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deserve it—apart from cocking everything up? And how did Dad the Lad
become Mad Dad, so mad they keep him tranked up to his sad bloodshot eyeballs,
even now, in this very county, as this tape is running . . . He has to pause
again. This is an excess of home truths.
There’s at least twenty minutes of the tape to run. Pauline is presumably
still studying old industrial sites across the Moor, or even the disused railway
line. Who knows the workings of his earth-mother’s mind? Perhaps she’ll be
almost relieved that he’s found The Life skills Show—revelation will clear this
stifling air, stale exhalations of dead time. Press on with it.
Her face is now lit from below. Everything else is darkness. As she opens
her mouth, there’s an odd rattling sound, an irregular percussive din that
threatens to over-ride her voice, she’s been mixed way down by those
docu-drama idiots—then he feels the draught from the billowing curtains and
realises the noise isn’t a superimposed sound-effect, it’s real balls of ice, hissing
rain, hailstones crashing on the flagstones outside.
The copper-grey overcast is split by a blinding slash of forked lightning.
And, almost instantly, wave-fronts of thunder roll over his mother’s testimony.
He manages to pick up the end of a crackling sentence:
“. . . that was how he discovered his allegedly transcendental knowledge.
His so-called Lore. He was a Lore unto himself, of course. It wasn’t just the
money and time he’d spent on all this—although it was my boring job that was
subsidising his hip shop—it was the hours you had to spend listening to the
visions, the utterings, the conspiracy theories. But that was only the beginning
. . .”
Light shivers, thunder rumbles again from its epicentre, rain spatters
through the open windows, a few silvery pellets of hail roll across the carpet.
But Lucas ignores them, he shuffles along on his knees to grab the control,
turn up the volume, or perhaps he should freeze and rewind, catch her in
mid-act, he mustn’t miss a tiny thing.
There’s a sudden click. He turns. For a second, Lucas sees double. On the
screen, there’s his pale mother, hollow-eyed, blurred, immobilised, hand
poised to brush away a long strand of hair, maybe tears . . .
And, framed in the doorway, wiping beads of water from her brow, there’s
spiky-haired Pauline in her old bomber jacket and jeans, panting as she’s just
run up the path from the gate, mission aborted, ready for a cup of coffee,
maybe a fresh start. She’s actually smiling.
“Lucas, what is this weird junk you’re watching? Have you really made up
your mind to go for the re-takes, at last? I do hope so, because—”
And then she sees, really sees. Her face becomes a blank ovoid. He looks
away. It’s a panic attack for both of them. Her voice flattens with disbelief.
Libros Libertad 