The burly teacher, his grey tweed jacket looking too small for him and pinching his fat arms, sat behind his high wooden desk and buried his attention in an important looking pile of paper before him. Silence descended like a mighty hand, squeezing us into hard concentration.
“Try,” I urged Max. “Do the simple ones.”
He looked at the board, squinting. “Which ones are the simple ones?” he said, shrugging.
Walton’s head sprang up, eyes darting this way and that. He settled them on Max, who must have been the only boy amongst us who sat without a pencil in his hand. He was quick to spot it. He then rose slowly, like some grotesque leviathan rising from the deep, till his huge body remained fixed and rock-like, looming above his oak desk.
“Problem?” Walton said, his voice like peals of thunder in the silent room. He put his hands behind his back and sauntered down the line of desks towards Max. He paused, craned his neck forward, slowly picked up Max’s piece of paper, turned it over enquiringly, and then placed it back on the desk. He took the pencil in his massive fingers and thrust it into Max’s hand, tiny by comparison. “Maxwell isn’t it?” he said.
“Max,” he returned quickly.
“Max, sir,” said Walton.
“Max, sir,” echoed Max.
“You can start now, Max, if you please,” Walton said evenly, stabbing at the paper with his forefinger; it skidded across the glossy surface of the desk. With that he ambled back to his desk and thumped onto his seat again.
For long agonising minutes I was aware of Max struggling to make sense of the numbers on the blackboard. I could sense the panic welling within him. In the end he simply gave up with a grunt of exasperation and put the pencil back down, pushing both pen and paper away from him. He sat with arms folded, staring at Walton, who stared straight back. There was a tension in the classroom, everyone testified to it afterwards, for even though all eyes were supposedly on their own work, the focus of all interest was on Max. Here, then, might be marked the genesis of Max’s extraordinary status within the junior school, which he was to build upon later in secondary.
This time Walton’s movements were lithe and swift, a beast springing to the kill. He reached Max’s desk in no time at all. Those closest to him bent away from him as if they were tall grass stems pushed by a strong wind. “What’re you doing?” he yelled.
I suppose the era must be taken into consideration here. That and the generally poor quality of pupils that passed through the school and the consequently low expectations teachers had of us all. Walton, like more than a few teachers there, had taught in the 30s; they had brought the 30s along with them right into the late 60s, and would drag those same 30s kicking and screaming into the 70s, regardless of governments and any number of newer, younger, sociologically aware socialist upstarts – new teachers, that is.
So it was no surprise to us that Walton yelled. He was renowned for it. A deep, booming bellow that caused your ear to ring for minutes afterwards. I imagined Max’s ear to be ringing with a not too pleasant sound right now.
“Pick up that pencil now!” he yelled again.
Max made as if to, then refolded his arms. “I can’t,” he said.
“What do you mean, you can’t? Course you can. And will. Pick it up!”
Max remained fixed.
I swore I felt the tension squeak as if ready to snap.
“Are you deliberately being defiant, lad?” In all fairness, Walton did try to counter his often hair-trigger temper. This last phrase was spoken in a voice upon which a veneer of calm had been noticeably glued. But the sight of this youngster with his arms so obviously folded in insubordination, meant the voice rapidly splintered this thin and ineffectual overcoat of calm. He bellowed something incomprehensible, dragged Max out of his seat by his arm, thrust him into the aisle between the desks and marched him to the front of the class with a fist in his back every few steps. By the time they reached the blackboard, both faces, man and boy, were ruby-red. And all other faces had abandoned their work and were mesmerised by the proceedings.
Walton grabbed Max by the shoulders, spun him round to face the blackboard and told him not to move an inch. “Stay there until you learn some manners. Obviously they let you do this sort of thing where you come from, m’lad, but don’t expect any of that namby-pamby southern stuff to wash up here. I’m afraid you’re not going to get away with anything.”
He grunted, and flashed us a demonic stare, at which the class, as a single entity, bent its many heads and made a communal pretence of losing itself in its work. I saw Max’s shoulders heaving, and at first I thought he was crying. Then, calmly, almost leisurely, he took up the blackboard rubber that lay on the ledge of the blackboard, and began to erase the chalked maths questions; great swathes of it disappeared. Mr Walton had his head bent to the pile of paper on his desk, his chin cradled in his huge hands. I remember my mouth falling open and staying there. Other mouths joined mine, till all heads watched the incredible scene unfold. It was only when Walton finally registered that nobody was working, that he turned round to see Max putting down the rubber. He’d managed to completely wipe all Walton’s work away, apart from a narrow band of chalked numbers that remained at the top of the blackboard beyond his reach.
Walton, gasped, spluttered, rose from his desk, banged his knee, sank back onto his chair, braced himself by placing his hands on the desktop, and hauled himself up again. He exploded.
I’d read about Vesuvius in my book, General Knowledge for Boys. This was every bit as explosive as that. Walton appeared to go off with a series of booms in quick succession, the retorts of his voice, amplified and reflected by the bare walls, filling the classroom. I had the urge to put my hands above my head to protect myself. Walton grabbed Max, who yelped in obvious pain, and then dragged the boy to his desk. Walton was grumbling and roaring, his face livid. Max was struggling as Walton reached behind his desk for his cane, a long, thin piece of bamboo – thin because he believed its speed and narrowness caused greater distress than the clumsy wide canes used by other teachers. Taking Max’s wrist in his iron, manacle-like grip, Walton brought the cane up high, Max heaving with all his might to break free. But the cane whipped swiftly down and smote the end of his fingertips; went up again, and down; schwip-tif, shwip-tif, shwip-tif it went as it zipped through the air and made unrelenting contact with Max’s hand. Max clenched his fist and the cane rapped against his knuckles, bringing blood. Walton released him and Max recoiled, clasping his hand and glowering at Walton; tears flooded his eyes, I could see them glinting in the light, and yet not one dropped. Max’s teeth and jaw were set.
Walton pointed the cane at Max. “You little…” He swallowed, trying to regain his breath. The stick wavered, as if it was a tongue trying to verbalise that which the teacher couldn’t.
If all our mouths were agog, then they fell even wider when Max rushed at the desk, grabbed a handful of Walton’s papers and tore them in half, throwing the bits into the air like confetti. He shrieked wildly and landed Mr Walton a well-aimed kick on the shin. Walton yelped, dropped the cane and clasped the point of impact crying, “You…You…You…”
“You’re going on my list!” Max screamed at the teacher, jabbing a finger at him.
Max tore from the classroom and across the grey but sunshine-washed playground. We all rose from our seats and craned our necks to catch sight of him running out of the gates, but not before hopping between the white hopscotch lines painted on the concrete. A murmur like the passing of a huge swarm of bees spread to stuff the room full of the sounds of childish awe.
* * * *
My eyes hurt. It’s my cell. I must describe my cell. The colour of the walls causes me such distress. Cream, cream, cream. And there’s no respite. Not even a window to release my eyes from their own special kind of prison. They’re sentenced to an interminable sameness. The walls cast a ghastly, jaundiced pallor on everything within the room; my single table, my single chair; all are seeped in a thin kin
d of sickly juice. I find –
Something’s nagging me.
It hits me in the face like a slap. Have you ever had that - you know, when something clicks on and tells you you’re doing something that you shouldn’t? I’m staring at the paragraph I’ve written for what must be five whole minutes now.
So what’s wrong, I ask myself? What’s tickling your brain, huh? I flipped back through what I’d already written, sifting through loose pages on my desk, re-reading, scanning the paragraphs, till I found, to my dismay, that I’d already described my cell to you.
It’s so disconcerting when that happens. It nudges me into thinking my brain is slowly dissolving and will in time be a putrid, runny pile of slop sitting in the base of my skull. It’s like a warning sign, this unexpected forgetfulness. So what’s important about forgetting such a little thing? Well it’s bloody important, if you knew me – I mean really knew me. This just isn’t like me at all; at least, it isn’t like the me that existed before. I never made mistakes like that. Never. So what’s going on?
I’m like a goddamn grub encased in a brick-lined cocoon, metamorphosing into God knows what. I’ve changed. And the frightening thing is I know how I’ve changed. I’m in a constant state of ugly, mentally wearing transformation. Is this what he wanted all along? Is that his plan? When I finally leave this prison – if I ever leave here – will I be so misshapen in mind and body that nobody will recognise me; that I won’t even recognise myself; that, in effect Philip Calder will have ceased to exist? And when this grotesque little grub finally emerges from his cocoon, what will he be then? Who will he be? What then for me?
* * * *
6
Mrs Randolf
“There are two children with her, both boys, aged five and nine. The woman’s in a bit of a state, and it looks like she’ll need a doctor to take a look at her,” she said as she pored over the notes on a pad of paper.
“Anything serious?” She glanced up from her papers, her pen hovering over the pink form in front of her. Another grant application form.
“Not as yet; heavy bruising to the chest, she informs me, a cut above the right eye, not too deep. It’s stopped bleeding but we’ve put antiseptic cream and a plaster on it.”
“And the children?” She could not hide the anxious edge to her voice. She never could. Even after all these years…
“They’re fine, Mrs Randolf, more than a little bewildered and they won’t let go of their mother as yet, but otherwise bearing up pretty well, I’d say, given the circumstances.”
Children could be deceptive, Mrs Randolf thought. They were often more proficient at concealing their true emotions than adults, feelings dammed up dangerously behind a wall of silence, their faces often unnaturally impassive, while their mothers could be on the verge of hysteria and more than likely suffering hurt in all its manifestations, physical as well as mental, topped off with a liberal dose of fear, not only for their own safety but for that of their children. The kids might be calm outwardly, but she knew different. Bitter experience had taught her otherwise.
“Where are they now?”
“Room five, as usual. Having a coffee. It’s going to be a tight fit; we had the Askwith family in yesterday.”
“How did she find us?” Mrs Randolf asked, ignoring the perpetual question of room.
“Citizen’s Advice Bureau directed her here.”
“They must be on piecework these days,” she said with little humour intended. “So the kids are fine? No sign of abuse?” The pen tapped agitatedly on the desk.
The young woman gazed at the pen, then into the old woman’s eyes. She shook her head. “No abuse, as far as we can actually tell. She – by the way, the mother wants to remain anonymous for now, scared of giving us her name. I did assure her, but she’s terrified. Anyhow, she insists the children are OK, but you know how it is, things don’t surface for a long time in some cases, sometimes not at all. I’ve lost count of the women who still stand up for their partners no matter how ill treated they’ve been, as if it’s their fault it happened; their fault their men knocked them around; as if it’s they themselves who’ve failed.”
Mrs Randolf watched as the young volunteer bent to her pad and scribbled with the pen with a vigour that threatened to tear the paper. “Don’t let it get to you, Carol,” she said. “You’ll learn eventually how to stand aside a little.”
“It makes me so angry though.”
“Naturally. But getting emotional only clouds things. We have to be clinical here, if these people are to get the proper help and accommodation.” She was a fine one to talk, of course. As they say, it’s easier to preach than practice.
Carol could be forgiven her emotions, Mrs Randolf thought as she studied the young woman bent to her paperwork; she was a college undergraduate, studying sociology, and she’d had her eyes opened to feminist thinking. It had come as a shock to her to discover in these so-called enlightened days that women were still the underdog in a world largely dominated by men, and King Street Women’s Refuge was just the place to really see that violent aspect of patriarchal domination at work. She’d watched as all their young volunteers, hoping to gain experience prior to fulltime employment, had come into the refuge as one animal, and left an altogether changed one. Carol, intelligent, self-assured, career-minded, was at that early point when her perceptions about the world were being seriously challenged; that women still suffered cruelly at the hands of aggressive men, often to the point of murder; that the police chose, still, to think those women brought it on themselves, that callouts to ‘domestics’ were a nuisance; that even the courts – riddled through with men – generally supported the views of the police; that somehow women who were wheeled into the hospitals with fractured limbs and scarred mentalities had either suffered because of a real chemical imbalance within themselves – if in doubt blame it on PMT, or the female propensity for high and instable emotions – or that it was a consequence of their constant nagging, or whatever female stereotype was at hand. Being faced with actual people with very real emotional and physical problems, not merely statistics in a college textbook, it was hardly surprising Carol was finding some of what went on here unpalatable and upsetting. It was trial by fire. Or trial by truth.
“There’s an Injunction out on the husband,” Carol continued, “but that hasn’t stopped him going round and beating the hell out of her.” She made an effort to disguise her feelings, her lips straightening. “She’s got nowhere else to go, two kids, no money…”
“Mary will give you a hand, if you like,” Mrs Randolf suggested, sensing the young woman’s confidence waning because of her lack of experience. “Stick with her and she’ll take you through it. She knows the ropes well enough. Just fill her in on the details, especially the Injunction. The police will have to be notified.” She touched the woman’s hand. “Don’t worry, darling, you’ll be fine. I’ll be done here soon and then I’ll come through.”
Carol smiled thinly and left the office, closing the door softly and leaving Mrs Randolf to ponder over the vast amount of paperwork on her desk. Eventually, tossing the pen down, she turned in her chair and faced the open window. The white metal bars, put up because of a recent break-in and the loss of a valuable computer, might have spoilt the view, had there been a view worth spoiling. But as it happened all there was to see out there was an ugly expanse of time-grimed bricks that went into the construction of a high wall, and a tiny rectangle of concreted yard. It looked like a prison, she thought. How ironic. A prison inside which women could feel at least a modicum of protection and security.
She put a finger to her temple, the pain there beginning to pulse deeper, more insistently. The visit to Overton Hall had left her emotionally drained. She’d hardly had the strength to offer words of encouragement to Carol. But it was better for her that she worked, kept her mind and body busy, then she wouldn’t have the time or energy left to think about things too much. Because then she might get angry, and bitterness was a terrible b
east. It made you self-centred, ate away at your compassion for others, and she couldn’t have that, not with the refuge to run. So to work till exhaustion claimed her had been the general rule, and in the past that philosophy had worked fine. But today she was already exhausted. There wasn’t anything left to give.
And why hadn’t he gone through with her, as he’d always done? Had he known? Had he been informed about the…about the drastic change? Oh, it was terrible! Terrible! She squeezed her eyes tight to shut out the picture, but it wouldn’t go. All she wanted were the memories instead, but they lacked substance, not at all like they used to be, weren’t powerful enough to overlay that – that horrible, horrible image. But it isn’t my fault, she thought. I couldn’t prevent those blows to his head, could I? Really, how could I? He was being attacked by a brute of a man. I tried to help him, Lord knows I tried. I screamed and scratched and kicked, but the man was just too strong to pull off him. And I don’t care what the doctors said; I still think it was that blow, the one that knocked him senseless. It would have floored a full-grown man, never mind a child. That’s what did it. I know. That’s what caused everything. But I couldn’t have prevented it, could I? Could I?
And he didn’t help one bit. She’d detected the animosity in him from the very outset of the journey, in his artificial silences, his clouded expression. So unlike him. So unlike the gentle, caring man of old. She almost thought she detected hate, or the very beginnings of hate. That had unsettled her. She did so love him still, even though he might not think so, and she didn’t want him to hate her. He was the only one she had left, now that…Oh, God, it was so terrible! How could You? Are You punishing me, is that it? For what I’ve done? Yes, that’s got to be it. But that’s not fair, because they deserved it. I don’t deserve any of this. They were evil, and I’m not. Look at me. Do I look evil? Is what I do evil? I save people. Protect them. No-one protected me. Protected us.
Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller Page 5