LIGHT SENSITIVE (1552 words)
It’s the heat. It’s been hot for so long his alertness is wearing away.
He's booked, as always, a window seat facing the direction of travel, first class. But he’s forgotten about the four seat group round the table. So when he sits down opposite a ten-year-old boy instead of a soothingly upholstered seat back,he scowls inwardly. It’s a long way down to the south coast and sooner or later the kid will be making noise with crisp packets and computer games that twang and beep and drive you mad. At present the boy is occupied reading a paperback—fine—but how long will that last?
He deposits his bag and the newspaper on his side of the table so the kid won't be tempted to invade his space. He loosens his tie a fraction. Can’t they put the air-conditioning on? He takes his laptop from the bag. A quick trick of light and shade makes his possessions slide back in the window reflection and hefeels something lurch in the pit of his stomach. He clutches at the laptop, even though it’s still in his hands, and this false movement sets him even further off balance. He looks outside. A train across the platform is moving off. He shunts his sunglasses down off his forehead, feeling safer now his eyes are protected.
He settles. Crazy to think he was moving backwards. The heat must be really getting to him. In the office his acuteness of vision is legendary. The way his mind flashes round a building plan. Krypton eyes is the sobriquet laughingly levelled at him by staff members. He can spot an incongruity on a plan at a thousand paces.
Laurie-Anne was pissed off when he joined the firm. “You make the rest of us look like incompetents.” Thomas smiles inwardly. Yeah, well, they aren’t all that good. Laurie-Anne included. He’s vaguely scouting round for her replacement. But she’s still hot for him, so no urgency. She’s started banging on about children. He strings her along —why the hurry? … let’s think about a bigger flat … a house and garden? Or he puts her off with the promise of a holiday in Crete … New Zealand … and all points south.
Kids are for the other side of the track. He’s got no time for disruptions for the next twenty years at least. Then it’ll be too late, he’d be doing any kid a disservice by bringing it into the world.
Nonetheless, Laurie-Anne is beginning to look pinched. Without makeup, her face wears a pale tight look. Shiny and drawn at the same time. Last night, she stopped in front of him and in a flat tone of voice said: “Unlike your father, you’ll die a lonely old man.”
What was she thinking of? He’s never been lonely in all his life. An only child, OK, but not lonely. He’s always been content with his own company. No matter. Soon Laurie-Anne will be past history. He looks through the train window at the clock. Three minutes to go. They’d better be on time.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, the funeral. Can’t be helped. Finishing the project will be tight. He’s pitching it to the developers at 9 am, on the dot, on Friday. He’ll have to be back on Wednesday. He’ll make sure Selina, the current wife, the one under his father when he died so to speak, understands.
His newspaper and laptop are set out in place on the table. He glances at the boy mistrustfully. Will he let him get on with his work in peace? The child’s ash blond head glints in the window reflection. Still concentrating on his book. Too good to be true. So, they do still make them like this. A Good Boy. And a Lost Boy too, travelling alone. Don’t lone travellers his age have to have UM document holders attached to their skinny necks? In airports, kids are labelled in this manner, like newly shorn and tagged sheep.
Now the train is clunking slowly through the suburbs, past disused, boarded up factories, expanses of old red brick, dank-looking despite the heat beating down. The occasional buddleia, unwilling to compromise, pokes obtrusively out of the flatness of a wall. Potential all going to waste. Short-sightedness. They clatter past rows of becalmed terraced houses and cars parked straight as a die, indifferent to the rods of sunlight that reverberate off them like lances. Then the tunnels that make his ears block up as the train clackety-clacks into top speed.
His father always came to fetch him. Always took him back home to Mum. But this boy doesn't seem worried. Hasn't even looked up to acknowledge Thomas’s presence. Eyes firmly locked into the print, some minimal kind of movement beneath the blue-veined, half-closed eyelids. Maybe he'll have the peaceful journey he's anticipated after all. Even though he'll be facing the sun for most of it, whereas the kid has the shady side.
Out into the open country and the air-conditioning begins to kick in. Right, the plans. He removes his sunglasses, clicks open the laptop. The polished steel lid flashes. The boy blinks and winces slightly. ‘Sorry’, Thomas says, surprising himself, he never speaks on trains if he can help it, ‘the sun’. The boy looks at him blankly for half a second through pale grey eyes, and then returns to his reading. He remembers what his Mum used to say: ‘When Tom gets his nose into a book, he's dead to the world, you can't rouse him whatever you do. I wish he'd play outside more. If only he weren't an only child.’ And he would carry on reading, pretending he hadn't heard, secretly basking in his mother's love, glad there was no brother or sister to get in the way. Even though he was less embroiled with the questing heroes than she imagined, he never let on, it was his way of letting her move freely in her own space, and himself in another, together and separate in quiet equilibrium. Thomas and his mother were not ones for idle chatter.
That was after his father hurricaned out of their lives. Then there’d been no balance at all. Space and time completely to cock. But gradually, the traumatic fireworks his father had caused to blow up in his face everywhere he turned dampened down. Time the great leveller. Aged thirteen, the regular visits to his father living down by the sea with one new wife after another, gave Thomas a clear perception of the inevitability of the human journey through time. Level crossings came and went, automatic barriers lifted and fell like an invisible clockwork ballet. He could do nothing about it. But space, the root of all mischief in the world? An avenging angel instilled in hima desire to create spaces that were free. That was where his work would lie: building houses for ordinary people.
Today, under his pen, spaces develop organically, travel at their own pace.And he enjoys letting his clients have a little of their own way—the colour of the door, the way the garage is angled,some personal touch for the house they will live in. It’s the one thing he’s good at. Planning houses relaxes him, ultra-contemporary lines espousing the natural environment in easy self-abandonment.
Mum was upset when she learned he was going to be an architect. Then she understood. So he took up the same job as his father.
Now the man is dead. And Thomas is travelling down to the south coast for the funeral. His mother won't come. Out of the question. ‘As long as that woman is alive, I’ll never see or speak to your father.’ Now the choice has been taken from her. He gazes out of the window, wondering for the millionth time whether his life would have been any different had his parents stayed together. Probably not. One point on which he and Laurie-Anne agree.
As he ponders, he observes the mirror image of the boy reflected in the window. With cloud cover, he focuses into extreme clarity, sharp as the original. Does this child seated, unmoving, opposite him have secret thoughts about his parents? Outside, on yet a further plane of reflection, Thomas sees that the whole window is encapsulated. Speeding along parallel to the train, he and the boy are sitting in companionable silence, father and son.
The sun slides out, full strength, from behind a cloud. The reflection melts away. The train skims past field after field of stunted wheat. Too hot, too dry.
The train screeches to a halt. Thomas jerks awake, kicking the seat opposite. He starts to apologize before he realizes that the seat is empty. Good thing, he doesn’t want to hurt the poor kid. He looks around. Perhaps the boy has gone to get some refreshment. Thomas raises himself out of his seat, scans the compartment. It is virtually empty. The boy must have reached his destination. He isn’t coming back. His book has gone.
Soon, the coast, the terminus. Thomas will step back out into the sultry late afternoon heat. Regret fills him. The seat opposite has been vacated before the end of the journey. He would have liked to talk to the grey-eyed boy.
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