Those who broke the boy: The Sons of Charlemagne Book One

by Richard Hathway

  On one other, memorable occasion it was I who incurred the silent scorn of the congregation. For reasons I don’t know and never bothered to find out there was an ancient stone font at the back of the church, amongst the back rows. Doing away with pews well before my time, the stale creatures entrusted with administering God’s foothold in this corner of the world had opted for chairs with handy boxes on the back. These were good for hymn books, prayer books, parish notices, chewing gum and on occasion little explosive caps placed strategically to detonate when an unexpecting pensioner put away his or her holy tome. As this was usually before a time of prayer the effect could be quite amusing to a couple of kids trying hard not to piss themselves laughing at the back. The chairs were arranged in four blocks. Two blocks, dissected by a central aisle held the most coveted seats, being as they were in front of the action. It wasn’t so much that those sitting there had a better view of what was happening, this wasn’t a Pink Floyd concert, more that they could be seen by the hierarchy of ceremony, the Anglican rock stars performing at the front. In the wings, far from the action and with a little less light, the other two blocks of seating, reserved for late comers and casual Christians. At some point in history the vicar of the time had clearly done a sterling job of guilting more locals into attendance because back from the main two blocks, gapped enough to create the necessary inflection of unworthiness, there were now another five rows of seats. In front of the back row the neat line of chairs was broken by the old font, like a roundabout on a stretch of road.

  Here we sat and played a game called “punch the hand”. We would sit behind the font, two of us either side. One boy would place his hand, fingers spread wide, on the side of the stone font that faced us. One of the other three boys would then try to punch the hand before it was removed. We would play this quietly, not really punching at each other’s hands so much as just trying to make contact. On the occasion in question Sam had put his hand on the font. I was sat two seats away but was determined to win this round. Sam was alert, ready to recoil at the first sign of movement. I was alert, ready to strike like an alligator hiding just beneath the surface of the river waiting to take down a gazelle. In my enthusiasm, I let the adrenaline take over. Sensing that Sam was momentarily distracted I struck. I was quick. He was quicker. His hand disappeared from the side of the font a split second before my hand, moving too hard and too fast, connected with the centuries old stone. I don’t know if my yelp of pain, my sweary exclamation or the laughter of the boys was loudest but suffice to say I was in trouble. Another day of missed meals, another beating and another early bedtime.

  On that day, the 21st of July 1985, I saw it all differently. I saw the looming edifice to mob stupidity and the wilful disregard of logic as it rose above the horizon. A sandstone monument to feudal salvation. I saw the red tiled floor, near perfect at the edges of this cavernous space, almost worn through on the avenues of ceremony. I imagined the thousands of footsteps from all those different pious performers down the years, carrying the relics that held the key to heaven, through the crowd of believers, to the alter at the front. I saw the pulpit, raised up to encourage the dirty, little sinners to look upward in adoration of God’s man on earth. The bible stand, a golden eagle with wings spread to receive the tome of the word, seemed to glint a little more with gaudy brilliance. I saw the huge, stained glass window above the alter. Jesus, white and clearly European, bathed in the shining pillar of heavenly light. He was proclaiming some truth or other to those doe eyed white Europeans at his feet. He was adorned in the obligatory flowing robes of red and yellow. His followers were dressed in plainer clothing befitting their status. Far from what the artist had envisioned, I saw the feeble and obvious propaganda, Goebbels would have been embarrassed by its juvenile awkwardness. Families struggling through the soviet horror three and a half thousand miles away would have recognised the imagery. Strive hard and give yourself without question to the cause and a brilliant future of warmth and happiness awaits you. I saw the people filing into this crucible of cleansing. I saw the hope in their eyes that God would forgive them for what they did the other six days of the week. I saw some who knew he wouldn’t so were just hoping he hadn’t noticed. At the appointed time, appointed not by God, I assumed, but rather directed by the time the vicar liked to get up, the congregation stood and fell church silent. Not silent in a true sense for there was always a salacious piece of gossip that needed whispering just loud enough for everyone to hear it but quietly enough for its origin to be unknown. Church silent. Reverend Nigel made his entrance. I saw him. A man so dulled by years of provincial preaching that he now moved so slowly. A turtle in robes, a machine tracing the same repetitious routine as its battery drains away. He gestured and said, “Please be seated” with about as much conviction in his authority as a football manager who says he’ll sack his top player if he doesn’t do as he’s told. I looked at that stained-glass window and back to reverend Nigel. He wasn’t doing the message justice. At least those soviet overlords really went for it, put on a show. The message may have been weak but you couldn’t argue with communist showmanship. Reverend Nigel possessed none of it. His thin voice barely reached the back of the church. That was fine with me. This show didn’t need a soundtrack today. I was there in body but, like the dreams I would later have when ravaged by the fever, I felt I was miles away from the surface. I was shrivelled within. I was deep in the well with no rope to pull myself up. Reverend Nigel and I went through the motions.

  I sat in the back row as usual. I played “punch the hand” as usual. Along with Riley, Sam, Harry and Garret I replaced the word art with arse when we sang “How great thou art”. When instructed by Reverend Nigel I dutifully went with the other holy youth to our allotted activities. I sat through it all. I smiled when I felt it was necessary, bowed my head when appropriate, I didn’t make a scene that day.

  When it was over I got in the car and went home. I went to my bedroom and lay on my bed until called for lunch. The smell of over boiled vegetables was as strong as ever, the front room curtains breathing it in as usual. I sat at the table and ate as little dry chicken and rock hard roast potatoes as I thought I could get away with. There was no pudding that day, my mother muttering something about my father eating all the ice cream. Talking at the meal table was not allowed until the end when we were to thank mother for a lovely meal, put our knife and fork together on the plate and ask if we could get down from the table. That day I was glad of the rule that before that I had found to be a stifling constriction on my freedom of expression. After the meal, I was told to do the washing up. My brother had laid the table, my sister was excused chores because she had important homework to do, as it seemed she did every weekend. I ran the hot water, put the black plug into the plug hole in the black sink and squirted remnants of washing up liquid from the near empty bottle. My father silently moved around the kitchen. He piled the dirty plates next to the roasting pan and saucepans on the worktop near the sink. He flicked the switch on the kettle. He briefly, unintentionally, brushed me with his arm as he reached past me to get the sugar bowl. By the time the sink was full enough my father had made a milky, sugary instant coffee for himself and my mother. He took hers to the front room where she sat in her chair, readying herself for an afternoon of knitting and telling her children to be quiet. My father went to the garage to turn beautiful wooden vessels on his home-made lathe, beautiful vessels that no-one would buy but mostly every family member or friend would have given to them for a birthday or Christmas. He certainly put more work and passion into his woodwork than he ever did his first son.

  The American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a theory in motivational psychology called the hierarchy of needs. Essentially, it’s a triangle split horizontally into five tiers. From the bottom up the first four tiers are known as deficiency needs. Maslow suggested that people are motivated to have deficiencies satisfied. Only when one level of needs is met can the person move on to tackling the next tier. If a ne
ed is not met the person becomes stuck, unable to progress. The first tier that everyone encounters in physiological needs. A child needs to have food and water, sleep and warmth. Once those basic needs are satisfied the child will strive to achieve the next tier, safety. If the child feels secure and safe from harm he will be motivated to reduce the deficiencies of the next two levels, belonging and love, and esteem. The need for love is one of the strongest human emotions but Maslow was clear that the need for basic survival comes first. I had my physiological needs met at home. I was given food and drink, terrible food cooked badly by a woman who didn’t know better and cared even less, but I had enough to survive. I had a roof over my head and the house was certainly warm. I don’t remember a time, even in the height of summer, when the radiators were not on. Perhaps one of my parents had not had their need for warmth met as a child and were trying to achieve it in adulthood. I was never in as much danger as other children, certainly not as much as the black girl at the window, but the relative nature of experience isn’t a definition of much use to a child. Their experience is all they can see. I wasn’t under attack from falling bombs or revolutionary bandits. I was in no danger of being carried off by a bear or falling victim to kidnappers as I walked the ten miles to the local well and back. The benign nature of Bristol’s geology meant the risk of earthquake or tsunami was very low. There was always the worry of injury during power cut hijinks but that was really your own fault so didn’t really count. No, the threat to my wellbeing was, as it always is in the best horror movies, inside the house. I don’t suppose it was really my parents fault. When you take two people with unmet needs of their own, put them in a house they can barely afford with three kids there’s going to be trouble. The stress levels in that house were so high. I could feel it in the walls. The walls of that house that had been bought in the nice area so the kids could get a better start in life. The walls of that house that became an albatross around all our necks, the symbol of how much was being sacrificed for us in absence of any regular affection. The walls that shielded the outside world from the bickering spouses, the children trying to remember all the rules, the middle child doing his best to rescue everyone, the failure of it all.

  There were some happy times amongst the beatings but in general, on the whole, all things considered, I spent most of my childhood fearing what would happen next. So, the child who does not feel safe cannot move up to the next level of belonging and love. He cannot form real friendships or intimate relationships because he doesn’t know how to feel what someone else feels. To feel some safety in the world he will fake it. The child will learn the social cues and parrot them. He will understand that everyone is sad when that kid fell off the high wall at school and broke his neck. He will understand that everyone is sad that he died but he won’t be. Not because he didn’t like him, not because he’s a sociopath, not because he feels anything different. Because he doesn’t feel at all. He has no real feelings towards anyone or anything, and likely never will do.

  Maslow’s forth tier is esteem. A feeling of accomplishment and pride. That warm glow inside when the difficult task has been completed, the dragon of unknowing slayed by diligent study, the instrument mastered or the perfect present bought for a loved one. Having met physiological needs and formed deep and decent psychological attachments it is easy to imagine the child feeling secure and loved enough to fail often enough to reach a goal. The embrace of family and friends who value you for you can be exactly the safety net one needs to take the first steps on the tightrope of learning. It is equally as easy to see how the child who does not feel safe and has only inconsistent, confusing love would never try anything.

  That was me. I had no idea from one day to the next what love would be on offer. What was worthy of praise on day would be ignored or criticised the next. Some days I would be a disappointment for not wanting to join in the family activity, other days I was clearly just in the way. In such a climate, I was never going to achieve Maslow’s final tier. At the summit of the triangle is self-actualisation. With all needs, physiological and psychological, perfectly met the child can move towards realising their full potential. Unencumbered by the tasks of meeting need, creativity can flourish. The mind is expanded with the luxury of time to consider, to dwell, to experiment. Of course, one big problem with Maslow’s hierarchy is the evidence of the starving artist. How does such freedom of creativity come from the mind of someone who has not had their basic needs met? How can the artist progress to the pinnacle without first securing base camp? One argument is that their art would be that much better had they been well fed and warm. Van Gough might have been a better painter if he’d felt appreciated more, felt loved enough to hold on to both his ears. The other argument is that great minds transcend the mediocrity of the physical. The ideas bursting from their dazzling grey matter are too bright to be contained, to urgent to be delayed by the annoyance of maintaining the fleshy vessel from which they leap.

  I am not a brilliant mind. I am just another middle-class kid damaged by the unrealistic aspirations and barely contained disappointment of damaged parents. It wasn’t really anyone’s fault but there it was.

  There I was. Looking into the black sink as the foamy water filled it. Waiting to get the job done so I could escape to my room. Waiting to be done with the banality of chores so I could focus on what needed to be done next. I needed to get back to that house. I had to find the girl. I had to ignore the fear welling inside me every time I thought of her. I had to find her. But I had to be smart. I had to ignore the voice whispering plans of violence to me. I needed to phone the police.

  After I had finished the washing up I went to my room. I couldn’t phone the police from my house because then the man would know who I was. I grabbed a twenty pence piece from my money tin and went downstairs. I asked my mother if I could go out for a short walk. She said yes without looking up from her knitting. Once outside I ran as fast as I could to the bottom of my road. A small row of shops stood on Westbury lane between Arbutus Drive and Aldercoombe Road. past Aldercoombe was the local pub, The Progress Inn, and outside that stood a phone box. I ran past the shops and across Aldercoombe road without looking. I pulled the heavy red door aside and crashed in, slumping against the side, trying to catch my breath. The ever-present smell of stale cigarette smoke and piss didn’t register. I picked up the receiver and dialled 999. I held the twenty pence in my hand, ready to push it into the slot when I heard the person on the other end pick up. It only took two rings before someone picked up. I pushed the coin into the slot and asked for the police. I said to be quick because I only had 20p and the woman on the other end told me I didn’t need money to call the police. All at once I felt embarrassed and cheated. The distant voice within me seemed to suddenly shout.

  “The phone has taken your money! You fucking moron! You’re never going to achieve anything! You’re weak and stupid!”

  I was convinced that the voice was right. The hand holding the receiver began to shake and waver as I tried to decide whether to end the call and walk away. A male voice brought me back to reality. I told the policeman everything. I told him about the girl, the man on the driveway, the secateurs. He listened to it all and then asked me if I thought wasting police time was a joke. I told him it was no joke and they should go to the house right away before he had a chance to get rid of the evidence. I was painfully aware of the time I had already wasted and didn’t want them to do the same. After a further five minutes of desperately trying to convince a world-weary copper on the Sunday desk shift he said he would send someone over to the house. He then asked me for my name. I froze. I couldn’t give him my name.

  “Your name kid, what is it?” he was saying into my ear.

  And then the voice.

  “You’ve fucking done it now you idiot! Look at you! You’re pathetic, you should have killed him when you had the chance but you didn’t and now you’re cowering in a phone box like a fucking baby!”

  I slammed the receiver down, b
undled out of the phone box and ran home. I burst through the front door and fell up the stairs to my room. I bounced from wall to wall, my hands over my ears, my eyes streaming with hot tears. The voice was screaming in my head. Not words now but deep and guttural primeval sounds so terrible I wanted to tear at my skull to remove them. I screamed something, anything, to get it to stop. I was drenched in sweat, every muscle ached and burned. My blood was painful, my bones tearing at my skin to get out. I spun wildly as if trying to shake the beast free. As the last of my strength left me I collapsed. My mind was overloaded. The fever came over my body like an orchestra building towards a swooping, all-encompassing crescendo of power and noise. I began to shut down. My sub conscious put me into self-preservation mode, a sort of induced coma. As I slipped into the shivering and hallucinations I felt the doors of hibernation closing against me. Briefly I felt the sensations of a dark forest, haunting pianos and shifting shadows. As my eyes rolled back in my skull and darkness came I caught a glimpse of him moving across my mind. Not enough to identify him or understand him but enough to know he was there.

  I saw him smiling.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My fever lasted six days. I missed the last week of school before the summer holidays. The doctor came but offered little help. Fluids, rest and a disgusting medicine that tasted of rust and banana at the same time. I sweated through the sheets twice a day, even when my mother opened my bedroom window wide and stripped me down to my underwear, all with the thinly veiled disgust of being inconvenienced of course. My mind raced beneath the surface. I had short periods of lucidity punctuated with hallucinations but mostly I slept and babbled.