Read Online Boy on the Wire by Alastair Bruce - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alastair Bruce
Ads: Link
are three photographs.
The first is of my mother and father. I grow numb when I look at this, when I notice it is them, a wave of coldness, starting at my neck. I do not have any photos of them. No photos of my brothers either. The ones I found here are the first. I have never had any, not since that camera I owned, and not since, after my mother died, my father removed all the photographs from view. This is the first time I have seen my father since I left Port Elizabeth, aged eighteen. My mother before that even. She died in 1987. I was twelve, the age Peter was when Paul died.
They’re grinning broadly. It must have been taken before they had children, or at least when we were very young. They are younger than I am now. My mother’s hair is being blown to the side. She is wearing large sunglasses. I can still see her eyes – they are laughing. My father has curly hair, though it is already beginning to recede. He is bare-chested. A day at the beach perhaps. I do not recognise the faces. I do, of course, but they are like strangers. At least, these are not the pictures of them I have in my mind, the pictures I can remember. They do not look like this when I picture them.
Around my mother’s neck is a string of white beads. Her brown skin. This I remember. I remember rolling the shells – I think that is what they were – around in my fingers. Beneath my fingers her warm skin and the mole at the base of her throat. I look for this but I cannot see it in the photograph. It is not right that I can’t see it. I remember it. It should be here. I remember touching it and her pushing me away. Paul was not there. It was after he died. A thought flashes through my mind. This is not my mother. But I know it is, really. The photo is faded. Perhaps the light was at the wrong angle. Perhaps the mole only appeared on her later. I place the photograph on the bedside table.
The more I think about that time, the more I have to admit the memories are fading. They are reflections in a pond. Revisiting them is like dropping a pebble into the water. They break up, disappear. Fallible – the word comes to me.
Maybe it would be for the best if she were not my mother, if they were not my parents. Perhaps they, too, had that thought.
There is something in the photo, these happy, smiling, young faces, that I do not know, that stands over me, looms – that is the word – over me. Something dark in the looking at it.
The next shows two boys crouched over a dog lying in the road. I close my eyes. We did a lot together, the three of us. When you live in the middle of nowhere, there is no one else to play with, so you stick together. There were just two years between each of us so it was easier. Paul and Peter were closest. The younger of the two wanting to be seen to be older and the eldest, almost a teenager, not wanting to be around children. I was more bookish than them as well – always reading. But we managed well enough. We all loved cricket and played it in the garden together. We rode our bikes. We went exploring, looking for bugs, for snakes in the bush at the back of the house.
They were cruel sometimes, as boys can be. On one of our hunts, as we called them, we went out onto the road. Peter and Paul went up ahead, stood at the fence and looked back at me, running to catch up. They looked only momentarily and then ducked under. The fence running parallel to the road was ornamental and not designed to keep boys in or intruders out.
On the other side, they stopped again to look at me. We were not allowed on the road. We had been told many times. That look was a challenge. I knew that even then. I looked back at the house, but there was no movement in it, no shouts from our mother to come back.
I walked up to the fence, to a part of it a bit further along that was hidden from the house by a tree. I called to them. I cannot remember what I said. I stood there in the shade and watched them on the black strip of tar. Peter had a
The first is of my mother and father. I grow numb when I look at this, when I notice it is them, a wave of coldness, starting at my neck. I do not have any photos of them. No photos of my brothers either. The ones I found here are the first. I have never had any, not since that camera I owned, and not since, after my mother died, my father removed all the photographs from view. This is the first time I have seen my father since I left Port Elizabeth, aged eighteen. My mother before that even. She died in 1987. I was twelve, the age Peter was when Paul died.
They’re grinning broadly. It must have been taken before they had children, or at least when we were very young. They are younger than I am now. My mother’s hair is being blown to the side. She is wearing large sunglasses. I can still see her eyes – they are laughing. My father has curly hair, though it is already beginning to recede. He is bare-chested. A day at the beach perhaps. I do not recognise the faces. I do, of course, but they are like strangers. At least, these are not the pictures of them I have in my mind, the pictures I can remember. They do not look like this when I picture them.
Around my mother’s neck is a string of white beads. Her brown skin. This I remember. I remember rolling the shells – I think that is what they were – around in my fingers. Beneath my fingers her warm skin and the mole at the base of her throat. I look for this but I cannot see it in the photograph. It is not right that I can’t see it. I remember it. It should be here. I remember touching it and her pushing me away. Paul was not there. It was after he died. A thought flashes through my mind. This is not my mother. But I know it is, really. The photo is faded. Perhaps the light was at the wrong angle. Perhaps the mole only appeared on her later. I place the photograph on the bedside table.
The more I think about that time, the more I have to admit the memories are fading. They are reflections in a pond. Revisiting them is like dropping a pebble into the water. They break up, disappear. Fallible – the word comes to me.
Maybe it would be for the best if she were not my mother, if they were not my parents. Perhaps they, too, had that thought.
There is something in the photo, these happy, smiling, young faces, that I do not know, that stands over me, looms – that is the word – over me. Something dark in the looking at it.
The next shows two boys crouched over a dog lying in the road. I close my eyes. We did a lot together, the three of us. When you live in the middle of nowhere, there is no one else to play with, so you stick together. There were just two years between each of us so it was easier. Paul and Peter were closest. The younger of the two wanting to be seen to be older and the eldest, almost a teenager, not wanting to be around children. I was more bookish than them as well – always reading. But we managed well enough. We all loved cricket and played it in the garden together. We rode our bikes. We went exploring, looking for bugs, for snakes in the bush at the back of the house.
They were cruel sometimes, as boys can be. On one of our hunts, as we called them, we went out onto the road. Peter and Paul went up ahead, stood at the fence and looked back at me, running to catch up. They looked only momentarily and then ducked under. The fence running parallel to the road was ornamental and not designed to keep boys in or intruders out.
On the other side, they stopped again to look at me. We were not allowed on the road. We had been told many times. That look was a challenge. I knew that even then. I looked back at the house, but there was no movement in it, no shouts from our mother to come back.
I walked up to the fence, to a part of it a bit further along that was hidden from the house by a tree. I called to them. I cannot remember what I said. I stood there in the shade and watched them on the black strip of tar. Peter had a
Similar Books
