Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope

Author:Joanna Trollope
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

David parked his car where he always left it outside his parents' house, with two wheels on the sloping verge to get it out of the roadway. Lynne had never liked him to do this because of the marks his tires left, in wet weather, but Ralph didn't mind. Ralph, David reflected gratefully, climbing out and locking the doors, didn't usually mind anything if the reasons for it were practical.

He looked across the roof of his car at the facade of the house, at the metal-framed windows that Ralph had always said he'd only change when it became necessary, at the brick porch where Lynne left a little daily crate of washed empty bottles for the milkman, at the frothing clematis which David remembered Ralph planting, remembered Ralph giving a slug of gin to, out of a cut-glass tumbler. "Clematis like gin," Ralph had said, "even more than me."

He moved round the car and across the verge to open the gate. Nathalie used to swing on that gate, doubled over, her knickers showing, until she was good and dizzy. His own version of dizzy had been taking his bike up to the top of the steep cul-de-sac a hundred yards away and freewheeling madly down it, forbidding himself even to touch the brakes. It was a pity that getting older made it so much harder to access such pure sensation, made him bring his mind to bear on the external senses, with all the attendant doubts and questions. He put his hand involuntarily to his mouth. If he freewheeled down Mortimer Close now, he'd be fretting about breaking his teeth.

The light was on in the workshop that lay to one side of the house. Ralph had built it himself, the year after he and Lynne moved in, the year they began on the long, slow, rigorous process of adopting Nathalie. For months and months Ralph had been out in most weathers, in his boiler suit, building his workshop, while inside Lynne sewed curtains and planned fantasy nurseries. All David's life, Ralph's workshop had been a place of sanctuary, a place where every dilemma gave the impression of being solvable with the turn of a screwdriver, the planing of rough edges. He went quickly now across the grass in front of the house—Lynne might be watching out for him—and opened the workshop door.

Ralph was sitting at his workbench under the central glaring strip light, with his spectacles on. In front of him lay an open manual displaying diagrams of the position of a cam belt in a car engine.

"Hi, Dad."

Ralph smiled down at his manual.

"Daylight robbery."

"What is?"

"What garages charge for fitting these things."

David moved to look down over Ralph's shoulder.

"Look at that," Ralph said. "Piece of cake, to fit a thing like that."

"Only if you have the right tools."

"Exactly," Ralph said. He stood up and took off his spectacles. "And would Peugeot sell me precisely the right tools? Not bloody likely." He put an arm round David's shoulders. "How are you, son?"

David looked down.

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