down coal mines? (Jackson’s own father and his father before him, for example.) Or Jackson himself, in the Army at sixteen, a youth broken into pieces by authority and put back together again by it as a man. Were those teenagers, himself included, allowed the indulgence of chaotic hormones? No, they were not. They went to work alongside men and behaved themselves, they brought their pay packets home to their mothers (or fathers) at the end of the week and— (‘Oh, do shut up, will you?’ Julia said wearily. ‘That life’s gone and it isn’t coming back.’)
‘Where’s Gary?’ Jackson asked, scanning the banks of seats.
‘Gary?’
‘The Gary you’re supposed to be keeping an eye on.’
Without looking up from his phone, Nathan nodded in the direction of the dragon boats where Gary and Kirsty were queuing for tickets.
And the battle is over and the Union Jack is being hoisted. Let’s have a cheer for the good old Union flag!
Jackson cheered along with the rest of the audience. He gave Nathan a friendly nudge and said, ‘Come on, cheer the good old Union flag.’
‘Hurrah,’ Nathan said laconically. Oh, irony, thy name is Nathan Land, Jackson thought. His son had his mother’s surname, it was a source of some contention between Julia and Jackson. To put it mildly. ‘Nathan Land’ to Jackson’s ears sounded like the name of an eighteenth-century financier, the progenitor of a European banking dynasty. ‘Nat Brodie’, on the other hand, sounded like a robust adventurer, someone striking west, following the frontier in search of gold or cattle, loose-moraled women following in his wake. (‘When did you get so fanciful?’ Julia asked. Probably when I met you, Jackson thought.)
‘Can we go now?’ Nathan said, yawning excessively and unselfconsciously.
‘In a minute, when I’ve finished this,’ Jackson said, indicating his ice-cream. Nothing, in Jackson’s opinion, made a grown man look more of a twit than walking around licking an ice-cream cone.
The combatants of the Battle of the River Plate began their lap of honour. The men inside had removed the top part of the boats – like conning towers – and were waving at the crowd.
‘See?’ Jackson said to Nathan. ‘Told you so.’
Nathan rolled his eyes. ‘So you did. Now can we go?’
‘Yeah, well, let’s just check on our Gary.’
Nathan moaned as if he was about to be waterboarded.
‘Suck it up,’ Jackson said cheerfully.
Now that the smallest manned navy in the world was sailing off to its moorings, the park’s dragon boats were coming back out – pedalos in bright primary colours with long necks and big dragon heads, like cartoon versions of Viking longboats. Gary and Kirsty had already mounted their own fiery steed, Gary pedalling heroically out into the middle of the boating lake. Jackson took a couple of photos. When he checked his phone he was pleasantly surprised to find that Nathan had taken a burst – the modern equivalent of the flicker-books of his own childhood – while Jackson was off buying the ice-creams. Gary and Kirsty kissing, puckered up like a pair of puffer fish. ‘Good lad,’ Jackson said to Nathan.
‘Now can we go?’
‘Yes, we can.’
Jackson had been following Gary and Kirsty for several weeks. He had sent enough photographs of them in flagrante to Gary’s wife, Penny, for her to have divorced her husband for adultery several times over, but every time Jackson said to her, ‘I think you’ve got enough evidence now, Mrs Trotter,’ she always said, ‘Just stay on them a bit longer, Mr Brodie.’ Penny Trotter – it was an unfortunate name, Jackson thought. Pig’s trotters. A cheap meal from a butcher. His mother had cooked pig’s feet, the head too. Snout to tail and everything in between, nothing wasted. She was Irish, the memory of famine engraved on her bones, like the scrimshaw he had seen in the museum in Whitby. And, being an Irish mother, of course the men of the family were fed first – in order of age. Next it was his sister’s turn, and then, finally, their mother would sit down with her plate, dining on whatever was left – often nothing more than a couple of potatoes and a drop of gravy. Only Niamh ever noticed this maternal sacrifice. (‘Come on, Ma, have a bit of my meat.’)
There were occasions when Jackson’s sister appeared more vivid to him in death than she had been in life. He did his best to keep the memory of her alive as there was no one else left to tend the flame.