by Allan Watson
It wasn’t a coin however. It was only a steel washer, worthless and cruel in the way it had tricked me. I bent down to pick it up, intending to throw it over the bridge into the water, when I heard dad yell my name loudly. It wasn’t an angry type of shout, I knew those yells well enough. This was a bellow of fear and panic. Before I could even turn around, two bony hands had grabbed me under the armpits and hoisted me aloft above the metal bridge partition, dangling me head first over the water. Until that moment I thought I knew what terror was, but this was beyond anything in my experience.
The water seemed to be hundreds of feet below me and looked as wide as the sea. It was a dirty brown colour and flecked with scummy foam. Paralysed with fear, I hung there waiting to fall. The sun unexpectedly slunk out from behind a dark bank of cloud and turned the muddy water into a river of copper. Behind me, Grandfather Crone’s false teeth clicked wetly like chewing mandibles and I could smell his breath which stank of stewed cabbage. Miles away I could hear dad’s running footsteps and mum’s frightened cries. Grandfather Crone adjusted his grip on me and I knew he was preparing to let me drop off the bridge into the foaming copper below. The world spun on its axis, tilting the red liquid up and over my head, and then there was nothing for a while.
When I came to, dad was straddled over me lightly slapping my cheeks. I felt cold and my face was a mess of tears and snot. I saw Grandfather Crone over dad’s shoulder, he was back staring at the traffic again, that hideous grin still plastered on his face. Gran Crone was scolding him to the amusement of the passers by. In hindsight she would have been doing everyone a great favour if she had placed her hands in the small of his back and pushed him beneath the wheels of the first bus that passed.
CHAPTER 5
I was wakened in the morning by Alice singing at the top of her voice as she bounced on the spare bed like it was a trampoline. The sunlight creeping around the edge of the curtains felt warm on my face and I could smell bacon cooking downstairs. For a few seconds I felt at peace with the world. Then the previous night’s events came bursting through the flimsy wall of half asleep contentment. The sudden depression didn’t last long however - daylight has a cute trick of rationalising the unexplained. Sleep walking was common in children of Denise’s age, it was just good luck she hadn’t fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. It struck me that she must have gone wandering while Teri and I were getting reacquainted in the bedroom. Sleepwalking or not, I hoped she hadn’t seen anything as she passed our half open door.
Then there was the foul smell. That was easily explained away in an old house such as this. The plumbing was probably as ancient as the brickwork. All those crumbling lead pipes. I would mention it to the agency who leased the flat. The gull tapping on the window was also unfortunate in its timing, but it was just a stupid bird. That only left the mystery of the bed rail.
I watched Alice bouncing like a demented grasshopper on the bed opposite me, showing no obvious sign of injury from her fall. I reached out and pulled the curtains aside to let in more light, but the increased illumination failed to clear up the mystery of the unscrewed safety rail. I could only imagine the brass screws hadn’t been as secure as they looked. It was just possible that Alice might have managed to kick it free and pure chance caused it to land in the corner. I knew if I thought about it much longer I would see serious flaws in my logic, so I banished it to the back of my mind. I would check it out later.
My main concern was to make up lost ground with Teri, and to do that I would have to go downstairs for breakfast. Shooing Alice from the room, I dressed quickly in shorts and T-shirt. A shower could wait until after breakfast. Just before I walked out the room, my hand instinctively tried the handle of the locked closet. I knew I was being stupid even trying it, but something about that locked door still needled me. I looked at the flimsy hinges of the door and knew if I was really determined I could take them off. Easy as pie. Smiling, I took the stairs two at a time, the appetising smell of the bacon was calling me.
As I passed the bathroom I heard splashing and stuck my head round the door to say good morning to Denise. She was in the bath, almost hidden beneath a white blanket of bubble bath. The way she covered her scrawny, undeveloped chest with her hands and shouted, ‘Dad!’ in a high, indignant voice made me laugh out loud. I retreated and found Teri in the kitchen lifting greasy strips of streaky bacon from the grill with a fork. On the worktop was a plate of buttered bread and a mug of steaming tea. There was also a half empty glass of water with an Alka-Seltzer still fizzing gently on the bottom. It looked like Teri was suffering from a hangover. It also seemed she was treating last night’s fiasco as a minor setback and was making an effort to see the day would get off to a good start. It had been years since she had cooked me bacon butties on a Sunday morning.
Creeping up behind her, I tickled Teri in the ribs, making her jump. The strips of bacon hanging precariously on the fork, fell to the floor with a resigned slapping noise. Teri whirled around and glared at me, brandishing the fork like a miniature devil’s trident. For a second she looked so mad I thought she was going to stick the tines into my face. Then she lowered her arm and snarled, ‘Why don’t you grow up, Matt! That was the last of the bacon. You’ll have to make do with Corn Flakes or toast now.’
There was a level of anger in her voice I didn’t understand. I watched mutely as she knelt to pick up the bacon strips and toss them into the waste bin with more force than was needed. I realised that I had judged her mood badly. I held my hands up in a gesture of unconditional surrender. ‘Whoa, steady on, Teri. Corn Flakes it is. Look, you go and sit down and I’ll make breakfast.’
Teri picked up the glass of water from the worktop and sipped from it. Her eyes looked bleary and tired, but there was something dark lurking behind them that told me there was more here to worry about than just a hangover and a few dropped rashers of bacon. She looked over my shoulder to check that Alice wasn’t in earshot and said quietly, ‘Have you seen Denise?’
There was a raw edge to her voice that suggested the question was loaded. I couldn’t figure this out. I stared hard into Teri’s face searching for a clue that might help me understand what was going on. The dark look behind her eyes had changed to a hard, bright thing and two red, blazing spots appeared on her cheeks.
‘I looked in on her a minute ago. What’s the problem?’
‘You mean you didn’t see the scratches?’
I shook my head feeling as if I was sinking slowly into quicksand. ‘No I didn’t see any scratches. There was enough bubble bath in there to build a snowman. What’s going on Teri? What scratches are you talking about?’
Teri’s eyes looked down at the floor as if she was seriously uncomfortable. Her hand waved vaguely towards her own crotch area. ‘Down here. All around......’ The scarlet spots on her cheeks darkened in intensity. ‘You know...... her privates. She’s bruised too.’
A heavy silence filled the small kitchen as the meaning of her words sank in. I remembered Denise’s sleepy voice. He touched me Daddy. What the hell had she been dreaming about? A dancing shadow skittered along the edge of my memory. I had the feeling that I should remember something important. I should be making a connection. Then the real import of Teri’s guarded words hit me like an avalanche of rotten, stinking garbage. Did she actually imagine that because our little session of bump and grind had been so abruptly terminated, I would be so sexually frustrated as to abuse my own daughter?
Teri was still looking at the floor, unable to make eye contact. I wanted to snatch the glass of water from her hand and pour the contents over her stupid head. ‘Fucking hell, Teri! Denise was having a nightmare last night. She was sleepwalking. If there are scratches on her…. privates… it’s because she put them there herself. And if you honestly think for a second that I would do something like that, then you better call the police right now. Go on, do it, fucking well call them!’ I was shaking, and my face must have looked like a thundercloud.
Teri
finally raised her head and the hateful suspicion was gone, replaced by a look of miserable self reproach mixed with relief. Her voice was timid and sheepish. ‘I’m sorry, Matt, honestly. I had to ask. My mind’s being going round in circles since I saw those marks. I was so confused, I didn’t want to believe it, but things have been so strange lately, and last night......’ Her voice tailed away into nothing. She looked so pathetic standing there, my own feelings of outrage evaporated. Teri was only a mother trying to protect her child. I had to bear in mind that if it hadn’t been for my straying ways we wouldn’t have come to this juncture in the first place. I had already branded myself as sexually irresponsible in Teri’s mind, and perhaps it wasn’t such a big jump to assume my morals hadn’t deteriorated further. From unfaithful adulterer to incestuous paedophile.
There aren’t many worse things you can do to a father than accuse him of violating his children, but a part of my mind was already racing past this punch in the guts and urging me to be pragmatic about the situation. Anger was pointless and would only drive the wedge further between us, past the point of no return. In a way, Teri now owed me and it was in my own interest to be magnanimous. I walked forward and hugged her.
‘I’m going to get something to eat and then I’ll shower and get the Sunday papers. I’ll take the girls with me for a walk.’ I had to fight against the spiteful urge to add, ‘That is, if you can trust me with them.’
Against my chest I felt Teri nod her head and the warmth of her tears soaked through my T-shirt. It was a good feeling. Teri had wounded me, but I was showing forgiveness and understanding. The sub text of my embrace demanded a reciprocal display of high-minded charity. Teri’s hands bunched the back of my T-shirt, pulling herself closer to me. A deal had been struck. Then I gazed out the kitchen window into the sunny rear gardens of the building and the smile on my face faltered. Something about the way the interconnecting back courts were laid out disturbed me. All those green squares aligned symmetrically made me think of Denise’s drawing. It made me think of death.
At one o’clock we were on our way to Craigtoun Park which lay a few miles outside St Andrew's. A brochure in the flat claimed the park had an adventure playground, crazy golf, a bouncy castle, a Pets Corner, an aviary, miniature railway, and a large boating pond with a sunken Dutch village set in the centre of it. My experience with Grandfather Crone years ago had left me with a fear of heights and falling into water. The heights problem was easy to avoid, but I'd never learned to swim. I'd never been in a swimming pool or even paddled in the sea since the day Grandfather Crone had dangled me off Ayr bridge. For some reason boats never troubled me, no matter how rickety they looked, I gained a measure of security from the wood as if it was insulating me from my phobia. It had been years since I had handled oars, but I had no doubts I would soon pick it up again.
Teri was happily pointing things out to the girls as I drove along the country road. Like the day before, the weather had started out cool and dull, like God had forgotten to put money in the gas meter, but by the time we were on the road, it was scorching. All the windows in the car were down but it still felt like the inside of an oven. I glanced down at the unaccustomed sight of my lily white legs sticking out of my shorts and made a mental note to put sun cream on, or they were going to get burned. Teri was also wearing shorts and I sneaked a look at her bare thighs, trying to remember how they had felt wrapped around me last night. In contrast to my own pallid, sun fearing limbs, Teri’s legs were a healthy creamy shade, the normally invisible soft hairs highlighted gold by the sunshine. I imagined sliding my hand across and caressing her inner thigh.
Before leaving the flat, James had sent me a text me asking how things were going. I had replied that I was taking things one step at a time. No point in getting his and Norma’s hopes up. On the surface I was confident everything would work out fine, but something was niggling away in the back of my mind. Denise’s drawing had disturbed something best left alone. A loose memory that needed to be pried loose like a bit of rancid meat caught between my teeth. I found myself thinking about the year I spend in hospital with white coated doctors asking question after question, teasing information from me a sentence at a time. In all the years since then I had deliberately turned away from my past, there was nothing to be gained from dwelling on such painful memories - even the little I consciously remembered of them.
Something had altered however, a small rip in the fabric of my life allowing a stray memory to break loose from the hard packed crust of childhood amnesia. I tried to grasp at it the way you struggle to pin down a forgotten word dancing on the tip of your tongue. The memory spun and darted like a silver fish in a stream, glinting and refracting light as I hunted it down. I could sense it tiring, barely staying ahead of my grasping mental fingers. Even as I closed in for the kill, a car coming in the opposite direction blasted its horn and I saw I had strayed across the white lines in the middle of the road. I corrected my steering and made a face at the horn happy driver, who in return waved a loose fist as if grasping an invisible penis, and was vigorously shaking it up and down as he passed. Alice asked what he meant by the gesture and I couldn't help but laugh as Teri caught my eye and blushed. I turned my attention back to the stray memory, but it had taken advantage of the distraction and was now gone.
We passed a dairy herd ambling around in a field, and in the back seat Denise began lecturing Alice about how we get milk and butter and cheese from cows. Alice, ever the cynic expressed her utter disbelief that milk squirted from those bagpipe things hanging from the cows tummies and she laughingly asked Denise if the cheese came out their bums. Denise got cross and a quarrel began. I was glad Denise showed no signs of being affected by her sleepwalking episode. I thought again of her hands twisting and tearing at the hem of her night-gown. He touched me, Daddy. I knew I should have been worrying more about the incident instead of playing tag with a fragment of the past.
The sun was too bright however. It filled my head with a torpid wind of golden apathy, sweeping everything beneath the cerebral rug, telling me to forget about it. I thought of how I still hadn't checked out the safety rail on the bunk, although I'd found plenty of time to sit and read the Sunday papers. I was like a lazy man putting off his chores in the hope that the house would burn down before he had to get off his arse and do anything. A twinge of guilt formed in my belly, but the sun burned it to a crisp within seconds. This was the first time in over six weeks that I would spend a proper day out in the company of my wife and daughters, and I didn't want to spoil things.
The car park at Craigtoun was almost full and we had trouble finding a space, but eventually I squeezed in between a Volvo and a Fiesta and everyone happily piled out. After paying our entrance fee at a little booth beside the park gate, we wandered across the grass towards a notice board displaying a map of the park. Alice demanded our first stop be the adventure playground, while Denise wanted to visit the Pets Corner. I settled the argument by tossing a coin. Alice's victory cry must have been heard across the entire park. Denise took her defeat in bad grace and scuffed her feet as we made our way over to the adventure playground, but when she caught sight of the big wooden fort with its chain bridges and the Flying Fox army slide, her skinny legs were sprinting past Alice to get there first.
Teri and I sat at a picnic bench while the girls climbed, jumped, and ran like demented whirlwinds inside the fort. Teri handed me a can of coke from the cool bag and I drank half in one long gulp. It was a moment to savour. The sun felt good on my face and the sound of fifty or so excited children having the time of their lives was cleansing my soul. I smiled at Teri, but her own smile was lukewarm in return. I thought she was going to bring up the business of Denise's scratches again, but I was wrong.
'Why did you sleep with that girl from your office, Matt?'
The question hung in the air like a man suspended from a gibbet. I felt a churlish resentment that Teri was spoiling our nice day out by raising the subject. After the veiled accus
ations in the kitchen, it was the least she could have done to just let us enjoy ourselves. I wanted to tell her to drop it for now, leave it until a better time. But I knew I would probably feel the same way tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. I placed the can of coke on the bench and rubbed at my chin. I had to concede that Teri was probably right. The sooner the matter was discussed and put behind us, the better it would be for everyone. I had always known that at some point Teri was going to ask this specific question, but I still wasn't prepared for it. In truth I didn't know the answer.
It was hardly as if there was any instant attraction between Rita and myself. When she first came to work in my office I thought she was reasonably pretty, but that was it. There was no locking of eyes across a crowded room, no arrows fired from Cupid’s bow, or crashing thunderbolts of lovelorn recognition. For the best part of a year Rita worked on the other side of the office and our communication consisted of nothing more than the occasional good morning and good night. Then she was moved to the seat next to me and it wasn't long until we discovered we shared the same sense of humour. That was probably the basis for our friendship, corny innuendoes which grew smuttier as we got to know each other better. Sometimes we would have lunch together in the canteen, and once or twice we went for a drink on the way home from work.
That was it. The sum total of our relationship. I liked Rita a lot but I never seriously thought for a moment about sleeping with her. Not that I didn't find her attractive. I had always held a secret hankering for redheads, and Rita's long mass of flame hair captivated me. Her face was like a smirking cat when she laughed and while not stunningly beautiful, I could easily see how a man could lose his heart to those greenish grey eyes. Any time she leaned over the desk to retrieve paper clips, I would never miss the opportunity to glance down the open top of her shirt, or admire the way her jeans stretched across her backside. But that was as far as it went, until the fateful night we got falling-down drunk together.