have thin legs and high eyebrows, like I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I have a long back which Lester says will turn against me in later life; he takes co-codamol for his.
We learned to sign together, she taught us. Ned’s hands are two birds: tap, bounce, glide. My hands are slow, even now. His hands can tell you any story, plus exaggerations, in seconds. The beads on his wrist make a noise like rain: it is the sound of Ned, like a human black cloud pouring down. He will never know.
I have a photo of her: me and Ned under each arm, two chicks, she called us. Back then I used to put our old washing line in his mouth and whip him with a birch. We were ten and eight. This was our carriage, Ned was the horse. I steered by pulling left or right. If he disobeyed he got a tap, if he was slow he got a tap. We went all over, lanes, fields, woods. He never whinnied and no one saw our carriage because it was invisible. I don’t ask him if he remembers it.
He was a gifted child. She told me that. I believed her. She was terrified he might wander on to the dual carriageway: Ned was drawn to electric fences, lightning, canals, traffic. I thought about that. I told him deaf people couldn’t die. I thought it would cheer him up. I led him to the dual carriageway. Not to hurt him, on the contrary, I wanted to watch him survive, use his gift, see how he did it. A gap in the traffic, off he ran, arms out like a bird. No fear. Halfway across he stood at the crash barrier, waving, watching the cars rocketing. The horror on the drivers’ faces made us laugh, the brake lights flashing as the cars slowed. Result! I was proud, the effect he had, definitely a gift. What a laugh. I waved. He waved. And when he sprints back, the blare of horns. Magic. We scarper before someone calls the police, change our clothes so we won’t match any description.
We screamed, it was blinding. We were Samurai.
Where our garden ends by the barbed wire the field starts. Crop in there, oilseed rape. Clackety-clack it goes in the wind, like applause in a giant stadium. Good evening, Wembley. I take a bow. Split the pods with your thumbnail and black seeds fall out. A knob comes on a tractor and does it. I watch him smoking his fags, taking his breaks, staring at his mobile phone. He’s got a big red ear that doesn’t match the other. Who’d text him? His sister probably. Dead romantic. The phone mast is on the west side. One of them with sponge fingers. They give you cancer apparently. Not sponge fingers, phone masts. Maybe sponge fingers do too, I wouldn’t like to say.
On the east side ridge is oak and elm in a line like they’re waiting. Everything waits. Crows sleep there at night, fifty million judging by the sound.
From her bed she watched this field: the weather, the mechanical sprayer, the red-eared knob. She liked it. We put her ashes there. We waited till the wind dropped, around March time.
This morning from the landing window I catch sight of Ned running in the field along the set-aside. He is wearing flip-flops. I watch. He stumbles, runs on. Must have seen a hare or something, he likes hares. He won’t get close flapping about like that: unaware of the noise he makes. I try to imagine what someone not related to him would think. I know what I’d think. I don’t know how he got this way. I try to rewind in my mind but I just go around in circles.
I used to carry him on my back. He liked it, bit of a laugh. Started when he was a nestling and I was six or seven. We still do it on a special occasion. Dog, he called me when he was learning to sign the alphabet, but he got it wrong. Gog, I was instead. Gog I remain to this day. He signs it as a shape now, a finger drawn across one eye, like I’m half-blind, when in fact I see everything, clear as. One of his foibles.
The JobCentre have Ned’s details. He’s hoping for BSL interpreter work. He could teach but he won’t do the exam. Problem is he won’t travel any distance on