Nine Lives

by Gary Kittle

liquid I’d had since breakfast, and to be frank I did not listen to a single word he said until he mentioned my mother.

  ‘…must be ashamed to have brought such a worm into this world. She must hide her face behind a veil like them A-rabs. That is if she doesn’t approve of your weakness. Maybe she’s German. Maybe that’s why you can’t wear the King’s uniform. Your mother’s one of Hitler’s whores!’

  I swear to this day that what happened next was not intentional, even if it was vicariously satisfying. Knocked off my guard psychologically by the filthy things he was implying about my mother I momentarily forgot about my bladder. A split second later I tried to regain control, but it was already too late. Before he had time to react, an equine flow of hot steaming urine gushed down on to the lacing of Sergeant Rogers’ well-polished boots. His feet were soaked in a second as the drill square erupted into laughter. I kept my eyes on the distant barracks’ roof, feigning ignorance of my mishap, as the sergeant cleared the square with his ear-splitting voice.

  Alone in the semi-darkness I wondered if my only punishment was to be left outdoors all night. Then a door crashed open and a pair of booted footfalls strode rapidly towards me. I felt Sergeant Rogers’ unseen right fist make contact with my cheek bone. Ironically, the excess of uniforms helped break my fall. That was when he swung his sodden boot to kick me harder than I have ever been kicked before or since.

  ‘I have to do this,’ he hissed, almost apologetically, and in the moment before his monstrous catharsis sent me into unconsciousness I saw him as few have ever seen him: a child whose older sibling has fallen into a whirlpool and won’t resurface, no matter how much his brother begged and howled for him to come back.

  Our eyes met and I understood the true horror of war, how lives aren’t just ended but left half lived. Our eyes locked and his were wider in terror than mine; wider and filled with tears.

  I was in the hospital wing for four days. The first thing I did when I got out was put that uniform on. Sergeant Rogers was court marshalled but acquitted; ironically his brother’s reputation saved his. For my part, a spell of military detention and the threat of ending up down a mine as one of ‘Bevin’s Boys’ led me into the world of bomb disposal. Mother said it was typical contrariness on my part, handling the enemy’s weapons in the service of our country. But she was proud of her son come V.E. Day, I think. Unlike her secret lover, Adolf, of course, who was so disgusted he blew his own brains out.

  Strangers at the Door

  For the third time that day there were strangers at the door. They knocked half a dozen times because the silence did not fool them. Perhaps some nosy neighbour had tipped them off having seen him putting out an empty milk bottle first thing. He would never know. At any rate, the knocking turned to pounding, and he knew that next would come battering and forced entry.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ the old man whispered.

  Struggling up from his armchair he opened his eyes on a room that seemed familiar and yet alien, too. Newspapers gathered at his feet, some yellowing at the edges already, as if they really could be as old as their dates implied: 2009, 2007, 2003. He must have read some of them, but mostly used them as insulation between layers of seldom washed clothes and stuffed beneath ill-fitting doors and window frames. He never worried that the paper covered the floor right up to the single bar electric fire he depended on for warmth on the coldest days. He considered the merits of having a quick tidy up before recognizing that even a quick tidying would be the work of days rather than minutes. And someone would find fault somewhere. It was their job, after all. There could be no defence against the tick box form and the second opinion.

  The clock had stopped, so he switched on the radio just as the announcer declared that this was the three o’clock news. The radio itself was failing, for it seemed to grow a little fainter each day. He took one last look around the room. He looked at the dining table with its covering of open photograph albums, empty biscuit packets and dried up teabags. He looked at the framed photographs lining the dusty sideboard, at the china cabinet and the ornament congested mantelpiece. A host of bygone faces gazed upon him, some familiar, others only vaguely so.

  This room that resembled a stable had been his home for donkeys’ years. All he wanted was the privacy of his own mess and chaos, alone in the quiet to be found slumped in a chair or stiff among the uneven heaps of paper one day. It simply was not fair that he was threatened by this well-meaning rescue party. The knocking at the door evolved into a beating and thumping of fists. They must have picked up the radio on their surveillance equipment.

  It was all the fault of the neighbours, of course. The neighbours, with their ill-disciplined children running wild on the pavement outside; their hedge trimmers encroaching on his garden, scattering clippings he was far too stiff to bend and pick up. So what if he occasionally kept the children’s tennis and footballs? Had he asked them to rattle his kitchen window, giving him the fright of his life? So what if he lived on canned food and breakfast cereal and had not paid a bill in three months: what business was it of theirs? It was his ‘caring` neighbours who had brought this on him, with their discrimination against the ‘feeble’, ‘demented’ and ‘vulnerable`. This tyranny of compassion was because someone had made an anonymous complaint, or maybe there had been a petition against him. Either way, the end result was the same: a hammering of fists that would never go away.

  ‘You will be safer in a home, dear,’ they would try to convince him. Safely out of the way, more like, whilst his neighbours helped themselves to his belongings and the council sold his house for cash. Social Services? More like self service.

  The old man shuffled out into the hall. It was colder there and his arthritis introduced him to joints he had never been aware of before. He clutched a blanket tightly around his bony shoulders, as if that might afford him some protection against the cold. Through the frosted glass in the front door he could see two dark shapes, one much taller than the other, their heads leaning toward one another in muttered collusion.

  ‘It’s probably just someone come to read the meter,’ he tried to tell himself, reaching for the door catch with a shaking hand. ‘Or someone come to sell me Jesus.’ He pulled the door open, knowing full well that when he closed it again his life would be changed forever. He did not bother putting the chain on. It mattered little either way: put it on and he was paranoid; leave it off and he was gaga.

  The taller of the two was the younger. His accomplice was a short, stocky man with a bald patch running through the middle of his scalp, as if a lawn mower had run over him. It was clear to him that it would be the taller one that would be doing all the dirty work. The little guy was a pen pusher.

  Through the front gate a woman was striding up the path to join them. Both men smiled, first at the approaching woman and then at him. The taller one leaned down toward the old man, presumably to whisper some vague hostility about what would happen to him if he tried to slam the door in their faces. The old man suddenly had an urge to shout for help. But that would only give his neighbours the satisfaction of seeing him degraded. Resistance seemed pointless. Not that he had to make things easy for them, mind. The tall man’s mouth opened and closed menacingly. The words reached the old man’s brain seconds later, as if they taken some unaccountable detour around his nervous system first.

  ‘Mr. Sparks? Good afternoon, my name is Mr Stuart and this is my colleague, Bill Dickens. We are from the social services assessment team in town.’ The woman had nestled herself between them. ‘And this, of course, is Pam Everton, who came to see you last month.’

  Bob stared in confusion. Was he supposed to have met some of these people already, then? Dick and Stuart from social security, and the woman, who had apparently used to play for Everton: What could it all mean?

  ‘Can we come in, please, Bob? `

  Could he stop them? No, that was what they wanted him to do, obstruct them unreasonably. Bob opened the door a little wider and stepped aside. The three
strangers brushed past him. It was good to shut the door on the cold again, he tried to reassure himself. The woman from Merseyside led the way confidently through to the litter-strewn sitting room, almost as if she had been to the house before. Presumably they had floor plans, in case they had to force their way inside or someone was taken hostage. Bob followed as quickly as his joints would allow. He found them scrutinizing his home like property developers, which perhaps they were. He waved vaguely towards the settee that so often became a bed when his knees refused to take him upstairs.

  ‘Do you mind if I turn the radio down while we talk?’ the shorter man, Dickens, asked.

  Bob nodded, surprised they did not want to turn it up to drown out their nefarious activities. Dickens nonchalantly turned the radio off as if it were his own; then mumbled something that made the other two smile. Bastards, he thought. Dickens looked across at his male colleague and nodded.

  The tall man took a long deep breath, as if he were about to shout to someone across a busy street. ‘Your neighbours…`

  Ah, yes, how predictable, Bob thought bitterly.

  ‘Your neighbours are very worried about you, Mr. Sparks. Pam here tells me that she explained to you