Meanwhile, the tests got harder.
Everyone in Year Six was used to the weekly papers, which were building to the scholarship exam – but Mr Barlow seemed to be setting questions that were impossible.
Only Eric seemed not to care, and he was sometimes absent altogether. Everyone knew that he had a complicated life. He’d missed a lot of school the previous year as well, and had come close to being sent away altogether. He was always vague about the details of his family, but his friends were fairly sure he lived in several different places. There was a mum, and an auntie, and also a friend of the auntie, and they all took charge and shunted him from one flat to another. There was an older brother too, nicknamed ‘Spider’, and Eric claimed that he spent weekends with him and his mates, doing wild and crazy things. There were rumours of stolen cars and house-breaking, but nobody was sure if they were true. Now, however, Eric was arriving late, and he was often unwashed, wearing only half his uniform. He was surrounded by the faint smell of liquor, and his eyes were wild and unfocused. If he took part in a class test, his results were shocking, and he told Rikki and Richard that his visits to Dr Warren were being increased.
‘They say I got something wrong with my neurones,’ he said.
‘What are they?’ said Jeff.
‘I don’t know. They want to laser them out, though. Cut out my bad bits, so I can get fostered or something. It would be three days in that Institute place, and the food’s pretty good. Flatscreen TV, chocolate-chip cookies—’
‘Eric,’ said Rikki, ‘are you talking about surgery?’
‘Yes.’
‘On your brain?’
Eric nodded.
‘But you’re normal. Don’t let them near you, buddy.’
‘They say they want to help me – there’s Doctor Summersby, too, coming back from America or somewhere. It’s research, so everything’s paid for.’ He grinned. ‘Warren says I can’t go on the way I’m going.’
‘Why not?’ said Mark.
‘I don’t know. They’ve been doing stuff on monkeys, so now it’s my turn. They got a lab on the top floor, through secret doors.’
He was grinning as he said it, but Jeff looked worried. ‘I don’t know how serious you are, Eric,’ he said. ‘But that sounds bad.’
‘What did you see?’ said Mark.
Eric shrugged. ‘I haven’t been in, but you hear weird noises. There’s chimps, I think, in cages, all kind of . . . wired-up. I saw one, through the doorway – then they shooed me back out again.’ He laughed and pushed his hair back. ‘I don’t care what they do – I’m joining the Army, and you don’t need brains for that. If Warren wants mine, he can have it.’
Richard and Rikki had a different attitude.
They were taking their work very seriously, and so were their parents. There were only three scholarships to the grammar school, and they were awarded for academic excellence. As a result, the Westlake home was often silent with concentration. The television was on for a maximum of one hour per evening, and Rikki and Richard stayed up late memorizing facts and formulae. In the classroom, Mr Barlow panicked about what he hadn’t taught, and the children got anxious about what they hadn’t learned. It was an emotional time, and every day someone was in tears.
Richard kept tight hold of his grandad’s wings. He often held them in his fist as he worked, and at the end of the day he’d replace them in his locker, letting them rest on the dangling Sea Venom. It was coming up to the anniversary of the old man’s death, and he knew that day would be difficult. Nobody at home had mentioned it: the subject was too huge, so they trod carefully round it.
The two heads worked together, burying themselves in work. There had been a time when Richard had laid his homework out on the old man’s table by the window, and breathed the scent of pipe-tobacco. Three steps up along the landing: the door to Grandad’s room, which now smelled only of newness.
The photographs were gone from his walls, but Richard remembered each one: the long runways on wild islands, and the faded gatherings of men in uniform standing on the decks of vast carriers.
He could hear the voice. ‘That was Terry. That was our commander.’
‘That’s not a Venom, though, is it?’
‘That’s a Hornet. That was state-of-the-art, then. Look at her . . .’
‘How fast?’
‘Four-fifty, I think. Slow, by today’s standards—’
‘You call that slow?’
‘The first drops were over Wales, you know. In over the sea. Now that’s the Baltic fleet . . . that’s the Q-hut – remember that?’
His grandad’s hands would be on his shoulders, and turn him, or shift him along. Such strong fingers, which he’d dig into the boy’s shoulder-blades that little bit too hard, and Richard would grit his teeth, knowing the game.
Now and then, a smell or a sound would make him turn, usually when he was on the landing, and there’d be a flicker in the air. His grandad would be there again, and gone. It happened in front of the wretched mirror, as Rikki stood with his eyes tight shut, the scent of new carpet rising around them. Yet the changes were right and proper, for his dad had been working in the kitchen, which was always a nuisance. It had made sense to create an office upstairs, and they’d talked it through. They had repainted the ceiling and chosen new wallpaper. The pictures were wrapped up in the attic.
Why hadn’t they moved the mirror?
It had a brass frame, and was screwed to the wall. It was the only thing that had stayed . . .
‘Danda, you coming later?’
‘If I can. Come back here.’
Richard would turn. ‘You meeting me?’
‘If I’m not busy.’
Grandad’s chair had been there, in the reflection. Even when he’d been sick he’d made the effort to get up and sit in it, smartly dressed. Even as he withered.
‘You wouldn’t rather walk home with your friends?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You want to walk with Jeff, that’s fine.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘What did they teach you today, then?’
He remembered more silence than talking. Or maybe he prattled on – maybe they did talk, and he’d forgotten. What had they talked about, though – when his hand was in the old man’s? Such a creased thing, and it had once held the controls . . .
He remembered planning the tree house, which his dad had said was way too high.
His grandad had laughed. ‘If he breaks his neck, it’ll be a valuable lesson. You won’t though, Richard – will you?’
And the old man’s shed, way below, that was still full of screws, nails, tools, glues, bicycle pumps, blunt saws and too much to identify or sort. Richard had found an old mug there, pushed onto a shelf and never returned to the kitchen – never washed up. It might have been his grandad’s last cup of tea, set down before the last time he pulled his jacket on and changed his shoes, to walk the last mile ever to Green Cross School.
‘See you later.’
‘If I can. Come back here.’
Richard would turn. ‘You know it’s practice today?’
‘You’re getting taller, you know. Hold your hand out.’
‘No, Danda—’
‘Hold your hand out! Do as you’re told.’
A two-pound coin, pressed in and closed in his fist, his grandad’s fingers frighteningly strong. His pilot’s eyes, weaker now behind bi-focals, but always bright with life.
‘You keep it.’
‘Mum doesn’t like it—’
‘Don’t tell her, then. Simple as that.’
Richard was breathing hard. He crushed the wings, squeezed them hard, and he found that this time his eyes were shut. When he opened them, he was gazing into his locker and Rikki was staring at him.
‘We’re at school,’ said Rikki. ‘You’ve got to stop.’
‘Stop what?’
‘You know what. Remembering.’
‘How? I just . . .’
‘What?’
‘I just want . . . to know where he is.’
‘Dust to dust, buddy. No heaven – you know that. There is no heaven.’
‘He’s somewhere, Rikki. He cannot be gone.’