Gabriel's Gift

  He went to work.

  In the glass-walled world, listening to music by Lester Jones, Gabriel liked to watch himself smoking a cigarette in a kooky hat and exotic waistcoat, as if he were a movie character. Adjusting the angle of the mirror, he could pretend to be someone else, any woman he wanted to be or have, particularly if he had painted his toenails in some dainty shade and was wearing his mother’s rings, necklaces and shoes. He preferred the ones with straps and heels, or anything that resembled a cross between a dagger and a boat. Low-heeled sandals did nothing for him. Perhaps they were an acquired taste. His mother, to his chagrin, didn’t wear boots any more.

  When he was in the ‘shoe’ mood, the different characters he brought together enacted rumbustious scenes as he tore in and out of the mirror’s eye, a crowd of actors in one body. It wasn’t an uncreative pastime. If, like all children, he was a pervert, he was also a film director and screenwriter.

  Today, however, he wasn’t in a ‘shoe’ mood. Earlier he had thrown a sheet over the mirror. He wanted to draw. A thought had remained in his mind from watching TV the other night. As far as he could remember, it went something like this: art is what you do when other people leave the room.

  Left in his mother’s room, he turned the pages of the art book until something attracted his attention.

  He found himself looking at a picture of a pair of boots – gnarled, broken, old work boots. Often, when he wanted to draw, he copied something, to warm up. He decided to work in charcoal. As he sketched, the boots came easily, the lines seeming to make themselves in the way his legs did when running, without persuasion.

  After a few minutes he noticed an unusual smell. He went to the door to see if Hannah was standing outside the room, as she was a person around whom different odours seemed to congregate, like bums on a street corner. He could hear her moving about downstairs in the kitchen. Probably she was dyeing her hair, which she did at least once a fortnight: this involved her putting a plastic bag on her head, which didn’t stop strings of dark colour running down her face, until she resembled a Christmas pudding.

  No; the smell wasn’t her.

  Turning around, he saw that in the middle of the room were the boots he had copied from the book.

  He walked around them, before going closer and squatting down. They smelt of dung, mud, the countryside and grass.

  He picked the boots up, touched them, slipped off his shoes and tried them on, shuffled a little way, and collapsed. He couldn’t stop laughing in surprise and perplexity. When he tired of this, he returned to the sketchbook. In the centre of the page was a boot-shaped hole. As he turned the page, the boots were sucked back onto it, and everything returned to normal.

  Or did it?

  He looked about fearfully. An eerie terror, like a ghost, had swished into the room. The purple knob of the wardrobe handle seemed like one of Hannah’s eyes. Perhaps it had detached itself from her face and flown up here to spy. He was reminded of a picture by Marc Chagall that featured a barn-like house with a huge all-seeing brown eye in the roof. When Gabriel returned the stare, the eye turned back into a dull rough surface.

  He was disturbed but excited by what he’d done. It didn’t seem like a dangerous ability. But it was wrong to mess with magic, wasn’t it? He didn’t know. Who would know? Parents and teachers were there to be believed in, or at least argued with. If they no longer functioned, or, like his father, were blasted by doubt, where was there to turn for the rules? Who knew what was going on?

  He did what he always did at times like this: consulted his twin brother, Archie, truly his other half.

  There would today – if fate hadn’t fingered one of them – be two identical boys sitting side by side in this room, one born a few breaths later, clutching the heel of the other. Gabriel would be talking to, and looking at, himself and not-himself, face to face with his own features, worn by another.

  Instead, the dead brother, alive inside the living half, had become a magic, and wiser, boy – Gabriel’s daemon or personal spirit.

  Gabriel’s father still talked of how proud he had been, pushing his two sons up a hill in the tank of a double pushchair, face into the wind, to the park. Wherever he went with them, they drew crowds and comment. ‘Two for the price of one,’ he would say, standing back so others could look at, converse with or tickle his boys. ‘Double trouble,’ he’d add fondly.

  Then, aged two and a half, one boy died from meningitis. It was a miracle, the doctors said, that the other survived.

  How could Gabriel and his parents ever recover? For a long time he had been an imprisoned prince, living with an elusive woman who had gained a child and lost one. She could be both indifferent and passionate. He had never learned how to convert the one into the other, except in his imagination, where he could do anything, apart from be with other people; that was, he guessed, the hardest art of all.

  When Gabriel was four, he almost drowned in the sea, his father running in to save him. At this, Mum almost drowned in sadness and terror herself. Afterwards, she had become too careful with Gabriel, not letting him live for fear he might die. Worry was like an engine that kept people alive. Fortunately, her husband had a reckless, frivolous, streak, which stopped them all from suffocating, but she had entered a zone of fear that she was unable to leave. When he was young, they rarely left the house.

  Gabriel didn’t remember Archie outside of the many photographs of the twins together, displayed in the hall, his parents’ bedroom and the living room. These precious framed pictures were never touched, moved or commented on, but they had always disturbed Gabriel for one important reason. His parents didn’t know which boy was which. His mother claimed that, when Archie was alive, they and they alone could tell the two apart. But recently his father had admitted that he had given one boy a dose of medicine twice, and that sometimes they put them in the wrong cots and didn’t realize the mistake until the morning.

  This made Gabriel wonder whether they had been permanently mixed up. Perhaps he was Archie and Gabriel was dead. Certainly, he was always aware of his brother’s absence, and whenever he saw a pair of twins he wanted to rush over and tell them or their mother that there were two of him, too; it was just that one of them was a shadow.

  ‘Will Archie come back?’ he liked to ask Mum, from the age of six. They had gone to visit his grave, as they always did on the anniversary of his death. Gabriel’s birthday – their birthday – was always sad, too.

  ‘No,’ she would say sharply. ‘Never, never.’

  ‘Does he hear us talking about him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he think?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he see?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even black?’

  ‘No. He sees nothing. Nothing for ever.’

  ‘Is he in heaven as well as under the ground?’

  ‘He could be. Gabriel –’

  ‘With his friends?’

  ‘Gabriel, we carry him with us, wherever we go, in our minds but he will be dead for ever and ever and ever.’

  She would say no more and would clench and unclench her fists as if trying to retain water in the palm of her hand.

  If Archie was in his mind, Gabriel always had someone to talk to. Together, the boys could conspire against their parents. If Gabriel didn’t fidget and listened carefully he could hear Archie, for Archie looked out for his brother and was sensible and always knew what to do. Sometimes, if he felt frivolous, Gabriel would call up Archie by singing ‘Two of Us’ by the Beatles.

  Now Gabriel became silent so as to hear his brother’s voice whispering within his body.

  Archie was saying not to be afraid; Gabriel should go on drawing. If the objects became real, it wasn’t bad or black magic, just an unusual gift that could be of use. When Gabriel hesitated, Archie said that things might change, but that he should go on to see what might happen.

  First, though, Gabriel would have to see if it might be possible to repeat
the strange exercise.

  On the next page of the art book was a picture of a yellow chair. He didn’t want to admit liking this kind of art, just right for the front of a postcard. He’d rather prefer the stronger stuff: toilets, blood and pierced eyeballs with titles like ‘Pulsations of the Slit’. The pretty pictures that had so shocked people in the old days had lost their power. But this one spoke to him now.

  It was, as Archie murmured, useful. There was no point being snobbish. Their father, who had plenty of curiosity but little taste, except in music, might like it. The last time Dad had rung, he said he’d found somewhere to live. He had taken a room in a big house not far away.

  ‘It’s a little bare and cold,’ he had said. ‘But there’s a bed and –’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Wardrobe.’

  What he needed were some bright pictures.

  ‘What did he say? What did he say?’ asked Gabriel’s mother, who had fortuitously overheard the conversation, no doubt by bending over and pressing her ear to the door.

  ‘Dad’s found a room.’

  ‘What sort of room?’

  ‘It’s bare and cold.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mum had giggled. ‘Very cold? But he hates the cold.’

  ‘He hasn’t got anywhere to sit.’

  He imagined his father standing up to read, eat and watch television, or leaning against the wall now and again, for relief.

  As Gabriel started to copy the chair, he began to feel he was bringing it into existence. He worked rapidly; it was like singing a song: once you’d started you shouldn’t think about it. When he had finished drawing and colouring in, he closed his eyes and looked up.

  There it was.

  He ran his hand over its ridges and curves. Gingerly, wondering whether it might collapse, he sat down. It was secure and comfortable. Gabriel stood on it, and danced a bit. It took his weight; this was a chair you could put your arse on and wiggle about.

  When he returned to his sketchbook and turned the page, the real chair disappeared, but his copy remained.

  The more he considered what he had done, the more disturbing he found it. Winking daffodils had tried to communicate with him. Dead brothers spoke within him. The earth, surely, had tilted and was trembling on its axis. Who would put it back before it tipped into eternity?

  To check that everything else was as he’d left it, he went down to the living room to find Hannah watching television, her wayward eyes flickering fitfully in the darkening room.

  ‘Hannah.’

  She looked about in surprise. ‘Bah!’

  ‘What?’ he said, grateful, almost, to hear another human voice.

  ‘Bath!’

  ‘Right.’

  She ran his bath.

  He could do it himself but he liked her to feel capable. Really, the poor woman, of all people, was only his mother’s conscience. Sometimes he wondered whether he thought about Hannah more than she thought about him.

  She was watching him. ‘Those clothes – to me give.’

  ‘What will you do with them?’

  ‘Wash.’

  ‘Hannah …’

  ‘No, you mama says – three days too long without washing clothes. Every day you change clothes – she has ordered.’

  ‘You know it takes me a few days to start feeling comfortable in anything. Thinking about new clothes makes me feel tired. And I haven’t got a girlfriend at the moment.’

  ‘Here!’

  He put on a dressing gown and handed her his clothes. ‘Still, as Dad says, never wear anything that is actually stiff. Hannah, he’s a funny guy.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘You should hear him. You’ll understand when you meet him some time.’

  ‘You mama say, he is fool.’

  ‘What? She’s a fool to say that.’

  Scowling, Hannah fetched clean towels.

  He locked the door, bathed quickly and went to his room to do more ‘homework’. When Hannah had checked on him and gone back to watch television, he crept into his mother’s room. He picked up the art books from the floor, and looked and thought, afraid he might cry.

  He had no idea what time his mother would come home; he had given up waiting for the hiss and rustle of her clothing, the trail of her perfume, the swing, fall and tickle of her hair, and her arms around him, pulling him into her. Samuel Beckett, whose play he had seen at school, produced by the local college, had been on to something: waiting was hard, wearing work, probably the worst torture of all, turning people into both victims and murderers in their minds.

  Since his father had left and she had got a job, Mum had changed in other ways. For a start she had acquired a new wardrobe.

  Late at night, when she came in to kiss him, she would wear a big fur-collared overcoat, jewellery and high heels. She would be accompanied by a symphony of new smells: the night air of unfamiliar parts of the city – he believed he could smell the East End on her at times, as well as aftershave, alcohol and marijuana. She had even, late in the evening, brought men he hadn’t met into the house. Loud music would be played, bottles would be emptied, and there’d be dancing. In the morning she’d forget who he was and call him ‘Sugar’.

  Now, back in his bedroom, lying in the dark, he heard the door open slowly. He was afraid; it had been too strange a day already.

  ‘Gabriel …’ whispered Hannah. ‘Are you in this world?’

  ‘At the moment.’

  ‘Something to tell.’

  ‘Mum’s going to be even later?’

  ‘Your dadda has ringed.’

  ‘Dad? It was him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Didn’t he want to speak to me?’

  ‘He offer a message to say he will pick you up tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s coming here?’

  ‘He taking you to him place.’

  ‘To his house for the night? Is it that Mum’s given permission?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he say what has happened to him? Is he all right?’

  ‘No. No more enquiry. Pack your vest and underpant.’

  It would be the first time he had stayed with his father. Gabriel had been hoping for this.

  ‘Sleep well,’ said Hannah. ‘Peace for me, tomorrow then.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An English expression: may you get lost in sweet dreams.’

  ‘I get. Thanks. Get lost to you and God bless you fresh cheeks all night.’

  ‘And all your fresh cheeks, Hannah.’

  Chapter Two

  After school the next day Gabriel was waiting at the living-room window with Hannah behind him. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them his father was at the gate.

  ‘Yes!’ Gabriel shouted. ‘Yes, yes!’ He turned to Hannah. ‘See, he did come.’

  ‘No noise,’ said Hannah. She was watching Dad warily.

  Even though he knew Gabriel’s mother was out at work, Dad didn’t come into the house but stood on the step with his back to the door, tapping his foot as Gabriel packed his drawing things and art books into his rucksack.

  Dad was unshaven, wore dark glasses and had his woollen hat pulled down. Gabriel remembered Mum saying to him, ‘Careful: people will take you for a burglar. A police record is the only recording you’re going to make!’

  ‘I’ll burgle your arse in a minute!’ he had replied, grabbing her.

  On good days he would be affectionate, always touching, kissing and hugging. But Mum said he was clumsy, and didn’t know how to touch.

  Under his hat Dad was balding; the hair he did have was pulled back by a rubber band he picked up off the street. The rest was straggly and frizzy. His jeans were ripped – ‘ventilation’ he called it – and he wore plimsolls, which gave him ‘uplift’. His idea of dressing up was to pull a fresh pair from a number of similar boxes he kept in the cellar.

  ‘Let’s get going,’ Dad said, hurrying Gabriel away from the house.

  Hannah stood at t
he window, mouthing, ‘Get lost!’

  Gabriel said, ‘I’ve been excited all day. Two houses instead of one. I’ll be like other kids now.’

  Gabriel was thinking of children whose absent parent felt so guilty they became eternally indulgent, and couldn’t stop giving them presents.

  ‘It’s a kind of flat, not a house,’ said Dad.

  To Gabriel’s surprise they didn’t go straight to Dad’s place, but to the V&A in South Kensington, walking around the old jars and pots in an agitated silence that Dad called ‘meditative’.

  Gabriel was used to his father taking him to see the latest work – the strangest stuff – by young artists working in squats, lofts and abandoned garages. Gabriel had looked at heads made of blood, hair and old skin; he had seen dissected animals, and strange photographs of body-parts. The only canvas he saw was Tracy Emin’s tent. Gabriel had learned that anything could be art. His father had no shame about knocking on the door of young artists he admired, and going in for ‘a chat’, since he knew they had been keen to talk about their work. Today, however, he wasn’t feeling ‘inquisitive’.

  Gabriel had started to draw seriously two years before, when his father hardly worked and was at home much of the time. There were no artists in the family, but perhaps Gabriel had turned to art and making films because it wasn’t something Dad had ever thought of doing.

  Unlike most musicians, Dad could read music as well as play several instruments pretty well. The house had been full of guitars; Dad also used to have a saxophone, a piano and a drum kit. At one time, in a garage near by, he had started to build his own harpsichord.

  From the age of fourteen, Dad had played in many longhaired, short-haired and now, mostly, bald bands. He could play in any style, and sing in only one. Gabriel’s mother called him Johnny-about-to-be-famous. Dad was smart enough to know that by his age you had either become successful, rich and pursued by lawyers, stalkers and the press, as some of his former friends had been, or you found something else to do. ‘Something else’, of course, was an admission of failure; ‘something else’ was the end.

  Worse than this, according to Mum, was to play pool in the pub every day with other ‘superannuated long-hairs in dirty jeans’, saying how the latest ‘beep-beep’ music wasn’t a patch on Jimi’s or Eric’s. This group of has-beens, who, as Gabriel once quipped, could hardly manage ‘joined-up talking’, only left the pub to attend AA meetings. Mum, who remembered being at the centre of the rock scene, wouldn’t have these bums in the house. At night Dad went to his mates’ houses to drink, jam and smoke dope.