by Alan Agnew
As we set off again, warmed by our roast dinners and lighter topics of conversation, Vicky asks me about the girl I mentioned and where does she feature in this open timeline of being down in Dorset. I tell her the truth; we have separated, the pressures of trying and failing to start a family, the demands of maturing into different people, and maturing in different directions. I feel obliged to ask her about her relationship status and choose to dress it up under pretence equally. ‘How does your other half feel about living so close to your parents?’
‘No time for men, mum says I am married to the church,’ laughing nervously.
I mention my meeting with the local vicar and the uplifting effect it had on me.
‘He is good, we were all a little wary at first, Reverend Davies had been at the Parish for twenty years before him, and nobody likes change, especially the Parish at Baysworth. You should come next Sunday morning for service if you are still here. Or if feeling brave, listen to us bell ringing on Tuesday nights, a cup of tea to the first 800 through the door.’ I return her smile.
As we reach the car park, Vicky turns to me with a look of carefulness, or is it sympathy? ‘I am sorry I could not give you the answers you were looking for.’
‘No, it’s been helpful thanks. Hey, one final thing, was there anything out of the ordinary at school the day before he committed suicide, a fight or an argument?’
Vicky pauses and looks me straight in the eye. ‘I don’t know Phil, and I didn’t see him. It was half term that week.’
I feel the blood draining from my face, through my body, weakening my knees.
‘What is it? Are you OK Phil? What have I said?’
I swallowed hard to generate just enough saliva to answer. ‘Could there have been any school events that week?’
Vicky shook her head slowly. ‘Definitely not, my mum ran a church activity week there during half term, it was so weird being the only kid in school during a holiday. Jimmy’s funeral was the same day as the first day back.’
‘Vicky thank you so much, it was lovely to meet you and hear your recollections of Jimmy, I appreciate it, and you have given me such clarity. I have to get home now but will see you again, I hope.’
As I turn and walk towards my car, I blow hard, the escaping breath held inside me since the mention of half-term. My fingernails dig into my palms as my fist clenches. The alarm bell is ringing loud and clear in my head as I sit at the wheel.
Chapter Twenty – 12 days after
I sit squeezing the steering wheel of my car watching the many Hunter boots being kicked off and cleaned of their mud before being thrown in the boot of spotlessly clean Range Rovers. Conversations throughout the car-park are already turning to tomorrow’s commute and to-do list in the office. I continue the breathing exercise I learnt from the therapy sessions that Caroline insisted I attend. Three seconds in, seven seconds out, swapping the angry gravelled voice in my head to a whisper. I drive purposely slowly out of the car park, pausing and raising a sympathetic wave to a distressed woman chasing after her loose dog running in front of me.
I turn on the radio as my mind pieces together the past to what Vicky has just revealed, wanting to piece together that week. I remember Dad and Jimmy had argued. Mum and I on the peripheral as they sparred with one another before Jimmy stood up, throwing down his cutlery onto his plate, a splatter of gravy on the tablecloth. Jimmy was pleading to give up football as if it had been the fight of his life. Mum sat mute, eyes fixed on her plate. I waited for my dad to yell his instruction to sit back down, but instead stood toe to toe against him, shouting ‘WHY?’
Jimmy had said he was slipping behind with his schoolwork. Yet, what had Vicky just told me, that Jimmy’s grades had always been excellent. I pressed my foot a little harder on the accelerator. Jimmy had said he didn’t have friends on the team but didn’t Vicky just say he was popular? I chewed my lip, a pinching pain forcing my foot harder against the accelerator. What else did Jimmy and Dad say in their verbal spar? Jimmy claimed he was tired, but I had already taken over his paper round, and dammit, Vicky just told me Jimmy had boundless energy on match days.
The music on the radio gets louder, the beat faster. Dad had stood in front of him at the dining table, pleading now. ‘It could your future, a scholarship, make something of your life’. I can see him now, the image of Jimmy, eyes brimming with unshed tears, all colour sucked dry from his cheeks as he calmly replied ‘What life.’
I barrel down the road lined with shops and people now, only noticing the man waving his fist in my rear view mirror, standing in the middle of the street, the Zebra crossing disappearing out of my sight. Why did he hate football of a sudden? Maybe it wasn’t football, maybe it was the showers. Oh my God Jimmy, my brother…You can’t explain that at the dinner table. No-one can account for the showers, apart from maybe ‘Loitering Lloyd.’ That animal. That barbaric animal. I see the whites of my knuckles strapped to the steering wheel.
Vicky said Jimmy skipped History, yet it had been his favourite subject, top grades she had said. All these years and I’d never known of the most telling details of my brother’s life and pain. He was right: what life? I pound the wheel with my fists with a ferocity that I beg will undo the past.
A woman jumps to the pavement dragging her child close to her chest, her face ashen white with horror, tins rolling from her shopping bag. Her stare strikes through me like lightning, my teeth gritting in defiance. And all the time Lloyd let him to do whatever he wanted, like Jimmy had something over him.
I turn into my street, my anger, frustration and powerlessness rippling up and colliding inside me, turning me into a seething seeker of revenge. I want to hurt him bad. I want him to be standing on his drive, head down focused on his flowers, rising just in time to see my telling face behind the wheel, for our eyes to meet knowingly. I want to see the panic in his body, his eyes popping and legs shuffling nowhere. I want him to feel the pain before my car hits him, and I want to watch in slow motion his lifeless body flinging in the air, catching the briefest glimpse of my smile and mouthing JIMMY, before crashing against the house, sliding to the ground.
I turn the final corner, my eyes hungrily seeking him, heart dropping like lead when I see the driveway empty.
I try to bury it, but there is no grave deep enough to hold my fears. I slam the car door and run into the house straight up the stairs, two at a time, and pull out my dad’s box of papers. I grab hold of the separated pile and pull the paperclip off and flick through at pace. There. Found it. Booking confirmation for Mr Jenkins from 19th February to 23rd February 1986, 2-bed cottage, Apollo Cottages, Brixham. Our usual holiday booking, but no cleaning receipt this time, because we never made it there. We should have arrived on 19th February 1986. Vicky was right, it was half term that week, and I have vague memories of packing a bag on that fateful morning. My mouth is so dry. Jimmy was not going to school, and he had no intention of going to school, we were going on holiday. Instead, he put on his school uniform to hang himself in our garage, his only escape.
Message received Jimmy, loud and clear.
I charge out of the house and across the driveway. I bang on his door ignoring the bell, my anger only building as I wait for it to open. I bang again, louder. No answer. In my rage, I had not even noticed the car still absent from the drive. I walk around the house; all windows are secure this time. I wish I had paint to scroll over his house, to tell the world who he really is, and what he did. The fire inside me rages, lacing my veins and engulfing my spine. I pick up a rock and hurl it through the bedroom window. The glass shatters, leaving a hole amongst daggers, an instant release.
I go back inside and look for a beer and find only an empty fridge at the worst possible time. I stare at the internal door to the garage. I still have not found the key to this door or the outer one. I have had enough of searching, waiting for email replies, waiting to meet people, and for the remaining pieces to complete my jigsaw. I kick the door hard with the sole of my shoe
just above the handle. I kick a second time and feel some movement. My third kick is rewarded with a crash.
A surge of power goes straight through me at the sight of the door crashing open. The escaping cold air blows into my face and I taste its staleness. I reach out and find the light switch hidden behind dust and cobwebs. The dim light only reveals the emptiness of the space, nothing apart from a few leaves that have slipped under the garage door. I tentatively step onto the concrete floor as if it were a frozen lake, seeing the image of my parents laying on the floor, their world, our world, blown to pieces. The smell of dampness hanging in the air. In a shadowed corner, I spot a single bottle of whiskey. I understand its purpose, its symbolism. I take it back to the kitchen and open it, pouring myself a glass and walk back to the garage raising the glass and toast, ‘to my big brother, I will put things right,’ and down it. The warmth hits the back of my throat. I cough and take a sharp breath through my nose and mouth, tasting it again. I return to the kitchen, dropping some ice into my glass to take the edge off the bitterness. I slump into my dad’s armchair, staring at the blank television screen, providing an unwelcome reflection of my anger. Whom I have become.
My mind fills with haunting images of what might have gone on. How Lloyd would loiter around the changing rooms after Jimmy’s football, all those little private chats at school, the promise of good grades? All those hours spent in the shed, filling his head with war stories like some kind of hero that he did not have at home. I don’t understand why Jimmy didn’t say something, why he didn’t fight back? I know so little about all of this. But children are vulnerable and muted by fear, which is why the media is full of men years later speaking up.
I think about Donald calling in favours from DI Mayne, his brother from the Lodge, how brotherhood was deemed more important than justice as the police turned a blind eye and shot down the investigation. They are as guilty as Donald. I notice my hand shaking, a trembling rage.
I reach down for the bottle, my medicine, nearly half down, and it has hardly touched the sides. I must have been drinking in a trance, slowly numbing my senses. As I stand, I feel its full effect. I sway from side to side, my head like a lead weight, my eyes swivelling to the back of my head, unable to focus.
I open my front door and stare at his house. Through my gritted teeth, I mumble my hate, my lust to inflict pain swelling. I reach down to pick up a half-brick sitting in my flower bed and throw it hard against his house, causing me to stumble. It misses the window scuffing the brick wall, but has whetted my appetite once again. I freeze momentarily and smile at the sight of his car back on the drive, and my mind goes to him finding the smashed window, maybe calling police friends. I think of him and DI Mayne as I stride over to his car and kick the wing mirror clean off.
‘COME ON DONALD, COME ON,’ I shout, standing with an exaggerated wide stance, my chest heaving, and arms spread wide. My adrenaline is pumping, now or never, I choose to fight.
I smile with a warped pride as my cries go unanswered, I want him to hide from me, to fear me, to feel how Jimmy felt and then I will strike him, right hook, left jab, kick to his stomach. I walk round to the back of the house, scouring the garden for another brick to fire straight into his lounge window. I imagine the glass shattering at his feet, and I want to see him scared. My eyes search for him. I don’t see him, I don’t see anything. A huge dust sheet extended right across the scaffolding blocking eyes into the house, but then also blocking any eyes out.
I seek my next move. I stare at his shed as I have done a hundred times in the past fortnight. I take a couple of steps to the door and kick it hard, leaving it hanging by its hinges as if by a thread. I kick again at the hinges, and the door slams flush to the floor like an open drawbridge, a surge of power filtering through me. I flick the light switch which illuminates four spotlights sunken into a garnished wooden ceiling.
It is like the Tardis, much bigger inside than outside, fitted out like a Scandinavian log cabin and furnished like a showcase kids’ room in Ikea. I stand in awe taking in my surreal surroundings. A small flat-screen television on one wall with DVD player and Xbox below with two mini reclining armchairs facing. A mini-fridge in the corner, a trendy red one with a metal handle and a fashionable Dyson fan, one of those bladeless ones that make you want to put your hand through. On the wall are two narrow mirrors and framed pictures everywhere, of show jumping, of popstars, of the Eiffel Tower, of youth. A small bookcase with pop and fashion magazines. The place even smells like candy. Nothing looks out of place, apart from a dirty green plastic box tucked away in the corner. It is full of rusty old tins of paint and oil, old paintbrushes with solid brushes, half-empty bottles of weed killer, varnish and white spirit.
I pick up the white spirit and push the sticky top-down, then to the right, with every turn soaking my finger and thumb in the greasy colourless fluid. The bottle immediately bends in my hand as the air is released. I pour the remains of the bottle over the two chairs tossing the empty bottle to the floor. I reach down into the green box once again and pull out a small box of safety matches. I push open the small cardboard box from within, pulling out four matches, striking them purposely along the sandpaper of the matchbox. They alight as one with an instant spark against the friction, and for a second, I am mesmerised by the tiny inferno between my fingers, a little dark wisp of smoke floating upward. Holding such power between my fingers. I lower it carefully to touch the small pool of fluid sitting on the chair which immediately ignites and spreads, following the fluid path all over the seat like a small river weaving through a valley. I light another match and toss it on the second chair, the small flame curls around the match, igniting much slower and confined to just one corner, the deep orange flame twinkling before rising and transforming to a deep yellow, the chair melting slowly as the fire spreads.
The flames flicker before me, the oppressive heat suffocating my face and smoke flowing upwards hitting the ceiling and blanketing all the walls. I take a couple of steps backwards out of the doorframe, the fresh evening air cleansing me. The small curtain covering the window catches a loose cinder and catches fire instantly. I take another couple of steps backwards, keeping my eyes fixed on the multiplying grey smoke chasing me out of the door. The crackling is deafening in the quiet of this night.
The scene changes before my eyes as the smoke turns to a thick black fog. Flames begin to eat their way through the shed wall where the green box sits, engulfing its shell. Rising high in the night sky and dancing to the tune of the wind, bouncing out of control, snarling and biting at the huge sheet covering the scaffolding. Suddenly I feel small and helpless, all control and power emptied of me. The black fog is surrounding me like an evil spirit, filling my lungs, awakening me from my rage.
I fall to my knees, blinking hard to rid my eyes of the poison. I bow my head, clenching my fists tight, willing to wake up in my bed. I hear Caroline’s voice next to me, sounding disappointed at first, asking me questions and then angrier, screaming now, take control, my wake up call.
I leap to my feet and run towards the scaffolding, grabbing the dust sheet and pulling it hard. My eyes flood with tears at the impenetrable task and then drown in fear as it catches alight. I look back to the shed behind me engulfed in flames, ash beginning to rain down.
I scan the garden and pick up a broom from the wet lawn and turn to the dust sheet whacking it hard, beating the fire down. The broom slices open the fragile embers of the sheet with chunks falling to the ground giving me a sudden clear view into the living room window. I see Donald asleep in his chair, the reflection of the television on his glasses and I start banging hard on the window.
He wakes with a startle and his eyes fix first on me then on the bright orange glow behind me, he rises to his feet and opens the patio door, eyes still fixed on the shed.
‘What the hell,’ he screams above the blaring noise from the television.
‘Donald, call the fire brigade and then get out of the house.’
He turns and shuffles to the hallway, and I remember having seen a fire extinguisher in his kitchen fixed to the wall above his fridge. I run in, past Donald dialling frantically and grab it, running upstairs to the spare room, I jump on the bed and out of the same window I had used before. I stand on the platform, gripping the extinguisher hard, firing the foam downwards onto the flames, suffocating them until all I can see at the bottom of the sheet is a ring of dirty foam.
I jump over the metal bar and skip down the steps two at a time firing at the shed with the remaining foam until it shoots out only air and bubbles—the foam slides off the walls revealing a charcoaled black shell. The extinguisher is ingrained into the palm of my hand as I try and let go. I peel my fingers one by one off the black metal handle. Tears fill my eyes, relief it is over but already drowning in guilt.
I stagger back in the house through the patio doors, Donald stands opposite me with fright in his eyes. ‘Philip, Philip, are you OK, I am so sorry I don’t know what could have happened.’
I am standing next to his sofa chair but fall to my knees. My mind contemplates just for a second if I can sit here and accept his accolades, be the hero. But how could I live with myself? I could face charges, and what credibility would a liar, an arsonist, an attempted murderer have in proving another man’s guilt?
‘It was me, Donald.’ My voice alien to me.
‘It was me that set fire to your shed. I only meant to frighten you. I did not know it would spread so quickly.’