The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard

Author:Richard Beard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

Go back, to the instants before his death. Nicky made so many schoolboy errors. He had a somewhat arrogant manner, as regretted in his school report for Summer 1977. He was a little overconfident at present in Maths and Art, but there was no reason his confidence should stop there: a year later he was in the Colts Cricket XI, taking unbelievable catches. He beat boys his age at anything, so it was no wonder his head was bigger than his boots.

The school had not worn Nicky down, not yet, and in the summer of ’78 he remained too self-assured. One danger of self-assurance was underestimating the risks of a final swim as the tide surged in. If Nicky had been less self-confident, I might have been able to discourage him. Unfortunately, in terms of his character traits, he was notably assertive among older children. In the Final Order of Summer Term 1978 his age is given as 9.3 in a class with an average age, usefully provided, of 10.2. Though the smallest in the class his agility and coordination make him always in the fore in both formal and games activities.

If Nicky is eleven months younger than the average, there are children in his class who are eleven months older than the average; a two-year span across the class as a whole. Nicky is competing on a daily basis with eleven-year-olds, the same age as me. Nicky is always in the fore. He takes the lead, though the smallest in the class. He comes to believe that no feat is beyond him. He asks Mum for one last swim, even though she’s packing up the camp and the tide is rushing in and everyone knows our day at the beach is almost at an end. Nicky has the idea—his idea—to leave the wide-open beach where the others can see us. We are special. We deserve the once-in-a-lifetime patch of sand behind the large rock with the best waves that no one but us has dared to test.

In Lazarus Is Dead I introduced an element of competition between the brothers. At the time I thought I did this for narrative reasons, because the rivalry between them created a plausible chain of cause and effect. The younger brother, Amos, wants to be first at whatever they do—first to run into the water, first to swim out deeper—but fiction isn’t shaped from thin air. All novelists say this, if pressed. The subconscious must be persuaded to open.

Nick-nack paddywhack, give the dog a bone.

Fictions aren’t about creating something from nothing, but something from everything: Nicky was a smaller boy in a class where other children might be two years older. He was constantly having to prove himself.

Well done, Nick-Nack, well done coming first, but keep trying.

In his letters Dad stokes Nicky’s ambition, but coming first is only part of the problem. Nicky’s boarding-school education puts the comfort of home out of reach. This means that in his letters Nicky is always looking backward

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