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

by Richard Hathway

  I dreamt that my hands felt huge though they looked the same. The dream would never let me figure out if my hands were bigger or that the outer layers of skin had lost sensation so I couldn’t feel them, making it seem that my real hands were encased in extra skin. I dreamt that I moved through the world by flying, not as Superman but upright as if on an invisible skateboard or surfboard.

  I saw hundreds of rats crawling over the ceiling of my bedroom in the middle of the day. I leapt from my bed with a scream in the night. I stood trembling on the landing as my mother emerged bleary eyed to see her son shaking and telling of the huge spider with a wolfs head that was sitting on his bed.

  I dreamt of a Parisian boulevard drawn in charcoal and brought to life in pastels. I wandered in that place, just a dark grey outline of myself. I saw a café on a corner. The smell of bread and the noise of conversation and laughter came to me on a breeze that was almost liquid with hope and possibility. I crossed a little cobbled street towards the café. The delicate spiral staircase in charcoal iron seemed to rest on the side of the building like a corkscrew against a wine cellar wall. I sensed that I needed to climb that staircase. I felt it pulling me in with a deep magnetism. I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t control it, I had no choice. My stomach churned as I took the first steps. I looked up and there, at the top of the spiral, was what I had always been looking for. It was shapeless and obscured by ironwork and I didn’t know what it was but I knew I needed it. I knew that whatever was up there would complete me, save me, love me, consume me. I climbed faster, tripping over my shoes in an effort to capture the only thing I had ever wanted. At the top of the staircase I stepped onto the roof in time to see the door to the internal staircase closing against the shadow of my longing. I took a breath and stepped towards the door. I reached out and pulled the door open.

  And I woke up. I always wake up at that door. The dream is always the same and it always comes to me now as a warning to illness. I have had that dream a few times since and every time I do I fall ill within two days. It must be a remnant of that first time in 1985 when an eleven-year-old boy’s mind tried to reconcile what he had seen on Grove Road.

  As my periods of lucidity grew longer my mother sat and read to me. My father bought me a bar of chocolate and a copy of The Eagle and I took the awful medicine and drank the Ribena. All it had taken was looking like I was going to die for my parents to show me affection. My fever broke on my birthday. I was re-born. I emerged a butterfly from a cocoon, leaving the caterpillar behind. Whatever was within me had also transformed. No longer just the whisper. He was now more than a hint of something. More than an idea, more than a wish. He was growing inside me. Had I created him? Was he my child or merely a rotten cyst? Perhaps he was a twin I had consumed in the womb. Whatever he was he was quiet. I considered myself lucky to be alive. I knew I had escaped detection, and certain death, by the man on the driveway. I had survived the fever. I had dodged death twice.

  My sister told me about the police going to a house on Grove Road. I asked her what had happened, eager to hear all about the man’s arrest for murder while I had been fevered. She told me that they’d had a call about a murder but there wasn’t one, it was a hoax call. The police had been to the house but everything was normal. Everyone who lived there was still alive. The police had to apologise to the man and woman who lived there, apparently he was a local politician so they had to go on telly and say sorry. I was stunned and angry. Angry with myself for waiting a day to phone the police. He had gotten away with it! This wasn’t right! Someone had to do something! Only no-one believed there was anything to do something about. Except me. I was the only one who knew what had happened and clearly the police couldn’t be trusted to investigate properly. I would have to do it. I would have to find the evidence. I knew right then that I had to do it. I knew that no-one knew it was me who had called the police. I knew I had all summer. I knew I was the grey man with the perfect cover, a twelve-year-old local kid enjoying the summer holidays with his mates. I knew what I needed to do. I didn’t know how hard it would be or that it would lead me here.

  Because of my illness no birthday celebration had been planned and that suited me. I’ve never enjoyed being the centre of attention, I don’t feel I deserve it, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and all that. I opened my presents from my brother and sister. My mother and father were getting me a Walkman. Well not a Walkman but a cheaper version. I think it was an Alba or Aiwa, one of those. It hadn’t arrived from the catalogue yet so I would have to wait. Mother blamed the catalogue for being late with the delivery but I suspected she had forgotten about my birthday until too near the time. It didn’t matter. I smiled and said thank you to everyone. I spent a quiet day in my bedroom as I still needed to get my strength up. I planned my revenge. Father got tea from the Chinese take-away which was nice. I had sweet and sour pork balls and a pancake roll. We even had prawn crackers, all very exotic. My mother smiled at me, my father winked and smiled. They genuinely seemed happy I was alive. I think in another life I could have loved my parents. They were almost loving, but life so often got in the way of them showing it and I had no desire to seek it out.

  Summer holidays. Six weeks stretching out before us like a glorious ribbon of freedom. No homework, no school tie, no trudging to the bus stop with a bag almost as big as you stuffed with books and games kit. To awake on a warm summers morning and feel the lightness of heart that comes from knowing that your time is your own. To freely and proudly strut with happiness, to run and laugh, to make glorious memories to recall in years to come, stories to tell in a pub, smiles for a deathbed. I tried to fake it all, to keep my focus on the girl, to retain the anger and injustice. I tried to just go through the motions, to keep my cover intact. I was determined not to enjoy any of it. how could I? How could any of it bring me happiness anymore?

  The voice, I was still calling him that, was planning, scheming, persuading. I told him I would listen. I would do as he said. I would let his strength guide me to my revenge. I would not enjoy my summer. I was determined.

  I failed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1985 wasn’t one of those blisteringly hot summers that people talk about for decades later. It was nothing at all like 1976, etched into the national consciousness like the fading star of a brighter yesterday when life was simpler and Britain had British seasons like what Churchill had sent all them boys off to fight for. No, 1985 was a rather unimpressive affair. Never too hot, never that cold, a bit rainy now and again but always just enough to elicit the phrase “Well it’s good for the garden!”. Unimpressive the weather may have been but it was perfect for four boys mucking about in the lanes and woods all day.

  We would meet on the corner of Grove Road and Grove Avenue every morning. Because there was an old oak tree exactly where the corner house would have been built, the developers of the 1910’s had been required to leave the small patch of land intact. This created a little grassy corner with the imposing tree hanging over the corner, providing shelter in the rain and shade from the sun. we would meet there because it was a place to sit and chat, because it was halfway between Riley and Garret’s houses and because it was opposite the lane that led to the field. I would potter my way up Arbutus Drive and down Grove Road to the corner. This meant that every day I had to go past the big house where it had happened. If I had to go home for lunch I would need to pass it four times in the day. On the first day that I passed the house, just over a week since I had seen the girl pulled from the window and crouched below the hedge for an eternity, the day was warm despite a gentle cool breeze. My heart rate increased as I approached the corner of Arbutus Drive. No-one had come to my house looking for me, there had been no phone calls, no questions. I knew that I had gone undetected by the man on the driveway and the police but still I was scared. As I rounded the corner onto Grove Road he was there. He was there in front of me with a pair of shears glinting in the lazy sun. He had laid an old blanket on the road underneath the hedge, had
a wobbly old wooden step ladder ready to reach the top and a stiff brush to remove any stray clippings that escaped the blanket. He didn’t even notice me at first, engrossed in his work. I froze. What should I do? If he had seen me that day but didn’t know who I was he wouldn’t have come to the house would he? But if he saw me now he would recognise me. There was no-one else around to see him grab me and drag me to the same fate as the girl in the window. None of the boys were on the corner yet. I was always the first because I wanted to get out of the house and I couldn’t be late for anything, ever. Riley and Garret usually arrived near enough to the agreed time but Sam was always late because he had to come the mile from his house. My eyes darted around trying to fix on a witness, a car approaching, a postman on his rounds or the whirl of a milk float. There was no-one. I was alone with him. I was frozen in the fear and the anxiety of what ifs and maybes and don’t knows and oh God I hope nots. My internal gyro began to fail and I was sure I was swaying wilding from side to side. My vision was blurring, any second now I would hit the ground and he would drag me inside to my death. But in an instant I felt calm and solid again. The voice held me steady and fixed my gaze on the man.

  “Kill him,” it whispered seductively, “Take the shears and kill him now.”

  I wanted to but I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot but straddling two worlds. I was terrified and determined.

  He turned to locate the brush that was to his left. He saw me. He lowered the shears. And he smiled. He smiled at me. And he spoke. “Good morning. Are you alright? You look lost.”

  He didn’t know me! He had no idea who I was! Realising that he was smiling at a curious frowning boy who wasn’t moving I managed a reasonable impression of a smile.

  “I’m ok,” I managed, “I thought I’d forgotten to lock the front door but I did. Thank you, good morning.” It wasn’t the best impression of cheery nonchalance I’ve ever produced but it was good enough. My legs were stone but I forced them to move, keeping the smile going until I was past him and half way down the road to the corner. The voice was screaming about failure and cowardice but I didn’t care. I felt elated, exhausted, shaky, brilliant, cold, hot and barely contained. As I walked normally down Grove Road that morning I felt like I was dancing inside my skin. Or trying to break out if it. Or trying to keep myself inside. I was unknown. I was the grey man.

  To my shame, I had quite a lot of fun that summer. It’s hard not to enjoy the company of best friends. Every time I passed the house, every morning when I woke, every evening and through every night I thought of her, dreamt of her, but when I was with my friends I forgot. Every now and again the memory of the girl would crash into my mind and I would instantly feel shame and guilt, like the recently widowed young woman who is laughing at a friend’s joke and is suddenly reminded of her husband. I was always determined not to enjoy the day but I always did. I loved playing with my mates.

  That first day set a tone for the summer. Further down Grove Road from Riley’s house was a building site. Some old dear had died and her family didn’t want or need the house so had sold it to a developer. The old six-bedroom sprawl had been torn down and the established gardens stripped away. The two-acre plot was now to have three houses built on it. There had been the usual mutterings from other homeowners about the desecration of the area and property prices. The new houses weren’t quite in keeping with the style of Grove Road and were going to be too cheap seemed to be the main gripe but this first development was to be just the start. Soon enough the old dairy and the tumbling little shop attached were gone, replaced by more of the same red brick boxes. Some of the more enterprising residents of Coombe Dingle saw the future and, having put a very impressive proposal together, sold off the bottom third of their long back gardens to a developer who managed to fit an entire cul-de-sac down there. I imagine by now more of Coombe Dingle would be new to me than recognisable.

  We didn’t care about any of that though. We were excited to explore a building site. Being a Saturday there was no-one at work there and being Coombe Dingle, the developer hadn’t felt the need to fence the site off. When Sam eventually got to the corner we set off. There were no buildings there yet, just the trenches for foundations. When we got to the site it was open and empty as expected. The unexpected bonus was the box of nails lying on the ground just across the threshold. Why a box of six-inch nails was lying about on a site with nothing built on it still escapes me but we weren’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. We divided into two teams, Sam and me against Riley and Garret. Grabbing handfuls of nails each we ran in different directions and jumped down into the trenches. Over the next hour or so we ran through the trenches like the youngest of those called to battle in World War One. We would pop our heads over the top periodically and hurl nails at the opposing team. When our positions were given away by howls of laughter and exclamations of “Fuck that was close!” and “Christ that just missed my head!” we made daring escapes. Leaping out of the relative safety of the trenches into the open field of fire we would make for whichever of the three trenches wasn’t occupied by the enemy. We sank into our new position, panting with exhilaration and nervous energy, gathered together what weaponry we could find and began the assault again. The voice loved it. It cried out with joy and bellowed lustfully for blood. There was something dangerous, animal, brutal and violent growing in me, getting stronger every day.

  By the end of the battle the building site was littered with hundreds of nails and we were leaving, laughing and exclaiming with mystery and wonder that not one of us had received any injury.

  Most days we played in and around the woods or sat lazily on the corner talking about whatever it is twelve-year-old boys talk about on warm summers days. Blaise castle estate stretches over six hundred and fifty acres so there was always places to go and fun to be had. We would dam up the streams that led through Blaise Estate or slide down the high banks on either side. On one stretch of path that winds through from the Dingle car park to the big house by the play grounds there is a large steep bank populated with huge beech trees. The ground either side is in that natural tangled mess of many greens and browns, fallen trees, mossy divots and vibrant plants thriving in an untouched, woodland state. The beech wood cathedral stood proudly different to the creeping plants always trying to invade its barren floor. The roots of these living monoliths grew ever more exposed with the years as generations climbed the hill and with varying levels of bravery either ran or slid down to the path again between the silent onlooking totems. To one of the trees someone had added a rope swing. It always struck me that the tree in question looked rather annoyed at being violated with such an inorganic adornment. But there it was, a length of frayed, thick blue rope like that seen on Devon fishing boats, tied at one end to the scowling beech trees’ tendon and, swinging at the other end, a broken piece of one of his brothers. I never much liked rope swings. Maybe because of being bullied so much at primary school but they always seem to echo with a call of “look what we did, bet you can’t do it!” It’s bad enough not being brave enough in front of your own friends but to be pushed into revealing the fact by others not now here seemed a little unfair. My cowardice regarding rope swings, and most other activities that involved any measure of bottle, did on one occasion have an upside. On the path above the Dingle car park there was another rope swing. No doubt constructed by the same ethereal heroes as it displayed the same blue rope. This was a challenge of the next level though. Whereas with the beech wood cathedral a fall from the rope would get you a sore arse, a few grazes and the laughter of your peers, this rope swung out over a nettle and bramble strewn bank and the unforgiving concrete of the car park. Three of us were down there parting the hedges and bushes with sticks looking for any signs of pornography. I have no idea who, why or where the idea for hiding porn in a hedge was born but it was a God send for boys in the eighties. We had once found a few pages in those hedges so of course we went there every weekend hoping for more torn glimpses of fleshy
nirvana. One of the greatest feelings of disappointment I’ve ever had was finding a porno in a hedge but discovering it was wet and stuck together in a useless pulp. Crushing for a young lad that was. We didn’t find any that day so the rope swing beckoned. Harry was to go first. I don’t remember how we decided these things but it was doubtless arbitrary. What I do remember is that when the rope broke and he fell into the brambles and nettles below he kept his arms straight above him as if nothing was wrong. As he was swallowed by the undergrowth the blue rope dangled across his face from the handle above his head. I still feel guilty for laughing so much, especially considering he got a fractured arm and torn to pieces for his trouble.

  The river that runs through the estate makes its way slowly along the bottom of a steep valley. After the path at the side of the river, worn through the undergrowth by centuries of use, the sides of the valley rise steeply. The tangle of thick bushes and old trees quickly becomes difficult to penetrate.

  One day we found, rather inexplicably, two beer kegs lying next to the river on a stretch below the beech wood cathedral. We wouldn’t have known what to do with beer if we’d found it so the fact that they were empty was of no consequence to us. We decided a barrel race was the only sensible thing to do. We dragged both kegs ten metres or so up the steep, stony valley side and lined them up. Riley and I were each crouched and leaning back, holding a barrel to stop it rolling away before the word was given. Garret made some final checks of the anticipated course.

  “Yours is gonna win ‘cause it’s not dented as much.” Sam declared to me.

  “Nah, the dents make it smaller,” replied Garret, “so Riley’s will win.”

  The discussion went back and forth for a few minutes. Dents verses smooth, being on the right verses the left, the size of the stones on each side, the bend of the river favouring one or other of us. Honestly, it’s amazing how many variables we came up with to disagree on. When all points of contention had been settled we were ready. Garret gave the countdown and on “go” Riley and I let fly our chariots. I think all of us were surprised how quickly they picked up speed. Bouncing off the stony descent they spun and accelerated towards the river. Towards the woman walking her dog beside the river. We’d been so focused on the countdown we hadn’t noticed her appear around the river bend below us. She was ambling along, her Miniature Schnauzer trotting beside her with a stick in its mouth. Neither of them could reasonably have been expected to anticipate empty beer kegs to come raining down on them. She heard the sound too late and moved too slow but just enough. A twist of the hip spun her around enough for my barrel to skim within millimetres of her. unfortunately, as she spun away she yanked the dogs lead and, having been pulled into their path, the Miniature Schnauzer quite literally got both barrels.