Read Online After Brock by Paul Binding - Free Book Online Page B

kite shop, isn’t it? Apologies to you and Josh for not having heard of it. Sometimes it’s hard for me to know anything much beyond my music.’ This I found easy to believe. ‘And my wife and her sad condition,’ he added quickly. ‘But Peter’s shop – is it really called High Flyers?’
    There was a strange smile, or, more accurately, shadow of a smile, playing on his face. Which made it seem youthful. Now I could imagine he’d been a small boy once.
    â€˜Has been called that for five and a half years – since it started,’ I said, a bit defensively.
    â€˜I suppose he named it after the quiz show?’
    That was the second time Julian Pringle had mentioned this subject, and there was something about his manner that made me uncomfortable.
    â€˜I think that “high flyer” about describes a kite,’ I said. ‘There’s a well-known kite shop in Chester, which Dad is in regular touch with, called Kites Aloft. Well, the name he chose for his shop follows the same idea.’
    â€˜But it was also the name of a highly successful radio programme in the early seventies,’ said Dr Pringle.
    First I’d heard of this.
    â€˜And was my dad connected with the programme?’

    â€˜ Connected ?’ Dr Pringle looked positively aghast at my question, ‘well, of course! A star, you might say. And can you be surprised when he was such an astonishing, precocious storehouse of knowledge? But surely you know about all this?’
    Surely I did not.
    But, as we were both searching for what to say next, a bell sounded – a harsh sort of ring, from the other side of the book-covered wall opposite me.
    â€˜Ilona, my wife!’ said Dr Pringle, ‘I shall absolutely have to go and see to her.’ Indeed he would, for again the bell came, like an urgent cry, only seconds after its first clang. ‘But this is a difficult conversation, Nat, difficult in the extreme – and for both of us. I’m a clumsy man in this sort of respect. Scribble your postal address down on the pad on my desk, and then let yourself out, would you? And I promise you that I shall write you a proper letter this very day. Not an email, definitely not that, for it must be a really private communication that nobody could spy on a screen or hack into. No, I shall send you an old-fashioned letter, even if computer written.’
    And the bell rang a third time, loudly and more agitatedly.
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    I felt as though, if in the kindest, gentlest way, I’d been expelled from the Pringles’, slung out of the premises by that awful pitched bell and, just when I was on the brink of knowing more, of having an evening and a night’s disturbing speculations confirmed. I didn’t feel like going back to an empty house – I almost regretted the lack of any exam to ‘look forward to’ – so instead, with this heavy, let-down sort of feeling in my stomach, I cut across from Walworth Road towards the Old Kent Road where I knew a good place to have (another) coffee and a pastry or two.
    And all at once I remembered Oliver Merchant, Uncle Oliver as he was to me being my godfather, who had a habit of singing me some song about the Old Kent Road on his rare visits during my childhood to the Camberwell house we lived in then. Uncle Oliver was fattish with a protruding tummy and a mane of white hair, and a habit of wearing fancy waistcoats (which showed the tummy to bad advantage) and quite often a spotted bow tie. Uncle Oliver had been Dad’s godfather too, and the founder of Sunbeam Press itself. So this was a song, in more ways than one, from pre-history, but somehow remembering it helped banish the disappointment and sadness left me by my call on Dr Pringle.
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    Well – Josh had his mega-party last night (Saturday, but it was two hours into Sunday before I got home). I’m writing this now in my journal book on the