“You thieving little bastard! Where’s my money? I know you’ve got it! Give me it or I’ll break your neck! You are no son of mine!” said my father, John Jackson, farmer.
To my surprise I replied in rather a strange way. I was very free with my version of the truth, and I couldn’t believe what I was doing to my own father. You’ve got to remember this was a replay, a video, a DVD, the real thing happened a long time ago, I replied: “What you on about, dad?”
“I know you’ve stolen my nest egg, my business capital, the aunties saw you crossing the fields. So give it back, now!” he said.
“I’m not giving it back. I’m using it in business. I’ll make four times the money, well, three times the money in just a couple of days. It’s my stake money, gets me in the game. Then, of course, I’ll pay you back straight away with big interest and you can hide it somewhere else,” I said.
For long silent moments my father didn’t respond looking me up and down as if I was covered in dirt, or worse still, pig shit from the farm. He was assessing me, of course, making sure I was his own flesh and blood, his son, the boy they’d loved so much, the boy who stole from his own family. A vile sibling taking money from his hard-working father, a man who’d worked hard to put this aside for his old age, and to avoid paying tax to a government who squandered it on stupid wars he disagreed with to the point of obsession. There would be no argument, because the money had to be returned.
“They kill the poor people who get in their way, make rich people richer, and politicians make their reputations by walking on the dead.” He didn’t like politicians much, even less the ones who interfered with agriculture.
He continued “That money was earned. That money is money this bloody government would waste on something stupid. That money is for me and your mother’s old age and not for your dirty deals.” My father’s spat the word “deals” out.
He didn’t mind selling produce on the black market, doing deals behind the taxman’s back, but he was vehement in his disgust with me over selling hallucinogenic drugs to partygoers, and a bit of weed as well, actually resin, but this is just semantics and it was, whichever way you painted it, drug dealing .
“I’m not giving you the money back! This gets me in the game,” I said.
Watching this I was quite amazed. I’d always been slightly afraid of my father, but now I was not only admitting I’d stolen his money, I was openly stating I was using it to buy drugs then make a huge profit, before giving him his money back with interest. It was getting me in the game? I was so blatant to my father’s face, so just watching this rerun of my life gave me the shivers. How could I have been this rotten, this hard, so bloody awful?
My father was eyeing me up and down. He was wearing a very grubby stained boiler suit, filthy wellingtons, a flat cap, and some form of vest-type shirt underneath. His stance was getting more aggressive, feet apart, arms spread, leaning forwards. Suddenly he lunged and grabbed me round the waist. I responded almost immediately by attempting to get him in a headlock. This was quite a revelation because I’d never remembered I was this strong or powerful. I was a young man, a very fit young man, going through a very sad moment wrestling with my own father over a drug deal.
We were uttering guttural noises at each other, most single swear words mumbled under the breath. I’ve no need to tell you what they were. You can imagine four-letter stuff of the worst kind. We wrestled and swore at each other for what seemed to be a few minutes. Whether it was that long I have no idea, I was fully involved in the fight. It wasn’t really a fight it was a struggle for power to see if the old Farmer John still had it, or if that young upstart son was now going to be taking over, if not on the land in a different and more criminal field. If of course, those fields of activity exist at all in small northern towns? Sadly they do.
We came into contact with the table in my dining area and the tangled family argument fell on top of it causing a loud groan to emanate from the overstressed fake wood. Both of us were thrashing around with our bodies on the table, our legs hanging out in space. I had a few items on the table, one of them a very modernist vase-type thing with artificial flowers. My father released one arm grabbing out for this object. I don’t know whether he was trying to stop it falling from the table, or grabbing it to bludgeon me. It fell to the floor breaking into countless small ceramic shards. The struggle continued, my father gasping out, “Give me the money you little cunt!”
I screamed he was a silly old twat for not understanding the profit would be good and quicker than fiddling the taxman. He was roaring back that this was filthy money. His money had been gained through hard work selling produce in the farming community; pure hard work in fact, something I wasn’t experienced in.
The table collapsed. There was a huge splintering of wood, chipboard-type wood with a lovely G-Plan finish. We crashed to the floor on the tabletop like hitting the bottom of an elevator shaft. We came to rest with my father almost on top of me. As we hit the floor I thought he was going to crush the life out of me. Like me he was partially winded. I think he’d injured his arm or something. I could feel his vice-like grip around my waist slackening. He released it and lay on his back gasping and clutching at his arm in pain.
“I’m not going to go on like this. I’m not fighting you for the money, but just make sure you bring me back the exact, and I mean exact, amount. No interest! Do you hear me? The exact amount! Not one penny more!” All these forceful words my father forced out while fighting for breath.
Slow and ponderous my father climbed to his feet. I remained gasping on the floor looking up at him. It was then I noticed tears running down his old face. He was crying and I was too stupid to know why. Also dripping from him was blood, quite a bit of blood. I was starting to worry, so still winded I forced myself to my feet, and gasping for breath I asked in a stupid way, “You all right, dad?”
He looked at me through his tears and just mumbled something as he was leaving the room clutching his damaged arm. I had crossed the line, gone beyond the father-son argument, into a struggle for power, supremacy, and worst of all I was doing it on the strength of a good drugs deal. He left the room crunching through the broken shards, some of which were embedded in his bloodied right arm.
Then a curious thing happened. I got a strange sensation the bubble rewind was over, but somehow not over. I was correct as the room started to go dull grey in front of me giving at first the impression I was on the point of blacking out through lack of breath. This, of course, wasn’t happening. I was back out in the fog again. Then it cleared quite suddenly and it was 4:30pm or thereabouts. It was obviously the same period with the same damp, bone-chilling weather, and I was walking towards the farm gates relieved the deal had gone well and I’d made money, lots of money! I was going to pay the old man back the full amount without interest, perhaps even try to beg forgiveness.
I was thinking about begging forgiveness when a police car approached coming down the track from the farm.
Panic set in! I was wondering if my father had confessed to his tax dodging and was handing me to the police for my drug dealing, all in an effort to save me from myself. This seemed logical to me. My father would see this as a salvation, in the short-term a hard lesson, but in the long-term serving me well.
The police car was not alone. It travelled in the company of another vehicle, both moving in a slow procession, splashing and squishing through the mud on that familiar potholed driveway. As they slowly passed me I could see my sister in the rear seat of the police car, looking very tired, with an air of resignation about her. She stared at me through the misty rear window, shaking her head from left to right, like this procession was on my behalf as if I were the instigator, the reason. The ambulance passed very slowly behind the police car. There was no rush, and inside I could see two or three vague silhouettes through the opaque glass.
Once out onto the smooth open road the sirens came on with the police car escorting the ambulance at speed towards the to
wn and I presumed the hospital.
I was thinking of setting off in pursuit when everything faded to white and green. It was now dark outside and I was inside the hospital…My sister was sitting in solitude in the corridor with no other members of the family to be seen. My mother and George were not there, not in the corridor at least, thank goodness.
“Let’s go outside for a cigarette. I don’t want them to see you! Come on, get a move on,” Jane said. I couldn’t detect any tone in her voice. It sounded so flat and detached.
I was stationary in some kind of catatonic fusion as if I were part of the hospital floor or, as people say, glued to the spot, after which Jane grabbed my arm and dragged me through a door out onto the fire escape. She seemed unable to speak so I asked, “Who’s ill? Is it father with his bad arm? He’s cut it and I hope it’s not gone septic or something like that.” My sister burst into tears. She’d already been crying for a long time, it was quite obvious. Now she just roared, gasping for breath and blubbing.
“Dad’s dead, got stuck in the baling machine. George was working close by and stopped the machine before it did too much damage. We all thought dad would be okay but he had a heart attack on the operating table. He never woke up and mom had just finished making dinner.” Jane broke down into wretched tears. I moved to comfort her receiving a cold response.
“Dad’s dead and we have to hide out here away from mother and George. I want you to be part of the family. Do you understand? Part of the family! I’m going to straighten you out if it’s the last thing I ever do because nobody else will help you!” I think she saw me as a wounded animal, somebody who needed veterinary treatment. Perhaps I was a wounded animal. I was going to respond but everything faded out so I don’t know where our conversation went after that.
Once again I was outside in the biting dark cold fog. I could smell smoke and see it rising through the strange glow in the distance. This cloud of blackness seemed to be an indication, a signpost saying some strange terrible occurrence had happened here. It was like a funeral pyre with death its only reason for existence.
I was drawn towards the source of this blackness, this harbinger of evil. What greeted me was the strangest of scenes. It was a German manufactured baling machine blazing away to destruction, engulfed in flames supported by a large amount of diesel oil. Next to it, with apparent madness on their soot streaked faces were my aunties, Beatrix and Violet. Both completely blackened by smoke, wearing their aprons from the farmhouse, and what appeared to be muddy carpet slippers on their feet. They appeared riveted by the spectacle of the inferno, watching the flames engulf the machine for reasons I now fully understood. I didn’t attempt to approach them. I was too ashamed.
I crept off into a cold empty farmhouse with uneaten dinners on its large Victorian table, shamefully to hide an old OXO tin under my mother’s no longer marital bed.
I was stunned, not because dad was dead, I already knew that from my conversation with George in August 1973, but the fact he was distracted from his work by my involvement with the drug dealing. The fight had probably been on his mind. My father was quite a tough guy, but when it came to things in the family it was different. Mother was ill once and he fretted for weeks even after she was better. Now I could imagine him totally distracted from his work running the fight scenario through his head, what he’d done wrong, not what I’d done wrong.
He shouldn’t have been working with a damaged right arm. He was probably slow moving, or using his left arm to operate things normally done instinctively with the other limb. I knew that damaged limb would slow his movement, and I was to blame for his injuries.
Whatever? Inside that bubble I felt completely responsible for the tragic death of my father.
I’d killed my own father!
Chapter 19 – Right here right now, but enraptured or is that captured?
I was back in the black of that damned briefcase. The hand I had use the pop the bubble was on fire, and the pain was excruciating. It was as if my hand was being held in naked flame, and subjected to the biting tongues of fire. I stared at the smoking flesh turning a purulent pink colour, bubbling, and dropping off the bone. I was melting away. The hand that burst the terrible grey bubble was dissolving in a way I did not understand until the pixie gleefully explained.
“It’s an acid bubble, it’s an acid bubble! Yes, it’s an acid bubble! All the grey ones with the real interesting stuff are!”
Then I understood the full significance of the fireman’s suit. She had produced a hosepipe out of the blackness. It was an old-style hose, a canvas grey pipe with a marvellous ornate brass nozzle formed like the mouth of a large fish. Sadly for me it was only dripping a small amount of water. She was smiling at me, holding this useless fire fighting device, and not attempting to use it.
“Use the bloody hosepipe! Get on with it. Use the damn thing!” I screamed.
Pixie reached up to the helmet and removed it from her head, placing it on the floor in front of her. She then proceeded to stare at it. All this time I was suffering terrible agony, a terrifying, biting, mind-numbing cacophony of pain. I was about to scream something extremely rude at her when she held up a hand. This was a caution for me not to say anything. She was counting and looking at the helmet which I realised had an ornate clock built into the badge. So the fire crew identification badge was a timepiece. The brass numbers were counting down, 16, 15, 14, it was all happening very slowly. I couldn’t take this incredible agony much longer. I had to scream out for her to use the hose.
Just as I was about to plead with her she opened up the hosepipe on to me with a terrific blast of the incredible icy water. Even though the jet was over my entire body, the water only affected the parts on fire with the acid. Everywhere else was dry. The water continued for about a minute, I suppose, before she turned it off. I looked at my hand. It was normal, not burnt, no scarring, just normal, as if all that melting burning pain had not existed at all. I still remember it with a profound agony inside my head, and if I think about it a little too much it returns.
“You have to suffer if you pop a grey bubble. If you pop nice bubbles they’re not acid, but nice. All the interesting bubbles are all made of acid, interesting stuff, and you pay in proportion,” pixie explained with that captivating smile on her face. Was she a sadist?
I was just about to reply to this rather sadistic, beautiful pixie, when I felt two soft, fine hands close around my eyes from behind my head. Was this some other pixie inside the briefcase, another subtle torture to remind me of a distant past, to give me my education? I was worried these hands were going to put heavy pressure on my eye sockets and gouge my eyes.
Suddenly I was in the warmth of the pub garden again, feeling joyous throughout what seemed to be every molecule of my body. Jennifer released her hands pulling me round by one shoulder. As I turned to face her I had a strange feeling something would not be quite right, that the pain and scarring inside the bag would carry over into this beautiful universe. I was wrong.
She was as perfect and as beautiful as she had always been. The scarring, that was mine alone, and for some reason I could see she understood what I’d learnt from the dull grey viscose orb. Jennifer stroking my face as if taking tears away from my eyes, though there were no tears. I was joyous to be with her. She then suggested that we go for a walk in the nearby woodland to discover a little bit more about nature.
As we walked very slowly in beautiful sun dappled daylight I talked about my experience with the pixie. She listened with patience but I understood on some level she already knew. Jennifer assured me this was the learning process. I was surprised when she confided something to me. I had been assigned as her student and against all the strict rules she was becoming too close to me. I was pondering what she meant by too close, was she starting to feel the same way about me as I felt about her? It was then I noticed she didn’t have a briefcase with her.
“Where’s the briefcase? You haven’t got it,” I said.
She
just laughed in the infectious soft way I was starting to adore. She told me some character called O’Duke had the briefcase with him. I was on the very verge of asking her who O’Duke is when I heard the distinct sound of footfalls crunching through the old leaves on the forest floor. These were coming from behind us, a disturbing sensation. I was quick to turn my head, and to my great surprise saw a huge Irish wolfhound trotting along behind us in the most benign manner with a briefcase, now closed and locked in his mouth. Jennifer explained to me the Irish wolfhound, O’Duke, was a guard dog to prevent the briefcase from falling into the wrong hands – mine! What constituted the wrong hands was explained to me. I had to learn all the lessons from this mysterious past other life. People with a large amount of grey bubbles were known to steal briefcases and throw them into dark places – rivers, down wells – anywhere they couldn’t be recovered from, even fires. All these actions are forbidden by the access codes, the Lylybel population.
Without any doubt, as a group of creatures the Lylybel were dead set against any tampering with history, so the wolfhound and I don’t know if he was called Oh! Duke or O’Duke was sent by the glorious grand mysterious mighty Lylybel to stop me destroying the evidence of some strange past life I seemed to have lived. I explained to Jennifer that I didn’t want to destroy the briefcase. If the price I had to pay to be with her was to learn the very painful truths about some distant past life, so be it. I knew instinctively I had to be with this special woman, and not destroying the case was part of the price. What could be that bad?
O’Duke stopped behind us. For some stupid reason I have no idea why I put my hand towards him, well above the briefcase handle, and attempted to stroke his head. He didn’t growl, he didn’t bark, he didn’t move, and he let me stroke his head during which he made the strangest almost musical purring sounds. All I could think of was the sound of a big cat more than a dog. With this growing confidence I decided to see if I could touch the handle of the briefcase. Was this madness?
Acid Bubbles Page 16