by Shane Dunphy
‘He can’t be. I mean, it’s just too twisted.’ Patrick, like Luke, was not going to go down without a fight.
‘I’m afraid he is, in fact, Luke’s dad.’
The remainder of the movie played out, Patrick now in awed silence.
Ben informed me that it looked very like the boy would be with me for a week, and I had made the decision early on that I would not fall into the trap of going into therapeutic overkill. Our time together would be as easygoing and fun as I could make it. As my partner was working at the other end of the country, and I was temporarily living on my own, Marian had agreed to come over most evenings. This would not only help to maintain safety for both of us, but also allow us to simulate the experience of a ‘normal’ family as closely as possible. Obviously, though, there were times, such as this, when we were alone together.
These occasions I filled with activities I thought Patrick might enjoy, and that I guessed he may not have experienced with Gertrude and Percy. So we watched some of my favourite movies (besides the original Star Wars trilogy, we managed to take in the Indiana Jones films, The Lost Boys, The Goonies, Back to the Future and Gremlins), none of which Patrick had encountered before, and all of which he enjoyed unreservedly. I taught him some chords on the guitar, and let him explore my CD and vinyl collection, which was nothing if not eclectic.
The thing that Patrick seemed to enjoy most, however, was a highly mundane activity. Yet he relished every moment, and it became an evening ritual: we cooked together. Initially, the idea of his actually preparing his own food proved a difficult one for him to get his head around.
It was Patrick’s second night with Marian and me, and, after we had got in and removed our coats, I began to cut vegetables to roast with a chicken. He wandered into the kitchen, looking perplexed. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Making supper.’
‘Oh.’
He watched for a while, apparently confused by the whole process. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pushing aside carrots, peppers, onions and parsnips to point to a greyish, knobbly looking root.
‘It’s called celeriac,’ I said. ‘People used them before the potato was brought over from America.’
‘Does it taste like a spud?’
‘Not really.’
Patrick picked up a piece of this strange new vegetable. ‘Can I have a bit?’
‘It isn’t really good to eat raw. But go ahead, if you want to.’
‘No, it’s okay.’
I finished cutting all the vegetables into bite-sized chunks, and then put them into a marinade of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, honey and whole-grain mustard.
‘What does that stuff do?’
‘It partly cooks the veg, so that they take a shorter time when I put them in the oven, but it also tastes good. Think of it as a sauce.’
I made some lemon butter and began to rub it into the skin of a free-range chicken.
‘How long will the food be?’ Marian called in from the sitting room, where she was watching EastEnders.
‘A good hour yet,’ I shouted back.
‘I’m starving!’
‘Have some fruit.’
Muttering something about being in dire need of carbohydrates, Marian stomped past and grabbed an apple from the fruit basket. ‘I might not last an hour,’ she said testily, and went back to the denizens of Albert Square.
‘Why doesn’t she cook dinner?’ Patrick asked.
‘Because I’m a better cook.’
‘But she’s a girl.’
‘So what? Some of the best cooks in the world are men.’
‘No, they’re not!’
‘Yes, they are. Anyway, I like to cook. What’s the problem?’
‘It’s just … well, it’s …’
‘Sissyish? Girly? Not a very tough, manly thing to do?’
‘Yeah.’
I laughed, put the buttered chicken on a rack in a baking tray, and arranged the vegetables around and under it. I ground some salt and pepper over the whole thing, scattered some chopped parsley over that and then put it all in the oven.
‘I can’t eat out all the time – I’m too bushed most evenings when I get in, and I couldn’t afford to even if I wanted to.’
‘I know.’
‘But I like to eat, and I like what I eat to taste good. Now, the best way to ensure that I’m properly fed is to learn to do it for myself. The same goes for other jobs around the apartment. If the dishwasher needs unstacking or the floor needs to be vacuumed, I don’t wait for some woman I know to come in and do it – I just get on with it.’
‘Did your dad cook? Did he teach you?’
‘My dad could kind of cook. One-pot stuff. Stews, mostly. We always used to say that when my dad cooked, it was always a fifty-fifty thing. It would either be absolutely one of the best things you ever ate or completely disgusting. He had a go, though, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t afraid to try.’
‘Percy never cooked. Or cleaned the house. I can’t remember if my real dad did or not.’
I put the vegetable peelings in the bin and began to wipe down the worktop. ‘D’you want to lay the table?’
Patrick pulled open the cutlery drawer. ‘What about your mother? Did she teach you?’
‘Oh, she taught me a lot. Not much about cooking, though.’
‘No?’
‘She was fairly traditional, in that way. I think she probably thought I’d find a wife to do it for me, if I’m honest.’
Patrick began to set places on my small dining table. ‘But she didn’t mind you working with kids.’
‘No. She encouraged me to do that.’
Patrick seemed to ponder that for a while. ‘My real mum and dad were great.’
‘Were they?’ I asked, cutting slices from a loaf of white soda bread.
‘Oh, yeah. We lived in this beautiful little house, out in the country. There were flowers in the garden, and my mum kept chickens. We could have an egg for breakfast every day, if we wanted to. My dad would come home at night, after the show at the circus, where he did motorbike stunts, and sometimes Mum would let me stay up to wait for him. He’d always bring me home something – a bag of candyfloss or some popcorn. At the weekends, he’d sit me in front of him on the bike and take me for drives around the country lanes. Everyone knew him, and people would wave when we went past.’
‘That sounds really cool, Patrick. It must have been tough when you were taken into care.’
‘My daddy had an accident and had to go into hospital. Even the best stuntmen have accidents,’ Patrick said. ‘Mum couldn’t take care of Bethany, me and him all at the same time. So they sent us to someone who could look after us, just for a while. That’s what fostering means – that they’ll be coming to take you back.’
‘Yes, sometimes it does.’
‘They’d have come too, only Gertrude stopped them.’
I put the bread in the centre of the table and got a bottle of water from the fridge. ‘I’m not sure that’s true, Patrick. Foster parents can’t stop birth parents taking back their children. It’s not the way it works.’
‘That’s what Gertrude said.’
I didn’t labour the point. He wasn’t ready to have the fantasy killed just yet.
‘You mentioned before that you had another sister.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I never heard Gertrude mention her, and she doesn’t seem to be on your file either.’
‘She was only a little baby when we were taken away.’
‘And you can’t recall her name?’
‘No.’
I thought this extremely odd but decided to change the subject. ‘Want to get the guitars, and we’ll have a strum before we eat? Annoy the hell out of Marian?’
A grin spread across Patrick’s face, and he went out to the cupboard in the hallway where I stored the instruments.
‘You’re not playin’ those things while I’m watchin’ my soaps!’ Marian shouted as he went past her carrying the two case
s.
That was, by and large, how the week passed by. We did the ordinary stuff of living, got to know one another a little bit better, and, most of all, we talked.
Two days after we’d watched The Empire Strikes Back, Patrick and I were jogging along the river bank in the early morning. My gym wouldn’t permit children under sixteen into the exercise room, so I had been forced to alter my routine slightly. Patrick was not overweight, but I felt the exercise wouldn’t do him any harm, so I managed to persuade him to join me on these early-morning runs.
We had reached the halfway point, where we usually turned around to head homewards, when he stopped.
‘Stitch?’ I asked, opening a bottle of water and handing it to him.
‘No. I want to ask you something.’
‘Okay. What’s up?’
He gulped down some of the water and leaned his butt against the railings. ‘Do you think it would be easy to find my real mum and dad?’
I took the bottle back from him and had some. ‘I’d say it’d be easy enough. I mean, they’re not hiding or anything.’
‘How would you begin looking for them?’
‘You’d begin with whichever social-work office dealt with you being fostered to the Bassetts. They’d have your folks’ address, for back then at least. From there, you just follow the trail.’
‘Will you help me?’
I screwed the lid back on the bottle and leaned against the railings beside him. ‘You really want to do this?’
‘You know I do.’
‘Patrick, have you thought about what it’ll be like if you find them and discover you don’t really like them?’
‘Don’t be stupid. I know what they’re like. I remember them, Shane.’
‘My brother lives in the house I grew up in. He bought it off my dad. I’m always amazed, every time I go back there, by how small the place looks. When I was a kid, I thought it was a big, big house. My bedroom seemed huge. Now, when I see it, I wonder how we all weren’t falling over one another. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?
‘What you remember is a version of what your life seemed like when you were very young. You’re older now, almost a young man. You’ve lived a different life, known some tough times since then. You’ve been through all this crap over the last few days. That’s changed you, I’ve seen it. Your mum and dad will be new to you, and you will be to them.’
‘I don’t care about that. Who have I got, Shane? Who is there left for me?’
I nodded and turned to look at the river. ‘What if your dad never recovered from the accident? Suppose he’s paralysed or brain damaged?’
‘No. I just know he’s okay. He has to be.’
‘But you don’t know. You don’t know what you’ll find. This is heavy, heavy stuff.’
‘I’ve been dreaming about them for as long as I remember, Shane. I want to see my sister. I want to know what it feels like to be hugged by my mother again, before I go to bed. I want to smell my dad’s aftershave in the mornings and hear him singing in the bathroom. I want my family back.’
I put my arm around his shoulder. ‘Patrick, there are two reasons why your mum and dad never came to get you from Gertrude’s. Neither one is her fault. Either they didn’t want to or they couldn’t. Now, the “couldn’t” might be because your dad was just too ill, or because Social Services wouldn’t let them have you. None of those is good news. Not a one of them.’
‘I have to know. Will you help me? I don’t have anyone else to ask.’
I squeezed him and stood up. ‘I’ll help. Come on, the day’s getting old, and I ain’t getting any younger.’
Patrick whooped and took off at a sprint. I had trouble catching up with him.
13
Evening.
The dishes had been cleared away and a fire was burning pleasantly in the hearth. Marian was dozing in one of the armchairs, snoring gently. Patrick was sitting in the other, awake but with his eyes closed. He was listening to Eric Clapton’s original, electric version of ‘Layla’ at full volume through earphones. My young friend had become slightly obsessed with Clapton, and with that song in particular. He had encountered it purely by accident but had spent every available moment since listening to, or reading about, his new hero.
We’d been in a music shop in town, getting plectrums and some strings for the old guitar Patrick was learning on (I’d noticed that the ones on it had virtually no resonance left and were hampering his progress), when the famous opening salvo of Slowhand’s magnum opus came over the shop’s speaker system. I was putting the packet of strings and picks into my bag when I noticed Patrick standing with his mouth hanging open and a blissful expression on his face. ‘What is that?’ he asked, mesmerized.
‘The song? It’s “Layla”, by Derek and the Dominos.’
‘Derek who?’
‘Derek and … it’s Eric Clapton with a backing band, basically. He’s an English guitarist.’
‘He’s the man, compadres,’ the pony-tailed, middle-aged guy behind the counter said, overhearing our conversation. ‘You’d want to hear some of his blues stuff, little dude, or his work with the Cream. “Sunshine of Your Love” will rock your fucking socks off, man, pardon my French.’
‘Come on, Patrick. I want to get to the butcher’s before it closes.’
‘Can I listen to the rest of this?’
‘It’s a long song,’ I said, checking my watch. ‘There’s a lengthy solo at the end.’
‘Let the kid hang,’ pony-tail said, playing air guitar earnestly. ‘He’s in the zone. Listen to the guitar sound, Short Round. Original American 1956 Fender Stratocaster through Tweed amps; little bit of distortion combined with natural overdrive. Sweet.’
We stood as the first part of the song played out, and the chords of the piano-driven coda resounded through the store. Patrick seemed confused for a moment. ‘Is it still the same song?’ he asked.
‘Yep. This is the solo I was telling you about.’
He listened in further wonder. ‘It’s – it’s not like anything you’d ever hear on the radio.’
‘Kid’s right,’ our companion said. ‘No one would have the goddam guts to release a track like that today.’
‘Tom Waits does some pretty left-of-centre stuff,’ I said.
‘Well,’ pony-tail conceded, ‘yeah, Waits is pretty out there.’
‘Leonard Cohen is still coming out with good material.’
‘Hey, man, Cohen is a righteous dude, no argument from me.’
‘And, of course, Clapton is still recording …’
‘Can I please listen to this?’ Patrick interrupted.
From then on, Patrick was hooked. I had a few greatest-hits collections, as well as Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs and Cream’s Disraeli Gears at home; I dug out some articles in back issues of Mojo and Rolling Stone. I could understand why someone like Patrick would identify with Clapton’s story: the guitar genius had experienced loss, addiction and rejection, and had triumphed, taking everything life had thrown at him and channelling it into some of the most visceral, electrifying music of the last forty years.
I like Clapton, so I didn’t mind Patrick’s playing each of the CDs over and over (‘Shane, that guy in the shop was right – “Sunshine of Your Love” really did rock my fucking socks off!’ ‘Patrick!’), but eventually even I lost patience and handed him a set of earphones so he could enjoy his newfound passion without having to inflict it on the rest of us.
On the night everything fell apart, Patrick was engrossed in his continued study of all things Eric. I was sitting on the couch with my feet up reading John Connolly’s Bad Men when my mobile phone rang piercingly through the silence. Marian shot awake with a start, swearing loudly, then saw what had disturbed her and lay back down, muttering darkly about dismantling all my communication technology.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Shane, it’s Tilly.’ I could hear she was crying and stood up, going into the kitchen.
‘What’s wrong? Where are you?’
‘I’m at the hospital. There’s – there’s been an accident, Shane.’
‘Who? What happened?’
‘It’s Johnny. He’s in a bad way …’
I heard scuffling, and then Ben was on the line. ‘Shane, can you come over here, please?’
‘What the fuck happened, Ben? Was it one of Gerry’s family?’
‘Just come. I’ll tell you when you get here.’
‘Is Johnny going to be okay?’
‘It doesn’t look good, Shane. I’ll see you shortly.’
I shook Marian awake, and told her there was an emergency and that I’d have to go out for a bit. I said the same to Patrick and drove as quickly as I safely could to the hospital.
Ben met me at reception. He got us both coffee from a vending machine and brought me out to a smoking area, which was deserted in the bitterly cold night.
‘Johnny, Milly and Benjy were playing outside the caravan earlier today,’ Ben explained. ‘Something inane, Tig or whatever. As you know, Johnny’s gross motor skills have come along in leaps and bounds, so he could run almost as fast as the other children. From what I can gather, they were all having a jolly old time.’
‘And?’
‘You’ve seen the railing that is supposed to prevent passers-by from falling into the river?’
I felt a pool of ice begin to spread through my guts. ‘Yes.’
‘As I said,’ Ben went on, dragging deeply on his cigarette, ‘Johnny can run as fast as the others. His main problem is –’
‘Stopping,’ I said.
‘Yes. Benjy was “it”. Johnny was putting up a brave attempt not to get caught, and he apparently managed a really impressive burst of speed. The children say he hit the lower bar on the railing and tried to anchor himself on it, but went over head first. He fell the ten feet into the Torc below.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘My sentiments exactly.’
‘How … how did they get him out?’
‘Benjy would have jumped in, but Milly had the good sense to run up to the motorway. She managed to flag down a passing motorcyclist. Johnny was nowhere to be seen when they got to the spot, but this man, by an amazing stroke of luck, is a lifeguard, home from Australia for Christmas. He went into the water and eventually managed to find the child and get him to safety. He administered mouth-to-mouth, and Johnny did revive for a time. Sadly, he lapsed back into unconsciousness.’