A Patient Man

by S. Lynn Scott

  For several weeks the postman groaned under an increase of mail for the little bungalow.

  “Begging letters,” my father growled contemptuously as we watched the poor postie toil by one day. Whatever my father might do to earn his daily bread, much of which was not entirely restricted by the law, he still considered begging another for money as beneath him.

  I was not the only one who watched the little house of course. There were a lot of twitching curtains in our road over those first few days and weeks and then, for different reasons, the next few months.

  Mrs. B, or to give her full name, Mrs. Evadne Burbidge, was perfectly placed at Number 8 to keep vigil over the happenings at Bert and Peggy Freeman’s house. And she did, watching from her front room as she ironed, dusted and washed the living room windows yet again. The rest of her house must have suffered from neglect but there was no doubt that her front room, though somewhat worn from all the rubbing, must have been the cleanest in all England.

  Mrs. B lived alone, and one found out very soon after making her acquaintance that this was because no one else could possibly live with her. Her husband, or ‘the godless cheating bastard’ as she invariably called him, had sired two sons. On command I imagine. The first was born within days of a hurried wedding, and the blushing groom had heroically made a go of it for all of six months before taking to his heels. Eight months later the second was born. As perfidious as this behaviour was you somehow could not help but extend some sympathy to a man finding himself shackled for life to a fearsome woman like Mrs. B. ‘The godless cheating bastard’ disappeared into the ether with ‘that whey-faced tart who wouldn’t say boo to a goose’ never to be seen again. The vengeful woman told this story often to prove the worthlessness of men, although I always thought that it revealed more about her than she intended it to and definitely proved the eventual good sense of one man at least. Others gave her a wide berth from the start which proved that they had a great deal more.

  The oldest boy of this unhappy coupling ran off to join the army as soon as they would take him, and it wasn’t long before the second followed his example. At least this was the choice of career that Mrs. B broadcast to her captive audiences. Her listeners were always captive. No one would have stayed by choice. Mrs. Burbidge prided herself on having an instant opinion on everything and was one of those insufferable people who feel it is their duty in life to be generous with their bigotry so that others may profit. Her condescension was infuriating but to run like hell when you saw her coming was the only possible way to avoid it.

  Peggy, bless her, didn’t run fast enough often enough, but even this mild little woman could be pushed too far. After years of generously dishing out unwanted instruction thinly disguised as advice, Mrs. B eventually broke the proverbial camel’s back by insisting Bert take his shoes off in the house. Bert objected to being told to remove his own shoes in his own house to protect his own carpet and told her in no uncertain terms to bugger off. This enraged the inimitable Mrs. B who promptly collared the hapless Peggy and spent twenty breathless, loud and uninterrupted minutes telling her what a selfish, hopeless, bastard of a brute her husband was. Peggy shook her head and vainly tried to make her feeble protests heard until Mrs. B hit a particularly sore spot and implied that it was probably just as well that they had not been blessed with children as they would undoubtedly have turned out just as loutish as Bert. Poor Peggy saw red and the long fought for acceptance of her barren lot dissolved in an instant and resulted in the large Mrs. B being forcibly and very noisily ejected from the little neat house by the little neat lady wielding a very large skillet.

  I know all this because I happened to be in the vicinity shortly afterward with Bones. More of him later. We were making catapults behind the fence over which Mrs. B, having laid hands on an unwary neighbour, related the atrocious behaviour of the ‘nasty bitch’ as she termed the gentle Peggy. With the instinct of children, we knew the truth of the matter and were inclined to believe that Mrs. B was the real bitch of the drama and to give old Peggy a little more respect than we had hitherto deemed her worthy of.

  This all happened a few months before the great good fortune that befell Bert and Peggy and so, when the news that her greatest enemy had become a rich woman, the exiled Mrs. B could do nothing but fume impotently behind her spotless net curtains.

  3

  It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  The next thing that happened took place just over a week later.

  It was early summer, and the days were long and balmy as they always are when you are young. The holidays were still too many days away but with the sun already bright in a cloudless sky this day promised long hours of freedom if I made my escape before constraints were forced upon me. My mother preferred it if I went to school so that I didn’t bother her, but it wasn’t regarded as an absolute necessity and, as finding me and forcing me through the gates caused her no end of trouble, she followed the course of least resistance and just put the letters that arrived from the headmaster into the rubbish bin with a frustrated shrug.

  I didn’t dislike school particularly. I had friends there, a raucous bunch that tore around the schoolyard at break-time like things possessed, bouncing off walls and bruising bodies, our own and others. Lessons weren’t much calmer. In most, I just did what I wanted and ignored the teacher or gave him blank looks so that he concluded that I was thick and not worth bothering with. I was occasionally intrigued enough by something or other to earn surprised approval from a wearied teacher who had given me up as a lost cause. I was naturally bright. I know that now but back then education and the reasons for it were a complete mystery to me. Schooling was an imposition on my time and I did not see how it could free my mind by constraining my body. I did go willingly on some days, if Bones and I had planned some adventure or some torment for a teacher or a fellow student, or if the weather was bad or if we were working on something transiently intriguing like Robinson Crusoe or the sex life of plants – which promised so much and delivered so little.

  But when the weather was warm and dry enough to allow me to run free in shorts, a well-worn t-shirt and battered pumps, then I was awake with the lark (not that we ever had such a thing on Canvey I am sure – unless it were a mud lark) and off over the mud flats to the oily shore where all sorts of interest and delight lay between the wooden-hulled boats, floating seagulls, and grass- lined sea walls.

  This morning though was destined to be the start of something different. Bright rays from the rising sun thrust through the thin unlined curtains above my shabby bed and revealed a mist of dust motes hanging in the air. After just a few moments of dazed transition from sleeping to wakefulness, I kneeled on my bed and leaned my thin brown arms on the window sill, looking out at the sleeping road. My half-brother’s bed behind me was unmade with tumbled sheets, none too clean and an empty can of beer propped up against the thin pillow. The fetid whiff of cannabis suggested a stash somewhere but Gary himself was absent as he often was.

  There was little movement in the street. A cat crossed the road languidly intent on its own feline business and a white van gunned down Smallgains Avenue but otherwise, the street was mine. I had checked that the beer can was empty and was calculating how likely it was that Gary would miss the few coins that had fallen to the floor from his jean’s pocket and deciding that I didn’t care if he did when my eye was caught by an unexpected movement at the end of the road. Bert and Peggy’s old car rolled off their little drive and, with an uncharacteristic grind of the gearbox, chuntered towards me. As it passed, prior to turning left into Smallgains Avenue, I glimpsed gloved hands on the steering wheel, Bert’s flat cap and Peggy’s pale face turned upwards to me from the passenger seat. So, they were escaping I thought with interest and a little disappointment.

  Mum, had said that they wouldn’t stay on Canvey lon
g. With all that money why should they? She had been unashamedly fascinated by the Freeman’s sudden and unexpected prosperity but felt, and said, that she had a better right to good fortune than ‘those doddering old farts’ and she resented them accordingly. Her predictions of their next movements were therefore saturated with bitterness. They would buy a big place in the country or go on a world cruise or both, but they would not, could not stay on the island. It was inconceivable to her that they hadn’t immediately removed themselves to a swanky hotel on the mainland, but I suspected that their good fortune had frightened them a little and that they wanted to stay close to everything that was familiar. Even with my dreams of adventure on the high seas, the boy I was sort of understood that. Still, if the little house were to be locked up or sold it would rob me of one point of interest. Much as I found the sideways shuffle of crabs and the glutinous habits of shellfish engrossing, I was likewise fascinated by the strange behaviour of millionaires.

  I listened to the little car as it chugged out of sight and then shrugged my regret away, collected the scattered coins from the floor and crept past the door of my parent’s bedroom. There was practically zero chance of being caught and forced towards the school gates. Dad was in London for some shady reason or other and whilst he was away my mother had been making it her habit to get roaring drunk every night down at the pub with her ghastly friend Vi. As a direct result, she was extremely unlikely to make an appearance until well past noon, so I was easily able to make my escape into the crisp summer air.

  As was my habit on sunny days, I headed for the lonely expanses of the island, there to spend delightful hours searching for the shy water vole and the equally elusive exploding bombardier beetle. I had been told about both but never found either. Still, the search was engrossing and turned up all sorts of interesting creatures, most of which I could not identify even now. There were the obvious of course, the lapwings, gulls, and sandpipers. If I was lucky I would catch sight of hobbies on the wing and I remember that on that day gatekeepers and marbled whites were beginning to appear, harbingers of the heady days of summer. Down in the sludge and amongst tidal rivulets were even more curiosities that required investigation. You can imagine then that I spent most of my time filthy and drenched in an aroma that is found exclusively in the marshes of Canvey Island. For me, no sweeter scent existed.

  Later that day, when I had tired of roaming the salt flats and had spent the few pennies I had appropriated from Gary (supplemented by what I had earned by returning scavenged coke bottles to Bill’s Corner Shop) on a packet of crisps and a pork pie, I found myself staring curiously at the little home of the sudden millionaires. Bones had joined me when released from school. I never knew how he found me but somehow, whereever I was on the island, which could be any one of a hundred places, Bones would appear at my elbow as if he had never left it.

  “They’re gone,” I said. “Left this morning.”

  “No kiddin’,” he nodded wisely three times and said again, “no kiddin’”. He didn’t often say much else.

  We both regarded the little house solemnly.

  “Wanna ‘ave a look round the back?” I said on impulse.

  We’d been around there before to torment the cat, so it wasn’t as if there was going to be anything new to see particularly, but I liked to keep an eye on things in the street.

  The curtains twitched at Mrs. B’s, but Bones and I were old hands at avoiding her prying eyes. We sauntered around the corner and then with a wriggle were through the gap between the hedge and the fence. The neat little back garden with its tidy garden shed and marigolds in regimented rows was as it had always been. Nature had been tamed and organised, weeds banished and only order prevailed.

  I lifted the latch on the shed door and poked around desultorily. There were few things worth nicking I thought, viewing them with what I fondly imagined was an expert eye. The lawn mower was clean and, though old, was immaculate. Apart from that, there wasn’t much. There would be stuff in the house, I mused, but I was still only eight and had not graduated, even in my own estimation, to the dizzy heights of breaking and entering. Petty theft with the very lowest risk factor was all I aspired to at that time. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t hurt to have a look through the windows.

  I latched the door behind me and picked up three long cigarette butts from the paving slab that had been neatly sunk into the grass to provide a firm and un-muddy area before the shed. There were other stubs ground out into the tidy flower bed and half kicked over with soil, but the three I retrieved were only half-smoked and were, therefore, gratifying finds. I then turned to find Bones standing on the small patio staring agape at the French windows. Bones was very, very skinny, hence his name of course, and had sparse white-blonde hair and a lazy eye.

  As I moved towards him he brought me to a sudden halt by raising one emaciated arm to point at something beyond the window. He looked at me with a sort of speechless exclamation mark. My gaze followed the direction in which he was pointing.

  Through the window, I could dimly make out a body slumped on a chair where no body should be. But there was something else wrong. The chair had fallen sideways onto the floor although the figure was still sitting on it. After the first heart-stopping moment, this intrigued me. On closer inspection, it was revealed that a man was bound hand and foot to the chair and that a dirty cloth gagged his mouth and covered his eyes.

  It was Bert and he wasn’t moving.

  I stared spellbound. The rugs on the floor behind him were rumpled suggesting a tremendous struggle and the curtains that should have obscured our view of the room were partially torn from their rails. It looked as if Bert had somehow managed to pogo his chair a few feet across the room in hopes of getting through the French windows or of attracting attention, but exhaustion or death had overcome him. I tried the door handle…

  “No kiddin’,” breathed Bones over my shoulder.

  The door didn’t budge so I gave it a frustrated rattle. It was long before the ubiquitous plastic replacement windows swept across England and so rotted wood and flimsy catches were pretty much the norm on most houses. In addition, it was later found that the French windows had been the initial point of forced entry for the intruders, so it was not surprising that, with a few more rattles and twists, the handle came off in my hand.

  Bones let out a low whistle and mouthed ‘no kiddin’’ once more as I inched the door open, squeezed in and stooped to examine the prostrate form of Bert. His white hair was lank and disheveled and his body looked frail and pathetic in crumpled striped pyjamas. His dry, grey mouth, forced open by the dirty binding, dripped a thin line of clear spittle towards the pink flowered carpet.

  I had never seen a dead body before.

  To my heartfelt disappointment, I didn’t see one then for as I knelt to get a closer look at the corpse, the body jerked into life. For someone with a gag in his mouth, Bert managed to make a hell of a noise, but nowhere near as much as Bones and me.

  We both leaped backward with a yell that rattled the serene Dresden figures on the mantelpiece, and, as we were ashamed to admit later, clasped each other in a terrified embrace. Bert continued his macabre jerking as Bones and I slowly recovered ourselves. Bones, with trembling, hesitant hands, pulled the blindfold over Bert’s head and released him from his blindness. His eye sockets were so hollow and black that I thought for one thrilling moment that his eyeballs had been gouged out. Having recovered from the slight disappointment at discovering that this was just an impression created by sunken eyes, the dim light and my imagination, I remembered the pocket knife that I always carried. It came in handy for cutting up pork pies and prying winkles from their shells, to name some of the less disgusting things I used it for. I still have it and still remember how Bert, trying to focus after his imposed blindness, shrank from me in wide-eyed horror as I moved towards him.

  “S’all right, mate,” I muttered, rather enjoying the fac
t that I could provoke such fear. “Gonna cut you free, see.”

  I climbed over his body and sawed through the tape that had been used to bind his hands. His captors had been generous with it, so it was several minutes before the last strands gave way and Bert’s arms were released. Bones in the meantime had set to work on the mouth gag that was tightly knotted at the back of his head. He first tried to untie it but gave up and went in search of something to cut it with. He came back with a delicate pair of nail scissors. I have no idea why we didn’t just go into the kitchen where there was no doubt a range of implements that would have freed poor Bert in a matter of moments, but there you have it. Perhaps I am not as bright in some things as I am in others, and no one has ever accused Bones of being bright in any field.

  However, our exertions eventually freed the captive and with a groan, Bert lay panting on the floor before us.

  “Peggy,” he muttered through a bone-dry mouth. He eased his painful arms and tortuously attempted to raise himself from the pink flowered carpet. “Where is she?”

  I leaped heroically to my feet, ready for anything.

  “In the bedroom? I’ll get her.”

  Bones, my trusty sidekick, would have stayed with Bert but I grasped his arm and dragged him with me. I told myself I might need him, but it was really because, as we scampered through the little bungalow, I couldn’t help but approach each door with a fear that whatever was behind it might be a little more than even my bravado could cope with. But I was not tested. Each tidy room was deserted. Only the cramped bedroom bore signs of disturbance with the bed unmade and several of Peggy’s dresses scattered across the floor. A crushed and empty can of lager tossed onto the satin counterpane looked faintly obscene against the delicately flowered pastel and reminded me fleetingly of my brother’s pillow.