It’s his farm now. I don’t know when Mr Sinclair died, but that Andy now lives there with his mother, his wife and his young son, I do know that. When I last visited my parents, I saw him. Ran into him in the centre of town, doing his Christmas shopping, immediately around the corner from where we used to go to school. He was still red haired and ruddy cheeked, just as he had been sitting next to me in class, but now he totally filled the space in front of me, a giant presence, awkward and silent. He was wearing an open checked shirt – even though the weather was cold – and big boots. He looked like he did as a kid, only bigger, as if he’d been pumped up. He was still self-effacing and shy, almost embarrassed, dancing around on the pavement in front of me, grinning awkwardly. The reason we became friends at school was because he was so quiet: I could boss him around. Andy always did exactly what I told him. He wasn’t simple, like Steinbeck’s Lennie, just eager to please, as if his life depended on helping people. He was a little in awe of me, that’s what it amounted to: despite the fact he towered over me, he looked up to me. When I saw him in the High Street all those years later, so shy I think he’d have tried to walk past unless I’d stepped in front of him and blocked his path, we reverted immediately to our old relationship.
Standing outside the same newsagent we used to visit as kids every Saturday morning with our pocket money, I could once again have grabbed the coins from his podgy hands, prised open the sausage fingers, and told him which sweets and comics we were going to buy with his money. I don’t believe he’d have objected.
It was in our early teens that I became tired of him. It was boredom, I think, the fact we had so little in common. He was dull and tedious, too kind and decent. He wasn’t interesting or fun to be with. And I could see now, more than twenty years later, that I’d been right: he hadn’t moved on at all. His dreams – if he’d ever had any – had stopped at his property’s boundary fence.
Originally, I hung around with Andy because he gave me access to rifles. I don’t think he ever realised this. I’m good at fooling people when I want to. I can lead them right up the garden path while they’re still under the impression they’re standing at the front gate. So he never had any idea it was the rifles that kept me knocking on his farm door, none at all.
I could even claim that Andy’s dad is responsible for me being here today: he taught me to shoot. I liked Mr Sinclair; he was always laughing. ‘Come here, lad,’ he said to me one morning. ‘Let me show you the proper way to hold a rifle.’ We were standing in the courtyard outside the kitchen, and Mrs Sinclair was watching us through the window. She was smiling. I can remember still to this day how I felt they were a real family, not like mine.
‘Keep the butt tight against your shoulder. Pull it in here, that’s it. But keep breathing. Breathe regularly.’
He moved around in front of me. ‘You have to be relaxed when you’re holding a rifle, Milan. Don’t get tense. When you’re nice and ready, as you breathe out, hold your breath, then squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull it, squeeze it.’
I squeezed the trigger and there was a click.
‘You’re a natural.’ He laughed, taking the rifle off me. ‘Did you see that, Andy? Steady as a rock. If you’re not careful, he’ll be as good as you one day.’ Andy grinned. He looked genuinely pleased.
‘The rifle has to be a part of you, lad, an extension, like an extra limb. Remember that and you’ll be right.’
Mr Sinclair also taught me how to clean a rifle and how to be safe and responsible – opening the rifle when carrying it. When he trusted me enough and felt I knew what I was doing, we were allowed to go out and shoot rabbits by ourselves. There were plenty of them around. We’d sneak up to the brow of this hill, overlooking a small field – the Norfolk coast and its slither of sea in the distance – and there were so many rabbits hopping around and nibbling away we could have closed our eyes and fired and we’d have likely hit one. I loved the way rabbits jump in the air when they’re shot, as if they’ve been startled and can’t hide their surprise, then crash to the ground, on their sides, absolutely still. It was like a little dance of death routine, and the contrast always surprised me: between the leap into the air and the finality with which they landed on the grass. As if miming an exclamation mark.
I remember Mr Sinclair once asking me what I wanted to do when I grew up. He never asked Andy. His future was to be the farm, everyone knew that.
‘I want to be a writer.’ I don’t know why I told him, I’d never told anyone, not even my parents. I wanted to impress him, for him to see me as different, I think that’s what it was.
‘Books?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Novels?’ I nodded. He looked sceptical, but said nothing more, just looked doubtful. I decided that he was neither interested nor impressed, and I was disappointed. But one evening, the very first time Andy and I went off alone to shoot rats in the two barns about half a mile from the house, he said to his son as he handed him the rifle: ‘And watch that friend of yours; he’ll be more use with a biro than with one of these.’ They both laughed, and I knew they’d been talking about my dream – together, behind my back. I blushed, and wished I hadn’t told Mr Sinclair.
The moon was looming over the horizon, huge, like one of those cheap paper lamps with which students like to furnish their digs, and the air was perfectly still. The long grass was soaking, and our footsteps left a trail of dark green through a field of phosphorescence. Andy was whispering excitedly as we left the grown-ups behind us, his breath forming cartoonish thought bubbles above his head, his voice crystal clear in the crisp air. Soon he fell silent because of my lack of response. I followed his chubby legs, white and innocent in baggy shorts, across the field, detesting the complacency of his walk and the fact that he’d never, no matter how long he lived, ever wander off the path.
We were creeping through the sodden grass, quiet as mice, on the hunt for rats. Neither of us said anything as we approached the ghostly structures, perse and menacing against the trees at the end of the field. Then we were pushing open the great wooden doors, trying not to make any noise. The rats were running along the roof supports, and we caught them in the beam of our torch. One of us held the torch, the other did the shooting. The rats kept on running when they were caught in the spotlight, so they weren’t easy to hit. I was good, maybe even a better shot than Andy.
That particular night, I can see it still as clear as anything. One rat was wounded, its rear legs shattered by a bullet. It fell to the ground and tried to drag itself away into a dark corner to escape. I reloaded the rifle in double-quick time and fired a second shot, at almost point-blank range, splattering the rat all over the walls of the barn as I did my best James Cagney impression: ‘You dirty rat, you!’ Then we high fived in the gloom.