you see what I mean? But I suppose Dad was right. Simon wouldn’t mind if I played with his toys because he never minded. I didn’t play with them though, and the reason is the obvious one. I felt too guilty. Some things in life are exactly as we imagine.

His model aeroplanes swung gently on their strings, and the radiator creaked and groaned. I stood beside his bed lifting the comfort blanket from his pillow. ‘Hey Si,’ I whispered. ‘Happy birthday.’ Then I placed the blanket back in his keepsake box, and closed the lid.

I guess children believe whatever they want to believe.

Perhaps adults do too.

In the kitchen Dad was making a start on breakfast, prodding bacon around a sizzling pan. ‘Morning, mon ami.’

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘Bacon sandwich?’

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘She didn’t sleep well, sunshine. Bacon sandwich?’

‘I want marmalade, I think.’ I opened the cupboard, pulled out a jar and struggled with the lid before handing it to Dad.

‘You must have loosened it for me, eh?’

He lifted a rasher, considered it, and dropped it back in the pan. ‘Are you sure you don’t want bacon? I’m having bacon.’

‘We go to the doctor’s a lot, Dad.’

‘Ouch. Shit!’

He glared at the reddened flesh on his knuckle, as though expecting it to say sorry.

‘Did you burn yourself, Daddy?’

‘It’s not so bad.’ Stepping to the sink, he turned on the cold tap and made a comment about how untidy the garden looked. I scooped out four large spoonfuls of marmalade, emptying it. ‘Can I keep this?’

‘The jar? What for?’

‘Will you keep your voices down?’ The door swung open hard, banging against the table. ‘I need some bloody sleep. Please let me sleep today.’

She didn’t say it in an angry way, more like pleading. She closed the door again, slowly this time, and as I listened to her footsteps climbing the stairs, I felt a horrible emptiness in my tummy – the kind that breakfast can’t fill.

‘It’s okay sunshine,’ Dad said, forcing a smile, ‘You didn’t do anything. Today’s a bit difficult. How about you finish up your breakfast and I’ll go talk to her, eh?’

He said that like it was a question, but it wasn’t. What he meant was that I had no choice but to stay put, whilst he followed her upstairs. But I didn’t want to sit by myself at the table again, or listen to another muffled argument throbbing through the walls. Besides, I had something to do. I picked up the marmalade jar and stepped out of the back door into our garden.

These are the memories that crawl under my skin. Simon had wanted an Ant Farm, and dead people still have birthdays.

Crouching beside the tool shed with mud between my toes, I lifted large flat stones like Granddad had taught me. But it was too early in the year, so even under the bigger slabs I could only find earthworms and beetles. I looked deeper, digging a hole with my fingers – as the first drops of rain hit my dressing gown, I was somewhere else: It’s dark, night-time, the air tastes of salt, and Simon is beside me, wiping rain from his cheeks and bleating that he doesn’t like it any more, that he doesn’t like it and wants to go back. I keep digging, telling him to stop being a baby, to hold the torch still, and he holds it with trembling hands, until her button eyes glisten in the beam.

‘Matthew, sweetheart!’ Mum was standing at her bedroom window calling out, ‘It’s pouring down!’

As I opened the back door, the front door slammed shut.

I ran upstairs.

‘Sweetheart, what are we going to do with you?’ She took my wet dressing gown, wrapping me in a towel.

‘Where did Dad go?’

‘He’s gone for a walk.’

‘It’s raining.’

‘I doubt he’ll be long.’

‘I wanted us all to have breakfast together.’

‘I’m so tired, Matthew.’

We sat beside each other on the bed, watching the rain against the window.