by Mark Morris
ENGLISH LITERATURE: C
HISTORY: C
ART: D
“No,” he breathed, not wanting to believe. “No, it can’t be.” He squeezed his eyes shut, thinking that maybe he had read the grades incorrectly, willing them to change before he opened his eyes again.
He opened his eyes.
The grades were the same.
“Aw, no,” he moaned. He had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach; it was only now that Jack realised how completely he’d pinned his hopes on these grades being right, how he’d believed they would be, if only because he desired it so much. He felt desolate. He stared at the grades again, but still they hadn’t changed. Despite the brightness of the sun beating down on him, he felt as if darkness were closing in, felt like a prisoner about to begin a sentence that would never end. He couldn’t think straight. He turned, pushed open the gate and trudged up the path to the front door. He opened the door and stepped into the house. Its smell enveloped him, pungent and sour. It made him think of death. The death of his dreams.
He pulled his father’s letter from his pocket and dropped it on the mat just inside the front door. He could hear his father in the kitchen banging blearily about. He tiptoed up the stairs, gritting his teeth at each creak; the prospect of a confrontation now was unbearable. He entered his room and threw himself face down on the bed, crumpling the letter in his hand. He felt like weeping, but didn’t. He just lay there, not moving, eyes closed. However bad he felt, he had to be sensible about this, think it through, consider his options. He wouldn’t give up; there had to be a way. But already he was wondering what sort of future there was for him around here, how he could bear to stay with his father much longer.
But of course he didn’t have to stay with his father, did he? He was eighteen now, he could do as he liked. And he didn’t have to stay in Beckford, either. Maybe he could move to Leeds and look for work there.
Even as he mulled over these possibilities, however, part of his mind rejected them. The fact was, he was scared. He’d spent his whole life scared, had grown up that way, had learned instinctively to be cautious, not to take risks, not to rock the boat. Moving away, finding a place of his own, getting a job—it all seemed like pie in the sky, a crevasse too wide to leap. Most kids who moved away still had their parents to cushion them against the blows of life, to guide them through the mine fields, to show up on their doorsteps when things got bad with a nice fat cheque and the reassuring words, “You can pay us back whenever. We’re in no hurry.” And those that didn’t have such help ended up on the scrap heap. This, at least, was the way that eighteen-year-old Jack Stone saw the world. What he had been hoping was that he would be eased into the big bad world via University, which he saw as three years of independence without the crushing responsibilities of real life.
All his plans in ruins. What had he done to deserve this? He rolled onto his back, stared out across his room and hated everything he saw. All the things he had cherished and loved—his books and games and comics and posters and silly knickknacks—he now despised because it was all part of the trap. This stuff had comforted him, this place had been a haven, but now it felt burdensome, suffocating, intolerably heavy.
A thick cone of sunlight fell through the window and formed a glowing pool on the carpet. The sunlight oozed across his bookcase, touching the spines of books and making them flash like metal. Jack rolled off his bed, pulled himself into the sunlight and slumped down in front of the bookcase. He hooked his finger into the hollow spine of a large fat book and tugged. He shifted into a cross-legged position, back arched forward, cradling the book like a baby and smoothing a hand across its cool shiny cover. The book was entitled The Bumper Book of Fairy Tales. Jack opened it, anticipating the familiar soft creak of cardboard, the gentle rustle of paper. He began turning pages until he reached the story of Dick Whittington and His Cat. One illustration in that story showed the cat, standing upright and dressed in boots and gloves, gesturing to a thought bubble above his head that showed London as an opulent city, its streets paved in shimmering gold. Of course, Jack knew that London’s streets were not really paved in gold, but that illustration had nevertheless captured his imagination as a child and had continued to inspire him as he grew older. Jack’s plan had been to spend three years at a University within shouting distance of London, and then, when he had finished his studies, to move to London and find work there.
His father’s words from two days before came back to him: You’ll never get away from this place. Never.
“Fuck you!” Jack snarled, and hurled the book across the room. It flew like a heavy broken bird and crashed into the door. “You bastard,” Jack muttered, “you bastard.” He felt as though his father’s outburst had somehow cursed him. “I’ll fucking show you,” he muttered, jumping to his feet and stomping to the window. He clenched his fist and drew it back as if to punch a hole in the glass. But after a few moments he lowered the fist to his side, still clenched.
Why would his father say something like that anyway? The number of times his father had threatened to throw him out of the house, Jack would have thought the old bastard would have been glad to get rid of him. He pressed his forehead to the warm glass. “It wasn’t my fault she died,” he muttered. “You killed her just as much as I did.” He heard his father’s heavy footsteps on the stairs and his heart sank. “Don’t come in,” he murmured, half-turning. “Not now.”
The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and began to approach along the landing. “Go past,” Jack murmured. “Don’t come in.” The footsteps stopped outside his door. Jack’s heart was pounding; he felt suddenly afraid. But when his door handle turned and the door began to open, his fear was dispelled by a fierce black surge of outrage and anger.
“What do you want?” he snapped as his father entered the room. “Why can’t you just leave me alone for once?”
For an instant Terry Stone looked taken aback, almost hurt by his son’s venom, and Jack nearly felt sorry for him, nearly apologised. Then the rheumy eyes narrowed, the lips twisted into a snarl. “Don’t you bloody talk to me like that, you little shit,” he said.
Jack felt it all bubbling up, the years of resentment and anger, and it was like a power, like an irresistible energy inside him. He strode towards his father, feeling something wild, something primitive and dangerous, struggling for release inside his head. He screeched, “Don’t you dare call me a shit, you fucking drunken waster! Look at you! You make me sick and ashamed! You’re a nothing, a nobody! What fucking right have you got to call me names!”
He was three strides away from his father now. He halted, both hands squeezed into fists by his sides. Though he was the same height as his father, he suddenly felt two feet taller and twice as broad. His father’s face was struggling for expression, so animated it was almost comic. Jack saw astonishment there, and fury, and—he believed—more than a little fear.
Eventually his father spluttered, “You . . . you little murdering bastard! How dare you talk to me like that!”
“Murderer,” Jack sneered. “What a moron you are. Can’t you get it into your thick skull that I never murdered anyone? I was a fucking baby, Dad. I didn’t ask to be born, did I? If anything, you’re the one who murdered Mum. You were the one who screwed her!”
With a howl, Terry launched himself at his son. Jack caught him by the sleeves, but could not prevent his father’s weight from crashing into him. They fell to the floor, Terry on top. Jack felt his gorge rise at the stifling odours—unwashed flesh, stale urine, sour breath, smoke, alcohol—that settled over his face and seemed to cling there like a web.
“Get off me,” Jack gasped, “get off me, you bastard!” He was still clutching his father’s arms, which were thrashing like giant eels eager to bite. He brought his knee up hard and felt it make weighty contact with something—either his father’s balls or the inside of his thigh. Whatever, it was enough to make his father grunt and suddenly weaken. Jack heaved off his weight
and slid out from beneath him.
It was all so shocking and sudden. For a long time Jack had been expecting something like this, but he had also expected some warning, some ceremony, some preamble. The fact that he had goaded his father, that he had instigated this violence, did not make it any easier to accept that they were now rolling around the carpet, scrapping like dogs. Jack, off balance, tried to scramble to his feet, but felt a hand close around his ankle and yank back hard enough to make his knee pop. He’s dislocated it, Jack thought in a flare of panic, but the pain, though excruciating, was momentary.
He felt hands climbing him, digging in, trying to reach his face. When involved in violence, Jack always found it confusing, a buzzing blur of movement and colour and pain. He punched down to where he thought his father’s head would be and felt his knuckles make contact with something very hard, like a building brick encased in rubber. Through the tight radiance of pain that syringed up the bone in the centre of his arm he heard his father make a strange noise, a kind of giant gulp, as if he had been forced to swallow a cricket ball.
Again he felt his father’s hands weaken, and threw them off him, scrambling backwards, out of his range. His spine cracked against the edge of the bed. Jack cried out, tears of pain springing to his eyes. Through the swimming film across his vision, he saw his father lying on his stomach, trying to push himself upright with arms that wouldn’t quite respond. Did I really hit him that hard? Jack thought, and felt no glee, only fear. What if he had rattled his brain, given him a haemorrhage or something? He blinked his tears away and saw blood on his hand. He looked again at his father. Blood was gushing from a cut that bisected his eyebrow, running down his stubbly cheek, beneath his jaw and into the collar of his shirt.
“Are you all right, Dad?” Jack said. His voice was small, boyish.
His father paused, and then swung the top of his body round to face Jack, like a shark homing in on the vibrations of his voice.
“You’re dead, boy, you’re fucking dead,” his father said. The words were spoken fuzzily, but with a certainty that made Jack squirm inside.
“No, Dad,” Jack said. “Let’s stop now. This has gone too far.”
“You’ve gone too far,” his father corrected him, still in that same quiet voice. “The first thing you ever did was to kill your mother, to ruin my life. I think it’s time you paid for that.”
“No, Dad,” Jack moaned. “You don’t know what you’re saying. This is really stupid.”
Terry Stone shook his head and immediately screwed up his eyes in pain. “No,” he mumbled, “this isn’t stupid. Not stupid at all.” He reached for a golf club that was propped against Jack’s bookcase. It was a putter, the binding coming off the handle. Jack had bought it at a jumble sale once, intending to buy a whole set piece by piece and take up golf, but the fad had quickly died.
“Put that down, Dad,” Jack said, his voice quavering badly. His anger had dissipated as suddenly as it had come. Now he felt only misery and a crushing depression, wanted only for this whole scene to end, for it never to have begun at all.
Terry Stone showed no intention of putting down the club. He dragged it to him, used it to prop himself up.
“Dad,” Jack warned again, “you don’t need that. Here, let me help you.” He pushed himself to his feet, clutching his back, and took a step towards his father. Face twisting with hate, Terry grasped the club in both hands and swung it through the air towards his son.
Jack ducked, throwing up his arms to protect his head. He heard the club whistle through the air. He braced himself for the pain, but instead heard a crash and a curse. He opened his eyes and peeked out from beneath his armpit to see what had saved him.
Somehow his father had managed to snag the rumpled blanket of Jack’s unmade bed with the head of the club. He had then tried to drag the club back too quickly whilst trying to free it and had succeeded only in knocking the lamp from the bedside table. He was up on his knees now, yanking the club from the debris, obviously in readiness for another try. “Dad!” Jack yelled. “Stop this! It’s crazy!”
Terry Stone glanced at his son, and immediately Jack saw there was no reasoning with him. He made a bolt for the door, but just as his fingers touched the handle the golf club appeared beside him and smashed into the door, slamming it shut and denting it in the process. Jack went cold—that could have been his skull. He made a grab for the club but it was snatched away, the blunt head catching the ends of his fingers and making them sting. Jack was only grateful that the weapon was so cumbersome in the small room. He looked around frantically for a weapon of his own. All he could see was the big book of fairy tales lying open beside the door. He snatched it up.
He turned and flung up the book as a shield just in time. The head of the club slammed into it; a split-second later and it would have been his face. “Dad!” Jack screamed. “Dad, please stop!” As his father drew the club back and raised it to swing again, Jack ran at him, wailing in terror and desperation, and smashed the book as hard as he could into his face.
There was an awful crunching sound, and Jack thought he heard the air rushing from his father’s body. Then Terry toppled backwards, his hands above his head, the golf club slipping from his grasp. There was blood on the back of the book; the centre of Terry’s face was a crimson explosion. Because he had been kneeling, Terry’s legs swung out from his collapsing body, slamming into Jack’s legs and knocking him sideways. Jack fell into his bookcase, which rocked but remained upright. Books fell from the shelves, bouncing off his shoulders, slithering across the floor. For a moment after his fall, and after the books had stopped tumbling, there was complete silence in the room. Jack thought, My father’s dead! I’ve killed him! Then his ears seemed to unblock and he heard the reedy sound of his breathing.
Jack got to his feet, trembling, nauseous. His body felt full of freezing air, making every organ shiver. His father was lying on his back, arms above his head, legs straight down, like a sacrifice. This is it, Jack thought. There’s no way back from here. He didn’t know what to do. He pushed himself back against the wall, looked down at his father’s prone body and gnawed the fingernails on his right hand. His father gave a small groan and moved his head a little. Jack felt suddenly frantic. I can’t be here when he wakes up, he thought. He’ll kill me.
Moving slowly, gingerly, as though in a den of sleeping lions, Jack stepped over his father’s body and picked up the golf club, which lay on the floor above the limp tobacco-stained hands. He looked around for a suitable hiding place, then, unable to find one, threw the club out of the window and watched it bounce and come to rest on the cobblestones below. Next, he dragged a black Adidas bag from beneath his bed and began to stuff things into it—clothes, wallet, cheque book and card, tape recorder, camera, the letter he’d received that morning. He worked quickly, urgently, terrified his father was going to wake up.
When he had all he wanted from his bedroom, he ran down the hall and skidded into the bathroom. He stuffed a towel into his bag, a toilet roll, his toothbrush. Soap and shampoo followed, deodorant, a comb. What else, what else? He thought he heard his father groan. He ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, grabbed a packet of biscuits from the cupboard, milk from the fridge. He ran back to the foot of the stairs. “Dad?” he shouted. “Dad, are you okay?” Silence. Was his father pretending or was he really still unconscious? Keeping his eye on the stairs, in case his father should appear, all bloody and snarling like a psycho in a film, Jack picked up the phone and dialed 999.
“Ambulance, please,” he said when asked which service he required. He gave the address, then said, “The man you want will be upstairs,” and replaced the receiver to stem any further questions.
Despite the heat, he took down his jacket from the row of hooks behind the front door and put it on. He took down his cagoul too, rolled it up into a tight ball and stuffed it into his bag. He glanced up the stairs again, then opened the front door, wincing at the creak it made, and stepped outside.
Sweat was rolling off him; his skin was shining as if smothered in oil. He looked around, saw a slab of stone lying in the grass of the overgrown lawn, and used it to prop open the front door. Then he walked down the garden path and turned left outside the gate, heading up Daisy Lane in the direction of the Butterworths’ farm.
He was almost at the top of the lane, where it joined the main road into Beckford, when he heard the wail of a siren. He tossed his bag over a dry-stone wall and vaulted after it, hoping a cowpat was not awaiting him on the other side. He crouched behind the wall until the ambulance had swept into the turning and begun its bumpy descent towards the house. At this rate his father would be in Beckford before him. He climbed over the wall, retrieved his bag, made his way to the top of Daisy Lane, then began to jog down the hill towards the village.
Ten minutes later he was at his Aunt Georgina’s house. He rang the bell, hoping she was not shopping or at one of her WI meetings. He crossed from the front door to the small leaded window on the right and peered into the front room. He noticed a tea tray balanced on the pouffe before the floral-patterned settee; the pot was encased within a green hand-knitted tea cosy but its spout was exposed and steam was rising from it. At the back of the room, beside a small dining alcove, was another door, which led into the kitchen. This door now opened and his aunt appeared, wiping her hands on the apron round her waist. Jack waved but she didn’t see him. As she crossed to the door the flawed glass seemed to tug at her, ballooning her head, swiping her features into a blur, fragmenting the outline of her hips.
When she opened the door she didn’t look surprised to see him and immediately Jack thought, She knows what’s happened. My father’s told her. Or the hospital.
“Well,” she said, “is it good news or bad?”
“What?” replied Jack.
“Your exam results. Wasn’t it today you were getting them? Did you get the grades you wanted?”
