Read Online Shuttlecock by Graham Swift - Free Book Online

the end she plumps (just as I would too) for bold assertion.
    ‘Okay. I will. I’ll enjoy it too.’
    But now there’s an atmosphere of hostility.
    ‘I’ll take the car then?’ she adds.
    ‘No you won’t.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because you won’t take the car, that’s why.’ (I want the car for my own reasons.)
    ‘Well, how do we get to Richmond?’
    ‘You can take a bus. You’ve heard about buses? A number 37, all the way. I’ll even give you the fare.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    She plonks a cup of coffee down in front of me. We might as well have had an all-out scene. But she can still change her mind.
    ‘Won’t you come?’ she says after a sullen, coffee-sipping pause. The first sign of real weakness.
    ‘No!’ I say adamantly.
    I go into the living-room, shutting the kitchen door. The boys are lolling about, reading comics. The television is still in the living-room. The boys could switch it on – there are Saturday morning programmes for kids – but they daren’t. They know I’d hit them.
    I clap my hands, like an animal-trainer. ‘Right, you’re going out this afternoon, for a walk by the river at Richmond.’
    They give me slow, uninterested looks.
    ‘It’s all right, I’m not coming. I’ve got things to do. You’re going with Mum – it’s her idea – on the bus.’ And almost immediately their eyes, which only a second before had been full of reluctance, begin to show enthusiasm – and relief. This hurts me. Believe me, it does. You see, when I said I didn’t mind if it was just I who was the obstacle, that was a lie. What is it that Marian’s got that I haven’t got? Why do the kids have no axe to grind with Marian?
    ‘Will we go to the pub?’ Peter asks.
    ‘No. You’re not going till after lunch. But there’s acafé. I expect you’ll get an ice-cream or a drink. If you’re good.’
    Martin looks up at me resentfully. I fancy that out of the corner of one eye he is glancing slyly towards the television then back to me. That is the difference between Martin and Peter. Peter is the one who got the shaking last Monday, but he has almost forgotten it. Martin is growing up (he will be eleven soon): he bears grudges.
    I fish in my pocket. ‘Martin, come here.’ I pull out four pound notes and when Martin gets up I hold them out to him.
    ‘These are for you. When you get on the bus, you pay for the fares. Don’t let Mum pay for anything, understand? And, if there’s any change, I want it back.’
    ‘Yes Dad.’
    I look into his shifting, sharp little face. He is probably already thinking of ways to pocket the money, or at least hold onto the change. I wonder whether Marian will stand for it, whether it’ll make her feel uncomfortable, or whether she’ll insist on paying with her own money. And what will Martin do if Marian tells him to keep hold of the money? I look at him. He has cunning, grey-blue eyes under his mop of sandy hair. He’s clever enough to understand all this, and to see that I’m testing him.
    ‘Right, put it somewhere safe.’
    Later, after lunch, when Marian and the boys have gone, I get down the copy of Dad’s book from the shelf in the living-room and start to read it. I read from either of the two copies indiscriminately, picking up whichever is to hand, but naturally the one I value more is the one inscribed by Dad himself. I keep this in our bedroom. That is, usually. For as I sit down now to read the copy from the living-room I discover that at some time orother I have got the two muddled up. The one I have opened has Dad’s words in it. ‘… From your loving Father. September 1957.’
    I sit down in the armchair by the french windows. The afternoon sun has crept round to shine slant-wise across the garden, and its rays fall obliquely on the glass. The sky is cloudless. I could, of course, sit outside. I look at my watch. It has just turned two. I have about three hours. I could put up a deck-chair on the grass. But I want to feel, though of course