Out of This World by Graham Swift Read Free Book Online Page A

that I was looking at right then, the face in the photograph was alive.
    I don’t remember him ever telling me what he did. I mean, what he did at his office in London. Or what they did at ‘the factories’. Do you think he was always waiting to tell me that too? The right moment. Hoping perhaps he might never have to tell me, that I need never know. Just like me and the twins. All I knew was that every weekday he’d put on this smart suit and Ray would drive him up to town. Because in those days there wasn’t a trace of BMC at Hyfield itself. It was only much later, after Joe and I got married and got our place in Richmond, that he started to turn it into a sort of company headquarters. That’s what the papers called it: ‘Family home of the Beeches and unofficial headquarters of BMC’.
    Harry used to call it ‘the arsenal’.
    But even if I’d known – even when I did know – why should it have made any difference, why should I have given a damn? You judge by what you see, don’t you? And you see what’s closest first.
    It must have seeped slowly into my mind too, so slowly you could almost ignore it, you could almost pretend you didn’t really know it. I can’t remember ever saying to myself, sitting on the terrace or under the apple trees in the orchard or looking out of the window as the rain fell on the lawn: Don’t be fooled by all this, don’t be taken in, remember what all this is made of.
    But I remember, perfectly clearly, as if it were yesterday, that June morning when Grandad said, ‘Come with me.’ I remember the clean white shirt he was wearing with the dark green tie and the dog-tooth check trousers – they were not his ‘office’ clothes, even if this was, technically, an ‘office’ day. I remember the dew on the lawn and the sun just peering above the elms (it was not yet eight o’clock) and the air shivery yet gentle, as if Grandad had arranged, too, the promise of a perfect summer’s day. I remember his slow yet jaunty, teasing step. I remember the spiders’ webs glinting under the eaves of the stable, and every tuft of moss between the cobbles of the stable yard, and Ray standing there, waiting for us. And I remember the smell as we approached the stable door – a real stable door now, newly painted, not just the entrance to a store-shed. An unmistakable smell, a brown, warm, living smell.
    Grandad opened, gently, the upper flap of the door and said, ‘Now look inside.’ But you didn’t need to. Because there, nudging forward to poke its head out, so the sunlight caught its wet nostrils and its chocolate eyes and the tuft of mane falling between them, was a pony.
    Ray came a little closer and Grandad stood very still. Perhaps they were afraid I might be afraid. But I put out my hand, and it seemed to want to be stroked. It cocked its head to one side and I felt its rough lip against my bare arm. Then Grandad said, ‘Happy Birthday, my angel.’ And Ray said, ‘Happy Birthday, Miss Sophie.’
    I was ten years old. Ten years old exactly. I don’t knowwhere Harry was then, but he wasn’t there for his daughter’s birthday, and I didn’t believe Grandad when he said the pony was from both of them, from Harry as well.
    Ray, who must have been carefully briefed, slipped a halter over the pony’s neck and gave the end to me. I led it round the yard, and Grandad said we had made good friends. I was all choked up with excitement. Then he said, if I could tear myself away, we would come back in a little while, but first he had something else to show me. We put the pony back in the stable and went back to the house. And there on the dining-room floor – Mrs Keane must have been briefed too – was a new saddle, bridle, girth, stirrups, cap, boots …
    I remember the smell of the new leather, the sun on the blue and red carpet. And feeling Grandad’s hand on my head as I knelt down to look at this hoard of gifts, and looking up and seeing him smile, and thinking, for some