Blacklands Read Free Page B

father had plunged headlong into pragmatic support for the Blacklanders—a motley collection of local half-talent—and Lewis followed their fortunes with the same fervor that his classmates did Liverpool or Manchester United.

    Going to the football was the only thing Lewis and his dad ever did together.

    His dad was a short, ginger, bespectacled man who rarely spoke. He wore slacks beyond his years and did something in an office in Minehead but Lewis had never cared enough to find out exactly what. “Something in the law,” he’d shrugged when Steven asked. At home Lewis’s dad did the
Telegraph
crossword and researched his family tree online. Once a week in the winter, he and Lewis’s mother went to the village hall to play badminton—a risible game made even worse by the occasional glimpse Steven had had of them in their kit, his pale curly leg hairs and her maxi thighs in a miniskirt.

    In all the years Steven and Lewis had been friends, Lewis’s dad had only ever said three different things directly to him: “Hello, Steven,” on many occasions, “You boys having fun?” whenever he accidentally stumbled on them engaged in spying, and once—embarrassingly—“Who traipsed dog shit through the bloody kitchen?”

    In common with his much larger, more vibrant mother, Lewis generally ignored his dad. In Steven’s company he greeted everything his dad said with an eye-rolling tut or truculent silence.

    Once Steven had gone to Minehead with Lewis’s family to see a sand-castle competition. By the time they got there a summer downpour had reduced the magnificent creations to vague, melting mounds, so that the fairytale castle looked like the
Titanic,
and the life-sized orca looked like a rugby ball. Lewis’s dad had nevertheless wandered from lump to lump in his Berghaus waterproofs, photographing each from several angles and trying to enthuse Lewis by repeating variations on the theme of “You can see how it
would
have looked!” All the while Lewis and his mother shivered under a flapping umbrella, rolling their eyes and whining loudly about getting inside for a cream tea.

    While he hadn’t quite had the guts to abandon Lewis and show support for the sand castles, Steven had stood a little way away from his friend, his mother, and the umbrella. He preferred to get wet than to be associated with their scornful dismissal of such sad enthusiasm.

    He thought it was a waste of a father.

    Lewis brought him back to the here and now by adding temptingly: “Batten’s off the injury list.”

    Steven shook his head. “Can’t.”

    “But it’s Saturday.”

    Steven shrugged. Lewis shook his head pityingly. “Your loss, mate.”

    Steven doubted that; he’d seen the Blacklanders play.

    Saturday was dry and, if not warm, at least not particularly cold for January. Steven dug two complete holes by lunchtime and ate a strawberry jam sandwich. He always made his own Saturday sandwiches, so never had to suffer the indignity of fish paste. He’d taken the crusts—nobody cared about crusts. One of them had a speck of mold on it and he picked it off with a grimy finger. It made him think of Uncle Jude.

    Of all the uncles Steven had had, Uncle Jude was his favorite. Uncle Jude was tall—really tall, and had thick, lowering eyebrows and a deep, Hammer Horror voice.

    Uncle Jude was a gardener and he had a four-year-old truck and employed three men, but his fingernails were always dirty, which Nan hated. Steven’s mum always said it was good clean dirt—not what she called gutter grime. Of course, that was before they broke up. After that, his mum’s only answer to Nan’s criticism of Uncle Jude was a slight tightening around the lips and a shorter fuse with Steven and Davey.

    It was Uncle Jude who had given Steven his spade. Steven had told him he wanted to dig a vegetable patch in the backyard. Of course he never had but Uncle Jude was cool about it. He’d come into the kitchen and peer through the rain