Chapter 3
While still a young woman there had been a total collapse in Suzanne Gaillard's relationship with her father. The disagreement had been a matter of little consequence in the scheme of things, but stubborn pride on both sides resulted in Suzanne abandoning her family home, her university studies and her comfortable middle class lifestyle and starting a new life as far away and out of reach as possible. After leaving her native Brittany as a young and pretty but painfully naive woman, Suzanne found herself alone in a foreign land. She was competent in the language but had few other assets and was desperately in need of someone to care for her. Easy prey to the charms of a handsome older man, she had been swept away in a brief encounter. She found that the man filled her needs. He seemed kind, gentle and caring at first but when he discovered that she had fallen pregnant, he disappeared from her life without a word, showing himself to be less of a man than Suzanne had hoped. Thus Tony Gaillard came into the world fatherless, with an impoverished mother and to an uncertain future. By now any hope of Suzanne's returning to France was also lost as following her relationship and pregnancy, her father had finally disowned his errant daughter completely. Suzanne struggled to earn a living and put a roof over her head. Each twist of her life dropped her further from her upper middle class roots she had enjoyed in France and as she sank into poverty, she could see no end to the downward spiral. The infant had been immersed in his mother's worries from a time before he was born and developed into a nervous and distrustful child. As he grew older he became withdrawn and egocentric.
Salvation for Suzanne came in the form of James Wilcox. James was totally different from Tony's father. He was younger and had an unbounded enthusiasm for life. He fell hopelessly in love with Suzanne and they married after only a few months. After a year they had a child together, a sister for Tony. James' Parents welcomed Suzanne and Tony into their family and were overjoyed when Emily was born. The unaccustomed family happiness gave Suzanne a new perspective on life. She was starting to grow confident that this normal family life would bring Tony the security and confidence he desperately needed.. It may well have done so but in a cruel twist of fate, James was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident while Emily was still an infant and Suzanne's world crumbled apart again. Tony was plunged back into his nervous isolation. As Tony grew older his half-sister Emily, despite her best efforts was no comfort to him. She seemed to him to have things handed to her on a plate. She was successful and popular while he was not. She spent a lot of time with her grandparents who doted on her while he felt isolated. His world was caught in a vicious spiral which led him, as he moved through his teenage years to seek escapism, led him to the pitiless world of drugs and to the people who made money from the suffering and weakness of others.
The one thing that kept Tony sane was his passion for cars and fast driving, he could usually be found with his nose in a motoring magazine or dreamily gazing through the windows of a car showroom. One day he would have a car to be proud of. He told himself.
Tony was two years older than Emily but by the time they were in their teenage years he always seemed the younger of the siblings. Skulking about, head down, he talked in a mumbling tone without making eye contact. He looked younger and behaved younger than his sister and as Emily started to embrace life as a young adult, Tony was left behind, less mature, less able to cope. He found Emily's big sister attitude to him patronising and intolerable. Emily had no comprehension of this; she felt she was only trying to help her brother. At school Tony had been average at best and left as soon as he could. He worked for a car dealer, cleaning and preparing used cars for sale. He left home at eighteen after finding a flat that he could afford. Tony finally got a break when he was offered a job as a junior salesman. His personality was not however well suited to the bonhomie required of that profession but he managed to keep his head above water and did just enough to hold on to the job. The used car yard an adjunct to a larger dealership which sold expensive machinery that Tony could only dream of owning, but he was at least moving closer to the life he wanted.
Gradually Tony started to emerge from his shell and could have made a modest success of his life. If not for one millstone which still hung round his neck. By now he was a regular cocaine user. This was an expense that he could barely afford and in order to smooth his cash flow, started selling whatever he could get from his underworld contacts to punters who were even further down the food chain than he was. He did a reasonable trade selling ecstasy to the weekend party crowd who would pay over the odds to get a buzz for a night of raging. There was always demand for coke, as he knew only too well. Even LSD still had a following. As for the really heavy stuff, he tried to stay clear of that scene. Even Tony could see that heroin and methamphetamine use was the fast lane to self destruction. He wanted to keep his feet off that particular slippery highway.
Jimmy Costard was the underworld man who offered Tony what seemed ti him at the time to be a life-line. Accepting Costard's help was another of Tony's life-choice errors. Jimmy's lifeline was securely fastened around Tony's neck... with a slip knot that pulled tighter the more he tried to withdraw. Jimmy Costard was, without overstating the case, psychotic. Built like a wrestler, he had once, in his youth, been passably handsome but his lifestyle was etched in his now rugged and scarred face. Jimmy found money easy to come by; just turn the handle of his little enterprise and watch the punters dance. He had an easy flow of money but no morals. He saw himself as a big time villain and had no qualms about what he did. At forty he would easily pass for ten years older and had already spent five years behind bars for his use of an iron bar to convince a client to pay what was owed. He fully knew that he would never breathe the air of freedom again if the true record of his activities was ever fully revealed to the authorities. For Jimmy Costard, Tony was just another looser, a pair of hands that he could utilise for his own ends, buying and selling a little of his merchandise. Costard had however noticed Tony's aptitude with cars. A competent wheel-man was a potential assent in Jimmy's line of business so the observation was noted and filed away in a corner of his malevolent brain.
Tony was now beginning to see Jimmy Costard as someone he wished he had never met, but Jimmy could supply what Tony wanted – what Tony needed.
There had been a rough patch when Tony found that after spending the bulk of his pay on Jimmy's merchandise, he could no longer afford the rent on his flat and feed himself as well. He reluctantly moved back home with Suzanne and his sister. This was not good for his self-esteem and instead of being grateful for his mother's help, he was resentful of his situation.
When Emily's grandparents Mary and Bill died, Tony was left a tidy sum of money, saved because his grandparents had little need nor inclination to accumulate material possessions. Suzanne also got a nest egg which she more sensibly put away for a rainy day. Tony paid off his debts, got a lease on an upmarket apartment and indulged his passion by buying a fast Subaru WRX sports saloon which he drove faster than he should have but discovered that his passion for fast cars was matched by a natural driving ability.
Tony could have used the money to give himself a second chance and get himself together. Instead he found that he could now afford to fund his habit and fell deeper under the spell of his narcotic mistress. Around this time pretty Michelle moved in with him. She liked the lifestyle that Tony was enjoying now and swore undying love to him. Less than a year later when his inheritance was all gone, so was she. So was the apartment, so was the car. Only the drugs remained. Michelle moved on, older and more cynical. Tony moved back in with his mother again. This time he was openly resentful. He was jealous of Emily's cottage and her success and easy mature confidence, he had no tolerance for what he saw as his mother's nagging advice and hated the feeling that he was condemned to keep going round in circles.
After an argument which had threatened to break up the family, Emily agreed, in an attempt to placate her troubled brother, that she would leave the cottage to Tony i
n her will. She saw it as little more than a gesture, confidently expecting to outlive her brother anyway and if she had children, then the will could easily be amended. Tony realized all of this but it was something of a rare victory for him and he was temporarily appeased.
Tony was however unable to turn his back on the drugs and soon found himself having to go to Jimmy who was happy to draw him back down into the dangerous and ultimately dead-end life of a part time street dealer. It went OK for a while but he found that he was using almost as much as he was selling and he now had a debt which threatened to bring him down all together. He would wake up at night in a cold sweat after seeing himself in a dream trying to claw his way with bloodied and torn fingernails out of a shallow grave in the woods. The tales of what had happened to Jimmy's defaulters were legendary among those who moved in his orbit. Whether there were actually shallow, leafy resting places for those who had got on the wrong side of Jimmy was uncertain. But Tony knew of several familiar faces which had suddenly disappeared and were never spoken of again.
On the day that Emily had fallen from Juno, Tony had been trying to dodge a couple of unsavoury characters who were intent on collecting the debt which he had managed to run up. These were not people who forgave a debt; there was no legal recourse to claim debts owed for their particular wares; they made their own arrangements. Their methods were painfully direct. Far more severe – far more successful. Tony was in genuine fear of his life and was keeping as low a profile as possible until he could come up with the cash they wanted. He wanted to broach the question of a loan with his mother but then Emily stole the focus of his mother's attention once again by falling from her horse. He was not completely heartless... he would have to bide his time.
After the hospital visit with his mother Tony had kept his head down. The following day was spent in self pity. Despite knowing that drugs were the cause of all his problems, he was feeling the growing need for a little taste of something when the house phone rang. It was the hospital. He listened as a sympathetic voice told him that Emily had suffered a relapse and had now been placed on life support. Suzanne was not home, he was not sure where she was. Normally by now she would be preparing the evening meal. He called her number with conflicting emotions spinning in his head. The ring-tone echoed in his ear just as he saw the headlights of her car pull into the driveway. He went out to meet her and through the fog of his own troubles, blurted out the words in a matter of fact staccato without really considering how his fragile mother might react to the news:
"There's been a call from the hospital... Emily's had a relapse... They want us to go in to see them."
An icy hand gripped Suzanne's heart, just when she was starting to feel a little hopeful after her afternoon at the cottage; the bad news had assaulted her like a physical body blow.
"What do they mean by a relapse?" She said. Tony just shrugged and looked incapable of offering any support. " Do we need to go straight away?" Her words spoken breathlessly, calling for some thoughtful advice; the sort of advice that Emily would have given her. Already her fingers were trembling as she got out of her car and stood in the cold evening air with the strands of worry tight across her chest.
"Something about her breathing..."Tony said. "I'll get my jacket." He turned away from his mother's panic and went inside to collect his things. He was gone longer than Suzanne expected; she waited impatiently, nervously drumming her fingers on the roof of her little Peugeot. The orange glow from the street light flashed on her wedding ring still worn after more than twenty years of widowhood and only a fraction of her life spent as a wife. When Tony finally came out of the house, he was rubbing his nose and sniffing in an action that Suzanne mistook for a sign of emotion for his sister. She took her seat and gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles showed white. As Tony got into the car she turned her face to him and patted his arm.
"Don't worry, love, Emily will be fine."
The words were directed at her son but were intended as much for herself. She jerkily reversed out of the driveway into the path of an oncoming tradesman's van. The driver swerved violently and blew his horn for a good five seconds, not in warning but in an irrational burst of outrage. He made an unnecessary obscene gesture and swore at Suzanne before driving off into the rapidly falling evening with a crunching of miss-timed gear changes. The incident hardly registered on Suzanne's consciousness. As she accelerated down the road in the direction of Biddenfield General her thoughts were already at Emily's bedside.
They burst into Emily's room with an apprehension that was exceeded by the reality of what met their eyes. Emily was encased in a mass of tubes and wires. There were monitors everywhere and the steady beep of her pulse sounded above the ominous rhythmic gasping of her ventilator machine. The equipment was both alarming to see and beyond the comprehension of Suzanne and her son. Their arrival had been observed and soon a woman doctor whom they had not yet met came into the room.
"I know it looks frightening but Emily is not in any immediate danger." She said. "Don't worry about all the wires and pipe work, it's just there to support Emily's breathing and so that we can feed her and keep an eye on her condition."
The reassurance sounded almost as bad as the sight. Emily seemed to have disappeared under a mountain of technology. Suzanne wanted to know what was going to happen. The answer, when the jargon, and consoling words were stripped away was that they simply did not know. Suzanne tried to unravel a meaning from the words that the doctor had spooled out; she understood that Emily was still in a coma, she thought she had heard the words: vegetative state, unable to sustain her own respiration, unable to feed herself, prognosis uncertain, Still reason to be hopeful. How could you be hopeful? Suzanne thought when your daughter looked like this? But she held on to those five precious words Still reason to be hopeful as if they were a talisman, a spell that if chanted often enough would surely come true. She took Tony's hand.
"Still reason to be hopeful." she said to him but Tony's focus had drifted away from his sister's prognosis, and had settled on her dainty but valuable little cottage. The wheels in his drug befuddled brain had turned and locked onto the obvious conclusion. If his sister were to die, then the cottage would be his to sell, his problems would be over. He could make a new start; get things right this time, his sister's death would not be in vain. He could not smile at the prospect, he still had some dignity, was still far from the amoral personality of someone like Jimmy Costard. But while his mother's despair had become more profound, his own depression had been eased by the visit to the hospital.
They stayed at Emily's bedside for an hour and then returned home. There was nothing either of them could do for Emily. Once back home, in an uncharacteristic act, Tony made sandwiches and mugs of sweet tea. Suzanne smiled at the kindness but only ate a couple of bites. What drove Tony's actions lay less in compassion for his mother than for his own self inflicted trouble. He needed cash urgently and he knew all too well about his mother's nest egg... It would only be a loan until he was back on his feet. He knew this was the worst time to trouble her with this... but it was also the best time when her defences were down. It was time for Tony to make his play. He needed to make it sound, matter of fact, a normal request that any son might reasonably make.
"Mum," he said, as he bit a chunk out of the last cheese and pickle sandwich, trying to sound casual "I know this might be the wrong moment with Emily and everything... but I've got myself into a bit of debt..." He wiped the corner of his mouth and then added as if it was an idea that had just occurred to him... "I don't suppose you have any spare cash at the moment. Just a few quid to tide me over."
Suzanne looked at her son blankly, hardly understanding.
"What?... yes... of course, how much do you need?" His mother would have agreed to anything from the depth of her worries, not that she had the slightest expectation that her son might take advantage of her at a time like this.
"Could you manage, oh I don't know, a couple of thousand, make
it three if you can, it's just a matter of time before I can pay you back... I've got deals on the go that should pay off any time now. Irons in the fire, you know."
Suzanne stood mechanically and found her cheque book.
"Three thousand you say... Will that be enough?"
"Let's call it four then... Thanks Mum. I appreciate this."
Tony folded the piece of paper and secured it into his wallet. He finally allowed himself the faintest of smiles as he rested his hand on his mother's in a comforting way.
"Trust me Mum Emily's going to be fine, don't worry."
"Still reason to be hopeful..." She replied. The incident of the loan had already passed from her thoughts like a fly seen out of the corner of an eye that had been swatted away, of no relevance against the magnitude of her real worries.
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