BRYANBARROW
CUMBRIA
Tim decided to go to school without protest because Kaveh was going to have to drive him. It was the only way he was going to get Kaveh alone. And alone was where he wanted the bloke because there was no way the two of them were going to have the little talk they needed to have if Gracie was there. Gracie was already upset enough. She didn’t need to hear that Kaveh had future plans with a wife, with parents, and with Bryan Beck farm that involved the elimination of irritating impediments with the surname Cresswell.
So he surprised Kaveh by getting out of bed on time and getting himself organised to go to Margaret Fox School for Terminal Nutcases such as himself. He helped Gracie get ready by setting out all her breakfast choices and making her a tuna and sweet corn sandwich, which he packed into a lunch bag along with an apple, a packet of crisps, and a banana. She thanked him with a dignity that told him she was still grieving for Bella, so one of the things he did instead of eating his own breakfast was to go to the garden and dig the doll’s coffin out of the soil so that he could stuff her into his rucksack and ultimately get her repaired in Windermere. He replaced the coffin and the soil and made it look the way Gracie had left it after Bella’s funeral. Then he returned to the house in time to bolt down a piece of Marmite toast before they had to leave.
He didn’t say anything to Kaveh while Gracie was in the car. Instead, he waited till they’d dropped her off at her C of E school in Crosthwaite and were well on their way up the Lyth Valley. At that point, he leaned against the passenger door and studied the bloke. What came into his head was the mental picture of Kaveh taking it from his father and both of them sweating so that the dim light in the room shone slick on their skin. Only it wasn’t a mental picture at all but really a memory because he’d seen it all through a sliver of open doorway and he’d been a witness to that moment of ecstasy and collapse, with his dad calling out hoarsely oh God, yes. The whole sight had been sickening to Tim, filling him with loathing and hate and horror. But it had touched something else as well, had stirred in him something unexpected, and the truth of the matter was that just for a moment the blood in him had rushed and heated. So afterwards, he’d used a pocket knife to cut himself and he’d poured vinegar on the wound to cleanse his hot and sinful blood.
But he could see how it had all come about and in the car he noted that Kaveh was young and handsome. A bent man like his dad would have fallen hard for that. Even, as things were apparently turning out, if Kaveh wasn’t so bent himself.
Kaveh glanced at Tim as they headed towards Winster. Loathing, after all, was something one could feel in the air. Kaveh said rather uneasily, “It’s good you’re going to school this morning, Tim. Your dad would be pleased.”
“My dad,” Tim said, “is dead.”
Kaveh said nothing. He shot another look at Tim, but the road was narrow and curved and he couldn’t afford more than just that look, which Tim knew was an attempt to assess how he was feeling and what he was likely to do.
“Which makes things real good for you,” Tim added.
“What?” Kaveh said.
“Dad being dead. That makes things exceptionally good.”
Kaveh surprised him then. They were coming up to a lay-by, and he pulled into it and crushed the brake with his foot. The morning traffic was heavy. Someone honked and gave Kaveh two fingers, but he either didn’t notice or he didn’t care.
“What,” Kaveh asked him, “are you talking about?”
“Dad, dead, and good for you, you mean?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I mean. What are you talking about?”
Tim looked out of the window. There was little enough to see. Next to the car was a drystone wall, and the wall grew ferns like the plumes on ladies’ hats. There were probably sheep somewhere behind that wall, but he couldn’t see them. He could only see the rise of one of the fells in the distance and a wispy crown of cloud encircling its summit.
“I asked you a question,” Kaveh said. “Answer it please.”
“I don’t have to answer questions,” Tim said. “Not from you and not from anyone.”
“You do when you make an accusation,” Kaveh told him. “And that’s what you’ve done. You can try to pretend you haven’t, but that’s not going to work. So why don’t you tell me what you mean.”
“Why don’t you keep driving?”
“Because, like you, I don’t have to.”
Tim had desired this confrontation, but now he wasn’t sure he really did want it after all. There he was in an enclosed car with the man for whom his father had destroyed their entire family and wasn’t there a sense of menace here? Wasn’t the case that if Kaveh Mehran had been capable of walking into Tim’s birthday party and laying down the bald facts like a hand of cards, he was capable of pretty much anything?
No. Tim told himself he would not be afraid because if anyone was going to be afraid, it was Kaveh Mehran. Liar, cheat, rotter, and everything else.
He said, “So when’s the wedding, Kaveh? And what’re you planning to tell the bride? ’S she going to be brought into the picture of what you’ve been up to in this part of the world? Or is that why you’re getting rid of me and Gracie? I don’t s’pose we’ll be invited to the wedding. Guess that’d be a bit much. Gracie’d like to be a bridesmaid, though.”
Kaveh said nothing. Tim had to credit him for thinking a bit instead of blurting out something like his plans being none of Tim’s business. He was probably madly going through responses since the one thing he didn’t know was how Tim had managed to winkle out the truth.
Tim added, “Did you give Mum the news? Let me tell you, that’s not exactly going to make her day.”
What surprised Tim was what he was feeling as he spoke. He didn’t know what to call it. It was filling him up inside and making him want to do something to make it go away, but he couldn’t name what the feeling was, and he didn’t want to. He hated it when he felt something as a result of what other people did. He hated that he reacted to things. He wanted to be like a sheet of glass with everything rolling off him like rain and the fact that he wasn’t, that he hadn’t managed it yet, that there was no indication that he’d ever manage it …This knowledge was just as bad as feeling something in the first place. It spoke of a kind of condemnation: an eternal hell of being at the mercy of everyone else and no one being at the mercy of him.
“You and Gracie belong with your mother,” Kaveh said, choosing what was the easiest route for their conversation. “I’ve been happy to have you with me. I’d continue to be happy to have you with me, but— ”
“But the wife might not be so happy about that,” Tim sneered. “And with the parents as well, I guess the place would start getting a little crowded, wouldn’t it? Man, this worked out perfect for you, didn’t it? Like you even had it planned.”
Kaveh went perfectly still. Only his lips moved. They formed words and the words were, “What exactly are you talking about?”
There was something behind those words that was unexpected, that sounded like anger but more than anger. Tim thought in that instant that danger was anger with a d in front of it and maybe that’s where danger came from, born out of anger and what people did when anger came upon them, people like Kaveh. But he didn’t care. Let the bloke do anything and what difference did it make? He’d already done his worst.