Read Online Engleby by Sebastian Faulks - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sebastian Faulks
Ads: Link
you can let go and laugh.
The other striking thing about Mr Bennett, I mean Mr Arkland, the thing that really stirred me in the guts, is that he’s alive – and probably only fifty-odd.
My own father died when I was twelve. I can’t pretend we were surprised, obviously. I was looking after Julie one afternoon. She used to go to a free nursery in the morning, then my mother would drop her with the Callaghans or someone while she went back to the hotel and I’d pick Julie up on the way home from school.
I’d started at the grammar school, having done well in the eleven-plus despite going to a desperate catch-all primary called St Bede’s. The good thing about St B’s was that no one bothered you. There was no homework to speak of and you could wander from one room to another and see what lesson you liked the look of. I think it was a county council ‘initiative’ or something. I went mostly to science or history, but one girl I knew spent five years in the craft room. (I believe she has her own design company in London now.) At St B’s you never got asked home by anyone because most of their mothers worked and didn’t want a stranger there. In my year at least five fathers were ‘away’ (i.e. inside) and the majority didn’t live with the mother any more; we, the nuclear Englebys, were considered odd.
At the grammar school, though, there was a different kind of boy. All the parents were married. Some of the fathers did things like dentistry; one was a ‘solicitor’, according to his son. I found it difficult to find much in common with these boys, though I liked the look of their new satchels and their racing bikes.
My bus stop was only ten minutes’ walk from the Callaghans’ and I banged on the door, holding my breath against the stagnant, stuffy smell when one of the twins opened it. Why do poor people’s houses always smell like that? Ours did, too, and I thought all houses did till I went to a reception for my year at the grammar school headmaster’s house and it smelt of – I don’t know, air and wood or something.
Julie came skipping out and took my hand and we set off down Trafalgar Terrace as we always did, past the sooty red brick and the small windows with china ornaments, brass pots and grey net curtains. I make it sound slummy, but actually I like weathered English red brick and it was all right. Take it from me, it was not too bad. Once we were home, I made a pot of tea and some toast and honey for both of us, then I sat Julie down in front of Crackerjack on the snowy monochrome Rediffusion TV and went to do my homework in the kitchen.
I heard the telephone ring and went to answer it.
‘Mike. Thank God you’re there. It’s your dad. He’s been taken poorly. He’s in Battle hospital. You’d better come over. Take some money from the pot on the kitchen mantelpiece. Ask for Lister Ward.’
‘What about Julie?’
‘You’ll have to bring her.’
Everyone knew where Battle hospital was, it was famous, but it took two buses and a fifteen-minute hike to get there. I carried Julie on my shoulders for the last bit. The reception area had that grey aspect I’d seen through the windows of the old men’s workhouse. We were directed down a long stone corridor, on which there were periodically signs to Lister, among the other notices – X-ray, Pathology, Mother and Child Unit, Rowntree Cancer Ward.
We found ourselves going through half-glassed swing doors and out into a courtyard with parked ambulances and dustbins. It was raining slightly and Julie was tugging at me, asking me to slow down. On the other side were more hospital buildings, low-built, more modern than the giant Victorian building we’d come through, but somehow already tinged with that same grey, as though prematurely aged by all the deaths they had housed and shipped on and forgotten.
Eventually we found Lister, an airless room with strip lights, full of screens and half-drawn curtains with old people lying flat,
The other striking thing about Mr Bennett, I mean Mr Arkland, the thing that really stirred me in the guts, is that he’s alive – and probably only fifty-odd.
My own father died when I was twelve. I can’t pretend we were surprised, obviously. I was looking after Julie one afternoon. She used to go to a free nursery in the morning, then my mother would drop her with the Callaghans or someone while she went back to the hotel and I’d pick Julie up on the way home from school.
I’d started at the grammar school, having done well in the eleven-plus despite going to a desperate catch-all primary called St Bede’s. The good thing about St B’s was that no one bothered you. There was no homework to speak of and you could wander from one room to another and see what lesson you liked the look of. I think it was a county council ‘initiative’ or something. I went mostly to science or history, but one girl I knew spent five years in the craft room. (I believe she has her own design company in London now.) At St B’s you never got asked home by anyone because most of their mothers worked and didn’t want a stranger there. In my year at least five fathers were ‘away’ (i.e. inside) and the majority didn’t live with the mother any more; we, the nuclear Englebys, were considered odd.
At the grammar school, though, there was a different kind of boy. All the parents were married. Some of the fathers did things like dentistry; one was a ‘solicitor’, according to his son. I found it difficult to find much in common with these boys, though I liked the look of their new satchels and their racing bikes.
My bus stop was only ten minutes’ walk from the Callaghans’ and I banged on the door, holding my breath against the stagnant, stuffy smell when one of the twins opened it. Why do poor people’s houses always smell like that? Ours did, too, and I thought all houses did till I went to a reception for my year at the grammar school headmaster’s house and it smelt of – I don’t know, air and wood or something.
Julie came skipping out and took my hand and we set off down Trafalgar Terrace as we always did, past the sooty red brick and the small windows with china ornaments, brass pots and grey net curtains. I make it sound slummy, but actually I like weathered English red brick and it was all right. Take it from me, it was not too bad. Once we were home, I made a pot of tea and some toast and honey for both of us, then I sat Julie down in front of Crackerjack on the snowy monochrome Rediffusion TV and went to do my homework in the kitchen.
I heard the telephone ring and went to answer it.
‘Mike. Thank God you’re there. It’s your dad. He’s been taken poorly. He’s in Battle hospital. You’d better come over. Take some money from the pot on the kitchen mantelpiece. Ask for Lister Ward.’
‘What about Julie?’
‘You’ll have to bring her.’
Everyone knew where Battle hospital was, it was famous, but it took two buses and a fifteen-minute hike to get there. I carried Julie on my shoulders for the last bit. The reception area had that grey aspect I’d seen through the windows of the old men’s workhouse. We were directed down a long stone corridor, on which there were periodically signs to Lister, among the other notices – X-ray, Pathology, Mother and Child Unit, Rowntree Cancer Ward.
We found ourselves going through half-glassed swing doors and out into a courtyard with parked ambulances and dustbins. It was raining slightly and Julie was tugging at me, asking me to slow down. On the other side were more hospital buildings, low-built, more modern than the giant Victorian building we’d come through, but somehow already tinged with that same grey, as though prematurely aged by all the deaths they had housed and shipped on and forgotten.
Eventually we found Lister, an airless room with strip lights, full of screens and half-drawn curtains with old people lying flat,
Similar Books
