Читать книгу Feather Boy онлайн | страница 16

So there they were that day, the plastic models, on my desk. The horses, the riders, the gun carriages, the infantry and even one or two odd cowboys, a belly-scuttling Indian, a First World War soldier, titbits to entice. And the paint of course. And the brushes. I knew it was a risk. But that was what I was doing – risking.

Niker scanned my room. “What’s in that tin?”

The Huntley and Palmer tin. Had I been looking? How could he possibly have known? Why hadn’t I hidden it, stashed it under the bed, secreted it in Mum’s room?

“What tin?”

“This tin.”

I feel cold even now when I think of him opening it. His hands on the stiff, slightly rusty lid. Him pulling and peering and me just standing there. The tissue was discoloured, brittle.

“What have we here, Norbert?”

He drew out a Highlander, red jacket, green kilt, tam-o-shanter, a running man, heels kicking, thin bladed bayonet to the fore.

“Jeez,” said Niker, looking at the exquisitely painted criss-cross leg garters, “did you do this?”

“No, my dad.”

“It’s good.” And he put the soldier down, turned it gently this way and that, admired it. “Very good.”

He unwrapped and looked at every soldier in the same way, taking time and care, asking me what I knew about the uniforms.

Two hours later Mum found us both sitting at my desk, paint brushes in hand. The lasagna, which I’d forgotten to turn down, was burnt, but there were fifteen chestnut horses with black bridles, blue saddle-cloths and fifteen horse stands. Niker had painted mud and grass on his stands. And also flowers.

Mum’s smile was so broad. But premature. Nothing changed at school. In fact it remained so much the same I sometimes think that Niker never came to my house at all. But then I sometimes think that my father, with those heavy hands, could never have painted the Highlanders. And he did.

So here I am again, sitting at my desk with the smell of turps about me and thinking about Niker because it’s preferable to thinking about what I’m actually thinking about. Which is Chance House.