Gabriel's Gift Read online

  Gabriel waited at the bus stop. He’d count to a hundred. If the bus didn’t come, he’d go back. He started to count; he lost his place and started again. He decided to do it backwards. The bus came. He got on and started up to the top deck. He couldn’t just go home and think about something else.

  As the bus was gathering speed, Gabriel jumped down the stairs and threw himself off, scuffing his knee and grazing his hands. He couldn’t forget how, months ago, his father had rescued him from the ‘drum’.

  He went back and kneeled beside his father’s bed, talking into Dad’s face. He looked so relaxed for the first time in months that Gabriel didn’t like to disturb him.

  ‘Wake up,’ he said. ‘You can sleep later,’

  Dad stroked Gabriel’s face. ‘It is later. I was dreaming that I was at an airport but they wouldn’t let me on the planes and I was crying. Gabriel, if I’m asleep, at least I’m not feeling wretched.’

  ‘You know what Mum says?’

  ‘Who cares? What does she think?’

  ‘She says you’re useless, a waster, lazy and slow. What kind of future will I have watching you sit on your arse and drink all day?

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘She says I can’t see you if you’re going to depress me with your hopelessness and self-pity.’

  ‘It’s what she would say. Everyone says it.’

  ‘I don’t. If I don’t have a proper dad, who will look after me? I still need you, Dad. I want you to do this thing for me.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Go to Jake’s as arranged.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood, Gabriel. You know how I’m feeling.’

  ‘You’ll cheer up when you’re there. We need the money. Dad –’

  ‘Why are you getting upset?’

  ‘Your stupidity makes me upset! Give me a drink!’

  ‘Hey, put that down right now! It’s the strongest there is – you’ll puke! Take it easy, little guy. I don’t like to see you like this!’

  Gabriel said, ‘I’m not leaving until you get up!’

  ‘Right, right,’ said Dad. ‘I see. Please put the beer down.’

  ‘Get up, then!’

  ‘Wait …’

  Gabriel watched Dad slowly begin to move, as if he were discovering for the first time that he had a body. When Dad got to his feet Gabriel gave a little cheer.

  Dad began to throw his clothes about.

  ‘Boy, help me find my razor. I’m not going to cut my throat, though I’ve been considering it for the last few days. I’ll shave. You’re the only person I’d do this for. I wouldn’t take orders from anyone else!’

  Gabriel went up the hall to borrow an iron; together they pressed Dad’s white shirt, holding it up and turning the sleeves and tail here and there, like explorers who’d come across an object they’d never seen before.

  ‘Better clean your teeth,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘I smell now?’

  ‘You’ve been drinking. And you smell of fish.’

  ‘This is rock ‘n’ roll.’

  ‘Not today, I’m afraid.’

  Dad asked, ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘A bit better.’

  He made his father leave with plenty of time to spare, as Dad used to do with Gabriel himself, before school. This time, as Dad had his guitar and it wasn’t far, they walked.

  Dad moaned all the way like a morose teenager. ‘Why would anyone want to be taught to play the guitar? Play is playing. I learned from records.’

  ‘Take it easy with the philosophy,’ suggested Gabriel. ‘Hold the five-pound notes at the front of your mind.’

  ‘Money’s not everything. It’s just that I’ve been feeling a bit low these days –’

  ‘You’ll be telling me you’ve got a tummy ache.’

  ‘People only ever learn what they want to learn, just as you can’t force them to eat.’

  Gabriel said quickly, ‘Maybe you can introduce them to food they’ve never had before.’

  This encouraged Dad, but Gabriel could see that his pride was bruised by the possibility of this job. He wanted to see himself as a working musician. Teaching was the death of invention and certainly of pop glamour. Somehow Dad had to be convinced that it was possible to instruct as well as to play and perform.

  The two of them stood outside a big house with iron gates, like menials beyond a medieval castle. Gabriel held the guitar in one hand and his father’s hand in the other, for fear he would slip away.

  ‘Christ,’ said his father. ‘You wouldn’t catch Jimmy Page doing this.’

  ‘You’re not –’ Gabriel stopped himself.

  Dad didn’t hear; he was looking up at the house. ‘Look how posh they are – I expect they have their pyjamas dry-cleaned.’

  The gates opened automatically as a robotic voice on an invisible intercom said, ‘Visitors, please enter now.’

  In the entrance hall they passed a line of oriental staff in white uniforms with shiny buttons in which Gabriel could see a fish-eyed distortion of his father’s worried face. Being given instructions by a man in a black suit, the servants had their hands crossed in front of them, as if they were naked and didn’t want their intimate parts exposed.

  Gabriel gazed up at a wide curved staircase and imagined a singing diva in a trailing white dress coming down it. Around them it was as busy as backstage at the opera. The staff and producer’s assistants hurried between wide rooms containing gilt and velvet furniture, overhung by intricate chandeliers. There must have been a fancy-dress party going on, as little girls dressed as princesses and boys in pirate costumes were ushered about by nannies.

  The kid himself, Carlo, was about two years older than Gabriel. He was brought to them – or rather, almost dragged across – by a woman whom Gabriel guessed, from his knowledge of Gothic tales, to be the housekeeper. She rid herself of the boy – if he’d been a thing, she’d have flung him down, and if she’d been allowed, no doubt she’d have stamped on the thing, too – and disappeared with some relief and haste.

  Carlo was bony and crop-haired, with a criminal grimace, wearing a Chelsea shirt over torn baggy jeans; his feet were bare and dirty.

  ‘How are you today?’ said Dad. ‘This is my boy, Gabriel. He goes to Chapman High. D’you know it?’

  ‘Na.’

  ‘Where do you go?’

  ‘Nowhere … if I can ’elp it.’

  ‘What, if anything, do you want?’

  There was a silence. At last the boy said, ‘A tattoo.’

  ‘Right. Where?’

  ‘On me bollocks and round me arse.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dad. ‘Interesting. Not a lot of people are going to enjoy it there.’

  ‘’Ow d’you know?’

  ‘I don’t, really. I don’t do tattoos, but I can play guitar at bit.’

  Carlo had undoubtedly been well brought up but was unable to put one word beside another without grunting and snarling between them, and he suffered to look anyone in the eye.

  ‘This way, I suppose,’ Carlo mumbled, after the three of them had been shuffling about. To Gabriel he said, ‘You coming an’ all?’

  ‘D’you want me to?’ murmured Gabriel.

  ‘It’s up to you.’

  Carlo started up the stairs.

  ‘Public school education,’ muttered Dad to Gabriel. ‘One of those schools for talented parents. At least the working class have manners. A Chelsea supporter too, of all things. I’m off.’

  ‘Wait.’ Gabriel held on to his father with both hands. ‘Come on. At least let’s have a look.’

  Gabriel and his father followed Carlo up the staircase to a vast living room with a view of the Thames. There the boy stood with his back to a bookcase and stuck his arse out. At this the bookcase smoothly swung open into his part of the house.

  Behind the bookcase Carlo had two or three teenage rooms, including a kitchen and bathroom. It was a rich squalor the boy had made for himself; among the mounds of clothes, magazines a
nd CDs, Gabriel noticed computers, a drum kit, various guitars and, in the distance, a shiny grand piano. There was a basket containing dozens of pairs of sunglasses.

  Carlo sat in a window, turned away from them, craning his neck as if he urgently needed to inspect Battersea.

  ‘D’you want to play something … on the guitar?’ said Dad. ‘Or do you want to do something else? I don’t give a –’ Gabriel gave his father a scalding look. ‘I don’t really mind. It’s your time.’ He was looking at the boy in annoyance and sat there with his coat buttoned up.

  Carlo shrugged.

  Gabriel was becoming apprehensive, wondering how long Dad would remain patient. If his father walked out, it would be the end, his teaching career terminated within twenty minutes. Gabriel had no idea what sort of job his father would do, anyway. It was true that Dad could play; he could also scratch his backside and fiddle in his ear at the same time: it didn’t follow that he could instruct anyone in ambidexterity.

  Carlo did, at last, decide to say something. ‘You know what you are?’

  ‘What am I?’ said Dad. ‘Been trying to find out for years.’

  ‘You’re a … You’re a …’

  Dad said, ‘I’m waiting here, but you haven’t got the balls to say it, little big guy. If you do it’ll be annoying, but at least it will be rock ‘n’ roll.’

  ‘Wanker,’ said Carlo.

  Gabriel was holding his breath. Dad winked at him.

  Dad unzipped his acoustic guitar and lightly strummed what sounded like a pleasant folksy tune.

  ‘What d’you think?’ said Dad.

  ‘Wanker scumbag,’ the boy repeated.

  ‘Hey!’ said Gabriel.

  ‘What is it?’ said the boy. ‘Something to say?’

  ‘Dad –’ said Gabriel

  ‘Dad …’ imitated the boy. ‘Is that your daddy-poo?’

  Gabriel’s eyes fixed on a Coke bottle on the table. He intertwined his fingers and clicked them. Carlo was sneering. Gabriel started to get up, breathing hard. Carlo got to his feet, too. The boys moved towards one another until they were face to face.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Carlo.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Gabriel.

  Dad said, ‘Sit down, Gabriel. You, too, Carlo. Sit down! Now, cool it, people. Cool it! Jesus, I’m sweating all over the place now. Good.’

  When the boys had regained their places Dad lay the guitar down and looked about enquiringly with meanly flashing eyes. Things weren’t right for him and they weren’t getting better. ‘Funky Fingers’ had, after all, played with Lester Jones at Madison Square Garden. For three nights they’d ripped the place apart. No one, apart from the Stones, had been that good.

  Dad removed his coat, tossed the Coke bottle across the room into a bin, and picked up one of the kid’s electric guitars.

  ‘Carlo, tell me something,’ he said. ‘What d’you call this?’

  ‘Some people call it a guitar.’

  Dad plugged it in and stroked the strings. A tinny noise emerged.

  ‘What the hell’s that – a weeping mouse?’ said Dad.

  The boy shrugged. ‘Call it what you like, man, I don’t give a monkey’s.’

  Dad got to his feet.

  Gabriel’s father, in most ways by now a respectable middle-aged father, stepped back and took a kick at one of the expensive speakers, his boot breaking through the front of it. They would, surely, be ejected now.

  Dad, grinning with satisfaction at this memory of rock ‘n’ roll, turned the volume up to ‘unbearable’, and scythed across the strings. Ablaze of noise and jagged feedback penetrated the three of them like fiery arrows. The boy, who had sat up at Dad’s attitude, seemed to stagger under the noise.

  ‘Why whisper?’ said Dad. ‘This is the devil’s music. Or it is when it’s done properly.’

  It was a blues number, one of Gabriel’s favourites, ‘Mean Old World’. Dad was banging his foot and singing, though they couldn’t hear a word but saw only his opened mouth so that he resembled one of Bacon’s screaming Popes.

  Crouched over as if to avoid a hail of bullets, two of the staff ran into the room with their hands over their ears. They struggled to close the windows and to indows, and, make absolutely sure, dragged the curtains across. Then they scurried out across the vibrating floor, whimpering.

  The boy grabbed a guitar, turned up the volume, stabbed and twisted his foot in the front of another speaker – at least he had learned that aggression was imperative for a vivid performance – and started to play, pursuing his teacher into the distance.

  The boy managed a decent bluesy sound and when Dad paused, keeping the rhythm, the boy took over.

  As his father worked, letting Carlo play along with him, not forcing him to do anything, and the boy began to see he could do it, Gabriel could settle down to biting his fingernails and chewing his cheek. Gabriel had never worried about anything as much as Lester’s picture, though perhaps he didn’t have to take any action at the moment. Lester might not become aware of the picture’s whereabouts for a long time, and even then, might not realize that the picture was a forgery. Maybe, in the future, he could write Lester a letter. Dad had the address.

  When Gabriel and his father got up to leave he noticed, to his surprise, Carlo’s father standing in the door. The film producer was small, jovial and bald, in a good suit without a tie. With the top button of his shirt done up and his Adam’s apple seeming to still bob with the beat, his head looked constrained, like a boil about to burst.

  Dad had told Gabriel that Jake Ambler was so busy he would invite people who sought meetings with him to sit in his car on the way to the airport, or even to walk around the building with him, as he ate his lunch or went to the toilet.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Jake said, following Dad and Gabriel down the stairs, tearing notes from an impressive wad and pushing them into Dad’s hand. ‘You deserve this. I enjoyed that so much I felt like getting my leather trousers let out.’

  Dad turned and looked at him, nervous of any condescension. There was none; the man was looking at him gratefully.

  Jake said quietly, ‘Carlo didn’t say anything offensive did he?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well … you know … that you were a self-abuser.’

  ‘No.’ said Dad. ‘He didn’t mention anything like that.’

  ‘I’m relieved. I can’t seem to find the right tone with him. He’s my only son, Rex. It’s terrible: the boy has strange turns.’

  ‘He does?’

  ‘When he goes to sleep he thinks flies walk over his body. He thinks policemen are watching him. We sent him to that therapist that people have started seeing, the one who wrote the book, Deedee Osgood. Have you met her yet? Carlo seemed to get very attached to her, but it didn’t cure him. He won’t learn anything but the one thing he’s interested in is music. He’s either playing or listening, all the time. Music can make people feel better, can’t it?’

  ‘It’s always had that effect on me.’

  ‘Please, will you try it with him, then?’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘Teaching him stuff – anything that you know – through music.’

  ‘I’d like to be of help, Jake. I’m flattered and all that. But I’ve never done it before. I’m not qualified.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. The boy has worshipped Lester for years. He wouldn’t show it, but he was very excited when he heard you were coming. He’ll see you, I know he will. Please, give it a go – just for a while. If it doesn’t work out, nothing will have been lost.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ said Dad. ‘I know how the boy feels. For years I could hardly speak. I didn’t like other people standing too close to me. Music was the only thing that went into my head. Let me think.’

  Dad walked away and seemed to be thinking a bit, though mostly he was fiddling with his hair. Jake and Gabriel watched him. At last Dad agreed to come by every other day to give the boy lessons.

  ‘I don’t know what I�
�ll do,’ said Dad. ‘But I don’t mind telling him some of the things I know.’

  ‘I’m delighted!’ said Jake, shaking his hand. ‘You must come round for dinner. I’ll get some people in that you might like. Can my driver drop you anywhere? He’s at your disposal – both of you.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Rex, before Gabriel could say anything. ‘We like the street. We’re used to having our feet on the ground.’

  When Gabriel and Dad were turning the corner, Carlo ran up behind them and shoved tapes of his father’s films into Gabriel’s arms and whispered, ‘He’s all right, your father.’

  ‘Thanks for saying that,’ said Gabriel.

  Dad lit a joint and they walked away through the cold air.

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t smack that kid across the room,’ said Gabriel. ‘I was getting ready to.’

  ‘I noticed. You could have easily taken the skinny little bastard. But it wouldn’t have created a good impression with his old man if you’d put that bottle through his head.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t bother me one bit,’ said Dad. ‘I’m glad we went. But I am exhausted. I couldn’t go through all that again, even if they paid me. I’ll ring and say I’m emigrating to Africa.’

  ‘No you won’t. Surely we didn’t go through all that for nothing?’

  Dad said, ‘Do you know why people become teachers?’

  ‘In my experience, because they like being listened to.’

  ‘That’s a good reason for being one, then, if you have something to say.’ Dad counted the money three times and whistled. ‘To think – all these years I’ve been passing on my opinions in pubs for nothing!’ He said quickly, ‘You know, when that kid started cursing me, I remembered that my mum was a primary school teacher. I’d sort of forgotten that. She was devoted to it, too. She was hardly at home and when she was there she was preparing for the next day. We’d run into her adoring ex-pupils all over the place, waving and saying hello. Whenever I went to the school there was always a kid holding on to her. I hated that.’