‘Does he realize this, do you think?’ said Colette. ‘Six years before he can take command of ships trading world-wide? I think he has this idea he’ll be captaining sloops up the Congo this time next year.’
‘I think Julian was more interested in the other career route,’ said Aldous, ‘I don’t think he wants to be an officer. He wants to be a junior deck rating progressing to ordinary seaman, then able seaman . . .’
Colette laughed
‘Can you really imagine Julian as an able anything? Able seaman?’
‘It says here an able seaman could be working on ships trading world-wide in three years.’
‘Even so, three years. You could do a degree in that time. It sounds like nothing more than a glorified portering job. Loading cargo, untying ropes . . . My grandfather was a captain . . .’
‘Perhaps Julian will be a captain one day.’
Again Colette laughed.
‘I wish he would just stick to writing unpublishable books. Do you realize, if Julian gets through this interview, his course will start in September. He could have left home by the end of the summer. I’m not sure I could cope with the loss of two sons in one summer.’
‘We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can get rid of Janus so easily . . .’ Aldous began.
‘Easily? You call this easy? Going to solicitors and serving summonses and going to court, you call that easy? If it was so easy we would have done it years ago. You’re only calling it easy because Juliette has organized it all. You’ve had to do nothing. We’ve just had to carry you into the solicitor’s office so you can sign some papers, sign our son’s life away . . .’
Colette’s voice trailed away. They spent a long time in silence. After a while Aldous noticed that his wife was crying. If crying was the right word, because her face had barely moved in the ten minutes she’d been staring blankly into space. It was rather as though her eyes were leaking. Tears were forming, then spilling.
‘I feel as though I’m never going to see him again,’ she said, quietly.
‘Who?’ said Aldous, ‘Janus or Julian?’
‘Both of them.’
Julian did not hear from the British Shipping Careers Service for over two weeks. Finally a letter came with a red ensign on the envelope. Julian had been accepted. In September he would go to the National Sea Training College in Gravesend. He was to be sponsored by Sealink.
The letter came the day before Aldous and Colette were due to attend court, which meant that Julian’s news barely registered with them.
Janus had changed since the serving of the summons. He was quiet, polite, friendly, charming. Aldous and Colette still stayed at Juliette’s flat every night, however. They intended to do so until Janus was gone.
Most evenings at Juliette’s, Colette would gently try to argue Janus’s case for him.
‘He’s very different now, Juliette. You wouldn’t believe how different he is. He hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol for weeks. It’s daddy who’s the alcoholic now. He drinks himself silly every afternoon and falls asleep in the red chair, while Janus and I have lovely conversations, once he’s home from work. He’s stopped wearing those daft clothes and he’s really very normal.’
‘Very sly, isn’t he,’ said Boris. ‘He’s trying to make you feel guilty about evicting him. He thinks that if he behaves himself you won’t have the heart to go through with it . . .’
‘You’ve got to go through with it,’ said Juliette, ‘there is no turning back now.’
‘I know,’ said Colette.
Inside she was angry with Janus. At first she thought he would have gone into wild rages, gone on drinking benders wrecking the house and terrorizing the neighbourhood. But that would have been easier to cope with than the mild, happy, sweet Janus that had emerged in the last few weeks.
‘Have you got yourself a solicitor yet?’ she asked him one evening.
‘Why would I want a solicitor?’
‘To plead your case for you in court.’
‘Against whom?’
‘Against us?’
‘Why do you want me to plead against you?’
‘To give you a chance. Are you just going to let us throw you out? You will need time to find somewhere to live.’
‘That’s not my problem. It’s the problem of the people evicting me. I haven’t asked to be thrown out on the street.’
At other times he seemed to be welcoming the prospect of eviction.
‘I’m really glad you’ve decided to evict me, mother. I will plead in court that the exclusion zone be as wide as possible. I will ask for a twenty mile exclusion zone. Or thirty miles. I wonder if I can get myself evicted from the whole country. I will go and live in Africa. That’s where I’d like to live. The jungle.’
As the date of the court hearing approached he softened even further. One evening he even apologized.
‘I’m sorry I threw you and dad out of the house that night. I was just a bit upset because I’d been sacked, and I took it out on you. I was very deeply in love with a nurse who worked on one of the geriatric wards, and now I can never see her again, at least not until I get very old.’
The evening before the hearing he shocked Colette by begging forgiveness.
‘Don’t throw me out on the streets, mummy, I love you, I love this house, I love my piano, I love the garden, I love my father, I love my brothers and sisters, I couldn’t live without all that . . .’
It reduced Colette to tears instantly. ‘Please don’t say that, Janus, you’re breaking my heart.’
At which point Janus instantly revived and looked at his mother with quizzical amusement.
‘I’m only joking mother. Can’t you tell yet, when I’m joking? I can’t wait to be evicted. I’m really looking forward to it.’
When the time came, however, there was no need for Janus to appear in court, because on the morning of the hearing he was arrested and taken into police custody.
His arrest had nothing to do with the eviction, nor did it affect the eviction process. Aldous and Colette did not hear about his arrest until they were in court, since they went there straight from Juliette and Boris’s flat. Their solicitor beamed at them as they arrived, ‘We’ve just been told that your son has been arrested and is being questioned by the police, and won’t be appearing in court today.’
‘Arrested?’ said Colette, ‘what for?’
‘We don’t know yet, but this really is wonderful news. There’s nothing that could make our case stronger than to have your son in police custody at the actual time of the hearing, I can’t believe our luck . . .’ He clenched his fist in triumph.
The hearing was a drab, tedious, unglamorous event. The judge barely acknowledged the presence of Aldous and Colette, all business conducted was between the legal people. Eventually, after going through papers in a bored sort of way, the judge pronounced that an eviction order be served upon Janus Jones with immediate effect, and that the area of exclusion should be set at a radius of one half mile from the property.
Aldous and Colette that afternoon returned home in a state of bewilderment. They had been expecting Janus to be at home for at least a couple more weeks. The solicitor, during the course of the morning, had managed to find out more about the situation with Janus. He had been arrested and charged with threats to kill. He was being held in police custody until his magistrates court appearance, where an appeal for bail, in view of his eviction, was unlikely to be granted. The solicitor thought it was likely that he would go to prison on remand.
Threats to kill, they were told, was a serious offence, and could mean a prison sentence.
The eviction order would be served on Janus while he was on remand. When he came to leave prison, he would not be able to return to Fernlight Avenue.
‘He’s gone,’ said Colette, once they were home, taking in the oddly different atmosphere of the empty house, ‘just like that, disappeared. For good.’
‘Yes,’ said Aldous.
They didn’
t know what to do with themselves in the house. They realized, for the first time, how deeply their lives had revolved around Janus and where he was. Aldous would normally have retired to his red armchair in the front room, his haven from Janus, who’d always felt the room out of bounds, while Colette kept him talking in the kitchen. Now there was no need for Aldous to retreat to his corner. Janus was locked up. He was likely to be on remand for at least a month, and then a possible prison sentence. There was no chance of him breaking his eviction order. The house was safe.
It took Aldous and Colette a long time to absorb everything that had happened. They spent the afternoon silently exploring the house. Aldous ventured nervously into the music room, which had been his son’s territory. They realized that they would no longer have to sleep at Juliette’s flat.
‘We’ve done it,’ said Colette, in a voice of mocking triumph, ‘we’ve finally got rid of him.’
She looked at Aldous with a look that said I hope you’re pleased with what you’ve done.
‘He got rid of himself, in the end,’ Aldous replied, aware that Colette was trying to pass the burden of evicting Janus onto him. She was reasoning that Aldous, through drinking heavily, had put pressure on her to evict her son. ‘We didn’t have him arrested.’
‘No,’ said Colette, ‘I wonder who did.’
Julian, when he came home from school, could throw no light on the subject, though he described how the arrest happened, since it had happened in the early morning, before Julian was out of bed.
Loud knocks on the door. Janus had answered. Julian had listened at the top of the stairs. It had all happened very calmly and politely. Two detectives were on the doorstep. They asked Janus who he was. They explained that they would like to ask him some questions at the police station. Janus had politely agreed, had spent a moment putting on a jacket and some shoes, and then was gone.
Aldous and Colette learnt more over the next few days. Janus had been conducting a hate campaign against his former boss at the East Middlesex Hospital, the man who had sacked him. He had been writing him letters, anonymously, promising, in meticulous detail, a slow and painful death for the man. He drew coffins and skulls on the envelopes.
In his defence Janus claimed that he had been unfairly sacked. This complicated the matter, as the reasons for his sacking had to be taken into account, which raised the matter of the stealing of Mrs Ritchie’s brain. For a while it seemed that this might create a more serious offence, but the matter of the brain was dropped after a while, and Janus was charged solely with threats to kill.
Colette did not visit her son while he was on remand. The trial, a month later, made the local newspapers. Colette read the reports with horror.
Lovesick Porter Threatens to Kill Boss
Head Porter – ‘I was afraid for my family’
Lovesick Porter Sent Skulls through Post
Lovesick Porter blames his family
Lovesick Porter – ‘My Parents Don’t Understand Me’
Lovesick Porter Was Served Eviction Order While in Prison
‘It’s outrageous,’ said Colette to her husband, who had refused even to look at the papers, ‘in all these reports, they haven’t once mentioned that Janus is a pianist. And what’s happened about that brain? Why has no one mentioned the brain? The hospital’s embarrassed about it, that’s why. They don’t want their dubious practices exposed to public scrutiny. But it makes a big difference doesn’t it? Why were they letting him work in a mortuary in the first place, a sensitive boy like that? He told me they even let him hold the circular saw, the one they use to open the skull – that could account for a lot of his subsequent behaviour. If they mentioned the fact that he was a pianist who’d been allowed to run loose in a morgue, that could explain a hell of a lot. And their sloppy post-mortem practices – if it hadn’t been for that insensitive handling of a brain, Janus would never have been sacked . . .’
Colette may as well have been talking to herself. Janus received an eight month prison sentence.
21
A summer came and went while Janus was in prison. Colette and Aldous received several letters from him. The first was chirpy and full of bravado.
HM Prison Brixton
24th June 1978
Dear Mum and Dad
I’m having a really super time here. I’m sharing a cell with two Scottish burglars called Jim and Mick. Very nice blokes. They have taught me a lot about the routines here. The thing is, could you send me a parcel containing some pants and socks, some chocolate and some fags? It’s the only way to get things in here, see you soon, hope you aren’t missing me too much. Don’t worry, I’m having a great time.
Love to you all
Janus
xxx
There were a number of other letters in this vein, to which Colette had always dutifully responded, sending parcels of fags and chocolate, and any other luxuries she thought he might be permitted. He never asked for books, or any music manuscripts, which rather surprised her.
Then came a longer, more serious letter, which covered six pages of the small, thickly lined prison notepaper.
HM Prison Brixton
1st September 1978
Dear Mum and Dad
I’ve been in here for over two months now, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about things. There is nothing to do in a place like this apart from think, and I thought it would be a good idea if I set down some of the thoughts I’ve had in the time I’ve been here.
Principally, I want to provide an account of my behaviour over the last few years. I’m not intending to excuse that behaviour, or to [words crossed out], I just want to set things straight.
I believe that my problems stem from my childhood. I believe I had one of the happiest childhoods any child could ever have. I remember so fondly that big old house in Edmonton with its great cherry tree and the wonderful rambling garden full of flowers, and then those exquisite holidays at the farm that were like summers spent in paradise. I honestly thought that things would carry on like this for ever, but unfortunately childhood ends, and the adult world is much less attractive. In fact it is rather ugly. In my imagination I feel that I blamed my father for my childhood ending. My mother gave me my childhood, but my father took it away. He didn’t, of course, that’s just how my subconscious mind saw it. I saw my father as the one impelling me into the adult world of work and responsibility. I have never felt comfortable in this world, and I turned to drink in order to avoid it. I’m afraid that my temperament will not allow me to earn a living through music, either through teaching or performance. I am much happier with the menial jobs I’ve had over the years, in fact some of my happiest times were spent as a roadsweeper, the job I had when I was arrested. I like these jobs because of their simplicity, and because of the honesty and integrity of the people one works with. It is the same reason I enjoy the company of my fellow inmates here.
But of course I know I was a deep disappointment to you both because of this, but especially to my father. That is another reason for my turning to drink. I know I can never live up to your expectations of me.
This may all sound rather trite and clichéd to you, but I will remind you that expressions only become clichés through over use, and they are only overused because of their truth value. The truth, in the end, is often trite.
Yours Sincerely
Your Son (Janus)
Aldous at first refused to read this letter, just as he had refused to read all the others, or to read the newspaper articles about Janus, or even to talk about him. But Colette felt that this letter was important. She felt that it was sincere, and nagged Aldous into reading it, which he eventually did, with great reluctance.
To Colette’s disappointment, he was dismissive.
‘It’s as though he’s written an essay for the approval of the parole board,’ he said. ‘How can you take it seriously, nonsense like this, when you know how devious he can be?’
‘I think he means it,’ said Colette, ‘I
think he’s being honest about himself.’
‘But look at how it’s written – so impersonal, he talks about “my father”, and “my mother”, as though we were just abstractions. This isn’t sincere, it’s not heartfelt, it’s just pseudo-psychological claptrap.’
‘Well what would he have to do to convince you?’
‘Frankly, nothing. Explanations for his behaviour are pointless. The point is he’s done what he’s done, and there’s nothing that can excuse it. At least he got that right in the letter. This is just the first step in his campaign to worm his way back into your affections, and into our house . . .’
Colette no longer had the will to stand up for her son. The problem was that her life had improved since Janus had been in prison. Both their lives had. There was no denying it. Janus going to prison was the best thing that had happened to them in years. She didn’t even worry about how he was coping any more. She had at first, especially when that first letter came, with its stark information – sharing a cell with two Scottish burglars. She imagined these two bruised, scabby men bullying her sensitive son, bending his fingers back, stamping on his toes (she could only imagine bullying in the most childish terms), but subsequent letters convinced her that he was coping well, and that he was popular among his fellow inmates, as his last letter had suggested. She even cherished a hope that the whole experience might shock him out of his old behaviour patterns, and that he might steer his life back onto a normal course. It was his last chance. She realized that when he came out he had a hard choice to make. He could either stop drinking and begin to lead a useful life, or he could go back to his old ways, which would surely mean a swift return to prison, and then a life in and out of jail.
It was odd, but Colette had never known anyone who’d been to prison before, not even the remotest friend of a friend, or distant fifth cousin. No one she knew had even been in trouble with the police before, not among any of her relations as far as she knew had any of them ever been on the wrong side of the law. And now she had a son in prison. It had taken some getting used to, but by now, after three months, she had.
I’ll Go To Bed At Noon Page 37