It feels like a sort of freedom, a sort of escape.
It doesn’t last long.
Approaching the end of the straight section he has to slow down dramatically to turn.
“Okay?” he shouts over his shoulder.
He feels Jacob nod.
He’s still holding tight to him.
István enjoys the tightness of his arms around him, the feeling that they’re experiencing these moments of wordless purity together.
There’s another straight section toward the lake and they accumulate speed again.
“Hold on!” he shouts.
The engine howls.
At first they’re under trees.
In a sort of green tunnel.
And then suddenly the sky is above them, and the lake is there on their left.
And then it isn’t.
They’re under trees again, speeding on in the cool green light until they arrive at the place where the surface of the track deteriorates and he has to slow down. There are some potholes here and he picks his way among them. The holes are full of water the same whitish color as the path and are sometimes difficult to spot. When he misses one there’s a splashing sound and the quad lurches and tilts.
And then he sees a fallen branch across their path and has to stop. He’s not surprised to see it. There was a storm overnight. Lying in bed, he heard the rain against the window and what seemed to be thunder, although he wasn’t sure about that at first.
He puts the quad into neutral and dismounts.
Walking feels strange and slow for a second or two. It feels strangely slow. It feels like those dreams where you move too slowly to prevent some looming disaster.
He stoops and takes hold of the wet black branch. It fell from a chestnut tree and still has a couple of immature flowers on it. They look much tougher, much more sinewy and businesslike, up close than they do high on the tree. He discards the branch into the weeds at the side of the path and walks back to the vibrating machine.
In helmet and eye shield, a whole plastic suit of armor, Jacob watches him. “Okay?” he asks.
István nods, wiping some slimy dirt from his hands.
He remounts and they pick up speed again until they arrive at the farmer’s field, where they turn left onto a muddy track marked with the imprints of tractor tires. As they move slowly along it, Jacob loosens his hold on his father’s torso and looks across the field. The approaching sound of the quad startles a flock of starlings out of the young wheat. They move, in unison, into the trees.
Jacob is pointing at them.
István, half aware of them in his peripheral vision, nods.
He doesn’t hear what Jacob is saying about them.
“Yeah,” he says as they turn onto the path that will take them back toward the house, accelerating through sparse woods and then parkland and then the more formal gardens.
When the house comes into view, he eases off the throttle.
He stops at the foot of the south front steps and kills the engine.
Sudden quiet.
And in the quiet the sad sound of a plane, somewhere above the clouds, descending toward Luton Airport. You don’t hear that much nowadays, which makes it more noticeable when it does happen.
He looks up.
There’s nothing to see.
Just bright clouds, and the sound of the plane somewhere inside them.
“Want to have a go?” he asks Jacob.
He means at driving the quad. It’s something he’s offered before. To his disappointment, Jacob has always sort of shied away from it.
“Have a go,” István says. “Don’t you want to?”
“All right,” Jacob says, though without much enthusiasm.
“Come on,” István says. “It’s fun.”
They switch positions so that Jacob is in front holding the handlebars and István is sitting behind him.
He explains how it works. It’s the 300 cc automatic Polaris, the smaller one. There’s also a more powerful manual Yamaha that István sometimes uses on his own—Helen won’t let him take Jacob on that one. She says it’s too dangerous.
Following his father’s instructions Jacob turns the key and then presses the start button.
“Okay,” István says. “Now pull the clutch handle.”
“Which one is that?”
“I showed you.”
“This one?”
“Yes.”
Jacob’s left hand tentatively squeezes it.
“Harder,” István says. “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen.”
Jacob squeezes it harder and the sound of the engine subtly alters.
“That’s it,” István says. “Now we need to put it into Low.”
“Okay.”
István indicates the gear shifter. It has five positions—Park, Reverse, Neutral, Low, and High.
Jacob takes hold of it and pulls it into the Low position.
“Okay,” István says. “Now release the clutch.”
When Jacob does that the quad immediately starts to move forward and István feels his son tense up.
“It’s okay,” he says, with a kind laugh.
“Okay.”
“You’re doing fine,” István tells him.
“Okay,” Jacob says again.
For a while they move along at little more than walking pace.
Then István says, “Give it some throttle. Just a bit.”
Jacob twists the throttle.
For a moment the engine snarls and the quad jerks forward. Then it slows again.
“That’s it. Bit more,” István says.
Jacob tries the throttle again, and more firmly this time, so that the quad sustains a slight increase in speed.
“That’s good,” István says, raising his voice above the louder engine noise. “Keep it straight.”
They’re still only doing about ten miles an hour.
“You remember what I told you about braking?” István asks.
“Yes,” Jacob says.
“What did I tell you?”
“Always start with the back wheels?”
“That’s right. Okay,” István says. “Try it now.”
It suddenly feels as if the quad is pulling a heavy trailer.
“Now add the front wheels,” István says.
Jacob is slightly too sharp with the front wheels and they both pitch forward on the seat as the bike stops.
“Okay,” István says. “That was fine.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Sure. You did fine.”
Jacob seems to have had enough though, and when István encourages him to have another go the next day he says he doesn’t want to.
István tells Helen about it.
She says, “If he’s not into it, he’s not into it.”
“Why isn’t he into it?”
“I don’t know. He just isn’t.”
“He should be.”
She laughs. “Why?” she says.
She seems depressed.
Always a more sociable person than him, she’s feeling the solitude and isolation of lockdown more than he is, he thinks.
She spends a lot of time “meeting” friends via Skype or Zoom or whatever. Sometimes they even do “parties”—each of them physically alone with their own personal bottle of wine, and the others on their laptop screens.
He doesn’t do anything like that himself.
Every few days he and Jacob video-call his mother through Messenger. She was in Budapest when the lockdown started and now she’s stuck there.
“How are you?” she asks Jacob.
“I’m okay,” he says.
“What have you been doing?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he says vaguely.
“You must know,” she says.
He sighs and says, “Just hanging out.”
“What did you do today?” she asks.
“Today?”
“Yes.”
He has to think about it.
As usual he leaves before the end of the call and István and his mother finish up on their own.
“How are you?” she asks him.
“Yeah, okay,” he says.
“Helen?”
“She’s okay.”
They talk about Jacob.
“Is he okay?” István’s mother asks.
“Yes,” István says.
“He isn’t lonely?”
“I hope not.”
September.
The school time.
Summer’s end.
The leaves start to fall. First from the chestnuts and then from the planes.