Draca

by Geoffrey Gudgion

  ‘Grandpa came. He defied the ban. That’s why Charlotte’s people came today.’

  Jack watched the party with a let’s-get-this-over-with look on his face. The children ran off around the corner of the house, the boy leading his younger sister, both laughing.

  Charlotte smiled again, a bit more grimly this time. ‘So we’ve gone our own way ever since. Now I’m the bad girl for taking…’

  She stopped as a child screamed. It wasn’t the grazed-knee scream of a tumble, but a high-pitched note of terror, and beyond the scream was a low thunder like a block being pulled along a wooden deck. The noise ended with an impact but the screaming continued for as long as it took the girl to run back across the lawn and bury her face in Tilly’s skirts. The boy followed, also running, trying not to look frightened.

  ‘There’s a monster and it growled at her.’ The boy was wide-eyed as Tilly knelt and hugged the girl, who snivelled into her chest. Jack disappeared around the corner of the house and came back cradling a black, wooden carving shaped like an arching horse’s neck, about four feet long. It took George a moment to recognise Draca’s figurehead. Jack stopped at the edge of the lawn, keeping his distance as the girl’s screams became frantic.

  ‘Is this the monster?’ Jack spoke gently, making light of the moment.

  ‘It growled at her.’ The boy was insistent.

  ‘Like this, perhaps?’ Jack dragged the carving against the boundary fence, wood on wood, so it made a low rumble. The girl still cried. ‘Let’s cover it up, shall we?’

  Harry arrived to see what all the fuss was about, and Jack rounded on him, angry but whispering.

  ‘That was supposed to be in the coffin with Grandpa.’

  ‘Nasty thing. Shouldn’t be part of a Christian burial.’

  ‘Since when did you get religion?’

  ‘You can take it back where it came from.’

  ‘That would have meant a lot to him.’

  ‘Well it’s too late now. I’ll find something to wrap it in.’

  Harry strode off, shoulders stiff like he was biting back another comment. As Jack turned, holding the carving, it seemed the figurehead watched Harry go, not Jack. There was a darkness about it that wasn’t just its colour, it was more like a shape that sucked in the light. If it hadn’t already been in shadow when Jack propped it up against the fence, George would have checked to see if it threw one. It looked frigging evil and, if she had been a kid, it would have scared the shit out of her. She stared at it after the crowd drifted back to the lawn, and it stared back like it was aware. George swallowed, forcing back a weird sense that it knew her. More than that, she could believe it knew she was afraid. In all this crowd, was there only her and the little girl who could see that? It was unsettling in the way that thunder from an empty sky is unsettling. It makes you look around and shiver and wonder what the feck is going on. In the end, George turned away, the first one to blink, and gulped wine.

  Behind her the funeral was turning into a party. There was no grieving, no tears, no retelling of happy memories. The children were the first into the pool. Tilly jumped in after them, wearing a bikini that bulged like her kids’ flotation rings. One or two of the other parents changed into cozzies and joined them, and within a few minutes the focus had shifted to the poolside. Harry disappeared into a wooden changing hut, shouting at his wife to bring towels and spare costumes.

  George wasn’t tempted. She hadn’t had a reaction like that about an object, a thing, since she was a teenager and saw an ancient stone head in the British Museum. Aztec, or something. It was only carved stone, like the figurehead was only carved wood, but she knew something unspeakable had happened around it. She’d even thought that the horror was still inside it.

  So she hung back, wishing she could go back to the yard. Soon only Jack, Charlotte and George were left on the lawn, looking over the hedge at the crowd around the pool, until Harry emerged from the changing hut. He strutted round the side of the pool, running his thumbs backwards and forwards inside the waistband of his swimming shorts and laughing with the people already in the water. He had a good body for a guy who must be late fifties, barrel chested and muscled like a man who worked out a lot, and he knew it. George could tell that by the way he called out to people. The words might have been ‘having fun?’ but the message was ‘look at me’. And he didn’t just jump into the water: he bombed, showering anyone still on the poolside. When he surfaced and stood, laughing, shaking the hair out of his eyes, the water had turned the hairs on his back from blond to a dark, streaky pelt. For a moment George closed her eyes, and the image of him silhouetted against the water stayed printed on her mind in shades of brown. She rarely liked people with browns. Too frigging opinionated.

  ‘Come on, Jack, come and join us.’ Harry had spotted the three of them still up on the lawn. He crouched in the water, his arms lying on the surface, shoulders glistening. There was an edge to the words that made them a command, not an invitation.

  Jack shook his head, pulling back. Charlotte’s hand came up and touched his shoulder in the first act of intimacy George had seen between them.

  ‘Some other day, perhaps.’

  His mother hurried down the steps to the pool deck, clasping an armload of towels. ‘You’ve still got your old swimming shorts upstairs, love.’

  ‘No thanks, Mum.’

  Harry’s hand smacked the surface, making a small splash of irritation. ‘Get in here, both of you. Let’s be a family, for once.’ His smile hardened. Harry Ahlquist didn’t like to be refused.

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  Tilly turned, standing belly-deep with a child in the crook of her arm, squashing it against a struggling bikini. Her eyes were on Charlotte, even though she spoke to her father.

  ‘Leave them, Dad, if they think they’re too good for us.’

  Charlotte tugged at Jack’s sleeve while Jack and Harry glared at each other.

  ‘Time to go, darling. We need to run George home.’

  Harry’s jaw tightened so that small cords of muscle appeared in his cheeks. ‘Bit stuck up for us, are you?’

  ‘Bye, Dad.’ Jack turned away.

  ‘Too snooty, eh? So what’s different about you?’

  ‘Yeah, Jack, what’s different?’ The sunlight turned the glare around Tilly into an acid green.

  Jack froze, and took one deep breath with his nostrils flaring before spinning round and lurching down the steps to the poolside. Charlotte rushed after him, reaching out a hand to restrain him. ‘No, Jack!’ But the shirt she tried to grab was already being pulled over his head.

  ‘What’s different, eh?’ The shirt landed in the hedge. The tension across Jack’s shoulders twisted into wires up his neck, tight as a boat’s backstay. He bent over, and a shoe spun through the air to clatter against a table.

  ‘Don’t, Jack.’ Charlotte put her arm across his back, but he shrugged her off and almost fell over as he slipped off the other shoe. ‘Jack, not like this!’

  She was shouting, but Jack ignored her.

  ‘What’s different, you ask?’ He pushed his trousers down below his knees and George tensed, wondering what the feck was happening. She gasped when he kicked out of them to stand in his boxer shorts, hands gripped into fists at his side. ‘That’s what’s different. Now back off.’

  On the far side of the pool, Jack’s mother screamed and raised both hands to her mouth, dropping her armload. A blue-striped beach towel slipped off the tumbled mass and unrolled itself into the water. The party noise faded. Even the children shut up, and looked at the adults, but the adults were all looking at Jack.

  His right leg was normal. Muscular. Hairy. Toned. So was his left, down to the knee. The knee itself and the top of the calf was a mess of white scar tissue, like melted candle wax, and the calf ended in a stump and the thin, shiny, metal shaft of an artificial limb. The foot still wore its sock and looked the proper shape, but was too big for the spindly stick above it. Jack’s mother sank onto a plasti
c seat, hands still at her mouth, weeping noisily with her eyes locked on the leg. Harry just stared, his mouth slack.

  ‘Badly done, Jack.’ Charlotte retrieved a shoe from under a table, and pulled Jack’s shirt out of the hedge. She pushed it into his chest and grabbed his arm to turn him towards the steps. ‘Badly done.’

  IV: HARRY

  Harry Ahlquist went to Eddie’s cottage straight after breakfast. The wife insisted. Said he had to talk before they lost their son for ever. He’d tried Jack’s mobile all evening, after the funeral, but Jack hadn’t answered. ‘They’ll be staying at Eddie’s cottage’, the wife said. ‘Forget the office. Get down there and talk to him. And take that ugly bit of wood with you while you’re about it.’

  She had every right to be upset. So was Harry. Upset and angry. What the hell had been going through Jack’s head, to lose a foot and not tell them? It was humiliating to find out that way, in front of everyone.

  The Slut opened the door and they stared at each other without speaking. He’d hoped she’d have gone back to their apartment. Then her eyes dropped to the bundle in his arms. It must have looked a bit strange, still wrapped in a rug.

  ‘Is that a weapon or a peace offering?’

  ‘Old Eddie’s carving. Jack left it behind.’

  ‘You’d better come in.’ She stood aside, inviting him into his own father’s house, where she was slumming around in a loose shirt and no bra. ‘Jack’s upstairs. I’ll call him.’

  For a moment he stood in the front room, staring at used glasses and a nearly empty bottle of whisky, but there was no way she was going to make him feel like a guest in that house, so he walked through the kitchen into the garden, sniffing at the sight of dirty dishes piled in the sink, and at the litter of takeaway wrappers on the counter. Just like he thought: she was a slut.

  He parked Old Eddie’s dragon on the outside table and sat there until she came out with a pot of filter coffee and two mugs.

  ‘He’s coming. I’ll leave you two to talk.’ She sounded like a stuck-up receptionist.

  Jack looked a mess: bloodshot eyes that blinked at the sunshine, unshaven, pasty skin, shirt hanging open. He was wearing chinos and high-ankle, soft boots, and Harry really couldn’t tell, apart from the limp. They stared at each other across the table.

  ‘If you’ve come to shout, I’m feeling a bit fragile this morning.’

  That hurt. ‘I’ve come to talk, not shout. I’d like,’ Harry swallowed. ‘We’d like to understand.’

  ‘I need coffee.’ Jack swung his leg over the bench, and the sock on his false foot was loose and floppy above the ankle, too big for the shaft. For a moment, Harry was too choked to speak.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry I did that with Mum there.’ The boy gabbled out an apology, talking too fast in a voice that was gravelly and hung-over. ‘I just lost it. Far too bloody theatrical. I made a fool of myself and I feel really bad about Mum.’ He poured coffee and held one mug close to his face with both hands, blinking across it.

  ‘Why hadn’t you told us, man?’

  Jack blew steam off his coffee and said nothing.

  ‘We’d have helped, we’d have been there for you…’

  ‘Would you?’ Jack’s eyes snapped up as he cut Harry off. ‘Like you were “there for me” at my wedding?’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Is it? If you won’t be there for the good times, I’m hardly likely to go running to you in the bad times.’

  ‘She’s wrong for you, Jack.’ Harry regretted saying that as soon as he spoke. He always seemed to say the wrong thing with Jack, and this wasn’t going how he’d planned.

  ‘Don’t you think that’s for me to decide?’

  Harry swallowed, wondering how to dig his way out. He’d come to mend things, not make them worse.

  ‘I wanted to ask about your leg. See how we can help, you know?’

  ‘Nah. Finish what you started, Dad. Tell me what gives you the right to say my wife is wrong for me.’ He spoke real quiet, but hard at the same time, like the safety catch on a rifle.

  ‘No. I don’t want to make things worse.’

  ‘Too upmarket for you, is she?’

  Harry winced. The truth was painful. But that wasn’t all of it, not by a long shot. He paused, wondering if he should say more. Hell, if not then, when they were putting their cards on the table, he might never do it.

  ‘We saw her, once, before you married. That time we came over to your place.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You was still on duty, so your mum and me went to the beach. She was there, though she didn’t see us.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘With a girlfriend.’ Two lovely women holding hands on an empty stretch of beach. Too far away to recognise them, without the binoculars. Harry often took binoculars to the beach, for seabirds and the like.

  ‘So?’

  ‘They were kissing.’

  ‘Girls do.’

  ‘Not like that.’ Not with tongues, like lovers. Not with their hands on each other’s backsides. ‘She’d pushed her knee between the other girl’s legs! For God’s sake, you was engaged!’

  The boy didn’t show any surprise. He just blinked and sipped coffee.

  ‘You didn’t think to talk it through with me?’

  ‘Every time we saw you after that, you was with her. Never on your own.’ Jack looked at him, waiting for more. ‘Maybe one day you’ll find out that the hardest part of being a parent is when you see your kid making a mistake, and you can’t do nothing about it. Then the edict came about fancy dress for the wedding.’ Harry swallowed. He never thought he’d grovel to his own son. ‘Maybe I over-reacted.’

  ‘And remind me, thinking about being there, what was your excuse for not coming to my passing-out parade?’

  ‘I did. Came to watch you get your green beret. So proud, I was.’ Now the boy was getting picky. Trying to make him squirm.

  ‘You came when I passed the Commando Course, yes. You missed my commissioning parade.’

  ‘Something came up at work.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  Harry wasn’t going to respond to that. One more smart-arse swipe and he’d walk out.

  ‘Was that because you decided I was making another mistake?’

  Harry flinched again at the bitterness in Jack’s voice. Jack kept going, driving his point deep.

  ‘You’ve no idea what that meant to me. Commissioned from the ranks. Chosen to lead the best troops in the world.’

  ‘You weren’t meant to be an officer. All that lah-di-dah poncing around. It’s not us. I didn’t want you to be hurt.’

  ‘And Harry Ahlquist always knows best.’

  ‘Like I said, something came up.’ Harry stopped when he saw the look in Jack’s eyes. There was such hurt and anger there. They glared at each other, cradling coffee, with the sun warm on Harry’s head. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm, and nodded down towards Jack’s leg.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

  ‘IED. Underneath a truck.’

  That figured. More casualties in the Middle East were caused by improvised explosive devices than by bullets.

  ‘Since when did we have troops on the ground again?’

  ‘There are a few small teams still working with local forces. Trainers, mostly. Some Special Forces. I had to go and see one of the local elders, and made a bad call. They were waiting for us.’

  ‘Anyone else hurt?’

  ‘Two of my men died.’ Jack was holding himself together, Harry could tell. His voice was tight with emotion.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Harry tried to sound as understanding as he could.

  ‘No!’ Then, more quietly, ‘not particularly.’

  The kitchen window behind him reflected a shiny, picture-postcard view of pine trees and blue water, making it hard to see inside, but the fanlight was open and Harry heard a slight sound from within. She was listening. Bitch.

  ‘I br
ought the figurehead back.’ Harry nodded at the rug roll lying on the table.

  ‘It should have been in the coffin. You said you’d put it in the coffin.’

  ‘It don’t feel right. It feels, well, nasty.’ Harry couldn’t explain. It was the wife who had put her foot down. Went all churchy on him and said they couldn’t have a pagan idol in a Christian ceremony. She wouldn’t even have it in the house. It was unlike her to come on so strong. Anyway, Old Eddie wouldn’t know.

  ‘But we could do better.’ Harry squeezed jollity into his voice. ‘Why don’t we scatter his ashes at sea? From Draca?’

  A pause. ‘OK. I think he’d like that.’

  ‘You and me? Together?’

  It was the first time Harry had seen the boy smile in a long time. It wasn’t a warm smile, not the great beaming grin he had as a kid, but it was a beginning.

  ‘I brought the ashes with me as well. They’re in the car.’ Now it was Harry’s turn to talk too fast. He almost tripped over the bench as he went to fetch them.

  Jack looked shocked when Harry put the container on the table. Stared at it like it might bite. It was a cardboard cube inside a smart carrier bag with a string handle, more like something from an upmarket store than someone’s remains, and it was heavy enough to land on the table with a bit of a thump. Jack swallowed before he spoke.

  ‘Draca needs a lot of work. It’ll be a few months before we can take Grandpa to sea.’

  ‘Old Eddie ain’t going anywhere.’

  ‘I thought I might do her up myself. I’ve no job to go back to.’

  ‘How will you fund that?’ Jack wouldn’t be able to use Eddie’s money until they were granted probate on the will. Harry knew. He’d checked.

  ‘The bank said they’ll lend me money, based on the will and the probate valuations from the solicitor.’

  ‘I still think Eddie was wrong to give you everything. Tilly’s awful cut up about it.’ Maybe he shouldn’t have said that, but he’d dropped his guard after Jack smiled.

  ‘It’s what Grandpa wanted.’ Now Jack was tense again.

  ‘He wasn’t himself, at the end. You didn’t, er, say anything to him? To persuade him?’