Following the hum and whine, Edward climbs the stairs. He knocks and opens the door, as a chisel shrieks on spinning wood. ‘Is it safe?’ he shouts. ‘May I come in?’
The lathe winds down with a slumping sound. ‘Hello, son,’ says his father, as though Edward still lived at home and had casually wandered into the room. ‘Careful there,’ he says, as his toe comes into contact with the foot of the bench, but he stays where he is. ‘Clear on your right. Chair just beside you.’
‘So this is the shed?’ he asks, moving crabwise across the hardboard floor until he touches the chair. ‘That’s it.’
‘You’ve got the bench set up, then?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Must be really popular with the neighbours,’ he says, and his father makes a soft snorting sound that may signify a smile. ‘What are you making?’
‘A stool. A footstool. For your mother,’ says his father, putting a piece of wood into his hand. ‘That’s a leg for it.’ The leg has a cube at each end and is ringed with deep grooves which are warm and furred with fine shavings. ‘The ankles need a rest,’ his father explains, taking it back. ‘Not as nimble as she was.’ The lathe restarts; the dab of the cutting tool raises a cry and a whiff of hot wood.
Perceiving a difference between the sound on his left and on his right, he advances a hand across the wall. His hand encounters a low shelf, and another above it, and a third. ‘What’s here?’ he asks.
‘Hm?’ responds his father, though he heard the question.
‘Is this your pots and stuff?’
‘The cars,’ his father tells him.
Walking his fingers along a shelf, he locates one of the model cars. ‘I’ll be careful,’ he says, supporting the car on his flattened hand. He can feel the ridge of the exhaust pipe on his palm. ‘What’s this one?’ he asks.
‘Hm?’
‘What’s this one?’
‘A Bugatti. Show me? T55 Coupé.’
With his index finger he circles the spare wheel on the outside of the boot. He sweeps the wave-like running board, taps the conical headlamps, but he cannot remember anything of the Bugatti T55. His father’s models used to be kept in a mighty cabinet in the dining room, a cabinet of open decks, like a miniature multi-storey car park, painted white. He remembers a section reserved for illustrious older marques: a silver Auto Union car was there, with a scarlet Maserati and a green Vanwall. Concentrating on the name, he recovers the shape of the Vanwall, its thick blade of a body and the cockpit lodged behind the elongated bonnet, and, from this, momentarily, occurs an evanescent bloom of the Vanwall car’s deep green.
‘So, son,’ says his father, fitting another piece of wood to the lathe. ‘They keeping you busy?’ he asks, as if his translations were the benefaction of some charitable committee.
‘I’ve plenty of work, Dad, yes.’
‘Articles and stuff?’
‘That type of thing. Bits and pieces. I’ve a bigger project starting soon,’ he says, meaning the Stadler book, then it occurs to him that he has another book in progress, which it has never seemed appropriate to mention. He waits for another question, but none follows. ‘It should arrive next week.’
‘Good,’ says his father.
‘A book about someone called Jochen Stadler. A German chap. He went to South America as a missionary, then became an anthropologist-ecologist. He lived in the forest for years, in the Amazon, and married a girl who had looked after him when he was ill. When his wife died he came back to Germany, to his home town, and became a professor at the university, and a politician. His father had been a member of Göring’s staff,’ he perseveres. ‘A forester. Looking after bison in a Polish forest, until the partisans shot him.’
‘Had enough of the Nazis by now, I’d have thought.’
‘Not quite yet, Dad. Nazis, cooking and gardening – the three guaranteed sellers. Eva Braun’s Kitchen Garden would be a sure-fire hit,’ he jokes, but neither he nor his father laughs. His father is taking a tool from a rack; he hears the slither of steel on oiled stone.
‘Hotel’s OK?’ his father asks.
‘It’s fine. Very comfortable.’
Rhythmically the steel grinds against the slickened stone. ‘Your mother can’t see why you’re not staying here,’ his father remarks. ‘She’s put out, you know.’
‘But there’s no space, is there, Dad? Unless I’ve missed a room somewhere.’
‘As far as she’s concerned there’s plenty of space.’
‘And where would that be?’
‘I’m not arguing with you. Just telling you what she thinks.’
‘And I’ve work to do. There’s nowhere I could work.’
‘She thinks there is. Charlotte’s room.’
‘Dad, there’s not even a table in Charlotte’s room.’
‘The living room, then.’
‘It has to be quiet for me to work. I’m fussy. I’m easily aggravated by noise. Honestly, it’s better for everyone if I stay where I am.’
‘You know best, son, I’m sure,’ his father concludes, as the lathe begins to spin once more.
Exploring again the curves and details of the model car, he recalls how, late in the evening, before going to bed, he would go down into the cellar of the old house, where his father would be working. He would walk towards the ball of light and his father would take his hand to guide him to the stool. A sheet of wallpaper, reversed, always covered the bench, and on one part of the paper the husk of the car’s body would be laid. The metallic pieces for the chassis and engine were arrayed around it. Some were so small, like rat’s bones, he had to lower his nose to the paper to see them. His father used needle-thin screwdrivers and delicate little knives and drills that he turned between his finger and thumb. Sometimes it made him think of the hospital, and he would secretly become upset. He liked the names: Studebaker, Hispano-Suiza, Mercedes-Benz, Panhard-Levasseur. They connoted ingenuity and high craftsmanship, and he always enjoyed listening to his father as he worked, extolling a beautiful Ferrari engine, or the functional purity of the 2CV, which could seat two farmers with their hats on, and transport them and their pig over a rutted road, and was so simple a machine that the local blacksmith could repair it, should it ever break down, which it hardly ever would. Through his father’s words he came to share something of his admiration for these cars and their creators, but things changed as his eyesight worsened and it gave him pain to use the immense lens that his father used. So in the evenings he would go to Charlotte’s room and she would read the pages he had to study for homework, while his father worked for hours in the cellar, assembling his little cars. They won prizes, his father’s cars, at events they used to attend together, in high-ceilinged buildings with rough wooden floors and toilets outside. Then one year there was an exhibition, in Bristol, to which his father went without him. Sitting in the living room, with the TV on, they all agreed that it was best if he stayed at home. His mother stroked his hair while his father was speaking, but by then he was beginning to find his father’s hobby ridiculous, which perhaps his parents knew. When this was, exactly, he cannot remember. He must have been thirteen or so, around the time that he became ‘son’ rather than ‘Edward’.
His father’s appearance in his mind, the last image of him before he became a ghost with his father’s voice, comes from around this time as well. Concentrating, he