Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

Kale disappeared inside again and returned a few moments later with a dented car bonnet. It rocked unevenly on the floor when he dropped it next to the wing. Ben focused on them as Kale went back inside. They were the same colour and appeared to be from the same car. It had obviously been involved in a bad crash. The damage was too comprehensive to be from anything other than a collision.

Something about that pricked his consciousness. He shifted the camera to look at the scrap pile itself, adjusting the focus until the individual pieces became clear. Mangled car roofs, radiators, doors, bumpers. There wasn’t a smooth or undamaged surface anywhere. Not one. He hadn’t really considered it before, except for the danger it posed to Jacob, but now he saw that, like the bonnet and wing, everything there showed the scars of some horrendous impact. He panned around the tortured shapes, and for the first time it came to him that Kale wasn’t just collecting junked car parts.

It was accident wreckage.

Ben sat back and rubbed his eyes. His head was throbbing badly. He wondered if he wasn’t reading too much into things.

And what did it matter anyway? Perhaps Kale was simply a morbid, as well as mad, bastard. But the feeling remained that this was significant in a way he couldn’t yet grasp.

He bent back to the camera. Kale was back in the garden.

Ben watched as he continued to move the scrap around, painstakingly shifting and realigning pieces of it as if their precise position actually mattered. Every now and then he would pause to consider the effect, but Ben was at a loss to see any sense to it all. The changes seemed pointless, yet too deliberate to be wholly random, as though there were a purpose to it only the ex-soldier could fathom.

But what the fuck was it? The door opened and Sandra Kale appeared. She had dressed. Her face was made up, her hair combed. Ben guessed she would be going to the pub for the afternoon shift. She looked from her husband to Jacob and said something. It was like watching a film without sound. Kale didn’t appear to hear her either. Sandra stared at him, thin-lipped, then jabbed two angry fingers up at his back and flounced back into the house.

The door slammed behind her. A heartbeat later the sound of it carried from the bottom of the hill.

Ben grinned. Sunday harmony chez Kale.

After she’d gone, Kale brought out two plates of sandwiches and gave the smaller to Jacob. He hunkered down on the floor beside him and they both ate, in silence as far as Ben could tell.

At one point they were sitting in almost identical positions, the boy in the car seat, his father on the ground, chewing in unison.

When he’d finished, Kale threw some scraps to the dog, which had been sitting hopefully at their feet. Jacob copied him and went back to his puzzle as Kale took the plates inside.

Ben ate his own sandwiches while he waited for him to reappear. Jacob remained in the garden, moving only once to urinate against the wooden wall of the garden shed. Ben shook his head, angry at this evidence of his new parents’ laxness.

It was more than an hour later before Kale came into the garden again. Ben had begun to wonder if he’d gone out somewhere as well, leaving Jacob at home by himself. He had changed into a creased T-shirt and shorts, and now he began a series of stretching exercises. The section of engine he’d hefted over Jacob’s head lay near by. Ben felt a rush of adrenalin. He waited, both hoping for and dreading what was going to happen.

But Kale ignored the blunt metal weight. Instead he picked up two house bricks, one in each hand, and began slowly raising and lowering them, rotating his arms and varying the movements so that all of his upper-body muscles were included in the workout. It reminded Ben of t’ai chi, an almost graceful exhibition of control. Only Kale’s injured leg spoiled the effect, nailing him to the same spot like a wooden post. By the time he dropped the bricks, dark patches of sweat were staining his T-shirt. He was breathing deeply but steadily as he went and stood behind the car seat where Jacob was sitting. He looked down at the puzzle his son was playing with. Then, without warning, he bent and lifted both the seat and Jacob straight above his head.

The boy’s eyes widened in surprise, but instead of the panic Ben expected his face split into a delighted grin. Kale began rising and lowering the seat while Jacob smiled above him.

Ben began taking pictures, but then stopped. Jacob was laughing now, and Kale was actually smiling himself as he effortlessly bench-pressed his son. Ben felt a sense of exclusion and loss crystalize inside him as he watched. Those two smiles seemed to undermine any reason he had for being there.

But he made no attempt to leave.

“Fucking action man,” he muttered as Kale smoothly set the seat down and went back to his exercises.

The afternoon passed without further event. Kale continued to work out while Jacob played with his puzzle. He didn’t so much as glance at the engine embedded in the ground, but Ben continued to watch, all the same.

When Sandra Kale returned from die pub, he switched his attention to her. She seemed no happier now than when she’d left, peeling potatoes at the sink as if she bore them a personal grudge. She didn’t tell her husband she was back, and if Kale was aware of it he gave no sign. It was like a dull soap opera, Ben thought, one in which the characters didn’t do anything or talk to each other. Yet there was something hypnotic about it. He found himself drawn into the viewfinder’s reality, fascinated by the Kales’ lack of communication, the absorbing minutiae of their lives.

It stopped him thinking about his own.

It was becoming harder to see. He looked up from the camera and found with surprise that the light was fading. He hadn’t realised it was so late. Or that he’d been there so long.

Rubbing his stiff neck he decided to pack up. He didn’t relish the prospect of walking through the woods in the dark.

He reached down to remove the lens and saw the tiny figure of Kale disappear inside the garden shed.

He had gone in there after lifting the engine over Jacob’s head, Ben remembered, looking through the viewfinder again.

The small wooden shack expanded to fill the world. There was a window in it, but from that angle it was impossible to see inside. He decided to wait for Kale to re-emerge and try to catch a glimpse then.

Twenty minutes later his curiosity had given way to impatience. The dusk was settling into a dim twilight, but Kale showed no inclination to come out. Ben wondered what the fuck the man could be doing in there. He was beginning to think there must be another exit when the shed door opened.

Kale staggered out. His T-shirt was stuck to him, dark and wet as if he’d been swimming in it. There were livid red marks around his wrists, legs and neck. One ran across his forehead like a bandana. His face was congested and shiny with sweat as he held on to the shed door and gulped air.

“Jesus Christ,” said Ben, awed.

His imagination balked at what he could have been doing to get into that state. The shed wasn’t that big. He focused quickly on the dark gap through the doorway. There was an impression of something vaguely mechanical inside, then Kale had closed the door. His limp was even more pronounced than usual when he went over to Jacob.

Still breathing heavily, though slightly less so now, Kale pointed to the car wing and bonnet that he’d brought into the garden earlier and said something to his son. When Jacob didn’t look up from his puzzle, Kale bent and took it from him. Ben’s finger pressed on the shutter release as he recorded Jacob’s angry protest. Kale said something else, but he was wasting his time. Ben knew from experience that Jacob was winding up to a tantrum. He could hear his frustrated cries drifting up the hillside as he tried to grab the puzzle back. Kale withheld it for a few seconds longer, then let go.