Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

He lowered it and came towards him.

Ben saw the stock of the shotgun swinging into his face but couldn’t avoid it A light burst in his head, and a new pain spun into the others. He felt himself hit the floor, but only distantly.

He opened his eyes and saw Kale’s boots. He rolled over and looked up. Kale was a giant, towering above him. The shotgun butt was raised in slow motion. Ben watched, incuriously, for it to begin its descent.

“No, Daddy, no, Daddy, no, Daddy!”

The cry gradually penetrated the fog in his head. Kale was no longer looking down at him. Ben moved his head until he could see Jacob. The boy had his eyes open now, but they were darting about, looking at everything but Ben and Kale as he frantically rocked himself.

“Nonono!”

“It’s all right,” Kale said, but the boy only rocked harder, chanting his denial.

There was a huge grating of metal from the yard. Kale glanced uncertainly towards the window. A grey daylight was coming from it now.

Ben began to drag himself towards Jacob. His hand shrieked, and so did he.

Kale looked from him to the window and back again.

Another huge clamour came from outside. Ben pushed himself along the floor with his feet. His hand left a giant slug-trail of blood. He saw Kale’s face contort. The man pressed the heel of his fist against his forehead as if he were trying to crush it. He took a step forward.

“Get away from him!”

Ben shoved himself the rest of the way and pulled Jacob to him with his good arm. Jacob moaned and rocked, eyes shut again.

Kale gripped the shotgun.

“I said get away!”

Ben stared up at Kale as he held their son. He wanted to speak but the effort to reach Jacob had taken the last of his strength. There was a rushing in his ears. His vision was breaking up. He struggled to keep his head upright as Kale raised the shotgun and levelled it at them.

The room lit up as the sun crested the scrapyard’s wall. Kale winced at the sudden brightness. He looked out across the frosted tops of the cars as the light bounced and splintered from their uneven surface.

Ben saw him frown. Then his face cleared.

Still staring outside, he lowered the gun. Through the rushing in his ears, Ben heard him murmur, “There... it’s there...”

Like a man in a dream, Kale slowly turned back to them. He no longer seemed aware of Ben as he gazed down at Jacob.

A screech of metal from outside made him glance at the window again. Going to the makeshift cordon of furniture, he moved aside a broken chair with the same deliberation he’d applied to rearranging his pieces of wreckage. He stood by the breach he’d made for a moment, letting the sunlight fall on his face. Then, fixing his eyes on his son, he put the shotgun stock to his shoulder and stepped backwards through the gap.

The crash came immediately.

Ben cringed, clutching Jacob to him, but there was no pain, no impact. After a moment he cautiously looked up.

Kale had been hurled sideways by the marksman’s bullet.

It had taken him through the chest. He lay twisted on the floor, one arm thrown above him, the other straight out in a parody of the exercises he performed in his garden. His eyes seemed to be staring at a point above Ben’s head, at something behind and beyond him, and Ben felt an urge to turn and look. But his eyes were drawn to the blood soaking through Kale’s sweat-shirt. He lay in a puddle of it. Streaks and splashes fanned out from him in dark whorls, hieroglyphs of an unknown language which changed and grew as their substance spread across the floor.

Jacob was keening. Ben pressed the boy’s face into his shoulder to spare him the sight of his father’s corpse. The rushing in his ears became very loud. He put his head back against the wall and saw an oblique strip of sunlight running over the ceiling. Motes of dust danced in it, spinning frenzied patterns. He tried to focus on them, and was still struggling to decipher their semaphored message as his vision faded away.

The wasp bumped against the window. The sun streamed in through the whole length of the west-facing wall, filling the studio with light. The next window along was open.

Zoe went over and tried to cuff the wasp towards it with her hand. “Go on, piss off.” Its buzzing rose in pitch until it found the gap and flew out. “Stupid things.”

“You should just squash them,” the girl said, unscrewing the cap from a bottle of mineral water. “I always do.”

Zoe looked embarrassed. “If it had been a fly I would have.”

Ben didn’t say anything. He’d seen her usher out flies as well, but she did her best to keep her humanitarian tendencies strictly in the closet. He saw her glance at him as he struggled with the camera lens, but she made no offer to help. After a few false starts they’d established that he would manage by himself, no matter how long it took. Sometimes the shoots ran a little late, but so far no one had complained. The quality of his work wasn’t affected.

Besides, he was becoming more adept. The prosthetic hand had been difficult at first, but he was growing used to it. It was his left, which he only used to hold and support anyway.

Once you got over the shock of seeing the arrangement of metal rods, wires and plastic instead of flesh-and-bone fingers, there was an almost aesthetic beauty about the thing. It was just a matter of getting acclimatized. They’d told him at the prosthesis unit that there were other models he could have, some of them styled and coloured to look more realistic, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted that. The blatant artifice of the present one seemed more honest.

He’d begun making a photographic study of it, both on and off what was left of his maimed hand, experimenting with the effect he’d discovered with the dead flowers. He wasn’t sure yet how well it would turn out, or if he would ever show it to anyone, but it was something he wanted to do. If nothing else it was good therapy. It forced him to accept what had happened.

He got the lens off and fitted another, aware of Zoe and the model trying not to watch.

“Five minutes and then we’ll make a start on the last session, okay?” he said.

He put the camera down and went over to where Jacob was sitting on the settee. “Fancy anything to drink, Jake?”

Jacob shook his head, not looking up from the jigsaw puzzle spread out on the coffee table. For a change he was assembling this one face up.

Ben held the prosthetic hand under his nose and moved its fingers. Jacob broke off what he was doing to study it.

Ben watched him. He would miss having him at the studio after half-term finished. He’d worried about how him being there during shoots would work out, but it had been fine. He thought Jacob had enjoyed it too, but it was sometimes difficult to tell.

The residency application had been approved while Ben was still in hospital. The adoption proceedings were still under way, and might take another year. But he’d been assured there would be no problem.

He wouldn’t be entirely easy until then, though.

He tried to pick up a piece of jigsaw and succeeded at the fourth attempt. He held it out. Jacob took it, put it back with the rest of the jumbled-up pieces, and selected his own.

“Smartarse,” Ben said. “I’ll tell Grandma Paterson not to let you play on her chairlift this weekend.”

Jacob smiled briefly. His usual absent expression returned as he examined the prosthesis. It still fascinated him. He touched the steel rods and wires, lightly tracing their shapes.

Ben manipulated them for him. The boy raised the hand to his face and looked through it. Kale’s eyes stared out at Ben through the steel fingers.

“You about ready?” Zoe called.