Shuttlecock by Graham Swift

to tell me? I don’t have to rush to work. It’s your last chance. You can turn round now.’
    Martin turned. He looked ruefully for some time at his feet and then up, deliberately again, at me.
    ‘All right.’
    ‘At last! Good boy!’ I really was relieved, glad – no longer vindictive.
    ‘I threw it in the dustbin.’ He cocked his head towards the window. The dust-cart had departed from the street. ‘It will have gone by now.’
    ‘You what?’ I said, advancing across the floor. ‘You what?!’
    He pressed his lips together. His face tautened.
    ‘That was my book!’ With a genuine woundedness in my voice. ‘That was Grandpa’s book!’
    ‘Grandpa – ’
    He didn’t have time to say more before the first slap caught him across the face. Then another. And another. The extraordinary thing was that he didn’t turn or duck away. His feet remained firmly planted on the carpet. It was as if he had bargained all along on these blows. Tears of shock rather than fright or pain filled his eyes, but he kept his head erect and his shoulders square, like a soldier looking to the front while the sergeant screams in his ear. Even as I hit him I couldn’t help but grudgingly admire him; and it was this, rather than Marian tugging at my other arm, that made me stop.
    When I did, Martin simple turned, and without hurrying, without clapping his hands to his smarting cheeks or breaking into sobs, walked from the room. I sat down again at the table. I was going to be late for work now. I looked at Peter and Marian, who, surprised as I was at Martin’s self-control, had not rushed out immediately to comfort him.
    ‘Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? He stole my book.’
    I was puffed – and petulant – from my exertions.
    Marian looked at me in furious silence, then pushed back her chair and turned to leave the room. But she was scarcely on her feet before the door opened and Martin entered carrying a book. He walked towards me with an air of precarious dignity and put the book on the table.
    ‘You hit me for nothing, Dad. Nothing at all. I never threw it away.’
    I looked at him. Then at the book. I opened it at the flyleaf: there was Dad’s writing. ‘Your loving …’ I looked at Martin again for several seconds. At the book.
    The jacket of the original edition has the picture of aman, in silhouette, dangling from an opening parachute. For the first time I seemed to see the terrible vulnerability of this position, and the attempt of the artist to make the image resemble a shuttlecock.
    ‘Why did you – ?’ I started fiercely. But my anger had spent itself. ‘Why did you take it?’
    ‘Because you took away the television.’
    And I suppose, I thought, you want me to follow your example and bring it back.
    ‘I see. The television didn’t belong to you though, did it?’
    But I knew we weren’t talking about just the television. I looked into his face. His cheeks were bright pink from the slapping he’d had. I thought of the cunning with which he must have planned this little operation, and the guile and resolution with which he had carried it out. Those glances out of the window; the readiness to go hungry, to provoke and endure punishment. He was brave, he was resourceful, all right. He was his grandfather’s grandson. His eyes bored into me. How much did he understand?
    ‘If someone takes something from you – even
if
that was wrong of them – it’s no answer to take something from them,’ I said feebly.
    He nodded, uncontrite.
    No, not just the television; but all that went with the television. The Bionic Man and Kojak and Captain Kirk, and all the other made-up heroes who were better than his father. For some unaccountable reason I felt in awe of my own son, as if I should make things up to him, beg his mercy, but I was unable – unworthy – to do so.
    I was going to be very late for work.
    ‘Martin,’ I said. ‘All this was stupid, wasn’t it? Why did you do it?’ Then I added suddenly: