Читать книгу Feather Boy онлайн | страница 8

“I’m Robert,” I repeat quickly, to establish my claim.

“So yer said,” he replies. “I’m Albert. Robert and Albert. Bert and Bert. Do they call you Bert?”

“No.”

“Oh aye,” Albert says.

There’s a pause and then he says, “I were a ladies’ man. Once.” And he sighs. The sigh is sad and resigned but it’s only a moment before he leans down and smiles at me. “Eh up, lad.”

There’s something tender in his look, not a tenderness for me of course, just something misty about his past, and in that moment I indulge a few warm thoughts of my own about my grandfather, Grandpa Cutting, who used to call me “lad” and take me boating before he died of a heart attack hanging a garage door. And I’m just thinking maybe Albert will be all right and perhaps the Nobel luck is going to change when a voice chisels through the room:

“I don’t want this one.”

Everyone turns to the speaker. She is tall (even seated), white-haired, ram-rod-backed and her perfectly still right index finger is pointing down at Kate.

“Well,” flusters Liz Finch, the student teacher who, up until this point, might have been a sheet of wallpaper, “perhaps you’d like to swop with Kate, Lucy. Lucy?”

Lucy isn’t moving.

“Lucy?”

“No,” says Ram-Rod. “I don’t want a girl.” The index finger lifts, it moves. “I want a boy. In fact,” the finger stops mid-swing, “I want him.” She’s pointing at me.

Now, you know those team games where there are two captains and they each pick someone to be on their side, turn after turn, until there’s only one person left? And no matter whether there are ten or twenty players that last person is always the same? The one who is never chosen, whatever the game? Well, that person’s me.

“Robert, isn’t it?” says Catherine.

And all the times I’ve prayed, I’ve pleaded, I’ve begged to be chosen and God’s ignored me? And now—

“Norbert,” says Niker. “She wants Norbert!”

Niker’s jeering does not deter Ram-Rod. She beckons me and I just know I’m going to have to go.

“Norbert,” repeats Albert, meditatively.

Kate is already halfway across the room. I stand up.