They accumulate on the asphalt paths of Battersea Park.
They accumulate at Ayot St. Peter too, on the paths and lawns and on the tennis court. Mr. Szymanski uses the blower to clear them from the court.
István hears the sound of that as he shaves on Tuesday morning.
Even though the lockdown is over, he doesn’t have much work to do these days. He hardly ever visits the office in Battersea. He’s sort of lost interest in all of that. Since the failure of the Rainham project, and with everything locked down for much of the year, there isn’t a lot happening anyway. So that autumn he spends part of the time in London and part of it at Ayot St. Peter. Helen stays mostly in London during the week while Jacob is at school. One morning, on a day when István happens to be there, they’re having breakfast in the kitchen when the nanny appears and tells them that Jacob says he isn’t feeling well.
“What’s the matter?” Helen asks her.
“He says he’s not feeling well.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” the nanny says.
She obviously wants Helen to deal with the situation herself, and understanding that, Helen stands up and the two women leave.
István makes himself another coffee at the Marzocco machine.
Then he sits and looks at things on his phone until Helen reappears ten minutes later.
“Is he okay?” he asks her.
“He’ll stay at home today,” she says.
“Yeah?”
She nods.
“Why? Does he have a fever?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So what’s the problem?” he asks.
“He’s just not feeling a hundred percent,” Helen says.
“He’s not feeling a hundred percent?”
“No.”
“What does that mean?”
She doesn’t answer.
She’s on her phone now, talking to Samuel the driver. “Hello Sam?” she says. “Jacob’s staying home today.”
She’s still talking to him when István walks up to the fourth floor.
Jacob isn’t asleep or anything.
He’s sitting up in bed with a book. Some illustrated history of seafaring or something. He’s always looking at that book these days.
“Hey,” István says.
Perhaps with an effort to make his voice sound weak Jacob says, “Hi.”
“You not feeling okay?” István asks him.
Jacob just shakes his head.
“What’s up?”
Jacob shrugs.
“You feel sick or what?”
“No, I don’t feel sick.”
István places a hand on his son’s forehead. It feels maybe slightly warm, though not dramatically so.
“So what is it?” he asks.
“I just don’t feel okay,” Jacob says.
“You feel okay enough to read,” István points out.
Jacob lets the book fall out of his hands. “Not really.”
“No?”
He shakes his head.
“If you don’t feel well then you should sleep,” István tells him.
“Okay.”
After kissing him on the forehead, István turns off the light and leaves.
“He seems okay,” he says to Helen.
She’s in the bath.
He’s perched on the edge of the freestanding tub.
They’re in a phase of sleeping separately and he hasn’t seen her naked like this for a month or two.
He tapped on the door and asked if he could come in and she said yes. “I think he should go to school,” he says.
“He doesn’t want to,” Helen says.
“I know he doesn’t want to.”
“I told him he could stay at home today.”
“Why?”
She sighs.
“What is it?” he asks, suddenly aware that there is some particular thing.
She says, “There’s this kid at the school.”
“Yes.”
“He’s not very nice to Jacob.”
“What do you mean ‘not very nice’?”
“I don’t know exactly what happens,” she says. “Jacob’s frightened of him.”
“He’s frightened of him?”
“Yes.”
“Who is this kid?”
“His name’s Toby.”
“Do the teachers know about this?”
“I’ve spoken to Jacob’s form teacher.”
“And?”
“And she offered to talk to Toby about it.”
“Well?” István says.
“I said maybe she shouldn’t do that just yet.”
“Why?”
“I would prefer it if Jacob was able to sort this out on his own, without the teacher having to intervene.”
István stands up and turns to the window.
“I’m just not sure it will help in the long term to have the teacher talk to Toby,” Helen says.
“Who the fuck is this Toby?” István asks, still looking out the window.
“Just some kid.”
“Do you know him?”
“I know him by sight,” Helen says.
“What does he look like?”
“I don’t know. He looks normal.”
“Do you know his parents.”
“I see his mother sometimes.”
“What’s she like?”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make?”
István doesn’t say anything for a while.
He’s aware that there’s nothing he can actually do.
It’s true what Helen says—in a situation like this only Jacob himself can take any action without making things worse.
The trouble is that the action Jacob has taken is to pretend to be ill so that he can stay at home.
Helen says, “If it doesn’t improve I’ll talk to the teacher about it again and get her to talk to Toby or to his parents.”
István is still standing at the window, looking out.
“Okay,” he says.
The next day he takes Jacob to school himself. They walk across the bridge and through the streets on the other side, Jacob wearing his Star Wars backpack while István carries the second bag, the one with his sports kit in it.
The school is red brick, and vaguely mock-Gothic. A neatly clipped hedge separates it from the street.
At the entrance István says, “Okay, have a good day.” He makes an effort to sound normal and upbeat. As they stand on the sidewalk in front of the entrance, though, he’s unable to help looking at Jacob worriedly as he tries to get a sense of what he’s feeling, and Jacob probably picks up on that. His face seems unusually neutral, as if he doesn’t want to give anything away.
István leans down and kisses his hair.
“See you,” he says.
Jacob puts a hand on his father’s arm for a moment and then walks in.
“Hey!” István shouts. “Your sports stuff.”
With his face twisted into a sort of smile now, Jacob hurries back for the cloth drawstring with his sports kit in it—his sneakers and shorts and the T-shirt with the school’s logo on it, the same one that’s on his jacket front.
István holds it out for him. “There.”
“Thanks.”
“Have a good day,” István says again, as if just saying it might make it more likely to happen, and then watches Jacob through the pointed arch of the entrance until he’s out of sight.
He turns and walks away.
He walks through quiet streets toward the river.
The idea that his son is afraid of something, that he’s suffering in some way, and that there’s not much he can do about it is very hard for him to deal with.
It’s just very painful to think about.
He wondered, yesterday, whether to speak to him about the situation.
He decided not to.
It wasn’t just that Helen had said that Jacob didn’t want him to know about it.
He thought as well that talking about it might just make it seem more significant.
Maybe, he thinks, it’s not actually that significant.
He wants to think that it’s not that significant.
He hopes, anyway, that the situation will just go away.
At half term, Helen takes Jacob to Venice. She says she wants to show it to him.
“Isn’t he too young for that?” István asks her.
“Too young?”
“I mean to enjoy something like that.”
“I don’t think so,” she says. And then, “Something like what?”