Mum’s telling Gabriel why she chose his name. He never tires of the story, hearing how her voice softens and fills with love as she speaks.
It’s a strong name, she tells him. Filled with happiness, joy, and light. The light of heaven, Gabe. As she speaks, Gabriel feels his heart swelling with love. I looked at you, she says, and suddenly my life was filled with meaning.
The kitchen’s dark now and she gets to her feet and moves to the switch on the wall. The room flares into light, and there he is, sitting on a chair in the corner, smiling his special smile. The one he keeps just for them, the one that means trouble is coming. How does he manage to move so silently, so quickly? How does he sniff them out so that they can never have time alone? Gabriel’s fists clench and the old man catches the movement.
You don’t like me, do you? Little boy filled with the light of heaven, you don’t much like me.
If Gabriel’s name is filled with light, the old man swells with ferocious menace. He looks at Gabriel and smiles again. His teeth are strong; Gabriel has watched him eat, how he attacks his food, picks up a chop and tears off the flesh. He’s seen his strong jaws chomping. Everything about him is rugged and hard. His bruising hands, his taut forearms, his still-straight shoulders, the long legs that stride. Gabriel has seen him out in the yard at the back of the house, swinging an axe to split logs. He’s old, but he’s tough.
Gabriel counts in his mind all the days they’ve been here. They arrived just before winter, when night came early and the house was cold. Now it’s even colder and most nights Gabriel falls asleep shivering. He’s been at his new school for nearly a full term and soon it will be time for the long holidays. He won’t be able to escape the house. He’ll have to be here, day in and day out. He’ll have to listen as the man tears into Mum with harsh words, he’ll have to leave the room when he is told to and hear the soft-hard sound of fist on flesh. And then, later, he will have to watch as she pretends there is nothing wrong.
Hate swells inside Gabriel, swelling until he feels he will burst. There’s a river of hate running through Gabriel, running through the house, lapping at Gabriel’s ankles. Lapping at the old man. Gabriel wants to see him drown. He wants to see him flailing, thrashing and scrabbling for shore, the river too strong for him, rushing him along in its current, the old man powerless, unable to swim against it, against the roaring hate that flows through Gabriel.