“I’m not answering that. What I am saying is that you’re taking it back and reinstalling the bloody thing.”
“I don’t even know where I got it from.”
“It’s got a number on it, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what street.”
Now the moment Clay was waiting for:
“Je-sus Christ!” He felt me seething, right through the wall, but then the practicality. “Okay, I don’t care what you do with it, but when I get back home later, I expect it gone, you got that?”
Later, when Clay went in, he discovered the whole conversation was had with Hector wrapped like a wrestler around Rory’s neck. The cat lay molting and purring, simultaneously. The purrs were hitting pigeon-pitch.
When he noticed a new presence in the doorway, Rory spoke, a muffled tone. “Clay? Is that you? Can you do me a favor and get this bloody cat off me?” after which he waited for the last two stubborn claws, and then, “Ahhhhhh!” He breathed a great, relieving breath. Cat hair floated up; it showered down. Rory’s phone alarm now bleating—he’d been lying on it, trapped by Hector.
“I guess you heard Matthew, the cranky bastard.” Despite his appalling headache, he gave the tired suggestion of a smile. “You wouldn’t mind throwing that letterbox over to The Surrounds for me, would you?”
Clay nodded.
“Thanks, kid, here, help us up, I better get to work.” First things first, though, he walked over and slapped Tommy, hard across the head. “And you—I told you to keep that cat of yours”—he found the extra strength—“OFF MY FUCKING BED!”
* * *
—
It was Thursday, and Clay went to school.
On Friday he left it for good.
That second morning he went to a teacher’s room, where there were posters fixed to the wall, and writing all over the board. The posters were both quite comical. Jane Austen in frilly dress, holding a barbell with weights overhead. The caption said BOOKS ARE FRIGHTFULLY TOUGH. The other one was more like a placard, saying MINERVA MCGONAGALL IS GOD.
She was twenty-three years old now, that teacher.
Her name was Claudia Kirkby.
Clay liked her because these days, when he went to see her, she broke ranks with proper politeness. The bell would ring and she’d look at him. “Go on, kid, get out of here…get your arse to class.” Claudia Kirkby was good with poetry.
She had dark brown hair and light brown eyes and a sunspot center-cheek. She had a smile for putting up with things, and calves, nice calves, and heels, and was quite tall and always well-dressed. For some reason, she’d liked us from the start; even Rory, who’d been nightmarish.
When Clay went in before school that Friday, she was standing over the desk.
“Hey there, Mr. Clay.”
She was going through some essays.
“I’m leaving.”
She stopped, abruptly, and looked up.
No get-your-arse-to-class on that day.
She sat down, looked worried, and said, “Hmm.”
* * *
—
By three o’clock I was sitting at the school, in Mrs. Holland’s office, the principal, and I’d been there a few times before—the lead-up to Rory’s expulsion (in waters still to come). She was one of those stylishly short-haired women, with streaks of grey and white, and crayoned-under eyes.
“How’s Rory going?” she asked.
“He’s got a good job, but he hasn’t really changed.”
“Well, um, say hi from us.”
“I will. He’ll like that.”
Of course he would, the bastard.
Claudia Kirkby was there as well, in her dignified heels and black skirt, cream shirt. She smiled at me, like always, and I knew I should have said it—it’s good to see you—but I couldn’t. After all, this was a tragedy. Clay was leaving school.
Mrs. Holland: “So, um, as I said, um, on the phone.” She was one of the worst ummers I’d ever known. I knew bricklayers who ummed less than her. “We’ve, um, got young Clay here wanting, to, ahh, leave us.” Damn it, she’d hit us with an ahh now, too; this wasn’t looking good.
I glanced at Clay sitting next to me.
He looked up but didn’t speak.
“He’s a good student,” she said.
“I know.”
“Like you were.”
I didn’t react.
She went on. “He’s sixteen, though. By, um, law we can’t really stop him.”
“He wants to go and live with our dad,” I said. I’d wanted to add for a while, but somehow it didn’t come out.
“I see, well, um, we could find the closest school to where your father lives….”
Suddenly it came:
I was hit by a terrible numbing sadness in that office, in its sort-of-dark, sort-of-fluorescent-light. There’d be no other school, no other anything. This was it, and we all knew it.
I turned away, past Claudia Kirkby, and she looked sad, too, and so dutifully, damningly sweet.
Afterwards, when Clay and I walked to the car, she called out and chased us down, and there were her soundless, fast-running feet. She’d abandoned her heels near the office.
“Here,” she said, with a small stack of books. “You can leave, but you’ve gotta read these.”
Clay nodded, he spoke to her gratefully. “Thanks, Ms. Kirkby.”
We shook hands and said goodbye.
“Good luck, Clay.”
And they were nice hands, too; pale but warm, and a gleam in her sad-smiling eyes.
In the car, Clay faced his window and spoke, casual but also flatly. “You know,” he said, “she likes you.”
He said it as we drove away.
Strange to think, but I’d marry that woman one day.
* * *
—
Later, he went to the library.
He was there by four-thirty, and by five he sat between two great pylons of books. Everything he could find on bridges. Thousands of pages, hundreds of techniques. Every type, each measure. All jargons. He read through them and didn’t understand a thing. He liked looking at the bridges, though: the arches, suspensions, and cantilevers.
“Son?”
He looked up.
“Would you like to borrow any of those? It’s nine o’clock. It’s time to close.”
At home, he struggled through the door, he didn’t turn on the light. His blue sports bag flowed over with books. He’d told the librarian he’d be gone a long time, and was given a lengthy extension.
As luck would have it, when he came in, I was the first one he saw, prowling the hallway like the Minotaur.
We stopped; we both looked down.
A bag that heavy announced itself.
In the half darkness, my body was blunt, but my eyes were lit. I was tired that night, much older than twenty; I was ancient, stricken and grizzled. “Come on through.”
On his way past, he’d seen I was holding a wrench; I was fixing the tap in the bathroom. I was no Minotaur, I was the Goddamn maintenance man. And still we both watched that book bag, and the hallway felt tighter around us.
* * *
—
Then, Saturday, and waiting for Carey.
In the morning Clay drove around with Henry, for his books and records at garage sales; he watched him talk them down. In one converted driveway there was a collection of short stories called The Steeplechaser, a nice paperback, with a hurdler embossed on the cover. He paid a dollar and handed it to Henry, who held it, opened it, and smiled.
“Kid,” he said, “you’re a gentleman.”
* * *
—
From there, the hours fell.
But they also needed conquering.
In the afternoon he went to Bernborough, for several laps of the track. He read his books up in the grandstand, and started to comprehend. Terms like compression, truss, and abutment were slowly making sense.
At one point, he sprinted the channel of stairs, between the splintery benches. He remembered Starkey’s girl there, and smiled because of her lips. A breeze shuffled through the infield, as he left and quickened on the straight.
It was down to not much longer.
He would soon be at The Surrounds.
Penelope made it through summer.