The Book of Lost Things(8)

Now he was sitting by the river, and his whole world was about to change again.

“You’re going to have a little brother or sister,” David’s father said. “Rose is going to have a baby.”

David stopped eating his chips. They tasted wrong. He felt pressure building in his head, and for a moment he thought he might topple from the bench and suffer another of his attacks, but somehow he made himself stay upright.

“Are you going to marry Rose?” he asked.

“I expect so,” said his father. David had heard Rose and his father discussing the subject the previous week, when Rose had come to visit and David was supposed to be in bed. Instead, he had sat on the stairs and listened to them talking. He did that, sometimes, although he always went to bed when the talking ceased and he heard the smack of a kiss, or Rose laughing in a low, throaty way. The last time he’d listened, Rose had spoken about “people” and how these “people” were talking. She didn’t like what they were saying. That was when the subject of marriage came up, but David didn’t hear any more because his father left the room to put the kettle on and David only barely avoided being seen on the stairs. He thought his father might have suspected something because he came upstairs to check on David moments later. He kept his eyes closed and pretended to be asleep, which seemed to satisfy his father, but David was too nervous to go back to the stairs again.

“I just want you to know something, David,” his father was saying to him. “I love you, and that will never change, no matter who else we share our life with. I loved your mum too, and I’ll always love her, but being with Rose has helped me a lot these last few months. She’s a nice person, David. She likes you. Try to give her a chance, won’t you?”

David didn’t reply. He swallowed hard. He had always wanted a brother or sister, but not like this. He wanted it to be with his mum and dad. This wasn’t right. This wouldn’t really be his brother or sister. It would come out of Rose. It wouldn’t be the same.

His father placed his arm around David’s shoulder. “Well, do you have anything to say?” he asked.

“I’d like to go home now,” said David.

His father kept his arm around David for a second or two more, then let it drop. He seemed to sag slightly, as though someone had just let a little air out of him.

“Fine,” he said sadly. “Let’s go home then.”

*

Six months later, Rose gave birth to a little boy, and David and his father left the house in which David had grown up and went to live with Rose and David’s new half brother, Georgie. Rose lived in a great big old house northwest of London, three stories high with large gardens at front and back and forest surrounding it. The house had been in her family for generations, according to David’s father, and was at least three times as big as their own house. David had not wanted to move at first, but his father had gently explained the reasons to him. It was closer to his new place of work, and because of the war he was going to have to spend more and more time there. If they lived closer to it, then he would be able to see David more often, and perhaps even come home for his lunch sometimes. His father also told David that the city was going to become more dangerous, and that out here they would all be a little safer. The German planes were coming, and while David’s father was sure that Hitler would be beaten in the end, things were going to get much worse before they got better.

David was not entirely sure what his father now did for a living. He knew that his dad was very good at math, and that he had been a teacher at a big university until recently. Then he had left the university and gone to work for the government in an old country house outside the city. There were army barracks nearby, and soldiers manned the gates that led to the house and patrolled its grounds. Usually when David asked his father about his work, he would just tell him that it involved checking figures for the government. But on the day that they finally moved from their house to Rose’s, his father seemed to feel that David was owed something more.

“I know that you like stories and books,” his father said, as they followed the moving van out of the city. “I suppose you wonder why I don’t like them as much as you do. Well, I do like stories, in a way, and that’s part of my job. You know how sometimes a story seems to be about one thing, but in fact it’s about another thing entirely? There’s a meaning hidden in it, and that meaning has to be teased out?”

“Like Bible stories,” said David. On Sundays, the priest would often explain the Bible story that had just been read out loud. David didn’t always listen because the priest was very dull indeed, but it was surprising what the priest could see in stories that seemed quite simple to David. In fact, the priest appeared to like making them more complicated than they were, probably because it meant that he could talk for longer. David didn’t care much for church. He was still angry at God for what had happened to his mother, and for bringing Rose and Georgie into his life.

“But some stories aren’t meant to have their meaning understood by just anyone,” David’s father continued. “They’re meant for only a handful of people, and so the meaning is very carefully hidden. It can be done using words, or numbers, or sometimes both together, but the purpose is the same. It’s to prevent anyone else who sees it from interpreting it. Unless you know the code, it has no meaning.