"Safe!" Ellis called out.
Gerd opened the door tentatively. "Definitely gone?"
"Promise," Ellis a.s.sured him.
"OK, thanks," Gerd said, and joined Ellis on the doorstep.
Ellis drew in a lungful of air, then let it go with a sigh. He wandered out on to the moonlit forecourt, leant backwards and gazed up at the stars. Gerd wondered if aliens might beam his a.s.sistant away. The night had that sort of feel to it.
"The old man told me that they don"t have autumn out here," Gerd said. "He said that in October one day it"s hot, like today was, and then the winter comes across the plains overnight and the next day the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. That"s it. Summer"s over. Winter"s here. Nothing in between."
"Gerd ... I"m going home."
Gerd waited for Ellis to say more.
"Tomorrow."
"Tell me why," Gerd said.
"My dad"s dying. Sorry."
"No, I"m sorry."
They had breakfast in the Candy Kitchen. They ate well and they didn"t talk and they felt good. Michalis Eugenikos arrived with the newspapers.
"Michalis?" Ellis said. "Could you drive me to Chicago?"
"Sure. When?"
"This morning."
"Sure thing. I"ll go tell Cynthia."
Michalis entered the kitchen with a spring in his step.
"That"s a three-hour drive," Gerd said, in protest. "I"ll take you."
Ellis shrugged. "He wants to take me."
They joined the highway at Rock Island and when they saw Chicago signposted Ellis panicked, momentarily, that he would never leave America, that he and Michalis Eugenikos would drive on the interstate for eternity. Amongst the cornfields of Lockport county, he thought of f.a.n.n.y Robin running from All Souls to All Saints. It had taken him five months to read Far From The Madding Crowd when he was thirteen and Mr Pulman had said to Ellis"s dad that "the boy may be slow in some way, perhaps dyslexic". In response to this, Denny O"Rourke had asked his son if he was enjoying reading his current book.
"I love it. I"d like to live there if I could."
"Where?"
"1874."
"You"ve been reading that book a long while."
"It"s a long book."
"But you"re enjoying it?"
"Oh, yes. I like it so much I read pa.s.sages of it again and again until I can taste the words. I read descriptions of f.a.n.n.y and Bathsheba until I know them off by heart and I whisper their names aloud at night until I feel one of them in the room with me, lying next to me, stroking me."
Denny and Mafi had looked at each other, taken aback, whilst Ellis returned happily to his food, adding, "I"m not the runt my teachers think I am ... so don"t sweat."
Ellis delved into the grocery bag Cynthia had packed him for the journey. It was not small.
"What in Christ"s name has she given you?" Michalis sighed.
"Let"s see ... extra large Chocolate Malt, two spare straws, chocolate brownies, one ... two ... four of them, two iced doughnuts, packet of cookies, packet of marshmallows, two packets of Reese"s peanut b.u.t.ter cups and an apple."
"Good Lord," Michalis said, "where the h.e.l.l did she find an apple from?"
20.
Ellis stood at the doorway to Denny"s bedroom, with his body aching from aeroplane sleep, his gums tingling from the sugar of Cynthia"s goody-bag and his eyes deceiving him, surely, as to the extent of his father"s deterioration.
"Tell me about America." The voice was too weak to belong to Denny.
"No, Dad. I shouldn"t have been there. Pretend I never went."
When Chrissie found Ellis, he was staring into s.p.a.ce.
"He looks awful," he muttered.
"Yes!" she said, impatiently, as if it were Ellis"s fault. "I had to take him back for more tests."
"What did they say."
"We were in there all day!" This also appeared to be Ellis"s fault.
"What did the tests say?"
"We go back tomorrow to get the results. Hopefully you"ll start sharing the duties."
Ellis walked away. She pursued him into the kitchen.
"We were having a conversation, Ellis!"
"It didn"t feel like it."
"Well, we were," she corrected him.
"Look," Ellis said, "it"s not that I haven"t and won"t do all those things. It"s just that I"d never describe them as duties."
She grabbed the kettle and filled it. Ellis saw that she was close to breaking down.
"He can"t be this bad," he said helplessly. "The whole year can"t be like this."
She turned on him. "Ellis! There is not going to be a year!"
Ellis stripped to the waist and felt the sun on his back. Occasionally, he stopped working and stood beneath the walnut trees, close enough to the rippling leaves for them to eclipse the sound of the motorway. At dusk he went inside and loitered in the kitchen.
"That smells nice."
"Thank you. I think you"ll like it."
"I always love your cooking."
"Yeah, well it won"t be ready for a bit so get yourself a beer and go and sit with Dad."
"Isn"t he asleep?"
"It doesn"t matter if he is."
"I"ll lay the table first."
Chrissie took hold of her brother"s hand.
"Ellis," she said, being firm but not unkind, "you know full well we"re not going to eat at the table. We"ll do exactly what we always do if it"s just us, which is sit on our a.r.s.es in front of the TV. There is no table to lay. You"ve cut the gra.s.s and you"ve weeded the beds that don"t belong to us, you"ve washed Dad"s car even though it isn"t going anywhere, you"ve unpacked the shopping for me, you"ve filled that horrible enamel tea-bag tin with tea bags. There is nothing left to do but go upstairs and take a good look at him. Ellis, I can just about live with the fact that you are so much closer to him than I am, but not if you"re going to screw it up at the last."
Denny was sitting on the side of the bed taking deep breaths in preparation for the effort of coming downstairs. Ellis sat beside his father and their shoulders touched. For the first time in his life, Ellis was larger than his dad. They embraced and buried their heads against each other.
"We"ll have a few trips out ..." Denny whispered.
When he had composed himself, he looked out across the houses. "If you"d move me into the spare room I"d be able to look at those walnut trees. You can use this room when you stay."
Ellis smiled sympathetically. "Sod off. Your view"s rubbish."
His dad laughed and it hurt him. His face grew rosy. They settled into silence. Denny abandoned his attempt to come downstairs and got back into bed. Ellis sat beside him.
"I want you to make sure you have a strong image of us together, one that won"t fade."
"A photograph?" Ellis asked.
"Not a photograph. A memory ... a moment ... it"s important. They say that you can find yourself forgetting someone"s face or voice after they"ve gone ..."
"That will not happen," Ellis said firmly. "I"ve got hundreds of memories. Not all bad."
Denny laughed again. "You want to be able to tell your children what a handsome devil I was."
"I"d rather you told them."
It was night-time and Ellis thought his dad was asleep but Denny"s feeble voice broke the silence.
"I"m sorry I hit you."
"You"re sorry you what?"
"That birthday."
"Oh, that ..." Ellis shrugged it away.
"I"d redo that night if I could. I"d admit I was worried about Mafi. I"d give you a hug and tuck you in."
Ellis said, "I"d watch you leave my room and then the door would open again and you"d creep back in and sit on the side of the bed and say to me, "Whilst we"re talking about things, Ellis, it"s also that at times like this I really miss your mum." You"d tell me all about her and I"d know that even though she went away she did love me."
Denny reached out to his son and Ellis took his hand.
"She loved you so much," Denny said.
Ellis woke in the far reaches of night-time, with the morning close by and the world still quiet. He straightened up in the chair, rubbed his aching neck and realised that his dad was watching him.
"I"m an idiot for not telling you. I was missing her and I was angry at her but that"s no excuse."
"Yes, it is," Ellis said. He drew closer. "Dad, I know what my image is. The New Year"s Day you and I went to the top of Catt"s Hill, to watch the sun come up over the Marsh on the first day of the year."
Denny shut his eyes and joined his son on the hill.
"We sat on the field gate on the upper lane. The pasture was crunchy with frost and there was just enough light to see. There was a single bright star left in the sky and it hovered above Fairfield. You commented on it. As the sun rose, the wind stirred. Slowly, the fields became green and the sky was purple-grey and fast. We heard the sound of a shepherd whistling to his dog, coming from somewhere on Becket"s Farm. In the silence that followed it, we both listened at the same moment to the same single faint sound, as if the whole landscape had just heaved a sigh of contentment. A breath that had nowhere to have come from. The morning seemed like the past even as it was happening. It was as if we were walking through someone else"s memory."
Ellis fell silent at his own words.
"As if," he realised, "this was my lasting image already, even before I knew it, before I got there. It was waiting for me."
Denny whispered, "Life is just a dream, soon we shall awaken."
"Where"s that from?"
"Can"t remember. Find out and put it on my headstone."
Denny changed bedrooms and had a view of the walnut trees. Ellis carried the tape deck, amp and speakers up to Denny"s room. Denny asked Ellis to put on the Four Last Songs and muttered unintelligibly along to the last of them. When the music ended Ellis asked him what he had been saying.
"Da.s.s wir uns nicht verirren in dieser Einsamkeit," Denny replied.
"What does that mean?"
"We must not go astray in this loneliness."
"Is it German?"