A Patient Man

by S. Lynn Scott

  And so, the police search turned up nothing. Peppermint Copper didn’t look at all surprised.

  “Enjoying the excitement, Mikey?” he asked. I gave him one of my best stares, but he just chuckled and turned away. He did not ask me any more questions although he knew that I knew more than I had told or ever would tell.

  Bert came back from the hospital, pale and shaky and Ern and his corpulent wife moved in to the bungalow for a couple of nights to take care of him. He was mourning for her already and I doubt that his friend Ern could give him much honest hope however much he might have liked to.

  Another irritation for us was that Vi was at our house constantly, loyal to mum in her hour of need, especially when they coincided with her own interests. I know for a fact that she was talking to the tabloids and, as she had always hated my father it was likely that she was the poisonous source of much that was printed.

  I overheard a subdued conversation between Mum and Vi that dad had been interviewed by the police in London. He had a string of friends who alibied him up to the eyebrows, but they were all criminals and thugs so that made no odds and the tabloids, whilst not quite pointing the finger directly at my dad, still managed to trumpet his guilt as if it had already been proven in a court of law.

  The police turned to Gary as the weaker link and the probable second man. It all fitted very neatly as far as they were concerned, and the two physiques described by Bert were similar to those of my brother and my father. And to millions of other people across the world. Whatever they asked Gary and whatever he told them apparently gained them nothing.

  With the notable exception of the treacherous Vi and the smiling visits of the Peppermint Copper and his sergeant, we were cold-shouldered by almost everyone. Mrs. B still clung to her determination that Bert was a beastly wife-killer but wasn’t prepared to risk alienating her neighbours by consorting with the popular target of hatred and so she also shunned us. That, however, we could bear with equanimity if not positive delight. Sarah popped round once or twice under cover of darkness to glean the gossip, see if there was anything to be gained from the situation and to (privately) express undying love and concern for her father, in that order. Overall, she decided to keep her distance which was remarkably sensible of her I thought.

  We did not see Bert. Vi insisted that Mum should take him a basket of fruit, sympathy and a declaration of innocence on behalf of my Dad. Mum balked at this but Vi, Machiavellian as ever, had almost persuaded her. Dad found out though and vetoed the highly questionable plan before it could be put into action but after the fruit had been bought. I enjoyed the bananas and Vi put herself to work to find something else incendiary that would create a suitable tabloid headline and earn her a few more pieces of silver.

  Bert kept to his little house, but he knew that my father and brother were, if not the only suspects in the investigation, they were certainly the principal ones.

  I don’t believe in prescience or anything of that ilk, but it is true that one night just after 3am I woke suddenly out of a dreamless sleep with the image of Peggy suddenly before me. I was instantly awake, with none of that heavy fogginess that usually drags you into consciousness. I lay for a moment in the darkness of my room listening to my brother’s heavy breathing (he was staying close to home these days) then I shrugged off my covers, pulled back the hideous gingham cotton that did service as a curtain and looked down into the street.

  Bert was standing there in the pale moonlight.

  He was on the pavement just beyond the dilapidated white fencing that marked the limits of our front yard. He stood still and silent staring at the blank façade of our house and did not move a muscle of his wasted frame. I moved slightly to get a better look at his drawn face and the movement caught his eye. He raised his head and our eyes met fully. For long, long moments we were locked in a horrible gaze. His eyes were blank and expressed nothing. I think mine were the same. There was no exchange of emotion, no glimpse of understanding or of empathy, it was just entrapment. I could not move or tear my eyes away. He held me rooted as surely as if I had been manacled by iron. A car trundled by and accelerated into the distance, the sound clear and angry on the night air and suddenly Bert turned his head and walked away. I watched him, still mesmerised until he reached his home at the bottom of the street and walked up his garden path. Perhaps I dreamed the little episode, but I don’t think so.

  Peggy’s body was found the next morning.

  7

  Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  The poor old lady was found in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Epping Forest by a couple walking their dog. She was wearing her nightie under her clothes and bore no signs of violence or molestation. It became clear early on that she had died of natural causes in as much as she had suffered a massive stroke. Whilst it was generally felt that this in no way mitigated the guilt of the criminals whose actions had precipitated this event, there was a barely muffled air of disappointment from those of the newspapers who preferred their murder stories to be bloody and salacious, and therefore profitable. As a result, the interest from the media disappeared almost overnight and Bert was left to grieve in peace whilst the police were permitted to flounder on with the investigation without the overwhelming pressure for results from the press.

  Poor Peggy had probably not survived for much longer after I had seen her being driven away on that fateful morning. Worry and terror had killed her no doubt and the perpetrators of her abduction had been left driving around Essex with the body of a dead woman. The car, by the way, was discovered a month later burnt out under a pile of others at a breakers yard on the Isle of Dogs.

  So that was what happened.

  Practically the whole island turned out for Peggy’s funeral and the TV cameras and newspaper reporters also made a brief reappearance to report the salient facts tempered with a little human interest. After the sad excitement of that, life on our street and across the little island community went back to normal.

  Well, almost. Dad reappeared after a month or so when nothing of note had happened. It looked like the alibis had held. Whatever the police were doing to solve the crime they did not bother us anymore and our neighbours forgot to positively shun us and went back to just ignoring us.

  The schools had broken up for the six-week summer break and it was, though we didn’t know it at the time, going to be a record-breaking summer of drought. I spent long, long days on the crisp shingle of Canvey beachfront between the tarred breakwaters and the heavy sea walls and learned to swim (after a fashion) in the warm jellyfish-ridden water. Ice creams and chips made up my diet with pennies I had acquired (don’t ask how) spent on rides at the fun fair or machines at the arcade. I ran with the wild crowd, tormenting the day visitors with rowdiness and bad language and was the bane of the stall holders and shopkeepers with petty distraction thefts. When I tired of that I roamed the salt flats, alone or with Bones, scavenging occasionally with the seagulls on the massive landfill site at the end of the island. It is all filled in now and landscaped with views of the estuary and benches dedicated to those who have passed but who once walked there unknowing, or uncaring, of the rottenness beneath. In my day it was a fetid eyesore. Ironic that.

  The long grass on the steep sea walls dried out under the relentless sunshine and we discovered that large pieces of cardboard made brilliant sleds. The long hot hours of a cloudless summer saw the craze spread, and kids across Canvey climbed the sloping walls and slid screaming to the bottom before climbing to the top again. Bones and I husbanded a slide on the sea wall next to my house and made it one of the best on the island. Even the kids from the house opposite who had been in America thawed enough to join in the fun although the girl with the long brown hair kept her distance from me.

  The investigation continued, or so we assumed, but nothing was heard, and nothing was reported. The Peppermint Copper
dropped in unannounced on two or three occasions over the next six months, just to let us know that he still considered us guilty of something. I say us because we were all guilty by association. He always smiled that half smile and offered me a peppermint when I saw him, and I always took three or four. On the last occasion that we met that summer, he just gave me the whole packet and laughed.

  More unnerving than the occasional visit from the coppers was the silent vigil that Bert held almost nightly. He appeared at any or all times of the night or day and stood in silence staring at our house. He usually stayed for at least ten minutes unmoving and unmoved by anything else that might happen around him. He never strayed into our yard or uttered a single word to any of us. He just stood there, staring at the house.

  Mum was irritated at first, then angry and then, when this had been going on for several weeks, she became so unnerved that she opened an upstairs window and called him several unrepeatable names. She even threatened to call the police. That made me laugh. He ignored her, waited his allotted time and moved away as imperturbable as ever. She went to Dad and demanded that he ‘do something’ but the ‘something’ was not done. Strangely Dad was, for the first time for as long as I could remember and very possibly for the first time in his life, at a loss. I saw him once on a bright hot morning approach as Bert took his usual place on the pavement parallel to our front door, stop as their eyes met, hold them for twenty seconds perhaps and then pull away. He squared his shoulders as he walked back to the house, but he could not disguise the fact that it was an ignominious defeat. Bert stayed exactly where he was until his usual time was up and then walked back to his little house as if nothing had happened. This haunting, for that, was what it was, affected us more than any of us realised at the time. Even I began to see him as a dark shadow on my otherwise bright world and the belief that we were safe and that nothing would change was no longer as unshakable as it had been.

  The summer faded slowly that year and as the gloom of winter crept inexorably towards us I returned to school, read Robinson Crusoe in its original version (not the abridged which I decided was for babies) and discovered that the school library held countless other literary delights. I hid this new passion from Bones and my other school cronies and, oddly, the witch of a school librarian seemed to understand my reticence and regularly slipped my borrowed books into a plastic supermarket bag. When I had eventually extracted the pith of all the usual classic stories I was surreptitiously handed a card to the public library already filled out and official. I think she must have warned them that I was coming because, whilst they watched suspiciously for the first few weeks, they eventually realised that the last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself.

  My autumn and winter were spent in secret nooks and crannies about my school and house, devouring stories of every nature. From the delightful Doctor Doolittle books by Hugh Lofting to the Three Musketeers by Dumas, from The Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Suzanne to The Naked Ape by Dr. Desmond Morris. I read and reread everything Dr. Morris said and believed it for years. I got my hands on anything I could and read voraciously from cover to cover. I had no standards. Even if I didn’t like a book or didn’t understand it I felt myself duty-bound to read every word. I learned about lives entirely different to my own and I escaped for a while from the dawning realisation of what my own was. Imperceptibly at first, my parents began to shrink in my own eyes from all-powerful Titans into a neurotic, ill-educated woman mated to a dull, brutish thug who lived his life in fear. Yes, fear, because for the first time I could see that my father was afraid. He had always been afraid of losing my mother, perhaps to another man, but more likely to her freedom, and he was afraid of his masters in London. Why else was he at their beck and call, accepting their orders, earning not much more than a pittance for his services of protection and intimidation? And now he was afraid of Bert Freeman. Perhaps he had good reason to be.

  As my horizons widened the big man diminished in my eyes.

  I mentioned that Bert had been a teacher before his retirement. In the early spring that followed the long winter, I was summoned back to my classroom during a lunch break. I went reluctantly and to express my defiance dropped my crisp packet in the corridor and kicked open the door to the classroom.

  Bert was there with Miss Aimes, my teacher. She was fat and forty and shouted at me a lot in Maths for inattention (when I was there) but never in English, History, Geography or Science. I was rubbish at Maths. Now she was beaming. Bert turned his cavernous eyes on me and stood up to leave.

  “Oh, here he is now. Come in Mikey. Now you know you are not supposed to kick the doors,” Miss Aimes chortled. “I was just telling Mr. Freeman what enormous strides you have made over the last couple of terms. Quite the academic you are now,” she crowed proudly as if she had done it all herself. I scowled but I quite liked being called an academic. It sounded a lot better than swot, a label I was hell-bent to avoid.

  Bert nodded curtly at my sulky face as if he were intensely displeased and pushed past me to leave the classroom abruptly.

  “How odd!” exclaimed Miss Aimes in astonishment. “He asked me all about you as if he knew you well. He was my teacher years ago otherwise I wouldn’t have…Oh, dear, I hope I haven’t done anything wrong…”

  I shrugged. She had joined the school in September and might not have been aware of my part in the island scandal. She bit her lip and worried for the rest of the day. She was even paler the next day when she had presumably found out the full story and heard horror stories about my connections from her colleagues. She treated me with fear in her eyes for the next six weeks. It made maths lessons a lot easier though.

  So nearly a year had passed and the mystery of who was responsible for the abduction and manslaughter of Peggy Freeman had not been solved and looked like it never would be. The prevailing opinion was that my father and my brother had been solely responsible and that they had been protected by my father’s connections. There were even one or two meetings held in the council offices where people expressed their disgust at the incompetence of the police and the law that could not convict the usual suspects. Their bluster and demands for something to be done were reported in detail in the local press but, as the law required proof that none of these concerned citizens was able to supply, it was all ‘noise and thunder, signifying nothing.’ That’s a quote from Shakespeare whom I also discovered around this time. I read the plays with interest but without much understanding at first, although I did draw some parallels between the bloody Macbeth’s and my own parents.

  I read the newspapers as I read pretty much everything I could lay my hands on. I don’t think I felt any shame in knowing that the perpetrators of the foul deeds that created such outrage in the breasts of the innocent law-abiding Islanders, were believed to be members of my family. Rather the opposite. It cast a dark glamour over us all and even the school bullies (I mean the other school bullies) were in awe of me.

  Then the third thing happened, and this was the most momentous of all.

  8

  At this hour

  Lie at my mercy all mine enemies.

  William Shakespeare

  It was a day in late April when a letter from a solicitor’s firm arrived on our doormat. Dad happened to be at home when Mum picked it up and brought it through to the kitchen where he was eating chocolate cereal without any milk. The milkman refused to deliver to us anymore. It wasn’t due to a moral judgment, it was just that Gary had upset him by throwing up on his shoes in the early hours of one morning when his delivery coincided with my brother’s return from a particularly heavy night out. The silly man was stupid enough to protest at this treatment and therefore found himself bound and trussed, dumped in the back of his float with the cartons and careering down Burtonville Road shedding milk and bottles as my brother drunkenly pushed the electric vehicle beyond the limits of its capabilities. The whole street woke to the sound of smashing milk bot
tles and a chorus of “Save All Your Kisses for Me”, sung by Gary in a surprisingly fine baritone. Dad paid off the milkman, made Gary sweep the street and resigned himself to dry cereal and black coffee.

  I was on my way out of the door that morning but glimpsing my father’s lowering brow as he gazed at the embossed envelope I stayed to make toast with the hardened crusts of a week-old loaf.

  Having gleaned as much as possible from the uninformative envelope, Dad discarded his breakfast, tore the envelope open and, with my mother looking over his shoulder, read the few lines on the heavy paper.

  “We won’t go,” he said throwing the paper down amidst the detritus of the dairy-free breakfast as he left the room.

  Mum picked it up and read the few lines as if she did not understand them, which she certainly didn’t, knit her brow and read them again. She glanced up at me waiting patiently for the toast to pop up and said in surprise, “Why would they want you too?” Then she folded the paper and followed my dad from the room with it still in her hand.

  I hung around, but they disappeared into their bedroom and I wasn’t going to listen at that door. When I returned from school there was, as usual, no one at home (they generally spent most of the afternoon in the pub) and I had the opportunity to ransack the house for the letter. But I did not find it.

  There were definite undercurrents when they returned to the house that evening. Dad was even quieter and Mum more talkative than usual. They had an annoying habit of never discussing anything interesting when I entered the room, so it was my habit to either hide or eavesdrop at doors. In this instance I happened to be in the space between the settee and the wall under the front window reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull and, having been irretrievably lost in an allegorical maze for some time, I was relieved when light entertainment arrived in the form of my warring parents.