Luke and Jon

by Robert Williams

  Skin and bones

  Just as I was holding Kieran Judd by his neck and pushing so hard his eyeballs popped, Dad was ringing the hospital and asking to speak to Dr Abdelbaki. He lied and said, yes, he was a close relative, and it was as easy as that. The doctor told him about the tests they had run and the results they had received back.

  Jon was, he said, micronutrient malnourished, which was normally referred to as hidden hunger. He said it was more common in the Third World but there were more and more cases of it in Britain and America because of bad diets. He said that it’s called hidden hunger because the person may be eating but they are eating the wrong kind of food, food deficient in vitamins and nutrients. The tests showed that Jon didn’t have enough iron, vitamin A, zinc or iodine. He was run down and his immune system was weak and as a result he was more prone to catching disease. And when Dad told me that, I thought about the tight, hard, cough that had plagued Jon from the first day he’d turned up at our door and which sometimes grabbed him and shook his chest like an earthquake.

  They would keep Jon in hospital for a few days, put him on a drip and feed him. They would monitor his response and then, if everything went as expected, he should be OK to leave. The doctor asked when Dad would be coming to visit next and told him they would talk more then. Before Dad hung up he asked about the grandparents. And there was a lot to tell but to be blunt they were knackered.

  The hospital had run a battery of tests and the doctors were armed with pages of results as evidence. Jon’s grandma was suffering from dementia and her mind was gone, her memory dissolved. She didn’t know where she was or who her husband was most of the time. Nobody knew what ghosts she could see and when she talked it could just be a name said over and over, or rambling sentences that went nowhere and made no sense. When Jon described her random and fractured speech, it made me think of the book my mum had started to write when she had been unwell. She was troubled by something or everything and when she wasn’t sleeping her eyes darted around the room looking for something that wasn’t there in the empty corners, a constant expression of worry working her face. The hospital said they would try and make her comfortable but her mental health would only get worse in time. Jon’s granddad wasn’t as bad. The doctors didn’t get much out of him but he knew where he was; he knew what was going on. He just didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. He could walk, very slowly, and they were feeding him, trying to make him stronger. Both were as malnourished as Jon and there were no decisions to be made. If they ever did make it out of the hospital, it wouldn’t be to go back to their house on the fell. Dad was told it had gone on far too long and things had got out of control. It wouldn’t be left to happen again. Jon’s grandparents would be found residential care. Jon would be found a home elsewhere. It would, they said, be better for everyone.

  I played a trick

  I followed Jon’s example. I asked Dad if he would give me a lift across town. He looked surprised, I never normally asked to be taken anywhere, but he went to grab the car keys. It was a couple of days after Jon had been admitted to hospital and it was the first night we hadn’t been to see him. I could just about remember the way and I made sure we drove past the dark crumbling mills and the breezeblock estates. It was all beautifully bleak and just as I remembered it. I was glad that everything around was being pummelled with black winter rain, painting the perfect picture for Dad, but when I glanced across at him I realised he probably wasn’t taking much of it in. His eyes were staring hard and straight ahead, looking for risk through the rain. We passed the last groups of estate houses and bobbled down the gravel road and the building loomed into sight, a dark, rain-lashed shadow ahead. I told Dad to pull over at the entrance to the drive and he stopped and turned the engine off. He glanced around, looking for clues. I pointed towards the sign standing to our right. He wiped the condensation from the inside of his window and peered and read. He looked back to me and asked what this was all about, why had I brought him here? I told him: because Jon brought me here. Because this is where he will end up; it’s the only place they could put him. Dad was already turning the car around in the tight lane as I spoke, turning it to face Duerdale Fell and the drive home. I couldn’t read his face at all. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, if he was angry or not. We drove back to the house in silence and parted at the front door. I went straight up to my room and Dad went to his workroom.

  It was late when he knocked at my door. A tentative tap that wouldn’t wake me if I was sleeping. I was in bed but a world away from sleep and said to come in. Dad slipped past the door, crossed the room and sat at the foot of my bed. I sat up, turned my lamp on and blinked heavily, shutting out the glare. Dad said he was sorry if he’d woken me and I told him he hadn’t, that I wasn’t even tired. He rested his hands on his knees and started asking questions about Jon. About how he came to live with his grandparents, how long he’d lived on the fell and what I knew about his mum and dad. Did he have any other relatives? I answered as well as I could. I told him I didn’t know how long Jon had lived here but I thought it was a few years. I told him his mum was dead and he never knew his dad. As for any other relations, he never mentioned anyone and I got the feeling that was because he didn’t know of any.

  Dad sat silent, considering the information I’d managed to give him.

  ‘How would you feel about it?’ he asked. ‘Another person, here, all the time.’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, he’s here a lot of the time anyway, isn’t he?’

  He nodded. ‘He is, but this would be something else altogether. This isn’t fish and chips, a video and a sleepover. This is responsibility.’

  He meant it was responsibility for him.

  ‘Mum wouldn’t have even had to think about it.’

  He didn’t flinch, didn’t move a millimetre. I lay awkwardly, half propping myself up, arms aching, waiting for his response. He carried on sitting with his hands on his knees, staring ahead. Eventually he stood up and turned my lamp off. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep.’

  Pamphlets, leaflets and forms

  ‘I’ll phone them,’ he said the next morning. ‘That Mr McGrath, I’ll speak to him. See what he has to say.’ I carried on eating my cornflakes. He looked across at me. ‘But things like these, Luke, they’re never simple. Don’t get ahead of yourself. And don’t say anything to Jon.’

  He phoned Mr McGrath that afternoon. He explained why he was ringing, what he was thinking, and then waited for a list of reasons why it wasn’t feasible. He waited to hear that there were waiting lists, regulations, procedures and processes. But Mr McGrath just told him to come in for a chat the next day. So after he dropped me off at school Dad drove to the red Social Services building in town and found Mr McGrath’s small and cluttered office. They talked about Jon. They spoke about his situation. It was very sad, they said. Tragic. They shook their heads. Two men on the same side. Then Mr McGrath turned his attention to Dad. How did he know Jon? How long had Jon been coming to the house? Did Dad have any contact with Jon’s grandparents? How did I feel about it all? How did he think Jon would feel about the idea? Did Dad realise that there would be police checks, interviews, references requested? There would be scrutiny. Dad was bombarded for the next twenty minutes. He left with a mountain of pamphlets, leaflets and forms. He was told to read them all and to think hard about how serious he was about all of this.

  When I got back from school I didn’t find him in his workroom as usual. He was sat at the table by the front window that looked out onto the falling fields and further down onto Duerdale. All the paperwork was scattered in front of him. The sun was already setting and the town’s lights were beginning to come on. The long, straight bypass that cuts across the length of the valley was the first to light up and it always reminded me of a runway at night. The town followed. A cluster of lights springing on and lighting up the estates to the south of the town and the terraced streets nearer the centre. It looked like a golden spider web settling into the
black of the valley, an ugly town turned pretty for the night. He glanced up when I walked in and he looked like he’d just got off a long-haul flight. I asked him if he was all right and he stood up slowly, stretched and twisted and said he was. He’d just been thinking, that was all, thinking all afternoon.

  White lies and hard truths

  Dr Abdelbaki knew that Dad wasn’t related to Jon. And so did all the nurses. Mr McGrath probably told them. But nobody seemed that concerned. They knew that Arthur and Edna Mansfield were two wards below, probably not long for this world; they knew the background and they were pleased someone was taking an interest. Mr McGrath and Ms Green had been visiting Jon regularly and I thought he would have little time for them. I thought that they were the sworn enemy, that he would stare ahead, refuse to make eye contact, fold his arms and bury his chin in his chest. But it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe it’s like Mum said, things are only rarely as bad as your imagination can make them. Now Jon was slap bang in the middle of his nightmare, now it was happening, maybe it just wasn’t quite as nightmarish as he’d imagined.

  He visited his grandparents on their ward during the days. He received the same confused stare from his gran that everyone received, and Jon admitted that she’d been like that for months now. But he sat with her every day. He changed the water in her glass and tidied her bedside table. When she said incomprehensible things about people he’d never heard of, people he wasn’t sure had ever existed, he nodded as if it all made sense. When she was agitated and scared, shouting out, he tried to calm her. He told her she was safe. He held her hand.

  Jon’s granddad had calmed down since his kidnapping. He was resigned and tired. Remarkably he and Jon never spoke about the day they were dragged from their home and brought to the hospital. And they never spoke about what might happen next. Jon said he would try but his granddad would get annoyed, wave him quiet and tell him not to be bothering trouble. And Jon said that he’d always been like that. Even when his mum died, when he was dumped on their doorstep, they just opened the door and let him in, made up a bed and carried on. Things were as they were and they muddled through. When Jon arrived from his ward to sit with his gran for a while Arthur would drag himself to the hospital garden and sit on a bench in the corner and look up to the sky or just stare ahead. I saw him out there a couple of times, and part of me wanted to go and sit with him. But I knew I never would; I couldn’t think of one single thing to talk to him about. And I just didn’t dare.

  Dad had reached a decision and he seemed sure. He said we would give it a go. See what we could do – if that was all right with me. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t go any further. We’d stop it now. He thought we should have a big chat, I could tell. He kept saying that this was a life-changing decision and he wanted to know my views. I told him we had no choice; it was just something we had to do. He got annoyed at that and said that it wasn’t just something we had to do. We had to make a conscious decision whether or not to go ahead and it would affect me just as much as it would affect him. I should think about what it would actually mean on a day-to-day basis. So I shrugged. That annoyed him even more. I knew it would. Sometimes it’s fun. But he knew what I thought. He was just annoyed that he wasn’t getting his big discussion. He was annoyed that I wasn’t saying that I knew it would be tough for him but it was the right thing to do. Well done, Dad. I just didn’t feel like joining in and I really did think that we didn’t have a choice. It was clear to me. He was right about one thing though. We had to speak to Jon. Neither of us knew what he thought about the whole thing.

  It was getting late and Jon was tucked up in bed and it was only a few minutes until chucking-out time and Dad still hadn’t said anything. Some visitors at other beds were already pulling coats on and checking pockets for keys. I kicked at Dad’s leg underneath the bed. He glared at me. He cleared his throat and told Jon something that he already knew – that he would have to live somewhere else from now on. Jon nodded that he understood that to be the case. There was a pause before Dad asked how he would feel if the house he came to stay at was ours. Jon didn’t look at either of us. Just said quietly that it would be brilliant. Dad said, ‘Well, we’ll see what we can do, eh? See what happens … It’s out of my hands really so no promises.’ There was silence. Jon rubbed a tear into his cheek. Dad exhaled and looked up at the ceiling fan. I looked across Jon’s bed and saw the three of us reflected in the black window and started to laugh like a lunatic. I held my hand over my mouth and nose and tried to keep it down and hold it in but it bubbled up and sprayed out anyway. Dad looked annoyed and Jon looked shocked. I managed to calm myself and stifle the laughs and I apologised. I said it was just because I was nervous. And although that is true, I do laugh when I’m nervous, it was really the sight of the three of us, reflected back in the hospital window that set me off. We looked so gormless and mismatched and bloody useless. But we were having a go at least. You can’t say we weren’t doing that.

  I didn’t dare look at the reflection for the next few minutes in case it set me off again but it was nearly chucking-out time anyway. Dad told Jon that he would have to talk to his granddad to see what he had to say about it all and Jon nodded that he would and then we grabbed our coats to leave. We left the ward and joined the exodus of relatives and friends back to the car park. When we got out into the cold night air Dad stopped. He rammed his hands deep into his coat pockets, leant against a pillar and breathed heavily in and out for a few seconds before jogging across the car park to catch me up.

  Chuck

  The day I cracked Kieran Judd’s head against a wall like it was an egg I threw up. I was lying on my bed after school, not even thinking about anything and then I was suddenly prickly hot. Colours flashed behind my eyes and my whole body went slack and I knew what was coming. I managed to make it to the bathroom on jelly legs just in time to kneel over the toilet and heave. The walls of my belly closed in and I was sick three times. Three full retches that tore my tummy muscles and filled the bowl. I flushed the smell away but waited by the toilet, making sure I’d emptied myself fully. When I’d decided it had all come out I washed my face, rinsed my mouth and cleaned my teeth. I went back to bed but I was cold now, trembling, and I wrapped the covers tight around me. Dad tapped on my door and asked if I was OK. I told him I was, that there was a bug going round, that was all. He padded away and it was only then that I thought about what had happened with Kieran Judd. And it shocked me who I’d been for those two minutes. I don’t even like watching violence in films; I always turn away when things get particularly bad or gruesome. I always was the delicate artist. I couldn’t be sorry though; I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. It was simple: it needed to be done and it had to be me who did it. I just hoped that I didn’t have to do anything like it ever again. But I would do if I had to. I might read books and paint pictures but I’m not soft.

  Hospital garden bench

  The meeting between Gerald Redridge and Arthur Mansfield took place in the hospital garden on a cold but bright Wednesday afternoon. God knows how they managed a conversation. Here were two men, normally as silent as gateposts, sitting side by side on a wooden bench, having to address a subject that neither really wanted to address at all. I would’ve loved to have been there. Even just to count the words that passed between them. It couldn’t have been more than seventeen surely? I was stuck at school though and spent the afternoon staring out of dirty windows at empty playing fields and wondering what was happening two and a half miles away.

  Mr McGrath had been visiting Jon’s granddad regularly and had already made him aware that it was impossible for Jon to live at the farmhouse any more. The legal side of things, whether or not Arthur and Edna Mansfield were ever officially Jon’s legal guardians, seemed to be a fact that nobody could trace, an issue that nobody was too certain about. But Mr McGrath said that, in a way, it didn’t really matter any more anyway. Neither of them were able to provide adequate care for Jon, so it had become irrelevant. Mr McGra
th had already told Arthur about the idea, the possibility, that Jon could live with us and Jon himself had hinted something similar. So Dad wasn’t going in cold. Arthur Mansfield had been briefed. Dad was still nervous though and when he dropped me off at school he told me to wish him luck in telling a frail old man he’d come to take his grandson away.