After Brock by Paul Binding Page A

programme – Sixty Minutes – from Australia (ABC) shown yesterday (July 17). Watched it four times! Its subject’s becoming a hero, and I’m rather in need of one stuck up here a lot on my own, and worrying about cash flow. What an ordeal this new hero had, but what a reward! There’s a dad round a son’s neck there too…
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    â€˜July 23: ‘Dad surprised me today by suddenly asking me, as I was helping him clear out the yard, “Do you think Izzie is serious about this Doug guy?” “Yeah, too serious!” I said, “and the guy bores the pants off me!” Dad put down the white sack the county has given us for garden rubbish, and said quietly, “That’s not fair, Nat, and I do wish you wouldn’t say things like that! I didn’t meet the man for very long, but he struck me as a thoroughly – as a thoroughly decent bloke.” Isn’t that what’s called damning with faint praise, I thought, but I had the wit not to say this aloud. What I did say was, “Would you mind, Dad, if you heard he and she had started living together?” ( I certainly would!) Dad said, “I haven’t the right to mind anything in that department, have I?” Which sounded unusually hopeful as far as my own wishes went, I thought, though he immediately spoiled it by saying, “And anyway I wouldn’t mind! Not that I’d say if I did. Haven’t you taken it in by now, Nat, that I do my damnedest never to pronounce on what anybody should or shouldn’t be doing?”
    â€˜â€œWell, I suppose that has sort of struck me!” I replied.’
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    As Luke Fleming’s investigations later uncovered, Nat made two long stays in Lydcastle between June and September 2009. The first ended on August 10 when he returned to London, to his mother’s flat. Then on Thursday August 20 he got his A Level results. His journal would have you believe that on the morning of that great day he didn’t feel nervous but weirdly calm, as if, whatever the results, good or disappointing, he had moved far beyond responding to them as an individual with a future dependant on them, but had, over the summer, turned into a different kind of person, with just enough curiosity about his own past to want to know how he’d fared.

    He’d fared well, he found out, two As and a B. His place at Uni, the University of Lincoln, to study journalism, was now assured.
    Both Dad and Doug were full of congratulations. No words from the first about the iniquity of exams and the ranking of people (‘often for life!’), though it was unlikely his views had undergone any change, no words from the second about ‘soft’ subjects. Instead Doug told him that he’d heard nothing but excellent reports about the university of Nat’s choice. Mum was moved to tears, but (according to Nat’s journal) disconcerted him by saying, with eyes still moist, ‘It’s a tremendous relief for me, Nat, how you’ve done so well, and I really think some of the calming exercises we’ve done together helped you. I must be honest, and say I didn’t think you’d make those grades.’ She put a hand on top of his head – she was not a very demonstrative mother – and smoothed his straight, grey-brown hair making the feathered fringe in front tidier. ‘You’ve been so difficult to know, Nat. Do you realise that? Perhaps if Pete hadn’t left us, you’d have been a bit more forthcoming.’
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    â€˜August 2. Decided I should let Dr Julian Pringle know my good news. But that strange letter he sent me hasn’t exactly encouraged calling round again, even though it’s full of good wishes and suggests we have a friendly future to look forward to. So I decided to ring. Dr Pringle sounded surprised to hear from me, as if I wasn’t at all in his thoughts. But when