‘Yes, please.’
He placed the bowl in front of him. ‘There you go.’
‘Thanks.’
Moy had got used to his father’s concoction. He’d learned to hold his breath, chew with vigour and swallow fast. ‘Thanks,’ he said to George, taking his own bowl.
Patrick, sitting on his hands, stared at the small mountain of cereal. George looked at him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know if I can eat it all.’
‘You haven’t even tried.’
He dug down to the cornflakes, collected a spoonful and began. Meanwhile, George wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘You don’t talk much,’ he said.
‘Dad,’ Moy warned.
‘You always feel better when you talk…when you share things. It’s the way people work, isn’t it?’
Patrick just looked at him, and tackled the bran.
‘Dad, can’t we just eat our breakfast?’ Moy asked.
‘Just making conversation.’
George opened a crossword book, one of a dozen or more on the table. He took a minute to study a clue. ‘Lighter than air?’ he said.
‘Hydrogen,’ Moy replied.
‘Yes.’ He smiled, writing down the letters and looking back at Patrick. ‘For instance, you never mention your father much.’
‘Dad.’
Patrick moved the sultanas to the side of the bowl. He looked up at the old man.
‘What sort of job did he do?’ George asked.
Patrick stared at him, unsure. Eventually he said, ‘He was a designer.’
‘What did he design?’
‘Brochures…stuff you get in the mail. Before they were printed.’
Moy finished his cereal, and studied Patrick’s face.
‘Like Target? K-Mart?’ George asked.
‘I suppose.’
George sat back in his chair, pleased with himself. ‘That sounds very interesting.’
‘He hated it.’
‘Oh?’
‘He wanted to do something else, but there was nothing he could do. He tried mowing lawns for a while but couldn’t make any money.’ He searched his breakfast for more cornflakes.
‘And where did you live?’ George asked, looking sideways at his son.
‘In the house…that burned down.’
‘No, before that.’
Patrick realised what was going on, sat back and glared at George.
‘When you lived with your dad?’ George continued. ‘Was that before you came to Guilderton?’
Patrick swallowed the last of the cereal he was willing to eat. ‘What about your dad?’ he dared.
‘Don’t worry about my dad.’
‘Or your grandad? Wasn’t that Daniel?’
‘I showed him the photo,’ Moy said to his father.
George shuffled off, muttering. There were a couple of minutes of distant huffing before he returned, and handed something to Patrick. ‘This is the only other photo the photographer took that day,’ he said, as if attempting to prove that family stories, no matter how difficult, were always worth telling.
Patrick studied the backdrop of scrub and drought-baked hills. ‘That’s Daniel Moy,’ he said. ‘With…?’
‘With his arm around the photographer’s son,’ George managed. ‘I always thought it was curious. Daniel had just threatened the photographer and his son, that boy, with a knife. Then he’d forced them to drive back to Cambrai in their own cart.’
‘So why is Daniel standing with the boy?’
George leaned back. ‘Well, this is how my father told it,’ he said. ‘As they drove back, Daniel started talking about Elizabeth. How she could make the sweetest soup with nothing more than turnips and sheep shanks; how she was pitch perfect, and could sing every song in the key the composer had intended; how she could make you feel happy, just by looking at you, by smiling, by saying, it’s all just a bit of bother, isn’t it, Dad?’
Patrick studied the two faces.
‘And after all that,’ George continued, ‘Daniel just sat there, his knife in his hand, staring at the floor of the cart. Then he said to the boy, what’s your name, son? and the boy said, William, sir. Then Daniel asked him if he wanted to be a photographer, like his father, and he said, perhaps…perhaps a policeman. Then, all of a sudden,’ George continued, ‘Daniel stood up and threw his knife into the bushes. I’m sorry, he said. Turn around and head back. It was a stupid thing to do. But the photographer said, no, I’ll take your photo. I’m sorry your girl’s gone. And he flicked the reins, and they started off again.’
Then George told him how Daniel, the photographer and the photographer’s son had stopped for a rest on the way to Cambrai. How they’d sat on a rock, and drunk water from a canteen, before the photographer suggested a picture. ‘The thing is, Patrick, my father once told me, just as this photo was being taken the photographer was thinking of asking a favour of Daniel Moy.’