"Jumper:Griffin _s Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Steven)

Chapter Seven

Punches and Pimples Henry Langsford was an upper-class twit with a sense of humor. We'd tested for ikkyu together and he always gave me a hard time about the Americanisms in my language and my accent. His father was a second secretary at the British embassy in Amman so Henry was at a boarding school in London. "But all they have at school is boxing. I do that, too, but I've received dispensation for this."

He was long and thin, pushing six-two, even though he was my age. He could reach me with a kick long before I could strike him, but I was faster. But the boxing was something. I tried to stay away from his hands. I'd go outside for a kidney or sweep his foot, midkick.

Henry suggested a cuppa. "Won't be in trouble until half past nine and 'tis only seven stops up the Piccadilly line. You for it?"

I had a dozen excuses on my tongue. Instead I said, "Why not?"

We hit Expresso Bar on the north side of Beauchamp Place. He got tea, I took a double-shot latte loaded with sugar.

"No wonder you're so short. Stunted your growth, you did, with that caffeine. How do you sleep?"

It was actually midday still, for me, but I said, "Maybe that's why I'm faster than you."

We walked back to Brompton Road and into Hyde Park and wandered a bit, tending east.

We talked about travel, places we'd lived. We'd both been to Thailand, both been to Spain, but him in the south, Cadiz and Seville, and me in the north, Barcelona and Zaragoza. I talked about the "colonies" and Mexico. He talked about Kenya and Norway and family vacations in Normandy. That led to speaking in French and he was oh-so-superior about his accent-my County Durham origins corrupted the purity of my pronunciation, but my vocabulary was bigger.

"Et oil est votre maison, mon petit ami?"

"Little? I'm not ducking through doorways. And I lives in an 'ole in the ground."

"What? Like a Hobbit?"

"Very like an 'obbit."

"A basement flat?"

"You could say that. On the west side." Of America.

He considered this. "Your feet are a bit hairy."

"So, your home would be in Rivendell, eh?"

"Huh? Oh, right. Elves." He chuckled and looked at his watch. "Oi. Bugger me-I'm going to be talking to the Head if I don't get a move on."

We were close to Hyde Park Corner Station and he dashed for it, his long legs flashing. "Kick you in class," he called over his shoulder.

"In your dreams!"

A cuppa after became a regular thing, and when I turned sixteen the dojo went up to Birmingham to participate in a tournament. Henry and I roomed together, under the supervision of Sensei Patel.

"You never talk about your folks," Henry asked, on the train up.

It came out of left field, that, and surprised me. I blinked. "Bugger, something in me eye." After a deep breath I said, "Whatcha want to know? Dad teaches computers. Mum teaches kids their Voltaire and Beaumarchais and Diderot, in the original. Awfully boring if you ask me, but they're all right." I was tired; I woke and slept on Pacific Coast time and here I was floundering around at 9.00 a.m., Greenwich zero. It felt like two in the bloody morning.

"Seems like they're pretty handy with the ready," Henry said. "Dad's always on about the fees at the dojo, but in that proud sort of way. Nothing but the best for mine, don'tcha know. You don't seem to have any problem."

I shook my head. "Well, that's not their money-that's me own."

"Rich grandmother?"

"Distant uncle." Uncle Truck. Armored T. Truck.

I was eliminated in the second round of brown belt kumite by a college-aged brown belt from Coventry, and then Sensei Patel and another instructor protested.

"What?" I said, as Sensei walked past me to the judges' table. "He beat me fair and square!" He'd scored to my face with a lightning-fast roundhouse kick.

The judges listened to Sensei Patel, then called my opponent over. There were some heated words and then the referee came back on the floor and announced I'd won, by forfeit.

My opponent gave me a murderous look and left.

Sensei Patel explained. "Saw Mr. Wickes, there, take his shodan test five years ago. I've seen it before in these big regional tourneys. People dropping a belt level so they have a better chance of placing. Like a third-year college student retaking his A-levels. What's the point?"

Huh.

I made it through two more rounds and then was eliminated by a kid from Paddington who didn't even block my attacks. He'd just strike at the same time, leaning this way or that to avoid my hand or foot. Three quick points and out.

"Could learn a lot from that 'un," Henry said. Henry hadn't made it past the first round.

We watched the Paddington karateka go on to take first, so I couldn't feel too inferior.

Sensei Patel required all of us to participate in the kata competition and I was surprised to take second in the brown belt category. "See?" Sensei said. "Look what happens if you apply yourself a bit." He ruffled my head. The trophy was half as tall as me. It would be a bear on the train.

"A monument. That's what it is," said Henry. "A monument to your greatness."

"To perseverance," Sensei suggested.

After, Sensei checked in with us before he went out to eat with some of the judges and his sensei, over from Okinawa. "You lot all right by yourselves?"

"Of course, Sensei."

"See you after at the hotel, then. No later than ten, right? There's a dance, if you want, or there's the cinema over on Broad Street, right?"

"Right, Sensei."

We changed, dropped our gis and the "monument" in the hotel. Henry was now calling it a "monument to your perverseness." We found a pub where the food wouldn't be "too healthy."

Henry's choice. "S'all we get in dining hall. Veggies, veggies, veggies. With a salad."

Fish and chips were duly ordered and destroyed.

"But this greasy food is going to have me all out in spots, you know," Henry complained after, not a crumb left on his plate.

"And that would change things exactly how?" I was having a bit of trouble with pimples myself but Henry's was a spectacular case, a patchwork of trouble spots that he called his map of Africa. "Anyway," I said, "if you're still getting pimples with all the veggies they're shoveling down you in hall, then I don't see how a few chips are going to make it worse."

Henry swiped my last chip. "Look who's drowning his troubles," he said, jerking his head toward the adjoining bar.

It was Wickes, the disqualified black belt from Coventry. He was sitting in a booth with a half-full pint and two empty mugs. He glanced up and our eyes met. I dropped my eyes and turned back to Henry. "Oi. Guess Mr. Wickes is past eighteen, then."

"Why do that? Lie about your rank. What's he get out of it?"

I shrugged. "Maybe he has a trophy shelf to impress the gels." I glanced sideways briefly, just a flick of the eyes. "He's still looking at us."

"Umm. Well, it's going to be some time before I'm ready for pudding. Let's see what's going at the cinema."

"Suits."

We'd already paid but Henry put down a tip for the barmaid, saying, "Buy yourself one." She laughed at him and I was teasing Henry about it as we cut across the park toward Broad Street.

Wickes was there before us. "Think it was funny, do you?"

I stopped dead. The green was bright enough, from all the lights at the arcade, but there wasn't anyone near us. "I wasn't laughing at you, mate."

"I'm not your mate."

"Right," said Henry. "Not our mate. Don't even know each other." Henry tugged my arm and pulled me away. "Let's go this way, why don't we?" He turned away and I went with him, my back tingling, but it was Henry he kicked first and I swear I heard something break.

I wanted to check Henry but Wickes was turning toward me and I already knew how fast the bugger was. I blocked and blocked but his kicks were very strong and they hurt my arms or crashed through, anyway, only partially absorbed by my blocks. I tagged him once, good, with a front thrust kick that pushed him back clutching his side.

"Well, that's better than you did in the match," he said. His grin got nasty. "Guess I won't hold-"

I stepped back into zenkutsudachi and executed a gedan barai, a low block.

He laughed at me. I was still ten feet away, but he began to lift his hands as I stepped forward and punched, face high.

I jumped the interval and my fist smashed into his mouth.

He flew back and didn't get up.

Henry was sitting up clutching his side, his eyes wide. I checked Wickes-he had a pulse, he was breathing, he was bleeding from the mouth, and his eyes were blinking. I pinched his thigh, hard, and he yelped. "Feel that, do you? That's good enough for me." I went back to Henry and helped him up. "You okay, mate?"

"No. I think he broke a rib. And maybe I'm concussed."

I looked at him. "Why do you think that?"

"I blacked out there for a moment, when you hit him. I think. Saw it start, saw it finish-"

"What's my name? What's the date? Who's the prime minister?"

"Griff. It's Saturday the eighteenth. Tony Sodding Blair."

"Well, maybe you blinked. Should we find a bobby for Mr. Wickes?"

Henry surveyed the spreading blood on Wickes's chin. "No. I think he's got his."

I supported him back to the hotel and found Dr. Kolnick. The doctor was one of the senior members of the dojo, a third-degree black belt. I think his specialty was cardiology, but he'd spent so much time in the martial arts that he was good for the odd sprain and contusion.

Dr. Kolnick clucked his tongue and took Henry off to City Hospital and had him X-rayed, "to make sure we don't have a broken rib about to poke you in the lung." When the diagnosis turned out to be a hairline crack, he taped Henry up good. He also disinfected my hand. I had a gash below the knuckles I hadn't even noticed.

"Teeth, probably," the doctor said.

Teeth.

We caught our train back in the morning. Henry was stiff and I was sympathetic and tired and pissed off. "I don't think we should've turned our backs to him."

"Sod off," said Henry.

It felt weird, that trip. Except for the punch (and what a punch it was!) I didn't jump once. I arrived in Birmingham by train, walked around, and took the train back to London.

It felt… weird. It felt… normal.

Maybe normal was what I needed. Maybe I just needed to be in one place, where I only moved around like other people. Hmph. I could just see trying to rent a place. How old are you, kid? Where's your parents? Tell me another.

There was a fuss from Henry's parents about the cracked rib but they and Henry's headmaster ended up with the impression it had happened at the tournament itself and, as Henry said, "Better all around, that."

Sensei Patel wanted to talk to my parents about the fight, as he'd gotten specifics from us. I ended up bringing in a note, ostensibly from my dad, that "Griff discussed the whole thing with us and I appreciate the example you're setting for him. I am concerned about the incident, but believe it far less serious than what football hooligans are doing nowadays. And Griff has learned something from it."

I typed it on a rent-a-computer at Kinko's in San Diego and signed it left-handed, like the previous forms.

Sensei Patel said, "What'd you learn?"

"Don't turn my back."

"Kids!" But he didn't correct me. He did wonder aloud why my dad never came to classes or to watch any of the tests like the other parents.

"He's busy. Really busy."

In December, Henry went away, off to Amman for the holidays, and the dojo closed the week between. It was cold that year in London, I mean actual snow and stuff, so I went south, to the remote Bahfa Chacacual. I took Consuelo and Sam with me, and with the dinghy sailed them west, away from La Crucecita, to the fishingvillage of St. Augustin. It was still only nine miles from the family compound as the crow flies, but thirty miles by road. There was a colectivo that ran inland to the Bahias de Huatulco International Airport and from there they could take the bus into town.

I was supposed to call for them in a week, the same place, weather permitting. That was the plan.

I put back out to sea and sailed east, hugging the coast, past Chacacual, past the little fishing village at Bahfa Maguey, and after studying the shoreline carefully with my marine binoculars, on into Santa Cruz Bay with the sunset. There were dozens of dinghies, rigid and inflatable, tied up at the public pier. I stepped my mast before threading my way through them and tying up beneath the pier, where the posts weren't bumpered, but handy to ladder. I tied up and took the binoculars with me.

I wanted to see Alejandra.

It took me an hour to walk back into the hills above La Crucecita proper. I could've done it in thirty minutes if I hadn't been avoiding people and cars, but too many here knew my face.

I'd changed a bit. It was almost three years since I'd left and I was taller. I wore a baseball hat and a light jacket with the collar pulled up. It was windy and cool enough to justify the jacket. The offshore wind had been good for sailing- flat water, stiff breeze-but now it shook the trees and made it easy to imagine every sound an enemy.

The compound was lit up for a fiesta, a fire at the open end of the courtyard and lights strung across. I could hear music and the food smelled fantastic.

My stomach rumbled. I'd even eat chapulines about now.

I moved closer, working down through the brush; then, when the building blocked the way, I moved up into an old ahuehuete tree, using its thick trunk to shield my body, until I had a good view of the courtyard with the binocs.

There was Consuelo and Sam and her mother, Sefiora Monjarraz y Romera, and Alejandra's mother, Sefiora Monjarraz y Losada. Then I saw Rodrigo and a girl I remembered him chasing a few summers before, and then Alejandra came out of the house with a tray of food, with her cousin Mari-anna carrying another.

I stopped breathing for a moment. Alejandra was as beautiful as ever.

And she was okay.

I'd had reports, through Consuelo, but something inside of me must've still doubted, for I nearly choked on a sob. I blinked hard for a minute, then I could see properly again.

More cars and people made their way up the winding dirt road and the party expanded as the extended family and friends kept arriving. Most I recognized, though I would've been hard-pressed to come up with names, but there was a man who arrived with take-out from Sabor de Huatulco-I recognized the bag even if I didn't know him.

Rodrigo greeted him like some long-lost relative and I thought perhaps that's what he was, but then Rodrigo took him over and introduced him to Sam and Consuelo. I saw Sam's eyes narrow even though he smiled and shook hands, and while Consuelo looked polite, I'd seen her greet total strangers with more warmth.

I'd lay odds this was the new bellman from the Hotel Villa Blanca-the one who'd watched Alejandra's house while she was away.

I wanted to punch him, like I punched Wickes in Birmingham. Or jump him to the Isla la Montosa. Or that field with the bull in Oxfordshire.

Fat lot of good that would do.

Even if I killed him it would just draw them here in force, maybe snatching Alejandra or Sam or Consuelo. Or all of them.

A piece of bark came off the branch where I'd been gripping it and I nearly fell out of the tree, nearly dropped the binocs.

I walked back into Santa Cruz and risked buying a meal at one of the tourist places, only speaking English. By the time I was finished, a three-quarter moon was rising, giving me enough light to sail back to Bahia Chacacual, though it was after midnight by the time I got there and jumped the dinghy back to the Hole.

They weren't back in St. Augustin the next week so I found a public phone and called the family compound, as arranged, and asked for Senora Consuelo. She was a while coming and I felt like something terrible must've happened but then she was there.

"Bueno?"

"Hola, Tia. i Quieres tomar el sol en la play a mahana?"

I didn't know if they were listening. Consuelo had several nephews so calling her aunt might throw them off. It would at least leave it in doubt. And she liked to sunbathe on the beach, or at least walk up and down the shore with the water washing over her ankles.

"Nopuedo ir. Volamos a casa mahana." So, they were being watched. The bastards might have checked the flight manifests into Huatulco and not found Sam and Consuelo.

Anyway, they were going to fly home and not risk meeting up with me again. Not in Oaxaca.

"Que lastima. Vaya con Dios."

"Debes tener cuidado."

"Usted tambien."

Yeah, we'd all have to be careful.

Henry came back from the hols and brought me a little wooden horse, rearing, six inches high. "Merry Christmas and all that. It's olive wood. Didn't really know what you'd want."

I was touched but of course I couldn't show it. "Thanks. Didn't have to. I've got something for you, but it's back in me Hole. Bring it to class Thursday." I went to class most days, but for Henry it was Tuesday, Thursday, and odd Saturdays.

I didn't really have something for him. I'd bought something for Sam and Consuelo, and for Alejandra (mailed by Consuelo), but the season depressed me and I'd avoided the shopping crowds, the decorations, and the songs.

In Thailand, mostly.

In Phuket I was doing the same thing I did in Huatulco- I'd picked a remote jump site, in this case a little island called Ko Bon off Rawai. A resort on Phuket proper considered it their "private" island but I'd arrive on the south end, away from their salas and loungers and the honeymoon suite (though I watched some skinny-dipping once) and put my dinghy in the water and sail a half hour over to Chalong, avoiding the resorts.

I brought Henry a Thai Buddha head carved from rain-tree wood, gold leaf on the headdress thingy, pendulous earlobes and slitted eyes over a smiling mouth. It was the smile that made me buy it. Unlike the others, it was practically jolly.

He blinked when he opened it. "Very cool. How'd you know?"

"Know what?"

"I've got a shrine in my room. I'm not really Buddhist, but it's how I get out of Sunday chapel."

"You bleeding hypocrite!" I laughed.

He shrugged and smiled. "Yeah, well, you haven't had to listen to those bloody sermons on those bloody benches, have you? I'm all bony."

I shook my head. We were having our regular cuppa after but instead of walking, we were sticking to a corner table at the Expresso Bar. It was sleeting outside.

He opened his backpack to wedge the Buddha down inside with his gi. He pulled out a book to make room and I flipped through it. "Ugh. Exponents and polynomials. That was an ugly two weeks. Nearly ate me head."

"Was? Are you past this? I'm in advanced math, my form!"

"Uh. Did that last year. I'm homeschooled, you know? Work at me own pace. Do okay with the math." I reached up to touch his hair, a foot above me. "Over your head?"

"Oh, very funny." He licked his lips. "Give a guy a hand, could you? I was supposed to work on it over the hols and I spent all my spare time, uh…" He blushed.

I sat up. "Oh, this has got to be good. Let's guess-there's a girl involved."

He punched my arm. "Well, it wasn't a boy, that's for sure."

"Jordanian?"

"Nah. Tricia Peterson-known her for years. Her mother is the protocol officer at the embassy, longtime friend of my parents."

"So you didn't do the math because you were snogging in the bushes."

He blushed redder. "Going around to see the sights. She doesn't live there, either. Visiting for the hols. Her school is out in the wilds of Oxfordshire. Girls' hell, she says."

I nodded. He had a girlfriend. I was thinking about Alejandra and I could sympathize and even be a little jealous.

"Show me what you're having trouble with. And I don't mean the snogging bit."

We did simplification of fractions with exponents until he had to run for the Tube. "Don't slip," I said. "It's like glass out there."

"Thanks for the help. Maybe you could help me again Saturday? I could ask for extra leave. We could do it at your place."

"That's a thought," I said, stalling. "Take us for ever to get out there, though. Can you have guests in at your school? Never seen a boarding school-not outside a movie."

He looked at me like I was crazy. "Well, if that's your idea of fun. Sure. We'll go back there."

"Right."

I took a westbound train and transferred to a southbound at Earl's Court. Somewhere between Southfield and Wimbledon Park I jumped away to the Hole.

It snowed again, Friday night, very odd for London. Walking to the Tube station after class, Henry said, "'When men were all asleep the snow came flying, in large white flakes falling on the city brown.'"

I looked at him blankly.

"Robert Bridges. 'London Snow.'" He kicked at the snow on the sidewalk. "You know… poetry?"

"Ah. Me, I'm more of an 'As I was going to St. Ives' kind of guy. The bloody over the beautiful. Though I'm quite fond of Coleridge. And Green Day."

"But look at the snow!"

I scooped up a handful. "You look at it," I said, and flung it in his face. Much icy cold violence ensued and we had to shake the snow out of our clothes and hair while we waited on the platform.

St. Bartholomew's Academy is in an old Georgian mansion south of Russell Square. "But, of course, since Prisoner of Azkaban came out, we call it St Brutus's."

I looked at him blankly. The book had only just come out.

Henry explained. "His uncle pretends that Harry attends St. Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys."

I laughed. "Ah. Very good. Only read the first one so far."

"You could go blind! Look, I'll lend you two and three, okay?"

I nodded. I had odd feelings about it. Harry was an orphan, after all, whose parents were killed by someone out to kill Harry. A little too close to home, that.

We had to sign in with the school porter, a friendly man in a cardigan, in a room off the main hall.

The interior of St. Bart's was all polished wood and fusty old portraits staring disapprovingly at everyone. The students' rooms were somewhat better and you were more likely to see Manchester United or band posters instead.

Henry took me around to the dining hall and pulled some fruit ("All healthy snacks here-enough to make you croak") from the kitchen, then introduced me to a few people on his floor: "Griff, here, in my karate class. Helping me with my algebra."

His roommate, being a weekday boarder, was off with his folks in Ipswich, so we sat in there, the door open. I got to see his shrine, a shelf with a cotton meditation cushion before it, and some souvenirs from all over the world.

We did an hour of polynomials, then took a break. He showed me the gym in the basement, complete with boxing ring and some gymnastic equipment and balls and rackets and cricket bats. "Weather allowing, we use the green over at Brunswick Square for football and cricket. And the phys ed teacher's a right bastard about running. In any weather."

We did another half hour of math, then he lent me his copies of Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner, and saw me down. On the stairs, he got asked, "Who's your girlfriend, 'enry?" by a large youth sitting on the landing with two others, all older than Henry.

Henry kept walking, his face still. When we were down in the main hallway and out of earshot he said, "That bastard is the reason I started karate."

"You turned your back on him."

"But you didn't. I noticed." Henry tilted his head. "Watters is the kind who'd go for your back, too, but not in front of witnesses. Last time he gave it a go I bloodied his nose. I got in trouble but so did he. He does petty things like pinching one's classwork or putting porn in your room and reporting it."

"That's why you locked your room."

"Yeah, had to start last year. Honor among gentlemen, my arse."

"Your parents know?"

"My dad went to this school. In his time, the odd bit of involuntary sodomy happened, so he thinks this is all just good, character-building experience. I mean, no danger of hemorrhoids, after all." Henry saw my face. "Hey, it's not that bad. My roommate's quite decent though his math is worse than mine, if you can imagine."

I shook my head. "I'll never bad-mouth homeschooling again."

I spent Sunday at Hogwarts. Well, reading on the beach in Oaxaca, really, but the books were good. I tried to get together with Sam and Consuelo but the code phrase "No la conozco" let me know they still thought they were being watched.

So I read. I'd finished both books by Monday night, so, having neglected my own schoolwork, I did an essay comparing the evolution of the magic use in all three books, in French. That's what I do when I miss Mum the most. Work in French.

I gave Henry a printout of the essay when I returned the books to him at Tuesday class. "Well, you're right about my vocabulary. Have to hit the Dictionnaire Francais-Anglais for this one. Probably be good for me. Yuck." But he folded it carefully and tucked it into Prisoner before packing the books away in his bag.

We did the cuppa after and he said, "You know, I've got February half-term holiday coming up. Going to camp at my cousin's in Normandy. Think you could talk your folks into letting you go with me?"

I stalled. " Normandy? Where? Cherbourg?"

He shook his head. "Nah. Little village called Pontorson- less than ten kilometers from Mont-Saint-Michel."

I'd seen pictures of Mont-Saint-Michel. Who hasn't?

"Pretty. How do you go?"

"Train to Portsmouth. Night ferry to Saint-Malo. Cousin meets me at the ferry in his Citroen and takes me back to his cottage."

"There's no problem because of your age? Traveling, I mean?"

"Ah, there's more of a hassle coming home, so my cousin usually crosses back and gets me through passport control, does a bit of shopping, and then heads back."

"What's he do, your cousin?"

"Retired-really my grandmother's cousin, what, mine twice removed? Something like that. He likes his wine. Likes to garden. Was a civil servant before. Transport, I think."

"Sure he'd be all right with it?"

"Oh, yeah. Suggested it before. Not you specifically- bring a chum, he said. He pretty much turns me loose when I'm there. I mean, if there's any heavy work in the garden, I pitch in, but there's woods and a river and there's a ten-minute bus you can take to the coast-the tide comes in like thunder, just miles of sand and then, whoosh, in it comes."

"Well, it sounds brilliant. Tell you what, I'll run it past ma mere et mon pere and see what comes of it."

"I can have my mum call, if it'll help."

"Noted," I said. "If needed."

I should've said no.