Nicholas Royle - First Novel

I lay it down on the lawn, then immediately pick it up again and take it inside the house. I put it down on the kitchen table and study it. The pieces of plastic on the desk in my study are from the nose cone, one of the wings and a central section of the fuselage. I could go and get them and fit them into place, but there’s no hurry. The plane is not going anywhere. There are obviously other bits somewhere else in either my garden or theirs, because the damage to the plane is fairly extensive.

With a wingspan of about three feet, the model would have stood almost a foot off the ground with its undercarriage intact. A serious model aircraft, then, complete with engine, propeller, authentically detailed cockpit. An enthusiast’s much-loved toy.

I remember talking to Lewis in the pub about the pieces of red plastic.

I hear the cat flap and moments later Cleo jumps up on to the kitchen table and sniffs at the model plane.

‘What do you reckon to this, Cleo? What does Lewis know about this, eh?’

Why don’t you ask him?

‘Why don’t I ask him? Because I’m not sure I like the way this is developing. That DVD of his wife and daughters getting into that plane, which I think he wanted me to find. And now this, which I also can’t help thinking he wanted me to find.’

You won’t know for sure unless you ask him .

I stroke Cleo, from the top of her head, pressing back her ears until they lie perfectly flat, to the tip of her tail. I tickle her under her chin and, as usual, she lifts up her head and starts purring.

‘I don’t know.’

I arrive outside Lewis’ house. There’s a slight bite in the air, the sky clear. I’m wearing a little white cotton beanie. The DVD is in my pocket. I have been to a photo lab and had a copy made, which is now in my study.

I stand in his drive, still not sure what I am going to do. Either I tell him or I don’t. About the DVD. And about the model plane. Either he is in or he is not.

I take my hat off and stuff it in my pocket.

I knock on the door and wait. Someone walks past behind me. I turn around. Wearing a dirty raincoat and a flat cap and carrying a big striped laundry bag, it is Laundry Bag Man. He will deposit his bag on the pavement after twenty or thirty yards and go back for the other one. Laundry Bag Man always has two identical striped laundry bags with him, but seems unable to carry both of them at the same time. I don’t know what he keeps in his bags, but I doubt that it’s laundry.

I knock again.

I walk slowly to his garage door, open it and slip inside. I hear my heart beating faster as I approach the door to the kitchen. It, too, is unlocked. I enter the kitchen. Everything looks the same as before. I cross the hall to the living room and get down on my knees in front of the TV unit. I quickly remove the DVD-R, in its blank case, from my pocket and return it to where it had been when I found it.

As I am getting back to my feet I hear the clatter of the gate.

Without stopping to think, I scuttle back across the hall to the kitchen, rising to my feet once I can no longer see the front door. I cross the kitchen on my toes and wait to open the connecting door to the garage until I can hear Lewis’ key rattling in the lock of the front door. As he moves into the hall, I negotiate a route from the side of the garage to the front and take care to lift the main door on its hinges so that it does not scrape against the tarmac of the drive as I leave.

Walking home, heart still thumping as I overtake Laundry Bag Man, I reach into my pocket for my hat, but it is not there.

At home, even though it’s probably the last thing I should do, I watch the DVD again. The red dress, the little yellow hat. The woman walking past the windsock holding the hands of the children. The balding man with the paunch and the weak shoulder. The woman walking away, holding the hand of the child in the red dress. The other child, in the yellow hat, looking back at the man, undecided, torn. He seems to be offering some kind of promise. You wonder how much of an enticement it could be, looking at him. He doesn’t look as if he has a great deal to offer. But the child in the yellow hat is considering it. Maybe that’s all it takes? One child’s hesitation. The woman walking away, the child in the red dress. Shall we say the girl? The woman and the girl walking away. The other child, in the shorts and the yellow hat. Shall we say the girl in the case of this child as well? The woman walking away, the girl in the red dress. The girl in the yellow hat looking back. The balding man’s outstretched hand. His offer, promise, enticement. The outstretched hand.

The woman walking away from the camera, the first camera, holding both girls’ hands. They walk slowly. As if relaxed? As if obligated? Either or. Compliant? Reluctant? Either or. The girls hold her hand, trusting. They will follow her anywhere. Do what she says. She walks away from the camera, holding their hands. Past the horizontal windsock towards the man standing by the plane. His plane? Has he hired it? Does he own it? Can he even fly? Maybe he’s just showing it to them? Maybe all four will eventually leave together, on foot? Maybe the woman and the two girls will leave and the man will stay? Maybe he’s still there, waiting, the woman and the girls somewhere else, not coming back?

The woman walking away from the man, her mouth a straight line, eyes tiny black dots. The girl in the red dress holding her hand, compliant as before, but struggling slightly to keep up, perhaps? The skirt of her dress — and the dress of the woman — caught in the wind that tugs at the windsock. The girl in the yellow hat looking back. The man’s outstretched hand. The man’s slight paunch. His jeans belted beneath his little round stomach. The knees bagging out. One shoulder dipping slightly. The shoulder that carries the arm that connects to the hand that is outstretched. Maybe it’s lowered by the action of stretching out the hand? Maybe the stretched-out hand is too aggressive, the dipped shoulder the man’s way of compensating? He wants them all to come back but doesn’t want to coerce a small child. Doesn’t want to be seen to coerce a small child. The woman walking away. The child will join her. The three of them will walk away. He will be left standing there by the plane.

The plane, the four-seater plane moving down the runway, the grass runway. The wheels turning and turning. The plane moving down the runway. The wheels turning. The plane lifting, suddenly suspended, the wheels ceasing to turn. The plane moving forward, away from the camera, all of its seats apparently occupied. Is it the same plane the man had been standing beside? Is there an obvious gap in the field where his plane had been? Is this definitely the man’s plane? The four-seater plane moving down the runway. The wheels turning on the flattened grass. The sudden lift, the rise into the air, as if on a string. The careful steadying of the wings. The gradual ascent.

The phone rings. I pick it up.

‘Hello?’

Even to me, on my end of the phone, my voice sounds disembodied, alienated, suspicious.

‘ Ksssh-huh-huh .’

I don’t have anything to say, so I remain silent.

‘So listen,’ Lewis says, ‘do you want to go on a walk or what?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let’s go out walking. We’ve got stuff to talk about.’

‘Have we?’

‘Yeah. Free tomorrow morning?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ll pick you up at nine.’

‘Make it ten.’

‘Whatever.’

The moment I put the phone down it rings again. I pick it up.

‘ What the fuck is it now? ’

‘Paul Kinder?’

I don’t recognise the voice.

‘Yes?’

‘Delivery. I’m outside your house.’