Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  Further mutation. This time a suspected terrorist breaking down under interrogation.

  Then the policeman, calm and assured, intervened: ‘No, no, no. It wasn’t like that at all. The kid’s not drunk. Jason was stinking of the stuff. My men will confirm that. He was the one who was setting the place on fire. He said so himself. He had a bottle of petrol in his hand. The fire was started by petrol, that’s what the firemen say.’

  ‘And as for that,’ he continued, pointing at the puddle, ‘that’s further evidence. The kid was obviously scared witless. It happens when people are scared, even to soldiers, you know. Luckily he managed to stay sane enough to phone us. You’ve got a lot to thank him for. Now let’s have the statement.’

  The Bishop grunted and harrumphed – like a volcano that wanted to explode but had decided not to – as John stumbled through his story, bit by semi-coherent bit.

  Standing there in his sodden underpants, next to his own puddle, with tears trickling down his cheeks, he felt utterly degraded. Piss pants, shit pants, cry baby! If the lads at Beaconsfield could see him now! He’d die of shame! In his fantasies he’d been Denby the Dauntless, the airman shot down over Nazi Germany, defying his interrogators and braving their most ferocious tortures. ‘Vee haff vays of making you talk!’ Maybe, but they don’t work with Denby the Dauntless! Now, reduced to this!

  He got the feeling that he was really a kind of football, tossed around between the three adults for their own purposes: the Bishop’s to show off his interrogation skills, Isabel’s to parade her caring and concern, the policeman’s to display his cool professionalism in the face of heated emotion.

  As he finally staggered to the end of his story, the Bishop’s face broke into what was meant to be a reassuring smile. ‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to believe you, after all.’

  ‘Now, your side of the story.’

  ‘Not much to say. An infernal racket woke both of us up. Smelt burning and rushed down to see what was going on.’

  He turned to John. ‘Bishop’s Palace saved by small boy’s weak bladder,’ he said grumpily. ‘There’s a headline for the newspapers.’

  John winced. The man seemed unable to lay off him. Obviously he found any sort of gratitude demeaning.

  Then the guns were turned on Isabel. ‘Frankly, darling, I do wish you’d listened to me about Jason. I told you something awful would happen if we kept him here. He’s beyond our help. I wish you’d face up to the fact.’

  ‘But he’s our son! Our only son!’

  ‘Quite so, but this mess is going to cost us a pretty penny or two. And I doubt if the insurance will want to pay up. Well, after I’ve tidied up the room a bit and retrieved what you’ve so graciously left of my Sunday sermons, that is’ – sharp glance at John – ‘I’m off to bed. I’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’ll leave you to clean up His Nibs here. Hope the bathroom’s still working.’ Another sardonic glance at John.

  The police and the firemen finally left.

  God has a Funny Way of Doing Things

  Isabel led John into the kitchen. Sitting him down on a wooden stool, she draped a blanket over him and began to crash round with mugs and kettles.

  ‘I think you could do with a little refreshment after your terrible ordeal, darling.’

  When she eventually handed him a mug of steaming Horlicks, she suddenly burst into tears. ‘Oh, John, how can you ever forgive us? We take you into our house and a madman tries to kill you! And then my husband tries to blame you for it!’

  The cold night air, the roller-coaster of emotions, the adrenaline, the squalor of his uncontrollable bodily functions, the shame… it all made him clear-sighted. In his degradation he felt a sense of comradeship with a fellow sufferer. Poor, poor woman! Her only son a murderous lunatic!

  ‘Please don’t feel like that!’ he exclaimed. ‘Please don’t! I admire the way you’re looking after Jason. Most people would have chucked him out. But in spite of all he does, you stand by him. It’s so Christian! Please, that’s not crap. I really mean it.’

  ‘Oh, John.’

  As she hugged him the superlatives poured out in an avalanche: ‘Strongest… best… kindest… bravest… most noble.’

  He writhed. God, how he just hated this cuddling! He so wanted to be a proper lad, not a baby!

  When eventually she released him form her octopus-like embrace, she suddenly became all confidential, even slightly conspiratorial. In a low voice she started telling him things that clearly she didn’t tell many people; least of all, perhaps, her husband. Why me of all people? She doesn’t fancy me, does she? Quite a thought!

  ‘Jason’s our only son, you know. He was the child of many prayers, many prayers! I had such a difficult pregnancy, I nearly lost him. He was premature, you know. But he was such a wonderful child. Such a joy! So promising. So full of life and so clever. He could read at four, you know and he got twelve O Levels when he was only fifteen. He was a wonderful sportsman, too. He was a champion boxer and played rugby for the county. He won an open scholarship to Oxford. We were so proud of him. How we thanked God for him!

  ‘Then everything started to go wrong. He began to go all strange. He stopped talking to people and just sat in his room at Oxford for days on end doing nothing. Then he was found in the street, sitting on the pavement and staring at a tree for hours on end; and in the pouring rain, too! One day he ran naked through the park saying that Stalin was chasing him and trying to set his clothes on fire.

  ‘It was so distressing! His tutor said he was having a nervous breakdown because of overwork and stress. There were stories of drugs! Why? Why did it happen? Perhaps Don was being too hard on him. He was so engrossed in his own affairs – his army work, that school in Uganda, you know – that he didn’t have enough time to talk to him. Don means well, but he can be such a bully! I’m sure you’ve seen that. He has to dominate. Whatever Jason did, it was never good enough. He was always wanting more. Excellence just wasn’t good enough. Don just can’t understand human weakness, I’m sure you’ve discovered that! Maybe he was even a bit jealous of him because he was so clever; he doesn’t like rivals, you know.

  ‘By the way, he knows that you saved the house and, in a way, he’s angry with you because you’ve upstaged him. That was why he was bullying you and cutting you down to size. He was always doing that to Jason whenever he did well at something. I should have stood up to him more and protected Jason, just as I’ve tried to do with you.

  ‘But the psychiatrist said nobody was to blame. He said Jason was simply suffering from schizophrenia. That’s a disease, you know. But why does God send these diseases? It’s so cruel! And, maybe, I was to blame, after all. One of my brothers was schizophrenic and they tell me that the disease is hereditary. So I shouldn’t have brought poor Jason into the world at all. But now that he’s here I must stand by him, whatever he does! I pray all the time for God to cure him and end his suffering.’

  The torrent eventually dried up. They sat in silence for a while, he on his wooden stool and she on the edge of the kitchen table.

  Suddenly a blind fury blazed up in John. ‘Don’t blame yourself!’ he almost shouted. ‘You’re good, kind and noble! You’re far better than that Watson bitch! Whatever Jason does, you stand by him. Not like her! One silly little accident – which I couldn’t help! – and she throws me out! I hate her! She’s a cunt!’

  He paused, alarmed at what he’d gone and said.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he mumbled, ‘I shouldn’t have used dirty language. I just got… well… carried away. But, what’s going to happen to me? I’m so worried. I’ve got no one!’

  At that Isabel seemed to glow, almost to become phosphorescent: ‘John, you’ve got me! I’ll look after you. You can be mine!’

  ‘You know,’ she added looking beatific, ‘I think God has set this whole business up just to give me another child! That’s the only explanation
for it.’

  So God had been responsible for shafting Danny’s bum in the shower. And how would Briggs answer that one? God had been responsible for his needing a pee that night, for the puddle in the Bishop’s study, for the – as yet undiscovered! – pile of turds at the bottom of the lawn and for the disgusting state of his underpants. God had an odd way of doing things!

  Another suffocating hug. He seemed to have found another protector – good politics! But, oh, he was so ashamed of himself, sitting there in his pissed knickers letting himself be kissed like a baby. If anybody should get to know of it…!

  Finally he managed to disentangle himself. ‘I’m tired. I think I’ll have a bath and go to bed. Thanks for everything.’

  He went upstairs past a sodden black mess. The stairs and the landing were still intact, but charred and sooty. The window was broken and the curtains had been reduced to dirty black rags. Everything stank of burnt cloth, smoke and sodden wood. The Fire Brigade had arrived just in time. A few moments later and the whole landing and staircase could have come crashing down. A terrifyingly narrow escape!

  The bathroom was undamaged and the taps still worked. As he slipped off his sodden underpants, he noticed to his shame and disgust that he’d hadn’t just pissed them: there was unmistakable evidence of the scatological disaster under the rhododendron bushes at the bottom of the lawn. Washing them was a degrading and repulsive business. Could he never escape from the human body – his body, in particular! – and its squalor?

  In the bedroom he draped the dripping article over the radiator and climbed into bed in the nuddy. Not something he’d ever done before. Priority task for tomorrow: get some clean clothes from Gloucester Road.

  Sleep descended. Blessed oblivion.

  Underpants

  John awoke to see his underpants. There they were on the radiator, brilliantly illuminated by the sun shining in through the window. In the half-real world of semi-consciousness they seemed to be talking to him.

  ‘Sussed!’ they sneered. ‘Sussed to a crust!’ Can’t dream about girls. Dreams about boys instead. Hard man Denby? Sod that for a lark! A loony freaks out and chases him round the house, and what does he do? Pisses himself, that’s what, and all over the Bishop’s carpet, too! Then – wait for it – he goes and shits himself like a little kid. And that’s not all. Oh no, Just as soon as the Bishop bollocks him he starts to cry. Christ, what a wimp!

  They didn’t want you at Greenhill. They didn’t want you at Beaconsfield either. Nobody wants a dirty little shit-stabber. Except Isabel, that is. And do you know why she wants you? Just because you are totally pathetic, that’s why. You’ll be her little kitten. You’ll never grow up. And if ever you do try to grow up, the Bishop will lay you over that armchair and whack your bum with that rattan cane of his, just like a little kid. You’ll go mad and end up like Jason.

  He lay there for a while, hoping to go back to sleep and sink once more into oblivion, and when that proved impossible, wishing he was somebody else. Even Billy Nolan.

  Practicalities: Escaping from an Octopus

  Eventually more immediate problems took over. His clothes were grubby and sweaty and he had to get some clean ones. That meant a trip to Gloucester Road. Reluctantly he got up, dressed in his school uniform and went out into the passage. As he squelched his way along the sodden black ash and past the dripping and sooty walls, the smell of dampness and burnt cloth filled his nostrils. God, last night had been a close run thing!

  He found Isabel in the dining room. She was obviously in what Michael Connolly – a considerable expert in such matters – would have called ‘a right state’. She was still in her dressing gown. Her face was white and tear-stained and her hair was all awry. She looked as if she’d had an encounter with the electric chair or a high voltage power line.

  ‘Oh, John darling, do sit down and talk to me! I’ve had such a terrible time with Don!’

  He sat down at the table next to her and was engulfed in a torrent of words.

  ‘Don blames me for the fire. And for the bad behaviour of the children yesterday. I don’t know what I’m going to do! Really I don’t. But if you hadn’t been so brave I just don’t know what would have happened. Really I don’t.’

  Eventually she ran out of breath and the flood momentarily ceased.

  ‘Look,’ he said, managing at last to get a word in edgeways, ‘it’s Sunday. Hadn’t I better go to church?’ Both politics and sincerity here. Keep the Bishop sweet, yes, but, at the same time he felt desperately in need of a bit of help from on high. Something. Anything.

  ‘Oh no!’ she replied with vehemence. ‘It’s much too late for that! It’s past twelve o’clock and Don’s been gone for nearly four hours!’

  ‘Sorry, but I must have slept in.’

  ‘Please don’t apologise! You just had to have a good sleep after all you did last night. I spent all last night trying to explain it to Don.’

  The torrent burst forth again with renewed vigour, sweeping all before it. It was quite a while before it eventually began to peter out in a series of gurgling little eddies. Head-shakings followed. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know,’ she sighed, and then fell silent.

  ‘Please,’ he finally managed to say, ‘I must go back to Gloucester Road to get a change of clothes. I mean, this lot are getting pretty yukky.’

  ‘Don’t you go! Don’ll get them for you when he comes back.’

  ‘Please don’t bother him. He must be terribly busy. I can get the bus into town. It goes from the end of the road. It’s no sweat.’

  He felt desperate for air, like a drowning sailor dragged down into the depths by a giant octopus.

  ‘Oh, but you can’t go alone. I mean, what might happen to you?’

  Bloody hell, couldn’t he even get on a bus by himself?

  ‘Please, I’ll be all right. I do it every day. Anyway, both you and the Bishop have so much else to think about today.’

  To his relief she gave way. ‘You are so considerate! So considerate! Now do be careful. I feel so guilty about letting you go like this. You will be careful, won’t you? I mean if anything should happen to you, I’d never forgive myself!’

  Animal Crudity: A Gazelle in a Pride of Hungry Lions

  The bus at the end of the road took him into town, where he was able to get onto the Greenwood bus. Getting out at the top of Gloucester Road, the bright blue sky and the warm, gusty wind gave him a sense of liberation. Free at last from the grasping tentacles of adults. He could be himself now! He marched purposely down the hill.

  Then the underpants – or whatever it was – started again. Be yourself? But what self? He had no right to wear that red blazer, had he? He wasn’t a Beaconsfield lad any more. He’d been chucked out. It was Sunday and Mrs Coburn would be looking after the place as she always did at weekends. Was he going to tell her that he’d been booted out for being a shit-stabber? No way! For a start, she wouldn’t understand; and if she ever did… the shame of it! Worse still, she probably knew already. ‘We’ll get your things sent on from Fern Avenue.’ He was going to have to cobble up some semi-plausible farrago to get round that one, and hope that she’d be daft enough to swallow it. He was very fond of her and he hated having to deceive her. Oh, the mess he was in!

  ‘Wee’s the fuckin’ hom then?’

  A high-pitched Geordie screech made him jump.

  He glanced ahead to see a group of youngsters blocking the pavement ahead of him: male, female, dirty jeans, grubby miniskirts, woollen hats pulled down over the eyes, ferocious scowls, several shaved heads… a pack of predators on the prowl. In his distraction he had gone and forgotten Rule Number One of Greenwood survival: camouflage and low profile. In his Beaconsfield school uniform he was as glaringly conspicuous as a gazelle in a pride of hungry lions.

  With a tingling sense of fear rippling through him, he crossed the road, studiously avoi
ding any eye contact. Forget about old Granny Coburn. It was into survival now.

  The pack followed him. It was a boring Sunday afternoon and he was obviously a welcome diversion.

  ‘Why man, it’s wee Jonny boy, wor Sam’s liddell mate!’

  He looked round to see the beaky-nosed girl who’d brought Sam Hawthorne round to Ma Watson’s place on that famous Christmas two years ago. A big, sex-mad bully of a girl, she had scared him almost to death. It was her all right, no doubt about it, but bigger and more aggressive than ever. His guts seemed to twist up inside him as he broke into a panic-stricken run.

  The pack surged around him. Soon he was pinned up against a wall, the gazelle surrounded by the slobbering lions.

  ‘What’s the hurry son?’ screeched the girl, ‘Divvent yer wanna say “hello” like?’

  ‘Er, hello,’ he mumbled in the desperate hope that this might be the hunk of bloody meat that might satisfy the advancing pack.

  Instead, it merely seemed to fuel the feeding frenzy. The mob surged closer. Trapped! That old Greenhill feeling of sogginess when fear dissolved your bones.

  The girl eyed him: ‘Eeeeee yer’ve growed a canny bit.’

  A brief silence followed; that silence before the crash of thunder that comes after the distant lightning flash. Frantically he tried to push his way through the ring of sweaty bodies.

  ‘Have yer broken yer duck yet, son?’ somebody said.

  ‘Er, what do you mean?’

  ‘Hadaway, ’ave yer done it yet?’ laughed a bald-headed youth, his leering face twisted with pent-up aggression.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hadaway!’ shrieked a girl in a dirty T-shirt and a leather miniskirt. ‘How long’s yer cock?’

  John blushed bright red and made another attempt to break free. It was no good. Struggling furiously, his arms were pinioned behind his back. Emitting great peals of yob laughter, which made his innards shrivel up, the mob frog-marched him into a little side alley.