She’d made the trip to Overton Hall once a fortnight, every year for as many years as she could remember. Never failing. Her duty. And all she asked of him was one visit a year. One solitary day out of twelve long months. What was that by comparison? Nothing! He owed her that much. He owed them both. What would he be without them?
She rose from the desk and closed the window, a sudden coldness sweeping over her. Perhaps she was getting too old for this. Maybe it was time to hand the reins over. After all, things were running smoothly now, as smoothly as they ever would given the restrictions they were all confronted with. She just had to admit she was getting old. But that thought terrified her. She had never been old, never thought of herself as anything but young and beautiful, even though reality spoke back rudely from her mirror every morning and told her bluntly she was past her physical prime. She was an old woman. The kids sometimes called her Grandma Randolf.
She struck the desk with her fist and uttered a petulant squeal. “What would he be without me?” she muttered beneath her breath. A sheet of paper fluttered to the floor and a pencil rolled over the edge of the desk to follow it. “He knows what,” she said, folding her arms and facing the barred window again. “Yes he does. He knows what.”
He’d be nothing.
* * * *
7
Saturday
Imagine a herd of wildebeest.
You’ve seen the wildlife programmes on TV; muddy-brown bodies stretching in an endless band across a glistening heat-distorted landscape, a number of the animals are galloping around, apparently aimlessly; some walk casually, languidly; others hang around in tight little knots, close to one another; and there is, overall, the constant hum of their calls as they signal to each other, or maybe the odd-cry of alarm.
Now imagine, lurking not very far away, hidden partially by the long butter-coloured grass stems, a massive lion standing stock-still, muscles tensed, sometimes twitching in anticipation and excitement; feral eyes are locked onto the herd, its nose held up slightly and sampling the sweet air. The head moves slowly, majestically, left to right, back again, the movement repeated tirelessly, searching the herd of wildebeest, hot body by hot body. Then the head locks rigid, the eyes frozen and wide. The lion has chosen, singled out a straggler, its prey. This, then, is the unfortunate creature fated to feel the death pressure of its murderous iron-like jaws. This is the unfortunate creature that the lion knows it will kill. And it swallows saliva in anticipation of tasting blood.
Now, imagine that the herd of wildebeest is in fact a crowd of young girls, and that the lion was a ten-year-old boy. For this is how Max appeared to me that day in the playground.
Have I mentioned that the school was divided along gender lines – the boys taught at one end, the girls at the other, and ne’er the twain shall meet? A year or so down the line we’d all be thrown together like conflicting spirits in a heady cocktail. But till then we had our own Berlin Wall to prevent such a premature integration; a white line painted down the centre of the playground over which neither sex was to cross. And you’d think someone had set up a glass wall or an invisible force field of sorts, because even if a tennis ball strayed over the line the child would do no more than run up to the white line, stop dead and stare hopelessly as the ball trickled to a halt deep in enemy territory. There would be many a forlorn expression until it was picked up and tossed back, if you were lucky. There were regular patrols of teachers, stalking unseen, behind windows if the weather were inclement, their eyes probing like searchlights for those transgressors audacious enough to step over the boundary.
Max was rooted to the line when I came up to him. Watching. His concentration was intense, for he started visibly when I came up to his side and spoke to him.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
He lowered his brows, and his face was wreathed in that dark, resentful expression I came to know well. “Nothing,” he insisted laconically, turning back to stare at the girls playing. He seemed to be following one in particular, but I couldn’t make out which one, and indeed why he bothered to stare at all. Noisy, irritating, giggling girls, that’s all. He chewed at his bottom lip, glanced quickly at me and said, “Ever wondered what they’re like?”
I frowned. “Girls?”
He nodded. “Girls. Do you reckon they’re as soft as they look?”
I shrugged. It was a pointless question. I knew what they were like. I could see and hear what they were like. They were raucous, shrill, alien beings that had nothing in common with me or my kind and caused me often to wonder why we had to be protected from each other by a white line when neither gender was the slightest bit interested in the other. Unless we had to be protected, some sort of contamination in the offing, or it was to prevent unwanted pregnancies caused by passing spit when a boy and girl kissed – the thought repulsed me. So Max’s fascination was itself a curiosity.
“I’m gonna try one some day,” he said.
Try? I thought. I was innocent, even at that age. Most of us were. I struggled with the word.
He cast a prolonged mysterious eye over one girl who ran with pale gazelle-like legs across the playground. He followed her intently until she was lost amongst… Amongst the others in the herd, I thought.
“Her name’s Ruby,” he remarked, reaching out and pointing to the throbbing mass of bobbing pigtails and hair slides.
“Oh yeah?” I said, half-heartedly, deliberately not paying attention. I didn’t ask him how he knew.
I managed to drag him away, but he continued thereafter to scan the groups of girls on a daily basis, always searching out this girl called Ruby, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d assured himself she was there. It seemed a pointless exercise, like so much that Max undertook so gravely.
How the hell was I to know that Ruby would eventually become my wife? You just can’t predict that kind of thing, can you? Oh, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby!
But back then, quite frankly, I was desperately jealous that his attention was elsewhere, for friends were getting progressively thin on the ground since Max’s arrival, and I didn’t relish the idea of his interest in me being diluted in any way, least of all by a scrawny pin-legged girl.
Trouble was, I was never one to make friends at school, though I did once have three that, although they weren’t close, had always been there for discussing whether England had a chance in the next World Cup; or whether Pele was indeed the greatest footballer alive in the entire universe. They provided an outlet for gossip, were a source of comfort as we trudged the grey playground in winter looking for something to do, or were kindred spirits in an often hellish and seemingly meaningless academic pit. But they were never, as I’ve said, what you’d call close friends.
Be that as it may, when Max came on the scene he heaved them aside like runt chicks in a crowded nest, and one by one they were eased over the side; it wasn’t many weeks into the new term that Max had managed to monopolise my friendship. We were, he’d decided, a group of two and no more. I suppose I should have been wary or even annoyed; but I’d lost so little and gained much more, as far as my young brain could work out, that I let it ride and accepted the not too unfavourable circumstances.
His popularity was unmistakable. Naturally, as he and I were planet and moon – though I never figured out who exactly was the planet, and who the moon – his popularity rubbed off on me like an invisible radioactive dust, and I basked in the glow of heightened reputation it invested in me. The incidence with Mr Walton had done nothing to harm his status; some of the lads venerated this confident being capable of rapping Walton on the shin and living to tell the tale, and it must be remembered that many of them were the sons of hardened miners, whose home life was every bit as harsh in its way as their father’s wretched toiling. Yes, there’d been a hell of a ding-dong over it. Connie Stone pounding on the headmaster’s door that very day; Walton replaced for the afternoon by another teacher while it was all sorted out, and loud voices filtering down the full length of the
hall to stream into our classroom like tendrils of sweet smoke. We were gagging for playtime to come round. The kids buzzed around Max like flies around shit.
Forgive me. You’re probably thinking, “Is this relevant? Hell, we’ve been on a trip down memory lane now for ages. Is this Greyfriars or what? What’s he on, for Christ’s sake?”
Perhaps I’ve lingered too long, I don’t know. But it’s relevant. All of it. It’s one colossal clue. If I leave the tiniest piece out the puzzle remains just that. I don’t like it. Believe me, this is painful. Every pen stroke is like a razor gash to my mind, and I wouldn’t write it if I didn’t have to, or it was meaningless. So please, bear with me.
You see, like one of those wildebeest he’d singled me out too, though I never saw it as that at the time. I realise now, of course, what it was – it’s easy with hindsight. If I care to admit it the bond between us wasn’t true friendship, not in the ordinary sense – at least not on Max’s part. Naturally, at that age I thought it was. In fact there was something far more sinister at work. I should have seen this in the way Max used to observe me. Such an intense, burning scrutiny. I’d catch him looking at me – right into me – and the strange thing about it was that he’d never look away, be embarrassed about it and avoid eye contact. He’d just continue to stare. I guess I grew used to it, but it was disconcerting at first. Eventually I learnt to just let it slide; accept the mannerism as a part of his quirky nature. I see it now for what it was: a warning sign that pointed inevitably to now, to here, to me in this damned prison. I should have seen them all, for there were many, taken heed. Especially on the day he admitted to me the most curious thing.
We were in his garden. Walking. Little passing between us. Two bored youngsters. The weather had turned now, plummeting towards winter; freezing rain began to fall, driven by a malicious wind. The land was covered in a grey and dowdy blanket of feeble sunlight. I was getting more than a little cold, wet and increasingly despondent.
“Let’s go inside,” I said, my arms folded across my chest, my eyes slits against the wind. This was senseless.
He shook his head. His face was glossy with the rain, cheeks aflame, his dark hair sprinkled with glowing beads of water. He continued down the garden and I kept pace with him. He’d hardly said a thing. When we reached the fence at the bottom he turned and headed back up the garden again, with me matching him footstep for footstep. We’d done this countless times already.
“I’m going inside,” I insisted, halting defiantly. He stopped also, turning and giving me one of those protracted stares. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
The wind gave him a glancing sideways blow and he shifted his weight to steady himself. “I want to be you,” he said flatly.
I blinked, and then frowned. “Huh?”
“I don’t want to be me anymore.”
This was absurd. Just about every kid in the class would have given anything to be Maxwell Stone, including myself. I thought he was joking and laughed. His steely expression quickly put a dampener on my burst of humour. “Why?” I asked, incredulous.
He face contorted as he laboured to provide an answer, and he scratched the back of his head when he realised his work was in vain, finally walking away with a grunt. “I don’t want to be me,” he said, the wind whipping away his voice so that it sounded faint, ghost-like, a sound effect created by the elements. “Only you’re in the way,” he added with a flick of his hand. At least, that’s what it sounded like, as illogical as it seemed. He resumed his pacing, like an animal cooped up in a cage. And I could only stand and watch and wonder.
* * * *
An animal in a cage. I know the feeling well. As a young boy I once saw a leopard in a zoo – Paignton, I think. Back and forth, back and forth, pacing its life away with its flanks pressed against sides of the cage bars, a mindless activity to me. I remember being transfixed by its syrup-coloured beauty, the skin glistening in the summer Sun, the paws that were sheaths for death; the saliva dripping from its pristine white teeth to sit in regular little puddles on the harsh, grey concrete. And I remember the look of sheer hopelessness and despair, a dull film clouding its eyes. Some memory made it act thus. Some instinct that lay beneath the surface and was attempting to find release, to remind the creature that there was something else. Something else other than this.
I pace. Like the leopard. Like Papillon. It helps me focus my mind on something tangible. Perhaps I am driven by the same animal instinct, that if I walk sooner or later I’ll come across a means of escape, so I pace till my legs burn with the effort, and ironically the walking has become in itself the escape. I feel I must tire myself out, for the nights are unbearable, the darkness providing no solace, but transforming instead to a bleak velvet background against which I play out my memories, my mistakes, scenes from a film noir.
Once a week, however, I am allowed out of my room. I don’t know what day it is, because I’m not allowed a calendar, or even a clock, but I call it Saturday, because it has a weekend feel about it. The door clicks loudly, distinctively, and I know the lock has been released. At first – eons ago – I approached the door with apprehension and wild longing. I pushed the door (because it has no handle), and to my surprise it moved; it opened! My first thought was that they’d made a mistake and somehow something had gone wrong with the locks. I still remember the elation, the storm inside my stomach and my heart crashing against my chest. The short corridor beyond was empty and I knew I might have a chance at freedom. But what lay beyond the door at the far end was a mystery, for I’d never seen outside my room. Not directly, at least. I crept down the corridor. No handle again. So I pushed gently, eased the door open.
I was hit by the smell of fresh air – sweet, crisp, intoxicating fresh air. The door led directly out into the open. I blinked away the sharp light, and my vision cleared. The thing that met my eyes first was the massive purple-wreathed hills topped by an almost surreal expanse of blue sky, tendrils of mist curling around the hilltops like lacy scarves. I could hear the sound of seagulls screaming in the distance. I burst from the door.
And straight into an enclosed courtyard.
A stone wall, twelve feet or so high, stood in front and to both sides of me, the building behind me completing the square enclosure. It was a vast, open, cobbled space I walked into. I slowly went to stand in the enclosure’s centre. The air was chilly after the artificial, sweltering warmth of my room, so I wrapped my arms around me, unsure, hesitant, and at the same time panicking, for my freedom depended on what I did next. Then I saw the door to my left, tucked away into the corner as if endeavouring to keep out of sight.
I approached it with caution. It was a huge black-painted thing, and it was difficult to make out whether it was constructed of wood or metal. I pushed against it, but it didn’t budge. Now my heart raced in desperation. I pushed again and again, harder and harder with my shoulder, again, again, gasping, willing it open. It resisted. I sank to my knees breathless, my hands combing my hair as I picked my brain. I could attempt to scale the wall. It was my only option.
I ran, long, loping strides, building up speed, the wall approaching fast. A yard or two from it and I leapt, pouring as much strength as I could into my thighs, my hands stretching up towards the sky and aiming for the top of the wall. I hit the bricks with a sharp thump and fell back to the cobbles. I turned, ran some distance away and faced the wall again. Shit, it looked easily scalable from where I stood. I envisaged my fingers digging into the top of the wall like hooks, heaving myself over it, clambering on the summit before leaping into…
I was off again, pelting even faster towards the solid obstacle. Images of childhood school races sprang absurdly to mind, the sports teacher admonishing me for not having my hands stretched out stiff like blades; “It cuts down wind resistance! Makes you run faster! Don’t make a fist, for God’s sake, Philip!” My hands were like blades again. The stream of cold air beat at me, my lungs drew in huge panting breaths, my feet seemingly skimming over the c
obbles as they’d done all those years ago over the grass when I finished first at the tape and collapsed by the track with my chest afire. I leapt. I knew I was within reach.
My fingers clawed at the bricks, lichen and moss, a sharp pain as one of my fingernails tore. I cried aloud when my feet clattered to the ground and my whole body appeared to collapse in on itself at the foot of the wall.
“No!” I said aloud, hitting the wall with my fist, drawing blood.
Again I ran away from the wall, further away this time; again I ran; again I leapt; and again I failed. Tears of frustration and despair welled in my tired eyes as I sat there on the cobbles at the base of the wall, all hope shattered.
I did not hear or see them enter the courtyard, but I sensed their presence. I snapped my head round and saw two men in pale-blue military-style shirts and wearing military-style caps. They were standing by the door; both of them had their arms folded across their well-built chests. They remained silent. I rose shakily to my feet. I knew them. Not in the personal sense of the word; I mean I’d had dealings with them before. Morecambe and Wise I’d nicknamed them; one small and squat with grey hair springing from under his cap; the other taller, slimmer, thinning dark hair. The names invested them with something of the comical, but they were far removed from the notion. There was nothing remotely comical about the way they threw their weight around when they had to. I hated them for what they’d help do to me. In spite of my loathing for them and my anger at myself for not succeeding in scaling the wall, I approached them with caution, brushing my sleeve of dirt. They weren’t smiling, but they were laughing at me inside all the same. I didn’t need to see it to know it.
Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller Page 6