‘No.’
‘Well, maybe you were too little. But it’s the same thing—my card’s out of date, and I didn’t realise till yesterday. There’s a whole rigmarole about getting a new one. So QC’s getting us in with his card—it’s just easier that way. We’d have to postpone the visit otherwise.’
‘But it’s wrong,’ I said. ‘It’s dishonest.’
I heard QC cackling again in the back.
‘Don’t be soft. I work here, remember?’ my father said. ‘We’re not breaking and entering. Just bending the rules.’
Except that we were still on the wrong side of the barrier and the guard was taking a very long time to check his list of names. Part of me hoped he was on the phone to my mother. An acid pain was brewing in my stomach, thinking of how worried she was getting. The backs of my knees were sweating.
My father sat beside me peacefully, examining his knuckles, hopscotching the fingers of his other hand over the scabs. His chest rose and fell beneath his seatbelt. He began to whistle Grandstand. ‘Stop it,’ QC said. ‘Are you trying to piss me off?’
The wait felt interminable.
I said, ‘Dad, I think we ought to just leave it.’
He glowered at me. ‘What?’
‘Let’s just go home. If we can’t get in, it’s okay—honest, I don’t mind.’ Maybe if I’d withheld the next thing out of my mouth, he might’ve listened to me. He might’ve backed away from the barrier. ‘Mum said it might turn out like this, so it’s fine. Honest. I’m not even fussed.’
QC made a pained noise.
My father didn’t react. His eyelids dropped and opened. There was hardly a movement in the car park. I could see the motion of his tongue behind his teeth. The engine shuddered underneath us. ‘You know, I just had the weirdest déjà vu,’ he said, eventually. ‘Ever get one of those?’
‘No, and I don’t believe in ’em,’ QC replied.
‘Wasn’t talking to you, fella.’ His voice seemed to crackle. ‘Maybe it’s not a déjà vu exactly—more like an old familiar feeling coming back to me. I was thinking about this bloke Tom Pascoe, used to work with us on the farm.’
‘You’re not making much sense here, Fran, I hate to tell you.’
‘Can you shut up, please? I’m talking to my son.’ My father addressed me without facing me. ‘Pascoe worked for us when I was little—this weird-looking Geordie who my dad took on. People said he maimed two lambs on someone else’s grazing land, but I never really bought into that story, personally.’
‘What’s maimed?’ I asked.
‘Injured, hurt.’
‘Oh.’
‘There was no proof he’d done it, mind you, not a scrap of it, but he got pinned with the crime just because his face was an easy fit. He’d been in borstal as a kid—that’s what they used to call prisons for lads your age—and people didn’t really trust him once they’d heard about all that. Can’t say I liked him that much. He was a narky sort of bloke, but he was a hard grafter on the farm, especially when it got to clipping time, so my dad thought the sun shone out of him.’
He made us wait for it, wetting his lips—and I can see now, because I’m convinced this was the only truthful story he told on the whole trip, that he was trying to resist the urge to reconstruct it.
‘Thing is,’ he went on, ‘once these kinds of accusations start being thrown about, they make an awful stink. Folks had all made up their minds that Pascoe did the crime, so that was that. The stink was on him. And because he worked for us, the stink was on my dad as well. We lost a load of money that year. You’ve got to deal with a situation like that, don’t you? Make a stand either way—you can’t let it drag on. So my dad gave Pascoe the boot—I suppose he never had a choice. He let him have a few months’ pay and found him a job at a dairy out in Devon or somewhere, I forget where exactly. But, I tell you what, I never saw my old man so upset about anything before. I mean, he didn’t shed a tear when I left home, but when Tom Pascoe went, wah, he was in a mood for weeks.’ My father grasped the steering wheel now, twisted to look at me.
I knew he wanted me to ask what happened to Pascoe, so I did.
‘Probably topped himself,’ said QC in the back.
‘Not far off . . . Turned out, those lambs were hurt by someone else—two lads on another farm with a crossbow, shooting at things just for something to do. They’d bought it from a catalogue, would you believe. Well, they got caught doing it a second time. Pair of idiots. So, right away, my dad rang up his mate at the dairy to get Pascoe back to work for us, but, nope—too late. Way too late. Pascoe was in prison, wasn’t he? He’d got eight years for robbing a post office about a month after he’d left our farm and no one had told us a word. The old man couldn’t get over it. He was so bloody relieved. The way he thought about it was: Phew, close shave, eh? That Pascoe was rotten all along. Good riddance. But that wasn’t how I saw it then, and I still don’t see it that way.’
Another car was waiting in the bay behind us now, motor running.
‘Sounds like it was good riddance, to be fair,’ QC said.
My father turned to him. ‘Where’s this list he’s checking, mate—Alaska?’
I was still pondering his sermon. ‘But, wait, I don’t get it—Pascoe was bad. He didn’t hurt the sheep, but he stole from a post office. That makes him bad.’
‘Dan, come on, not you as well, son. I thought you had more sense.’
‘It’s obvious, though,’ I said.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say so. It all depends how you look at it.’ He squeezed the sore spots of his knuckles. ‘You can say that he was rotten from the off, or you can say his circumstances made him that way, can’t you? That’s what I think. My old man let him down. Big time.’
The car behind us beeped. He ignored it.
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
It beeped again.
‘What the bloody—?’ He spun round. ‘Are you hearing this?’
‘Yeah. Head up, though,’ said QC, nodding at the windscreen. ‘Movement.’
The guard was coming now, and he had company—another guard in a navy-blue jumper with a walkie-talkie.
‘Shit,’ my father said. ‘That other fella knows me.’
‘Don’t panic. Wait and see.’
They approached the car and stood at my father’s window. ‘Did you manage to sort it for us, then?’ he asked them curtly. ‘There’s a bit of a queue forming now.’
The guard in the jumper spoke first. ‘Sorry, I’m afraid we need identification for you and the boy.’
QC rolled down his window. ‘What’s the problem, Foz?’
The guard tapped his clipboard. ‘Got the names right here, like you said. Just need to check some IDs before we can oblige.’
‘Hey, come on, that can’t be right. I work here,’ QC said. ‘I’m allowed to bring in any guests I want.’
‘Not without ID you’re not,’ the other guard insisted. ‘It’s procedure.’
My father stared up at him. ‘I don’t have any. For either of us.’
‘Then you’ll have to back up. I’ll give the car behind a nudge.’
‘No, no, no, come on. This is crazy. I work here!’ QC pleaded.
The guard in the white shirt planted his hands on the roof. ‘We’ve been told not to let anyone through without ID, mate, sorry. Unless you have a driver’s licence or a passport or something like that?’
‘Dad, let’s go,’ I said. ‘I want to go home.’
But he just scowled at the guards. ‘Who told you? Who told you not to let us in?’
‘It’s just procedure, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, right. He works here, we’re his guests and we’re on the list—I don’t see the problem.’
The guards were unmoved. ‘Look, if you’re not going to shift your car, we’ll have to wait for the police to sort this out.’
‘The police! The police now! Oh my god, what is this?’
‘You want to calm down, mate,’ said QC.
&n
bsp; ‘Dad, let’s go. Let’s just leave.’
‘What business is it of the fucking police?’
‘You should listen to your lad there,’ said the guard in the jumper. ‘He seems to have his head screwed on.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah, Dad, come on, let’s go.’
‘This is all her doing, you know,’ my father told QC. ‘She won’t stop till I’m humiliated. I told you, didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you? Once was bad enough. This is fucking uncalled for.’
‘Fran. Calm down now. Seriously.’ QC was buckling himself in. ‘You’re landing me in it here.’
‘I can’t believe this. I mean, is this beyond the pale, or what?’
The guard in the jumper stooped, a staunch expression on his face, meant for my father. ‘Listen to me now, I work this gate quite a bit, and I know who’s who, all right? That’s all I’m saying to you, pal. You’re not fooling anyone. I’ve a decent memory for faces. This isn’t the way to get your access back, all right?’
‘Yeah, yeah, dickhead, I get it, I get it.’ My father jabbed his leg down on the clutch pedal and joggled the gearstick. ‘You’re humiliating me in front of my son. Thanks a lot for that. Well done.’
‘You’re humiliating yourself, pal. Don’t let me see you here again or there’ll be bother.’
‘Dad,’ I called.
‘Just back up, Fran. Or you’ll get me in the shit.’
‘You’re already in it, mate,’ he said. ‘Are you stupid?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You know what it means.’
‘Let’s just go. Before you get me sacked.’
My father huffed. ‘Yeah. Fuck it.’ He revved the engine hard. The car behind us arced away, heeding our reverse lights. As he wheeled us backwards, he stuck two of his bruised left fingers up towards the guards. They didn’t seem to mind. One spoke into his walkie-talkie, one smoothed down his sleeves. Our wheels spun and squealed.
QC went for the door but my father had the child lock on. ‘You’ve lost it, mate. I’m getting out.’ He rattled the handle.
My father took his foot off the accelerator. We rolled back with sheer momentum, and everything seemed to go quiet and still, as though we’d left the tow of gravity. Then he slotted into forward gear again. My belly lurched. The tyres shrieked beneath us. We were streaking down the road with all the clouds retreating from the windscreen and QC pinned against his seat. My father’s fists were clenched tight on the wheel. I wanted to cry right then, but didn’t, fearing it might worsen his behaviour, that he would see my tears as a disgrace, another provocation. As we neared the junction, our pace gathered. The lights flicked green to amber, but he dismissed them, taking the turn at such a speed that QC’s body swayed behind us. His weighty hand thudded the window. ‘Christ, Fran, what’s got into you? Slow down, you arsehole. This ain’t funny.’ But my father wasn’t listening.
I had seen a different kind of rage in him before, watching through the uprights of our bannister. He would prowl the limits of our hallway as my mother’s insults rained on him. Selfish, worthless, lazy, stupid, heartless, shameful, coward. She’d exhume all of his past mistakes and indiscretions, spitting names of other women like obscenities, reminding him she’d never really loved him anyway, saying how he couldn’t even do the simplest thing she asked, how all her friends detested him, and even his own son had lost respect for him. An hour or two of this, and he would break.
He’d put his boot through the flank of the sideboard. He’d kick chunks from the door under the stairs. Pictures and ornaments would get hurled against the dado rail, swept from the walls, trodden. Later, with him safely gone, the shattered pieces would be folded into newspapers; my mother on her knees, a wreck. ‘Get the hoover out, Daniel, please. Don’t say anything. I know, okay? I know.’ (Children of unhappy marriages become adept with vacuum cleaners. We grow accustomed to unpacking them in the small hours, using them in lieu of fixing things we can’t. A well-vacuumed carpet is an equilibrium.)
He never hit my mother while he lived with us—at least, not to my knowledge—but our repainted doorframes looked like avocado skins, our furniture was patched and crooked, most of the family photographs had no glass in the frames. It seems alarming to me now that I once admired him for his restraint, as though not striking her required some extraordinary act of will.
I can’t pretend to understand what all my parents’ arguments were about, or who was to blame for starting them. Hindsight makes it easy to link every problem in their marriage to my father, but perhaps this is too simplistic a view to take—because, despite what happened in the end, and all his cruelty, can it really be that he was responsible for each defective moment in their life together?
I know what my memory has recorded. And I recall that when they fought, he’d stand there, doing nothing, while she punched and punched and punched, as though he were acquiescing to her right to beat him, taking all her puny blows the way a tree accepts the birds. I think this means he recognised the badness that lurked in him and wanted to suppress it. A better man would not have failed to, I suppose.
When he realised the cars ahead were stationary, he stamped down on the brakes. It seemed the entire chassis was sliding out from under us. The tyres made a ripping noise. The seatbelt bit my collarbone. I shut my eyes, expecting to be swallowed up in metal, showered with glass, but there was no impact at all. There was a pure, remarkable hush.
Glancing up, I found we’d stopped a yard from a van’s rear bumper. A Labrador was panting at us gormlessly from the back window. There was a smell of cooked rubber. My father’s face looked sunburned. He sounded starved of air. ‘Come on, move it. Fucking move it!’ He pushed at the horn with both fists. ‘It’s green, you idiots!’
‘Stop beeping, for fuck’s sake,’ QC shouted from the back. ‘Where exactly are they meant to go?’
‘Anywhere. Out of my way. I don’t care.’ He blasted the horn again. And in the lull of his frustration, he turned to me and saw that I was terrified and padding tears with my sleeves. ‘Don’t fucking cry—it’s not my fault, okay? Don’t fucking cry on me.’
‘Never your fault, is it, Fran?’ said QC. ‘Jesus bloody Christ. Let me out. Right now.’
My father paid him no attention. He edged us forward as the queue of cars began to filter left. We were heading back down Kirkstall Road, in the opposite direction. ‘You know, I’m putting two and two together here,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like the answer that keeps coming back to me.’ I gave a spluttering noise he didn’t care for either: he glared at me with vague disgust, the type I thought he only harboured for strangers. ‘Will you be quiet?’ he said. ‘You’ve got to toughen up, son. I tried the best I could for you, I really did. I tried everything. And, all right, I messed up. I know, I know. I couldn’t get you in there like I promised. But I’m telling you right now, the entire fucking universe is up against me at the minute. I swear to god, it is. And I just can’t compete with that. Nobody can.’
‘It’s all hot fucking air with you, isn’t it?’ said QC. ‘Give the lad a break. He’s frightened, mate. How stupid are you? You’re acting like a loon.’
‘Is that right? How many kids you got, Barn? You’ve no fucking idea.’
‘Pull the fuck over.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Pull over, Fran. I’m not playing any more.’
My father fixed his eyes on the road. We were keeping to the speed limit, trailing behind average people having what I hoped were pleasant interactions with the voices on their radios, but I could tell that he was itching to race past them. He kept changing lanes, creeping closer to the car in front, as though trying to couple with its tow bar. When we drove by Yorkshire Television again, he wouldn’t look. I watched the buildings slip into the gloom behind my shoulder. ‘I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you, mate,’ he called back to QC, who was now leaning across the back seat, trying to figure out the chil
d lock. ‘Because, like I said, when you add two and two, I mean, it really looks like you just stitched me up back there. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I know you were behind it.’
QC didn’t answer. He was pulling and pushing at the door lever in vain.
‘You told them we were coming, didn’t you? Not Foz—that bloke was clueless. I mean, you must’ve flagged my name up with the other fella somehow.’
‘Stop acting paranoid,’ said QC. ‘You’re making things worse.’
I was still trying to stop my jaw from yammering. My eyes felt leaden and stung. I wanted to hear sirens, to see the rescue lights of police cars nearing, but I knew they wouldn’t come. Instead, the vapid corporate buildings we had passed less than an hour ago receded from my view again, and I was so removed from them, so disconnected from their normalness, that stomach acid rose into my mouth, left an astringent coating in my gullet. I’ve come to know the taste of it too well.
‘Don’t hear you denying it,’ my father said. ‘You told them we were coming, didn’t you? You piece of shit.’
‘Hey, you wanna mind what you say to me. I just did you a favour, remember?’
‘Right. Some favour.’
‘Don’t go blaming me. You had a plan. It didn’t work, mate. Simple.’
‘Yeah, because you dobbed me in. You went and spoke to Palmer.’
‘Palmer. Palmer! You’re losing it, mate. Get a grip.’
‘You still haven’t denied it.’
‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. All right? That what you need to hear?’
‘Yeah. I don’t fucking believe you, though.’
‘Pull over.’
‘No.’
‘Pull over.’
‘No.’
At this, QC sprang forward. He grabbed the upper section of my father’s seatbelt, tugging on it like a boat rope. He hooked the other arm around my father’s windpipe. ‘Pull the fuck over. Now.’ And though I heard myself calling weakly, ‘Don’t, QC! Let him go,’ my body stayed planted in the seat. I wanted it to end. I wanted him to squeeze just hard enough to make my father faint, so we’d career into the central reservation, smash the barrier. With any luck, I’d wake up in the hospital and find my mother tending to my injuries.
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better Page 12
