Unnatural Relations

by Mike Seabroook

  Christopher trudged through the suburban streets to his home, his feelings churning between the golden afterglow of the day's happenings and nagging tugs of concern for Jamie. He had sat quietly listening for more than enough hours, during their early meetings, murmuring such comfort and consolation as he could think of to say, to have a fair idea what sort of reception awaited his young lover when he got home, and, deeply though he respected Jamie's ability to look after himself - for he acknowledged, with the candour love can sustain, that Jamie was in truth a deal more grown up and capable than he was himself - he feared for him. Even so, these fears could not keep out the golden glow of what he knew had been the happiest day of his life. Between the glow and the fears the mile walk to his home went unnoticed, and he forgot all about his own dark premonitions until he found himself standing on the front doorstep. The lights and the noise of a television brought him precipitately to earth. He felt for his key in a black shroud of mingled dejection and fear.

  He let himself in, and walked straight into his mother, coming from the kitchen with a handful of knives and forks. "Hallo, Chris," she said, smiling at him. Then she saw his face and, dumping the cutlery on the telephone table, ran to him. "Chris, dear, whatever's the matter? You look as if you've been ill." She looked closely at him. "Chris, you've been crying!" she said in alarm. "What is it?"

  "Nothing, Mum," he said, gulping miserably. "It's nothing. Please..." He looked so wretched that she put her arms round him, something she hadn't done since he was a little boy. He stayed limply in her arms for a moment, then shook himself free. He would not have allowed the thought to come into his head if he had known such thoughts could exist, but he couldn't help it: the feeling of arms round him brought a hellish cocktail of blissful recollection of the last arms that had been round him, the pain of separation that lovers specialise in, and the trepidations he had for his future, unspecified but none the less grim for that, that he couldn't bear his mother's embrace. When immediately there came alongside these confused emotions a cold douche of guilt for comparing his mother's embrace with Jamie's, it was more than he could bear. He wriggled free and gazed at her in anguish for a moment. "Please, Mum, don't say anything

  to the others," he muttered, and bolted upstairs to his room, leaving her rooted to the spot in horrified amazement. After a moment she followed him softly upstairs and found him sprawled face down on his bed.

  "Do you want to talk about it, whatever it is?" she asked him, sitting carefully out of contact with him on the foot of the bed. "I... no, Mum, I c-can't," he said, half-turning his face to her. "I can't," he repeated, his voice getting a little stronger. "I... I'd like to, but I can't. Not yet."

  "All right, dear. Of course you don't have to. You know you can talk to me any time if you feel you want to. I don't want to pry..."

  "I know you don't, Mum," he said. He turned to face her, and gave her a watery smile. "I know you're the last person in the world to do that. It's just... just something I can't really talk about yet."

  She smiled fondly at him. "I understand, dear. Tell me about it when you're ready, if you like. Would you like me to go?" She didn't wait for an answer, but patted him once, very quickly, on his leg, and went to the door. There she turned and smiled reassuringly at him. "We'll be having dinner in a few minutes. Would you like me to leave yours out for the time being?"

  "No, Mum. No, thanks. I'll be all right. I'll be down in a minute or two and say hallo to Dad. Is Neil in?"

  "Yes, he's busy with his homework. He'll be out soon, anxious to bore you to death telling you about the goal he scored today. Now, you are sure you're all right, dear?"

  "Yes, Mum, I'm okay. Honestly. I'll just go and have a splash and I'll be down." She smiled at him again and left him. Downstairs she went to her husband, who was sprawled comfortably in his armchair watching the news. "That Chris?" he said, his face brightening. Chris has always been his favourite, she thought. He tries his hardest not to show it, but I know it, and Neil does too. He's very fond of Neil, but he worships Chris. Look how his face lights up when he thinks he's home. "Yes, dear, he's just gone upstairs to wash and change," she said. "And Bob, when he comes down, please don't ask him what the matter is."

  "Why? What...?" her husband said, alarm signals immediately showing in his face. "Is there something the matter?"

  "Yes and no," she said practically. "He's just come in looking as if he's dead and gone to his own funeral. I think he's in love, Bob. And that means that he won't - emphatically he won't, Bob, thank you for barging in in your hob-nail boots where angels fear to tread, asking him what's the matter with him. You just talk your usual sweet nothings to him about football or whatever nonsense there is on the news, and carefully don't notice when he goes into a trance all of a sudden. Tread warily. Bob. I remember that expression very well. You used to have it on your face every time we said good night when you were courting me."

  Her husband laughed. "Then I know what he's going through. Poor old Chrissie." He jumped up and gave her a quick hug. "Don't worry, Audrey. I won't do square dances on his poor old exposed nerve ends. I'm not so ancient that I can't remember what it's like the first time. It was bad enough with you, and you were the twentieth."

  "You beast," she said, pummelling him in the chest. Then she gave him a quick peck, smiled fondly at him and went out leaving him laughing. "Ha!" he snorted. "In love at last. By jove, Neil'll give him hell when he finds out. Poor old Chrissie. I wonder what she's like."

  ***

  The reception that met Jamie Potten when he walked in through the farmhouse kitchen was worse than his worst forebodings. The kitchen was empty when he arrived, but his footsteps had been heard as he crossed it and walked to the living room. He opened the heavy oak door and walked into a menacing, deafening silence. His mother was seated in a deep leather armchair, and was laying a book on the floor beside it as he entered. His father was sitting at the great oaken dining table that occupied one end of the immense room, with innumerable papers strewn round him, writing in an account book of some kind. As soon as Jamie walked in he laid down his pen, closed the book with a slam, and sat back, staring directly at him with a cold, contemptuous look on his face that Jamie, for all his self-possession, found unnerving, almost frightening.

  "Hello, James," said his mother quietly. He looked across at her. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and he was quick to notice that although she didn't look downright hostile as his father did, she certainly wasn't looking very welcoming. Jamie, who had stopped expecting anything much in the way of affection from either parent before he was out of short trousers, nonetheless felt a chill run through him at this reception. This was something special. He steeled himself as best he could, swallowed, hoping they would not notice it and, forcing as bright a note as he could manage into his voice, said, "Hello, Mother. Hello, Father."

  The silence continued for several very long seconds. Finally his father spoke, in a cold, quiet voice that was as nasty as anything Jamie had ever heard. "So you've put your uniform on again, then." Jamie went cold. They had found out. There was nothing much he could say, so he said nothing. "I'm talking to you, boy," his father said, still ominously quiet. "I said, you've got your school clothes on again. Have you got a tongue in your head?"

  "Yes, Father, I've got my uniform on," he said obediently, and waited.

  "Where have you been?"

  Jamie hesitated. He hadn't prepared for this moment, though he was far too bright not to have known that it must come some rime or other. His father unwittingly came to his aid. "Don't insult me and your mother by giving us some pack of lies about being at school. Where have you been?"

  "I wasn't going to say I'd been at school," he said. "I'm quite intelligent enough to realise you know I haven't..."

  "Don't you stand there and tell me how intelligent you are, you despicable little tyke," said his father, beginning to raise his voice for the first time. "I asked you a straight question, and by God you'll give me a straigh
t answer, or I'll whip it out of you. Where have you been - today and all the other days?"

  Jamie paused. Every second he could gain was time to think and to recover his composure. He thought he had armoured himself so successfully against his parents that they were no longer able to disconcert him. That, he now realised, had been an error. But his usual self-possession was coming back with each second of time he could buy. "Actually, I've been fishing," he said at last.

  "Fishing," said his father, very softly again. "Actually, he's been fishing, Annabel." He swung round to face Jamie again. "A fine occupation. Fishing. Yes. What do I pay per year in fees for your very fancy schooling, James? Do you know?" James had a good idea. There was again nothing to be said, so he said nothing, but walked to the nearest armchair and sat down.

  "Stand up," said Mr Potten softly. "I haven't given you permission to sit down." Jamie hesitated, then looked at his mother, but she, after barely catching his eye, looked away at nothing. His leather briefcase containing his schoolbooks, which had been hidden with his uniform in a disused outbuilding at the far side of the farm all day, he dropped into the chair. Then he returned to the point near the door where he had been before.

  "That's better," said his father, looking almost disappointed at being obeyed meekly like this. "It's time to get a few things straight in this household, and one of them is that I am the householder, and you are a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, who goes to a very flash school with a pretty badge on its pretty blazer and cap, by courtesy of your father's paying - what is it? I was just looking it up - yes, here it is: six thousand, four hundred and eighty pounds per annum. Plus extras which come to a further - let me see - yes, a further two thousand, one hundred and forty-seven pounds and thirty-six pence, to date. That's over the two and a half years you've been there, so shall we say a round figure of - what? - a shade over seven thousand three hundred each year, I work it out at. What do you think of that, James?"

  "What am I supposed to think?" asked James.

  "You are asking me to tell you what you're supposed to think? Surely not. The gifted schoolboy prodigy, asking his mere father for advice in matters of the intellect? No, I can't believe that. I'm not the intellectual in the family, am I, after all? I'm only the bloody fool that pays the bills. No, boy, you tell me what you think of those figures I've just given you. Seven thousand three hundred a year, plus loose change."

  He waited with a look of savage enjoyment on his face, mingled with something else, which Jamie, for all his experience in assessing his volatile parent's moods and expressions, could not quite place. It was, in fact, disgust; but Jamie could not be expected to recognise that, because for all the indifference and preoccupation with themselves and their differences that his parents had shown him since his infancy, they had always been, at least, proud of him and his attainments. If he was not a child yearning for affection, he was at least something for which they might legitimately take the credit, an achievement of their own, worthy of boasting about over the bridge table or among cronies at the Golden Hind Hotel where his parents took their Sunday lunchtime drink.

  After a long pause Jamie said, "I don't know what I'm supposed to think

  someone's education. I quite like the school, but I don't know if it's worth that much. You're a businessman, so I expect you'll be able to assess that sort of thing better than me. Have you decided I'm too expensive to run?"

  "James, James, my boy, I've decided all sorts of things today, and you'll hear of them in due course, but meanwhile you'll keep a civil tongue. I'm not going to pay thousands of pounds out on an education that you seem to think a trifle as light as air and sit here in my own house - my house, James, remember that - and take sarcasm and insolence from a bit of a kid like you." There was a bitter, scathing tone of real dislike in his voice now. It unsettled Jamie anew.

  "All right, Dad," he said eventually. "So I've been fishing. I played truant. But that's not the end of the world, is..."

  "You shut your mouth, you little shit!" roared his father, unable to keep at a simmer any longer. "You shut your dirty little fucking mouth - by God, I wonder where that's been today..." This really puzzled Jamie, and he began to feel really worried. He wasn't sure what the last cryptic reference meant, but it sounded perilous. He forced his attention back to the gathering tirade, ."..and listen to what I've got to say.

  "Today, your mother and I were dragged from our proper business to go to your fancy school. There we had to sit like a couple of delinquent children and listen to a lecture from that prissy, clever-clever, superior... ponce of a headmaster of yours telling us - telling me, your own father - how much better he understood and sympathised with you and your little ways than we did. He told us a lot about you, oh yes, he did, James. He told us all about how exceptionally intelligent you are" - his mouth twisted and he affected an ugly imitation of Dr Lane's dry, patrician accent. "He told us all about your wonderful qualities of self-possession - 'almost unnatural in a fifteen-year-old'; he told us about all manner of unnatural things.

  "He was also kind enough to tell us that he thought that we were two world-class shitbags. He generously told us that the problems you were going through were our fault. Yes, James - no, I'm sorry, my dear, precious, 'exceptionally intelligent', sensitive, gifted son, I should have remembered, you're Jamie to your friends, aren't you? 'Jamie'." He mimicked the headmaster's voice again to say the name, and made it sound like an obscenity.

  "Well, Jamie, the good doctor told us all about your attendance record. It seems that I pay a year's fees to your posh school, and you for your part condescend to put in about a term and a half's attendance. But does your headmaster haul you in front of him and thrash you within an inch of your worthless life, as any schoolmaster worth his salt would? Does he my backside. No, your headmaster calls you in and lays you on a psychiatrist's couch and asks the little man what the matter is." The flush was rising dangerously up his neck and cheeks now, and his eyes were bulging with suppressed fury and, Jamie thought, malice.

  "And the little man dutifully obliges the amateur psychiatrist, and tells him a lot of private business of his poor old parents, and the good doctor sends him on his way with a matey pat on the head. And then calls the parents in and spends hours telling us how the son of our loins is so upset by our behaviour - our behaviour, I ask you - that he can't possibly concentrate on trifles like his work that I pay a small fortune for, or his games that cost another small fortune over and above in kit, because he's too upset. My Christ, you've really pulled the wool over that superior bastard's eyes, haven't you? I'll hand that much to you, boy, you've made a monkey out of that high-falutin graven image."

  Jamie opened his mouth to speak. "There's no need for you to speak," his father snapped. "You're listening this time. It's me speaking, not some intellectual arsehole that you can twist round your little finger with your snivelling lies and your whining, wheedling slanders and your fancy intellectualising. I bet you never knew your old dad knew big words like these, eh? Not the fucking old business-wallah at home who sweats in trade to pay the accounts. Well listen and be educated, my pretty son. There are other sorts of education than the sort lofty intelligences like the good doctor hand out to their more 'exceptionally gifted' charges.

  "I had to grovel to that bastard, James, my pretty boy. I had to grovel to him, and promise him faithfully that I would be kind and understanding to you when you eventually condescended to show up. I had to grovel because it was the only way I could see of escaping. I thought if I didn't promise him everything he wanted we'd probably still be there now. Come to that, there were moments there when he almost had me believing the psychologist's claptrap he was spewing out. But I've had time to think about it since then, and let me tell you, boy, there's going to be no loving kindness for you here, no sympathy and understanding..."

  "There never was any of that," shouted Jamie, who promptly cursed himself for having raised his voice.

  "No? No?" sneered his father. "You need lovi
ng kindness like a fish needs a bicycle. You need a boot up your arse and a punch in the mouth when you open it too wide, and I might just be the man to give it to you. Now tell me, who's Christopher?"

  The tone of his voice as he uttered the name was positively ferocious, and this tone, combined with the heart-stopping mention of the name at all, took Jamie so utterly aback that he physically staggered. His face went a sickly fish-belly white and his mouth hung open. His father leered at him revoltingly.

  "Ah-hah!" he crowed. "That's set the little man back on his heels a little, hasn't it? HASN'T IT?" he roared suddenly at his wife, who had shrunk back into her chair as the pitiless tirade had progressed. She started violently when he bellowed at her, but said nothing, just hanging her head.

  "Your mother, my pretty boy, has nothing to say to me. She doesn't like me very much, your mother."

  "I don't blame her," roared Jamie, suddenly furious. "You're a bastard and a tyrant and a filthy, foul-mouthed... pervert. You leave a trail of slime wherever you go like a slug, and you pollute and wither everything you come into contact with. I fucking well HATE you. I've hated you for as long as I can remember. You talk about how much money you're spending on me, but I'd've swopped it all for one day feeling as though I had a decent father like all the others. They talk about their fathers and the things they've done with them, and when they ask me I invent lies for them, because I'm too ashamed to admit that I've got a father who wouldn't tell me the time and hasn't had a minute to spare for me since the day he fucked me into my mother's belly. You're not human. I hate the fucking sight of you, and there's another of your fuckings back for you. And don't you dare to talk about Christopher to me. You're not fit to speak his name."

  He said the last of this in a high-pitched yelp. Tears were streaming down his face, from rage and shock more than from chagrin. He felt that he had lost every vestige of whatever dignity he had ever possessed, had sunk as low as it was possible for a person to fall. He choked on a vast sob, and bolted for the door. But his father was too quick for him. Moving with a speed astonishing in so heavy and bulky a man he leapt from his chair, shot across the room and seized Jamie by the hair just as he got the door open.