Джон Бойн - A Ladder to the Sky

‘Feeling better?’ asked Maurice as the boy jumped up on to the sofa next to him, leaning over to bury his body into his father’s side. Maurice held him close, kissing him on the top of his head, breathing in his scent.

‘If I say sorry to Jupiter tomorrow, will I still have to go to see the doctor?’ asked Daniel, sounding a little less anxious about that particular ordeal than he had when they’d arrived home. There had been tears then and a declaration that he shouldn’t have to be kissed if he didn’t want to be, a sentiment that Maurice thought was actually rather fair.

‘I think so,’ said Maurice. ‘Otherwise this could all end up in a big drama that neither of us needs. I’m sure the doctor will be very nice, anyway.’

‘Will she use a needle?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The doctor. Will she use a needle when she sees me? I don’t like needles.’

Maurice shook his head. ‘She’s not that type of doctor,’ he said. ‘There’ll be nothing like that. All you’ll do is talk to her, that’s all. And then it will be over.’

Daniel frowned, his expression suggesting that he couldn’t believe you could attend a doctor with no pain being involved, just conversation.

‘I didn’t like it when she kissed me,’ said the boy.

‘I never really cared for it much either,’ said Maurice. ‘But you can’t go around committing random acts of violence when people do things you don’t like. You should have just told her not to do it again.’

‘Everyone was laughing at me,’ whispered Daniel.

Maurice hugged him again and looked down at the perfect feet and toes emerging from the ends of his son’s pyjamas. He had always expected to feel unadulterated love for a child, if he ever had one, but things hadn’t quite worked out that way. He was terribly fond of Daniel, certainly, but the boy irritated him as often as he pleased him. He was always there , was the problem. Hanging around. Needing food, toys or new clothes. Saying that it was time to go to school or to be picked up again. It was endless harassment. Maurice did his best to keep an even temper with the boy – he was just a child, after all, and he recognized that – but still, he looked forward to the day that he turned eighteen and was heading off to college. He might get his life back then.

The idea of using a surrogate had come to him on the night that he’d been shortlisted for The Prize, which, to his immense disappointment, he’d lost out on to an old rival, Douglas Sherman. He’d been thinking about what to do with the sudden influx of royalties and made an appointment with a solicitor later that same week in order to get the ball rolling. Six months later, a young Italian girl working as a chambermaid in a Central London hotel was pregnant with his child and there had been no trouble whatsoever during the pregnancy or the birth. Although the legal agreement had been tight, he had naturally worried that the woman might have second thoughts once the baby was born, but no, she had kept to her part of the bargain and disappeared from his life the moment he took Daniel home from the hospital.

It hadn’t been easy at first, of course. He had no experience of babies and had to rely on books for most of his knowledge. But Daniel had not been a difficult infant, sleeping through the night almost from the start and apparently happy to lie in his crib, reaching up for the toys that swung from a mobile above him, as long as Maurice was in his sight-lines, which he always was, since he worked from home in those early years, only spending more time at the Storī office after Daniel started kindergarten. They’d travelled to international literary festivals together, where other writers seemed charmed by the image of this handsome novelist, hugely successful at a young age, going everywhere with a small boy in tow. It helped that Daniel liked books too, as he was content to sit reading while his father offered himself up for endless interviews or took part in public events.

‘Why did you slap her, anyway?’ he asked now, and the boy shrugged.

‘I told you. Because she kissed me.’

‘No, I know that,’ said Maurice. ‘I mean, why was that your reaction? Violence. Striking out. When have you ever seen people behave in that way? No one has ever hit you, have they?’

The boy paused for a few moments, and Maurice wondered whether he was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth.

‘Sometimes in school,’ he said eventually, letting out a deep sigh as he looked down at the floor.

‘A teacher?’

‘No,’ said Daniel, shaking his head.

‘Who then?’

‘No one.’

‘Come on,’ urged Maurice. ‘Tell me.’

‘Just some of the boys in my class.’

‘Which boys?’

‘I don’t want to say.’

Maurice frowned. He didn’t want to push him, but if Daniel was being bullied, then he wanted to get to the bottom of it.

‘Please, Daniel. You can tell me. Maybe I can make it stop.’

‘James,’ said Daniel, after a lengthy pause during which he snuffled a few times and looked as if he might start to cry. ‘And William.’

‘But I thought you got along with them? You sit beside James in class, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t like me.’

‘Why not?’

‘He says I’m a freak.’

Fuck him , the little fucking shit , thought Maurice. But, ‘You’re not a freak,’ he said.

‘He says I am.’

‘Then he’s an idiot.’

‘It’s because I don’t like playing with them,’ he continued.

‘Why not?’ asked Maurice.

‘Because every time they play someone always ends up going to the nurse’s office with blood pouring from their nose. And they say I never speak either. They say I’m scared.’

‘And is that why they hit you?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘They say it’s just a game.’

‘Well, it seems like a stupid game to me,’ said Maurice, and Daniel looked up at him now, wounded by the irritation in his father’s voice. ‘Just stay away from them from now on, all right?’ he continued. ‘You’re only seven years old, after all. I don’t want you acting like you’re in Fight Club .’

‘What’s Fight Club ?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Just don’t let your friends hit you, and don’t you hit anyone either. Especially not the girls. We got lucky this time, there’s no lawsuit, but remember, this is America. People here will sue you just for looking at them the wrong way in the street and, if they find out that we have a little money, then they’ll try to find a way to take it off us.’

‘Are we rich?’ asked Daniel.

‘We’re comfortable. You don’t have to worry, put it that way. But we’re nowhere near as rich as most people who live in this city. So we have to hold on to what’s ours and not let anyone steal it from us. Okay?’

The boy nodded. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Stealing is bad.’

Maurice smiled. ‘Stealing is very bad,’ he agreed. ‘Only really bad people take things that don’t belong to them. Now, it’s time for bed, don’t you think?’

Henry Rowe had been new to the school that year. His family were originally from Belfast, Catholics who lived on the junction where the Falls Road met Iveagh Drive, but his mother, sister and he had relocated to Harrogate in 1980 to escape the Troubles. Even though he’d heard reports on the news of the bombing campaign in England and was vaguely aware of the hunger strikes taking place in the H-Block of the Maze Prison, Maurice had almost no interest in what was taking place on the island next to his own and, at fourteen, the concept of death, such a distant and other-worldly idea, bored him. Politics, he believed, was for other people and while he longed to be set free from the daily tedium of his home life, he had scant interest in the causes that his peers wore, quite literally, like badges of honour on their school uniforms. Only when the rumour went around that Henry Rowe’s father had been murdered by the IRA for betraying them was Maurice’s interest piqued. That would make a good idea for a story, he thought: a teenage boy, forced to relocate to a strange country, gradually begins to understand his father’s criminal past . He might have been out of step with his classmates when it came to their political concerns but Maurice already knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life, which was more than most of them could claim.