A Patient Man

by S. Lynn Scott

  “Where’re we goin’?” I asked after a few minutes in which we had disposed of several country roads and gained a dual carriageway. She didn’t look at me. She might have been concentrating on the road, but I don’t think she was.

  “I’m taking you to Mr. Barker’s house.” It took me a minute or two to realise who she was talking about, I had got so used to calling him Baldy.

  “Why ain’t yer takin’ me ‘ome?”

  “Haven’t they taught you how to speak properly yet?”

  “I do speak proper,” I snapped back. “They ain’t turnin’ me into a ponce so don’t you fink it.”

  She laughed but never took her eyes off the road to look at me.

  “Well, to be honest, I quite like you as you are, anyway.”

  Mollified I stared at the scenery that was passing us by much faster than was safe for us or anyone else on the road. Then a thought struck me.

  “What’s your name?” I ventured.

  “What do you think it is?” she replied lazily hitting the horn and startling a Volkswagen Beetle back into the slow lane where it belonged.

  “I dunno, do I?”

  “Guess,” she said, not caring if I did or not.

  I squinted at her windswept profile and considered.

  “Becky,” I was inspired to say, and she smiled a secret smile.

  “That’s it,” she said. Of course, it wasn’t. Her name as I discovered later that day was Triona, but Becky suited her better to my mind and so that is what she remained to me always. Becky, as in Rebecca Sharp.

  “So why ain’t I goin’ ‘ome?”

  “Ask properly.”

  I sighed but it was okay to give in to her I decided because she was a woman and a pretty one at that.

  “Why… aren’t… I… going… home…?” I said slowly and then spitefully added, “if …you… please,” which no one at school ever said but I had read rather a lot of Victorian novels recently.

  “I don’t know, Mikey.”

  Now that really was not fair. I was more aggrieved that I had been tricked into talking posh than that she claimed not to know the answer. It was at that point that I caught a sideways glance from her. Of course, I asked again but she just said that Mr. Barker would no doubt explain, and I was not to worry. She put Bruce Springsteen into the tape machine then and the Boss effectively drowned me out. Springsteen was more to my taste anyway, so I let it go until an hour or so (and several rude gestures from intimidated drivers) later we tore through a sleepy hamlet north of Chelmsford and swung sharply into yet another tidily graveled driveway. We drew up in a slew of flying stones in front of an immaculate Georgian house. It wasn’t large or imposing, just gently aloof and sufficiently superior. It wasn’t a castle or a manor, but you just knew that it moved in that sort of circles and considered itself their equal, if not their superior in understated taste.

  Becky slammed the driver’s door and stood patiently whilst I struggled to haul my suitcase out of the tiny trunk. One got a distinct impression that the only thing she had ever or was ever likely to lift was a finely drawn eyebrow.

  She then pattered up the steps on her chunky platform sandals, opened the shiny green door, crossed the checkerboard floor and passed into a room beyond a heavy wood door. I trailed miserably behind her, abandoning my case at the foot of yet another sweeping staircase. Posh houses always seemed to have a sweeping central staircase of some sort or another. I had learned that much in my short two months as a rich nob.

  “So young man,” said Baldy. He was standing in front of an unlit fireplace. Becky Sharp had picked up a phone and with the earpiece resting on her shoulder she had wandered just out of earshot so that her conversation was inaudible to me. “How was your first term at school?”

  “It was shit,” I said with feeling and because despite the magnificent exit he had arranged for me I was getting well and truly fed up with the complete lack of autonomy that was thrust upon me. He didn’t turn a hair.

  “So was mine,” he said. “But we all have to go through it one way or another. They tell me you would be an A stream student all the way if only you would apply yourself.”

  “Fat lot they know,” I muttered kicking the foot of an easy chair because it looked expensive and I was sure it would annoy him. “When am I goin’ ‘ome?”

  “Sit down, Michael.”

  “Mikey,” I snarled. “I ‘ate Michael.”

  “You ate Michael?” he asked, mockingly.

  “Yeah!” I flashed back. “I ate Michael!”

  A mildly pained expression drifted across his features.

  “Mikey, then.” He sat down himself but when he gestured to another chair I thrust my shoulders back and shook my head. He put his head back slightly and looked at the ceiling for a moment or two as if gathering his thoughts. I am not particularly perspicacious, but I knew that there was something unpleasant coming and I thought of my Mum.

  “Mikey, I believe that there was a time that you were close to your half-brother. Perhaps not as much recently but you were close once, so I am afraid that his illness may come as a shock to you.”

  “Is ‘e ill?” I asked in surprise. Illness was a stomach ache or a bad cold. People always got better. “Well, ‘e’ll get better, won’t ‘e?”

  “Perhaps I should not have said illness. I was trying to avoid upsetting you and I have misled you instead.”

  “Tell him straight,” came from Becky by the window. She was only half listening, and the remark was laconic rather than concerned. “The boy needs to know.”

  Baldy was ever so slightly relieved, I could tell. He wasn’t comfortable with empathy. Telling it straight was easier.

  “Your brother, half-brother I should say, was in a car accident. He survived but only just and was badly hurt.”

  I just sat and gaped. I don’t know what I felt but it wasn’t much I am ashamed to say. I couldn’t quite imagine my brother seriously ill. I’d seen him seriously stoned of course but that had been amusing rather than anything else and apart from that we had always been a remarkably healthy family. As a result, my knowledge of sickness in any shape or form was very limited. The news would have been hard to believe coming from anyone other than Baldy, but you sort of knew that, if he said it, it was true.

  “Right,” I said eventually, just to break the silence.

  “He will recover in time, but not completely.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “He lost his legs,” came the hard voice of the angel by the window. “He’ll be a cripple for the rest of his life.”

  Baldy winced. I don’t think he liked the word cripple. It had fallen out of fashion recently.

  “Oh,” I said again. They waited, perhaps for me to cry or something but whatever they were waiting for didn’t happen. I mean, I knew I should feel something. I’d always liked Gary, had positively worshiped him for quite a while, but now it was just as if it had all happened to someone else that I did not know at all. I bit my lip and sighed. Baldy concluded that that was sufficient expression of emotion and stood up.

  “Well, we will visit him in the hospital tomorrow. I am sure that you will want to do that.”

  No. I didn’t. Gary ill was one thing. Battered and broken or even dead was imaginable. But without any legs? That was quite another thing. I felt the rising gorge of revulsion.

  “I don’t wanna,” I said stubbornly.

  “It is the right thing to do,” said Baldy after a few moments.

  “Bollocks,” I retorted.

  “Nevertheless, you will visit your brother tomorrow. I have sent a message to your father telling him to expect you. For now, I will show you your room and you can meet my wife.”

  I tried to stare him into submission with one of my coldest looks, but he wasn’t having any of it.

  “Come,” he said.

&nbs
p; “Bye, Mikey,” Becky Sharp wafted her manicured fingers at me as I reluctantly followed Baldy from the room.

  “Is she your bit of stuff?” I asked, just loud enough for her to hear. “Your bit on the side?”

  “No, she isn’t,” he replied calmly, not even missing a beat. You had to admire him. I did. Not sure if I believed him though.

  The bedroom he showed me was even better than the hotel room I’d stayed in when last with him. It was large, light and bright with big windows and a bed with something white and billowing called, as I later learned, a duvet. The suitcase that I had abandoned in the hall had somehow found its way, all by itself possibly, to this room and was sitting on a large, carved box at the end of the bed. The wardrobes were vast and when I returned later and opened the doors, hoping to find adventure behind them, I found, not Narnia, but my clothes, sparse as they were, neatly hung or folded. But that was after I had met Baldy’s wife.

  I hadn’t really thought of Baldy having a wife. He didn’t seem the type. Having been told that he did I immediately visualised a tall willowy woman, elegant, sophisticated, witty and brittle. An older version of Becky Sharp in fact.

  We found her in the conservatory, an attachment to the rear of the house that bore no resemblance to the mass manufactured plastic domes that they attach to any two up two down these days, but an elegant glass structure crammed full of exotic greenery, heavy with the scent of orchids and redolent of a more elegant time.

  “Lottie,” Baldy said and a movement behind some sort of bushy yucca suggested the presence of his spouse. The back of a head with long blonde locks appeared briefly through the fronds and a throaty voice barked, “Get down, Aramis.”

  I looked in astonishment at Baldy wondering if it was possible that his name really could be Aramis and what strange creature he had married. The long locks wavered and disappeared and a very short, round figure, brandishing secateurs replaced them. She was followed by two long-haired Afghan hounds and the illusion of grace was shattered and the blonde locks explained.

  “Lottie,” said Baldy, “this is Michael although he prefers to be called Mikey. Mikey, this is my wife Charlotte. You will call her Mrs. Barker.”

  Elegant she was not. She was shorter than me and I was only an average nine-year-old height.

  “So, this is the boy…” she said, wiping her secateurs on loose canvas trousers. “I see.”

  What she saw I am not sure, but it was obvious what she felt for her disdain was clear.

  “You’ll be staying with us for the summer Mikey and I am sure you and my wife will become very good friends,” said Baldy, without conviction.

  We regarded each other, the short woman and I, and both decided that that was unlikely to be the case. She snorted and turned away.

  “If you say so St. John,” she said.

  St. John Barker. When you thought about it, he looked like a St. John. It summed him up, looking exactly like one thing but, when you were in on the secret, he was quite another.

  She was a funny woman, Mrs. Barker. Not very feminine at all. I always thought that all women were either feminine or if God had ordained that they weren’t naturally so endowed, they aspired to femininity and painted their nails, curled their hair, wore copious amounts of perfume or at least did something along those lines but Lottie Barker did not. She kept her hair short, always wore trousers and a loose-fitting shirt and never wore make-up or a dress or sought to remove the hair from her upper lip and chin. She was short, as I have said, and a little overweight but not fat and, if you ignored the fact that she was over forty and made no effort, she had some of the attributes of prettiness. A straight nose, full lips, and hazel-green eyes hinted that at some time in the past Charlotte Barker might have been a bit of a catch. Now, however, she was just round and short and too busy with her dogs (who, despite being male, were prettier and more feminine than she) or tending to her flowers and reading books. I learned later that she was fiercely intelligent with a Ph.D. in mathematics, but I never found out if she worked or ever had. She wasn’t a lazy woman. She was an early riser and was always doing something. She rarely sat down except for meals and not for long even then but I don’t think she was the type to live off her husband’s money, so she must have had an income of her own. I, with no prospects of my own fortune as far as I could see, branded her as one of the filthy rich and thought of her with the contempt I felt that class deserved. I recognised that there was something very odd about her though. I don’t believe she ever went further than the front gate, the whole time I lived with her. There was a woman who lived in the house somewhere and who did the housework and shopping so she didn’t really need to leave. The land around the house added up to a couple of acres and was bounded by fields where the dogs ran wild when they weren’t busy being decorative. There were a few visitors to the house but, apart from Becky Sharp they were invariably male and always asked for St. John Barker. I rarely saw her with Becky but on the few interesting occasions that I did, I learned nothing more about their relationship than I already knew. That is that Becky sometimes visited the house. If there were any torrid emotions flying about they were all far too well-bred to give vent to them.

  This first meeting pretty much summed up the continuing relationship between me and Mrs. Barker. She didn’t care if I was there or not and, as far as I was concerned, if she didn’t bother me I had no reason to bother her. Anyway, at that moment in time, I was more concerned with what Baldy had imparted. He had said that I was to stay for the summer holidays with him and his odd little wife.

  “Whaddya mean? I ain’t stayin’ ere. I wanna go ‘ome. Where’s me dad, or me mum?”

  “It has been decided that you will stay with us for this holiday at least.”

  “Why?” I whined. “’Oo decided? No one asked me.”

  “Everyone thinks it best. Your father is much taken up with the care of your brother, and your mother has not yet returned from abroad.”

  “I ain’t stayin’ ‘ere, you can’t fuckin’ make me.”

  A faintly pained expression crossed his face as the faintest hint of a smile touched his wife’s.

  “I know it’s fashionable to talk like a docker these days,” he remarked scathingly, “but you do yourself no favours. My wife and I will do our best to make you comfortable. You will be well fed, you have your own room and I am instructed to let you have a small allowance, but I will not be your jailer and if you want to walk through those doors now and live on the streets that is up to you. I will inform your father and report you to the police as a runaway, you will no doubt be put into foster care and that will be the end of it as far as I am concerned.”

  I stared at him with hatred in my soul.

  “I could go live wiv me sister.”

  “You could, but do you really think she wants you?”

  It was cruel of course but I could not deny the truth of it. No one wanted me, least of all this uptight intellectual and his un-motherly wife.

  “Triona will see that some activities are arranged for you while you are here. Swimming, horse riding and that sort of thing. I think there is a junior cricket club in the village and I am sure you will make some friends.”

  I was aghast. I had an effective but untutored swimming technique and I had ridden flea-bitten old nags on the Canvey salt flats with gusto but no finesse. I had even been forced into the odd game of well-mannered cricket at the new school (no-one had been eager to put me into the rugby team until and unless there was an away game when my style of aggression might prove useful) but I hated the idea of it all being so organised and confined. On the other hand, being squired around by the sexy Becky Sharp sounded attractive.

  “You will stay tonight at least. You will go to the hospital tomorrow and if your father wants to make other arrangements you can discuss it with him. Go and have a look around outside if you want. We have dinner at 7 pm. Make sure you are back
on time.”

  I decided to acquiesce to that at least as I was already starving. I gave them both a deeply resentful stare, turned my back and stamped out of the conservatory.

  What was left of the afternoon was spent, not unpleasantly, exploring the grounds and the fields beyond the well-kept gardens which were spattered with colour as wildflowers danced in the early summer sun. The scent of verdure filled my nostrils and it was good to escape confinement at last. If I wanted to leave, to start walking and not turn back, then I could, no one would stop me, and, for the moment, I felt that to be enough. There was a leafy copse with trees to climb which I quickly identified as a potential favourite spot and a gently rolling hill that promised much but, once surmounted, revealed only a busy dual carriageway snaking its way to unknown destinations. But, all in all, it was not looking so bad, for a while anyway.

  Despite my hunger, I was late for dinner and turned up filthy with my trousers muddied at the knees. Baldy had a face like thunder but his little wife was inelegantly drinking her soup and did not acknowledge my arrival.

  “One of the things you will learn while you stay here is not to keep me waiting – ever. It is disrespectful.”

  I had achieved something then I thought as I glared back at him. I approached the table and grabbed a bread roll even before sitting down. Baldy reached over and taking me by the scruff of my scrawny neck propelled me, breadless, towards the door.

  His wife glanced up. “The kid doesn’t have a watch,” she said crisply and then went back to her soup.

  “Go and wash your hands and face and then you can come and eat your dinner.”