Saul felt awash with the same hopeless love he had felt when he had shown Fabian the book his father had bought him. He was going about it all wrong, the old man, but all he wanted to do was understand. Maybe there was no right way to do it. I was wrong too, he thought.
Back, back, he moved through the years. Deborah cuddled into him for warmth.
He read about the time his father had had an argument with one of his history teachers over the best way to present Cromwell.
No, fair enough, maybe can’t be talking about Bourgeoisie to group of ten-year-olds but shouldn’t be glossing over him! Terrible man, yes (Ireland, and etc. etc.) but must make clear nature of Revolution!
He read a reference to one of his father’s girlfriends — ‘M.’ He could not remember her at all. He knew his father had kept such affairs out of the house. He did not think his father had had any romantic involvement at all in the last six or seven years of his life.
He read about his own fifth birthday party. He remembered it: he had been given two Indian head-dresses, and in retrospect a thrill of worry had passed around the adults, concerned at his reaction, but he had been elated. To have not one but two of the beautiful feathered things… He remembered the joy. Saul was seeking the first reference to himself, maybe a mention of his dead mother, who had been carefully excised from his father’s ruminations. A date caught his eye: 8/2/72, the only entry from the year of his birth, the birth itself apparently not recorded. There was no cutting attached to the entry. Saul’s brow furrowed as he read the first few words.
We are a few weeks on now from the attack, which I don’t really want to talk about. E. is very strong, Thank God. Many fears, of course, alleys and etc. etc., but overall she is getting better daily. Kept asking her was she sure, I thought we should go to the Police. Don’t you want him caught? I asked her and she said No I just don’t want to see him again. Can’t help thinking this is a mistake but it must be her decision of course. Am trying to be what she needs but God Knows it is hard. Worst at night, of course. Don’t know whether better to comfort/cuddle or not touch and she doesn’t seem to know either. Definitely the worst times, tears etc. Am beating about the bush. Fact is, E. had test and is pregnant. Can’t be sure of course but have looked at timing carefully and looks very likely that it is his. Discussed abortion but E. can’t face it. So after long hard talks have decided to go ahead. No record, so no one need know. Hope everything turns out alright. I’ll admit, I’m afraid for child. Haven’t yet worked out my own reaction. Must be strong for E.’s sake.
Saul’s chest had gone quite hollow.
Somewhere Deborah was saying something to him.
Oh, he felt stupid.
He saw what he had lost.
Stupid, stupid boy, he thought, and at the same time he was thinking: You needn’t have worried, Dad. You were strong as fuck.
Tears came cold to his eyes and he heard Deborah again.
Look at what you lost, he thought. She died! he thought suddenly. She died, and still he did right by me. How could he? I killed her, I killed his wife! Every time he looked at me, wasn’t he looking at the rape? Wasn’t he looking at the thing that killed his wife?
Stupid boy, he thought. Uncle Rat? When were you going to think that one through? he thought.
But more than anything he could not stop wondering at the man who had raised him, had tried to understand him, and had given him books to help him understand the world. Because when he had looked at Saul, somehow he did not see murder, or his lost wife, or the brutality in the alley (and Saul knew just how that attacker had appeared, as if from nowhere, out of the bricks, as he himself moved). Somehow, when he looked at Saul he looked at his son, and even when the air between them had poisoned and Saul had exercised all his studied teenage insouciance not to care, the fat man had still looked at him and seen his son, and had tried to understand what was wrong between them. He had had no truck with the awful, bloody vulgarity of genes. He had built fatherhood with his actions.
Saul did not sob, but his cheeks were wet. Wasn’t it odd and sad, he thought a little hysterically, that it was only on learning that his father was not his father, that he realized how completely his father he had been?
There’s a dialectic for you, Dad, he thought, and grinned fleetingly.
It was only in losing him that he regained him, finally, after so many dry years.
He remembered being carried on those broad shoulders to see his mother’s stone. He had killed her, he had killed his father’s wife, and his father had set him down gently and given him flowers to put on her grave. He wept for his father, who had been given his wife’s murderer, the child of her rapist, and who had decided to love him dearly, and had set out to do it, and had succeeded.
And somewhere he kept telling himself how stupid a boy he was. A new thought was occurring to him. If King Rat lied about this, he reflected, and the thought trailed off like a sequence of dots…
If he lied about this, the thought said, what else did he lie about?
Who killed Dad?
He remembered something King Rat had said, a long time ago, at the end of Saul’s first life. ‘I’m the intruder,’ he had said. ‘I killed the usurper.’
In the succession of words the sense had been drowned, had been another surreal boast, a crowing, bullish aggrandizement without meaning. But Saul could see differently now. A cold stone of fury settled in his gut and he realized how much he hated King Rat.
His father, King Rat.
Chapter Nineteen
The door to the flat opened.
Saul and Deborah had been huddled together on the floor, she murmuring nervous words of support. They looked up at the same moment, at the gentle creak of hinges.
Saul scrambled silently to his feet. He was still clutching the book. Deborah rocked herself, tried to rise. A face peered around the rim of the door.
Deborah clung to Saul and gave a tiny whimper of fear. Saul was primed like an explosive, but as his eyes made light of the darkness his tension ebbed a little, and he stood confused.
The face in the doorway was beaming delightedly, long blond hair falling in untidy clumps around a mouth stretched wide in childish joy. The man stepped forward into the room. He looked like a buffoon.
‘The thought I heard someone, I thought so!’ he exclaimed. Saul straightened a little more, his brow furrowed. ‘I’ve been waiting here night after night, saying no, go home, it’s ridiculous, he won’t come here, of all places, and now here you are!’ He glanced at the book in Saul’s hand. ‘You found my reading material, then. I wanted to know all about you. I thought that might tell me a bit.’
He looked a little closer at Saul’s red eyes and his own face widened.
‘You didn’t know, did you?’ His smile of pleasure was broader than ever. ‘Well. That does explain a few things. I thought you were rather quick to join your so-called father’s murderer.’ Saul’s eyes flickered. Of course, he thought, giddy with grief, of course. The man was eyeing him. ‘I thought blood must have been thicker than water but, of course, why on Earth should he have told you?’ He rocked back on his heels, stuck his hands in his pockets.
‘I’ve needed to talk to you for a long time. The rumours have been flying about you, you know! You’ve been famous for years! So many places, so many leads, so many possibilities… I’ve been all over, chasing impossible crime… You know, any time I heard about some weird break-in, some murder, something that doesn’t fit the bill, something people couldn’t have done, I’d run to investigate. The police can be very helpful with information.’ He grinned. ‘So many dead ends! And then I came here…’ The man grinned again. ‘I could just smell him, and I knew I’d found you, Saul.’