Unnatural Relations

by Mike Seabroook

  Hauling him back by his hair with one hand, he grabbed a handful of the seat of Jamie's trousers with the other and hurled him backwards into the centre of the room. There was a shriek from the far side of the room, and Annabel Potten rocketed out of her chair, driven at last by simple fear for her child into some kind of spirit. "David! NO! Don't you dare touch him. You shan’t touch him!" she howled, and with that she rushed to where Jamie was picking himself up, eyes distended with fear, but with an ugly set to his mouth. She stood over him, between him and the advancing, looming bulk of her enraged husband.

  "Get out of my fucking way, you evil cow," he screamed at her, and, too possessed with rage to count what he was doing, swept a brawny forearm towards her to brush her aside. If the blow had landed on the side of her head where it was aimed it would have done her grave damage, but she flung an arm up and deflected it. Even so it hit her arm with sufficient force to knock her off her feet, and she crashed down beside Jamie on the carpet. As she fell her head hit one of the huge, bulbous legs of the great Victorian dining table a glancing blow. She shrieked at the impact, and immediately gasped as she hit the floor, all the breath knocked out of her. Jamie bounded up from the floor and shot a desperate look round the room, seeking something he could use as a weapon.

  The sudden eruption of violence, however, had some effect on David Potten, bringing him some of the way back to his senses. He halted in his menacing advance on the other two and stood, swaying a little from side to side. His eyes were bulging out of their sockets, his hair was standing out from his head and his face was a livid purplish red. He stood for some moments, sucking in gulps of breath. Then he subsided, almost visibly, like a toad after it has puffed itself up for combat, and stamped back to the table. He dragged a chair from under it with such force that the edge of the seat smashed against the underside of the top, crashed it down and dropped onto it like a sack of coal. There he sat for some minutes, breathing heavily, with his eyes fixed on Jamie and a look of loathing and disgust written all over his face.

  Jamie had helped his mother to her feet. "Are you all right, Mother?" he asked. She nodded, still breathless, and a little dazed by the blow to her head. Jamie helped her back to the chair she had been sitting in. Then he moved to a position by the heavy oak sideboard. There were bottles and some ornaments on it that he thought might be usable as weapons if he was attacked again. He leaned on it to recover his breath, watching his father warily. After what seemed like an eternity, David Potten spoke.

  "Get this into your head, you vile, revolting, disgusting little fucking queer. You needn't think anything's changed because I let you go. You've got a lot coming to you, and you're going to get it, all of it, with interest, before you're much older. Your headmaster told us all about your little games with this Christopher. And something else for you to think about, too. I'm going to find out who this Christopher is, and I'm going to tear him apart. I don't give a fuck if I do time for it, it'll be worth that, because I'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that he's in hospital. While he's in there having his bones set he won't be shit-stabbing you, my fine fellow. And if I'm in prison, I shan't have the responsibility for paying for you to play hookey from school to let a fairy ream your arsehole out for thirty quid of my money a day. Oh yes, my pretty little fairy of a son, it'll be a pleasure to have fifteen three-minute rounds with your little friend."

  "You're sick, Dad," said Jamie, very quietly. "I'm sorry for some of what I said just now. I feel sorry for you. Sorry you can't understand anybody who isn't just like you. I expect most people who know you feel sorry for you. That crowd of hypocrites you play bridge with, coming round here and guzzling your booze and sucking up to you because of your money, they probably despise you, or feel sorry for you. That's your trouble, I see that now. You're so used to people sucking up to you for your money that you can't understand it when someone's indifferent to it. That's why you'll never understand me. I'll have to go now, of course. I don't know where I'll go, but I can't stay here. We've said too much to each other that we shan't be able to forgive. I'd better go now." Stifling another sob, he moved towards the door.

  His father immediately jumped up and bore down on him. "You're going fucking nowhere," he roared, and aimed a heavy punch at Jamie's head. The boy ducked under it, but he was not quick enough, and it caught him heavily on the shoulder. He staggered back against the sideboard, and his father, who had risen instantaneously straight back to boiling point, moved in to follow up his blow with another. Jamie, desperate and terrified, swept a hand along the sideboard seeking something to defend himself with. His clutching hand found something cold and heavy. He snatched it up and, as his father, completely out of control of himself now, towered over him, he swept it sideways as hard as he could. It struck David Potten full on the side of the face with a soggy splat, and stopped him in his tracks. He stood for a moment, swaying, and looking at Jamie with a slightly puzzled expression in his eyes. Then they lost their focus and he fell with a gentle thud to the carpet, where he lay making a slight snoring sound and dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

  Jamie looked down at what he had done, and felt nothing. He was vaguely aware of a terrible relief at being out of immediate danger, but other than that he was too numb with accumulated shock and emotional overload to feel anything. He swayed a little, and leaned on the sideboard. The only thought in his mind was to get away. He ran jerkily from the room, and never even remembered his mother, sitting slightly concussed in her corner chair.

  The door slammed behind him, and that roused her from her daze. "James. My James. Jamie!" she sobbed quietly. "What have we done to you? What have we done to ourselves?" She got up and went groggily over to where her husband lay. He was beginning to come round. She looked at the great bruise along the side of his jaw, across his cheek and over his temple. Then she found a brass candlestick on the floor where Jamie had dropped it. It had been straight and about eighteen inches in length. Now it was bent to an obtuse angle from the force of Jamie's blow. She rose unsteadily to her feet and stood it on the sideboard. Then she tottered across to the telephone to call the doctor.

  Jamie ran up to his room. He dragged a canvas holdall from under his bed and stuffed it with clothes. When he had what he thought would be enough for a few days, he grabbed his torch off the window sill and a couple of books. The whole operation took a minute and a half, and then he was taking the stairs three at a time. He shot through the kitchen and raced across the farm to his disused outbuilding. For a few moments he thought of sleeping there, but quickly decided it was not safe to stay anywhere near home. He added the clothes he had been wearing that day to the contents of the holdall and set off, walking aimlessly but more or less in the direction of the town. Suddenly a thought came into his mind, and almost jolted the breath out of him. How, he wondered, could he have forgotten? Christopher. If he could only talk to him they would be able to work out what to do.

  Jamie loved Christopher for almost numberless reasons, and in many ways. Sexually and physically he loved him. Jamie knew what he was, and he knew that Christopher was also. That was how they were made and there was nothing more to be said. But he loved him on other and far deeper levels than that. Christopher was the only person who had ever loved him, or treated him with love. He was also the only person in Jamie's short but interesting life who had been identifiably kind to him on anything more than an impersonal level. He was the only person who had ever been willing to sit and listen to Jamie without interrupting and, having allowed Jamie to say his piece, to offer a considered judgment, or advice, or admit that he didn't know, or just ruffle his hair and give some kindness or consolation. He was the only person in Jamie's experience who had been willing, indeed glad, simply to be there when needed. They had sat together for hours and hardly said a word, but in a deep and comforting companionship. At other times they had talked as if they had unfathomed wells of subjects to talk about and things to say about them. It made, in the end, little differen
ce. Christopher was there, and he had never let him down. Jamie made up his mind.

  And, as soon as he made it up, he promptly changed it. It would never do to invade Christopher like this, late at night, half out of his mind with everything, with unresolved problems at home that were beyond a boy's competence even to think about solving; with more trouble, of an unknowable nature, facing him on the school front. School. He would, he supposed, have to go tomorrow. Though judging by the insistent theme of his father's outburst that evening it seemed highly problematic that he would remain at school much longer, it was nevertheless a problem in the short term.

  No, he couldn't possibly take that kind of burden to Christopher now. Not to mention Christopher's parents, his family. Jamie only knew one family, so he had limited standards to judge by. He took it for granted that Christopher's people knew no more about their son than his had done. He could conceive intellectually of a kind of family that wouldn't react as his had reacted to things; but he had nothing in his pack of experience to enable him to imagine how such a family would seem or be. He opted for safety. He would have to go somewhere else.

  And in a moment he found his answer. Only a moment ago he had supposed that he would have to go to school tomorrow. Why not give himself the advantage of a little advance notice of the kind of reception he was going to receive? Dr Lane had told him in the strongest terms that he was to take any problems to him without a second thought. Dr Lane lived with his wife, a friendly woman with soft grey eyes and a cheerful affection for the boys, in the headmaster's house, across the cricket field from the school. Why not? thought Jamie. He thought about it for a few yards more, probing the idea for hidden snags. Then he nodded to himself, and set off at a more purposeful pace for school.

  ***

  "All right then, Annabel," muttered the doctor. He leaned awkwardly over the small table in the hall on which the telephone extension sat and scribbled a prescription. "It's Librium, 10 mil. No more than four a day, mind. They're powerful, and they can be habituative." He slipped his raincoat over his shoulders, and prepared to dash to his car through the downpour that had just started. As Annabel Potten held the door open for him he hesitated on the threshold. He took a step out into the portico, then turned back to her with a very uneasy expression on his face.

  "Look here, Annabel, I don't like this at all. I know you've had your problems in the past. God knows, I ought to, I've given you enough scrips for that bloody poison over the years. But I really don't like this. I've never known you two to go for each other like this before. I'm not sure I oughtn't to..." He trailed into silence.

  "It's all right, Harold, really, it's all right," said Annabel Potten, too quickly, and speaking in a low, urgent tone. "We've had a terrible fight, and I had to defend myself, but I can control David, honestly, I promise you. Please don't do any... please don't make things worse," she ended in a flat tone of finality. "It wouldn't do any good, and it might do a lot of harm. More harm than you could possibly realise. I can handle him, I promise you. I just need something for my nerves."

  The doctor looked very hard at her for a moment and began to say something, but thought better of it and turned for his car again. "All right, Annabel, I'll take your word for it this time. I wish I knew whether I'm doing the right thing." He still hesitated, looking tired and worried. "You give me your word that it's all over and you can take care of it?"

  "Yes, yes, yes, Harold. It's over and I can deal with it. Please believe me. It was only a flaming row, and we've had enough of them, as you know. This one was just worse than usual. Now please go. I hate to be like this, but I've got to talk to David."

  He shrugged. "All right. David's not really badly hurt, as I told you, but he must have rest. And for God's sake don't let him near the Scotch bottle. And the same goes for you. Take two of those capsules I gave you. Now, you take care of yourself. Good night." He stared hard at her in a last moment's indecision, shrugged again, then ran through the rain to his car.

  Annabel Potten watched the tail lights disappear round the gatepost and listened until the sound of his car had died away in the lane before closing the door. Then she sagged against the doorpost and began to summon up her strength to go back to her husband. She was already half-regretting her urgent dismissal of the doctor for, despite her assurances to him, she was not at all confident of her ability to control David. She had always in the past found one or other of the weapons a woman can call on adequate when he had been in one of his volcanic moods, but this time he had gone far beyond anything she had seen before. The thought flashed painfully through her head that she was, for the first time, genuinely afraid of him.

  She pressed her elegant hands to her temples and gathered what there was to gather of her resources. She was feeling sick, weak and tired, just at the moment when she felt sure that she was about to need all her strength. However, there was no help for it. She walked shakily back to the living room.

  David Potten was lying sprawled in a deep armchair, his head heavily bandaged. The first thing she saw was a large glass on the small table beside him. "David!" she ejaculated in dismay. "You mustn't. Harold said you mustn't drink. What is it? Scotch?" She took a step towards him with a hand outstretched to take the glass. He snatched it from the table and drained it.

  "Don't you bloody well tell me what I can do and can't do," he snarled. "And don't tell me what that smarmy bastard Holdsworth said either. I'll decide whether I have a drink or not, and what it is." He heaved himself upright in the chair, got rather groggily to his feet and went to the sideboard. His wife stood uncertainly where she was near the door and watched as he poured himself another very large measure. She noted with relief that it was at least from the brandy decanter that he helped himself. She supposed it was probably better for him than whisky. Thoughts ran sluggishly through her mind. She had hoped vaguely that somehow his being hurt might have done something to dampen his temper a little. That hope now fizzled out. A grey wash of despair passed over, almost paralysing her.

  Potten was holding the brass candlestick with which Jamie had struck him, looking with an oddly detached air at the great kink in it made by the blow. He turned towards her, drinking deeply as he did so. His left eye was hugely swollen and the eye itself had completely closed. It looked as if a purplish-black billiard ball with a livid blue slit across its equator was squeezing itself out of his head. Annabel Potten felt her gorge rise, and swallowed desperately to keep it down. "I never thought that little bastard had the spunk in him to do it," her husband mused. "Little bastard. Ha! First time I've ever been laid out in my life, you know." She cringed against the door. This soft, murmuring tone was more terrifying than all his normal bluster.

  "Ha!" he muttered again. "Imagine that. First time in my life I've ever been knocked cold, and it's by a little milksop of a queer. A bit of a kid, and my own pup at that. Well, well. I wonder what the guys at the club, or in the Golden Hind would say about that." And, to her astonishment and dismay, he threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. Not, she saw with gathering consternation, any kind of laughter that she had ever heard. There was nothing but horror in it. It seized him in a paroxysm. He roared and gasped and spluttered with it, and eventually leaned over the big oak sideboard, helpless, cackling with this unnatural, sour mirth.

  Eventually he got control of himself and straightened up. He drained his glass and refilled it. "David," she said feebly, "Harold said..."

  "I told you before," he said, still chuckling at intervals, "I don't give a shit what Harold said. I don't give a shit what you say. If I want a drink in my own house, I shall have one, without asking anybody's permission, especially yours. That's just one of the things you're going to learn before you're much older. You and that son of yours. He's got his to come yet, when he comes down from his room. If he's got the guts to come down. He's probably locked himself in and hidden under the bed with his teddy bear. But there's plenty of time. There are going to be some changes, Annabel Faulkner." He managed to
make her maiden name sound like a discharge of spittle. "There's going to be a lot of changes round here. Now I'm going to bed. I'll go along with Harold that far. Off to bed to recover from injuries inflicted on me by your greasy little poofter of a son. I'll see you tomorrow."

  "He's your son as well," his wife said With a brief spark of her own anger. She immediately regretted saying anything at all. In his present strange condition he was too unpredictable to take risks with. But there was no explosion. He turned the livid eye on her again, still with the menacing half-amused expression on his face, and said softly, "Yes. My son. I wonder." He stepped towards her and the door, and despite herself she flinched. He saw the movement and a broad smile flitted across his face.

  Her movement drew his eyes to one side as he tramped towards the door. "Hallo, what's this?" he muttered, and stooped to pick something from the floor. It looked like a scrap of paper, an inch or so square. He stared at it for some moments, then turned it over, and she saw that it was a photograph of someone's head and shoulders. "Well, well," he said, again softly. "Well, well, well. So this is the beloved." He held the picture close to her eyes. She had a chance to take in a pale, youthful face with a shaggy mop of dark hair, then he flicked it round in his fingers. On the back she read, "To my darling Jamie, with all my love. C."

  "Christopher," he said, almost lovingly. "How nice to meet you." He moved his wife, quite gently, to one side and went out, still looking intently at Christopher's face. She stood motionless, hearing his heavy footsteps going up the stairs, then moving along the passage to Jamie's room. The door opened and closed. "James!" she heard him shout, "James!" The steps came back along the passage and down the stairs. She still had not moved when the door opened. Potten poked his head round the door. "I just thought you'd like to know," he said in a mock-solicitous tone, "your brave son has decided that discretion is the better part of valour." She just stared at him, unable to speak. "He's gone, Annabel. He is no longer among us." He grinned unpleasantly at her. "I just thought you'd like to know."