Baldy did not acknowledge his wife’s remark and his tone did not change nor his grip lessen until I had been bodily ejected from the room but, when I returned to my seat (having searched in vain for the kitchen where I assumed I might be able to scavenge for myself), there was a leather strapped watch next to my plate. It was not referred to but after I had eaten my soup, which I think was parsnip (yuck, but anything tastes good when you are really hungry), I surreptitiously strapped it to my wrist with a fair amount of satisfaction.
It was the thin end of the wedge of course. In wearing it I was signaling that I would allow myself to be bound by other people’s schedules and I was thus giving up much of my childhood freedom. The origin of the watch, which looked as if it had not been previously worn and turned out to be an expensive one, did not become clear until much later and might have contributed to the uncomfortable silence which hung over most of the rest of the meal. I didn’t think it was likely that they had had a row but nevertheless, something had been said that caused Baldy to watch his wife and for her to remain so determinedly impassive.
The woman who helped around the house was introduced briefly as Vera and served pork chops to follow. She joined us to eat them and was dumpy, energetic and talked almost incessantly about the most incredibly mundane things. I think she covered the state of my trousers, moving on, understandably, to the best washing powder to remove stains, then, less understandably, to the plight of orangutans in Sumatra and eventually ending up with a diatribe against what I think was some sort of unsuccessful treatment for bunions. No one listened and hardly anyone responded to any of her frequent questions, but she didn’t seem to mind as she already had the answers anyway. Still, she had a sunny, imperturbable temperament and was a kind and lively, not to mention much-needed addition, to the little party who had a tendency towards the grim if left to their own devices. Perhaps that is why they kept her.
The Barkers did not have a dessert, but I was served treacle pudding with custard and Vera sat down next to me to enjoy hers with a sparkle in her eye. I imagined that, with my regular attendance at meals, she saw a viable excuse to add chocolate cake, scones and a variety of calorie-laden puddings to the menu and that she was beginning to love me because of that already. I did become fond of her in my way. She never stopped talking trivia long enough for anyone to discover if there was any intelligence or real feeling behind her words, but she was homely and had the remarkable ability to be completely oblivious of any uncomfortable undertones and to just suddenly not be there if those undertones developed into unpleasantness.
She hauled me off for a bath, ignored the fact that I swore at her when she walked in on me in a state of undress and scrubbed my back despite my vehement protests. She mentioned the orangutans again, but I think that was just a present obsession and had little or nothing to do with me, although, she did produce a nit comb and used it mercilessly. I forgave her in some measure when she then took me, clad in pyjamas and glowing painfully, down to the kitchen. It was on a lower floor beneath the reception rooms, which was why I had not managed to find it previously. She produced milk and biscuits and talked at me until my head nodded and I gave in to bedtime.
17
I am hurt. A plague o’ both your houses!
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet.)
The next morning, still in my school uniform, as I had nothing else to wear except the red Canvey T-shirt which had been met with disapproval when I boldly appeared in it, I was bundled into the front seat of Baldy’s Mercedes and driven to Southend. I had decided not to argue the point and in fact, I was quite excited. I was going homewards.
At Baldy’s office, the scene of that fateful day when everything changed, I was brusquely transferred to the care of Becky Sharp who, with the barest roll of her eyes, received his instructions and bundled me into her car. The weather had closed in, the sky was leaden, rain fell in sheets and, with the traffic heavy and impatient we were slowed to a snails’ pace. Becky put the Bee Gees on again and, playing it very loudly, as usual, totally ignored me. On that day, for some reason, she had decided not to be charming which was a shame as I could have done with a bit of distraction.
She drew into the car park but made no attempt to try and find a space. “I’ll pick you up here at 12.30,” she said, gesturing for me to get out.
“I ain’t goin’ in on my own,” I said, suddenly very frightened but doing my best not to show it. It wouldn’t have made any difference to her if I had.
“You have to. Go through those doors and ask at reception. They’ll tell you where to go. I’ll pick you up here at 12.30. Go.”
Still, I hesitated.
“For Christ’s sake, don’t be such a child, Mikey.”
Well, I had to go then, didn’t I? She didn’t even wait to check if I went in so, of course, I didn’t.
I watched her exit the car park and drive off without even glancing back. I was heading the same way, out of the car park, intending to get myself down to the seafront and decide my next move when I was arrested by the sight of Mr. Freeman’s tall stooped figure entering a side door.
As the door closed behind him I stood undecided for a few moments and then, without making a conscious decision to do so, I made a dive for the same door and was in time to see him turn left at the bottom of the corridor. My next sighting of him was as he entered a lift. I couldn’t follow him, but it didn’t matter because I knew where he was going. I went back to reception and managed to intensely annoy the several women behind the counter by tapping repeatedly on it.
“Where’s your mother?” snapped one old dragon.
“Greece,” I said honestly.
“Your father?”
“Wiv me bruvver.”
“Where’s your brother then?”
“I dunno, that’s wot I want you to tell me.” She looked at me as if I were dirt. “’E’s in ‘ere somewhere and I dunno where to go.”
“Name?”
“Me bruvver’s name?”
“Yes, your brother’s name,” she said wearily so I told her. “All right, fourth floor. You want the Balmoral Ward but don’t go running about on your own, boy. It’s a hospital, there are a lot of sick people here.”
“No kiddin’,” I said rolling my eyes.
Several nurses and several similar conversations later I approached the door behind which my poor maimed brother lay. The door was open and beyond it, I could just see the bed with the pale cotton curtains partially pulled back.
Mr. Freeman stood to one side looking silently down at the figure under the white sheets. He was thinner than when I had last seen him and more stooped. His loose grey overcoat hung from bony shoulders and his eyes were small and gaunt and fixed unwaveringly at a point, out of my sight, where my brothers head must have been. He did not move closer and he did not say a word, but he stood for some minutes watching my helpless brother as I, helpless also, watched him. A nurse bustled by on some mission and he turned away.
I caught the glitter of satisfaction in his eyes and the faintest smile played on his lips.
He found me at the door but he never flinched or betrayed surprise. He just nodded curtly and passed me by. I watched him walk away down the long corridor and I could read exultation in every step.
He had only just passed from sight when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Mikey.”
There he was, big and solid as ever. More than just solid. Stolid that is the word.
“How’ve you been, son? Are you enjoying the new school?”
“No, it’s crap,” I said, though I knew it would gain me nothing. “And I don’t wanna stay with Baldy. I wanna go ‘ome.”
“It’s better for you…”
“’Ow do you know what’s better? You don’t know nuffink,” I retorted. It was totally selfish of me to put my needs before that of my crippled brother and my suffering fa
ther, but Dad understood because it was the way in our family.
“Come and say hello to Gary. He will be pleased to see you.”
He wasn’t of course. He had his eyes closed. He had been asleep when Mr. Freeman stood by him, exulting in his helplessness and that was just as well. Gary was thin and grey-faced against the white sheets which were raised above the space where his legs should have been, hiding the bloody stumps beneath. At least that was what I could not help but imagine as I reluctantly moved forward.
Dad too looked weary and grizzled as he took the seat on one side of the bed and gestured me towards the other. Gary looked at me as if he were trying to focus.
“It’s your brother, son,” Dad said quietly, gently. It was unlike him. I mean, he always spoke quietly, I’ve told you that before, but his tone was never gentle. Firm, yes, calm, yes, dispassionate always. This was new, and I couldn’t help but glance up at him in surprise. “It’s Mikey, he wanted to see you...” (that was a big lie) “...and I thought you would like to see him.”
My brother and I stared at each other across the crisp sheets and through the shining silver retaining rails. He was not pleased to see me any more than I was pleased to have been forced into this embarrassing situation where I did not know what to say or how to behave and was forced to squirm uncomfortably under this half man’s pained gaze.
“Sorry, about you losing your legs, mate,” I said at length, quite pleased with myself for what I considered a fine expression of sympathy.
Gary’s already thin lips disappeared entirely into an angry grimace and after a split second of silent fury that hung heavy in the air, he began wailing, “get him out of here, get him out of here, get him out of here,” over and over in a high-pitched scream that increased in volume and agony the longer I remained - which I did not for long. My father, realising he had misjudged both his sons, was on his feet in a moment and his sturdy body across Gary’s as he tried to still the frantic thrashing of his body and remaining limbs. A passing nurse hurried over and I ran, Gary’s agonised cries echoing after me.
Down the sterile corridor, down another, through a door that led to wide concrete stairs, down, down, down through another door and into the reception area, dodging old ladies, past the nurse who looked up angrily and said “I knew he was going to be trouble”, past old men, porters, nurses and wheelchairs and other paraphernalia, through two sets of sliding doors that weren’t quick enough and that delayed my headlong gallop momentarily, out across the car park, dodging Fiats and Cortina’s with blaring horns and screeching brakes, to the long road and on and on, it didn’t matter where so long as it was away from the broken man on the bed.
Wait. A bus. There was a bus marked Castle Point. I could go home. It was just pulling away. The doors were closing. It felt as if my very life would slip away if I didn’t grasp this last chance. I hurled myself towards it and squeezed through the closing doors. The conductor pulled me through although I am sure he would rather have pushed me off, and, with a clip of my ear that he just could not resist and a couple of curses, he manhandled me into a seat and demanded money.
I had the curled-up roll of notes that my father had given me when I left for school two months ago. I had managed quite well without breaking into it, exclusively in fact, on the other boys’ money. They, with a bit of physical persuasion, had been forthcoming to the point of generosity. I held out a £5 note and the conductor stared back at me in total contempt, tinged with more than a touch of suspicion. I was in my posh school uniform don’t forget but there must be something about me, I suppose, in my manner or my looks that just screams untrustworthy because I almost always get that look.
“No change,” he growled.
I was about to get chucked off. I would walk if I had to. It would take most of the day, but I was going home come what may. He was already reaching for my shoulder and calling to the bus driver, but something distracted him and, as I sat, hunched and resentful, he moved away to someone behind me. It was Mr. Freeman of course. Barely ten minutes had passed since he had left Gary’s room with that smile of achievement on his face and, no longer the wealthy man he had once been, of course he would travel by bus these days.
I was angry with him too of course. Hell, I was angry with everyone and pretty much everything in the world, but I reserved an especial venom for him. He was the sole reason that I was on that bus in that disgusting school uniform with nowhere to go that I could call home. He was the reason that my mother was far away and that my father, in all the ways that mattered, was even further away. He was the sole reason that Gary lay maimed, broken and bitter in that hospital bed. I knew it and of course, he knew it too. He paid my fare but much to the conductor’s disgust I did not acknowledge the fact. I did not even acknowledge his presence and he made no further attempt to acknowledge mine. I hunched down against the cold dirty metal wall of the bus and pressed my forehead to the even filthier window pane. I didn’t move once as people came and went or as the old monster of a bus ground it’s noisy way along the busy streets of Hadleigh, past the pretentiously posh houses on Essex Way and down the long hill into Benfleet and the unpretentiously middle-class bungalows, under the bridge and past the grubby little station to the bridge onto Canvey Island. Only then did the tang of the Canvey flats seep slowly into my consciousness through the damp press of humanity and I raised my head slightly and looked with intent through the grimy glass. Mr. Freeman was still there of course. I didn’t need to turn around to know that. His was a presence that you just couldn’t ignore.
The bus trundled along Long Road. Old Bill was tending to his three scruffy ponies in the distance and I pondered climbing off and joining them, but my favourite haunts were calling to me and I stayed put. We reached the town and turned left at the Haystack, a pub on the corner that has undergone many incarnations and was just then emerging, totally incongruously, as a rather frightening wine bar. I think that now a modicum of sense has prevailed, and it has returned in the main to the purpose it was built for, offering pints to locals, but then it was the 70’s and, let’s face it, sense and good taste had taken a holiday.
However, blue painted parrots, cocktails with rude names and neon monstrosities appeal to some people and, of course, Vi was one of them.
As the bus wheeled around the corner and I turned back from contemplating a quick meal at the Wimpy before my further explorations, she emerged in a mini-skirt far too short for a woman of her age and our eyes met. The bus rattled on and I inched towards the edge of my seat ready to take flight. I could just see Vi tearing along behind us as fast as her two-inch platform shoes would carry her. Luckily that wasn’t very fast, and she was further hampered by the shortness of her skirt which kept riding up to a point that even she felt was unacceptable, so she had to keep stopping to pull it down. The result was that by the time everyone waiting at the stop on the high street had climbed on and we were turning right past the library she was still too far behind to catch up. I saw her stop, give up and light up a cigarette as she glared after me.
At Canvey Point, the furthest you could go on the island, I jumped up and sped away as fast as I was able. Mr. Freeman probably got off after me, but I didn’t look back. I rarely did these days. Call it nurture.
18
Mischance and sorrow go along with you!
Heart’s discontent and sour affliction
Be playfellows to keep you company!
There’s two of you; the devil make a third!
And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps!
William Shakespeare
(King Henry the Sixth Part 2)
Oh, it was good to be back. The day had fought back against the dreary rain and pushed it aside so that a watery light suffused the air and, as I surmounted the mound that led up to the concrete sea wall and clattered up the iron steps that would take me over that last obstacle, the sun broke through and I was happy again.
&
nbsp; I threw stones at the slate grey sea, watched the tankers on their stately way, ran along the shingly shore and picked my way through rock and seaweed, worked my slow way to the salt marsh flats, greeted with affection the cockles and the winkles and the small white rimmed coal black rocks, the brown bladdered weed and the swooping gulls. I stowed the hated blazer safely in a rock crevasse and then purposely forgot where it was. It didn’t matter. I had three more and no doubt the woman who talked all the time was busy dry cleaning them. I held on to the tie because it was bound to come in handy for something or other. I didn’t think about going back but it was a lowering oppression in the back of my mind. Like the day, I pushed it back and allowed the sun to shine in instead.
I visited the clubhouse. It hadn’t changed but there was a smart black and white fibreglass yacht with an unpronounceable name moored next to it where previously had only been battered fishing vessels. The rickety pontoons looked like even they had had some work done on them. A few missing planks had been replaced and a pole with smart red and white life buoy had been erected not far from my hideaway. Even the sailing fraternity was beginning to wake up to Health and Safety. Home was only a short walk, but I made no move to go there. It wasn’t a decision I had to make because I just did not want to go. I did not want to see the empty house, or worse, the house that was mine inhabited by other people, strangers.
It was a glorious day. I bought fish and chips from a kiosk at the seafront and then went back for a second helping because I could. I had the money and there was no one to tell me not to. I can’t describe how good they tasted. The afternoon slipped quickly away and sank into early evening. I got a whole pound’s worth of change and played the slot machines in the arcade for well over an hour. I’d never had much, if anything at all, to spend on them before and so that was when I discovered that the more you started with, the more you had a possibility of finishing with. Perhaps I was just lucky that day but, whatever the reason, I was nearly £2 richer when she found me.
A Patient Man Page 16