The Gift by Peter Dickinson

Author:Peter Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

7

PENNY

Tuesday night was Mum’s bridge class—the first real chance.

“Dad, I want to talk to you.”

“Not now, old boy. I’m a bit fagged.”

“It’s serious, Dad.”

“What’s up? Trouble at school? Some of those young roughs …”

“It’s about a man—I don’t know his name—who wears a blue suit, blue everything in fact, and a black hat.”

“I think I know the guy you mean,” said Dad casually. “What about him?”

“There’s another bloke—a little man with a pale face—and a big, strong, rather stupid bloke. I call them Monkey and Wolf.”

“That’s right. I’ve seen them a couple of times in the pub, with Trevor.”

“Monkey’s got a job at the new shopping center site, and Wolf had one.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you send them up there?”

“What the hell are you getting at?”

“They’re friends of yours, aren’t they, Dad?”

“What are you on about, lad? I’m not a snob—you know that. If I see a bloke at a pub who I’ve interviewed a week before, naturally I ask him how he’s getting on. And if we both happen to use the same pub, of course we have a bit of a chat now and then. I’m damned if I’m going to go changing pubs because I’ve given one or two of the regulars their jobs.”

He sounded quite angry about it, but otherwise not at all put out.

“You said you’d gone off The Painted Lady,” said Davy.

Dad laughed.

“I’m not a snob,” he said. “I didn’t say Mum wasn’t.”

“Monkey only got that job,” said Davy, “because Wolf broke the ankle of the man who drove the digger before. And Monkey didn’t really know how to drive that particular digger. I was in Mr. Venn’s office, and he was pretty angry about not getting a driver who knew the machine.”

“Oh, for God’s sake …” began Dad, then changed tack. “Why the hell do you call him Wolf? Dick’s pretty dumb, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly except by being clumsy.”

This was it. Davy knew now that he wouldn’t get anywhere by relying only on what he’d seen with his ordinary sight. It was true Dad had known the men in the Jaguar before Wolf and Monkey had got their jobs, but he’d probably have an answer to that. No wonder Penny had refused to help tackle him.

Davy thought of Granny. Perhaps she would never speak to him again, if he broke his promise. She would think of him as another Dad. That would be the sort of grief …

“Do you know anything about the gift, Dad?” he said. “The family gift?”

He needn’t have added the last three words. Dad’s face had already lost its flush and become gray-white, like something dead. And his hand had flashed to his chest and gripped there, over his heart. Davy waited, his own heart slamming, until a little color had seeped back into those ghastly cheeks.

“The reason I call him Wolf,” he said carefully, “is that there’s something—two things—wrong with his mind. The first thing is that he thinks in horrible violent pictures all the time, shootings and smashings and burnings.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.