by F. G. Cottam
What was really magical about the piece he had just read for the second time was what James thought for its author would be the throwaway section, the second paragraph, where he had painted a careless picture of the port summoned from its slumber in the early morning. For James, that paragraph offered the promise of something serene and idyllic, a coastal refuge where the future would seem bright and beautiful at the dawn of each new day.
The place described in that paragraph sounded many miles and a hundred years away from the volatile ethnic stew of contemporary London and the threat of violence on its streets to which his precious son had fallen savage victim.
In the bed, as though aware of his father’s thoughts and the violent emotion prompting them, Jack stirred for the first time. James looked for the spreading bloodstain of the haemorrhage he dreaded, but the bandage remained unmarked. He saw that there was sunlight through the window in a splash on Jack’s face and wondered if it was bothering the boy. He went and closed the blind over the window, without taking his eyes off his son. Gloom enveloped the room.
There was a sound from Jack’s throat. It was the first audible sign of life and James tensed and approached the bed and, in the grey absence of light, took his son’s limp hand in his and squeezed it. His own fingers and palm were gripped in return with a strength that surprised him. The sound, a sort of cough, emanated again from his son’s throat. It did not sound like Jack. It sounded deep and somehow gleeful and a note sounded by someone far older than his adolescent son.
His body had started to shake. The bed was on wheels. Jack could hear them scrape back and forth in minute but rapid progress on the parquet beneath them. The sound came out of Jack again. James used his free hand to press the bell above the bed that would summon a nurse. He feared that his son was fitting. The neurosurgeon had not mentioned the hazard of a brain seizure. He might choke on his tongue. He might suffer heart failure. A noise rumbled and barked deep within Jack, further down than his voice box, from in his chest. Words emerged from his mouth. His grip on his father’s hand tightened.
‘Gresh,’ he said, ‘flood.’
A nurse bustled into the room.
‘Gresh flood.’
The nurse bent over her patient from the other side of the bed, checked that his air passages were clear and then moved the position of his head on the pillow and raised his free arm to take his pulse.
‘Gresh flood,’ Jack said. He tried to raise his head from the pillow. His grip on his father’s hand was briefly strong enough to inflict real pain. Then it weakened. The head sank back down. The bed stopped shaking on its wheels. His breathing became regular once again.
‘He is fine,’ the nurse said.
‘What was that?’
‘It was a dream, perhaps, but he is all right now and should awaken before long.’ She looked around in the gloomy light. With the high ceiling and painted-over pipes of its obsolete gas supply, it looked a grim sickroom.
‘Open the blinds,’ the nurse said, ‘and he will probably come around.’ She poured a fresh glass of water from the carafe on the night stand next to the bed.
‘His eyes are bandaged.’
‘The sun is shining strongly outside. He will sense the brightness and warmth. They will bring him back to consciousness reassured.’
James nodded, reminded that nursing was more a vocation than it was a job. He walked across and opened the blind and sunshine spilled into the room. Jack stirred. His head shifted towards the light and he moaned softly in what his father recognised as his real voice.
‘Fresh blood’ had been the phrase he had uttered in that gleeful-sounding earlier growl. He had been trying to say, ‘Fresh blood.’ Jack had moments before read the phrase in Richard Penmarrick’s Brodmaw Bay eulogy. It must have been a form of telepathy, thought James, who did not believe in coincidence. He did not really believe in telepathy either, but was fairly certain of the two words Jack had been trying to articulate. He must have communicated them to his unconscious son. In the context of the article it had seemed an innocuous phrase. In isolation, in the presence of his bandaged, wounded child, the form of words was sinister and repulsive.
Jack came around slowly. The nurse gave him a drink of water and then left them to their privacy, promising to return in a little while with soup. James looked at her objectively, noticing her in physical detail beyond the uniform and her busy efficiency, for the first time, as she glanced at him before leaving. She was slight and blonde and pretty, drawn and a bit pale with tiredness, blue-eyed, her hair restrained by clips. Of course she was tired, he thought, as she smiled briefly at him and left. She was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three and she was manning a front-line resource.
James sat and held his son’s hands in both of his on the blanket of the bed. ‘Do you remember what happened, Jack?’
‘Dad? Where am I?’
‘You’re in a hospital bed.’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She’s at home, with Olivia.’
Jack nodded. ‘I remember all of it. Well, I remember it all up to the point where they beat me unconscious. I must have a hard head, Dad. It took a lot of blows.’
‘The doctor says you’re going to be okay, son. You’ll make a full recovery, he’s confident of that.’
‘I tried to fight back. But there were three of them and one of them had a tyre iron. It isn’t like in a film, where they queue up and Jet Lee or Jason Statham or somebody takes them on one at a time. In real life, they all come at you at once.’
‘Did no one on the bus try to help?’
Jack smiled. ‘Get real. This was Peckham High Street, Dad. Peckham’s a place where heroes are thin on the ground.’
Jack nodded, which was pointless because his son’s eyes were bandaged and therefore blind. He felt relief and shame, both emotions very strong in him and struggling for ascendancy. He thought that shame was winning. He should have been a better father than to put his son at risk. He would never do anything so irresponsible again. He would protect his children as a father should who was deserving of the name. He would get his family out of the war zone London had become. He was resolved.
‘I’d like to see Mum.’
‘You won’t be seeing anything for a while, Jack.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’ll call her.’
Lillian brought Olivia with her. She had established over the phone that Jack was a fit sight for his sister to see.
‘There’s no blood, just bandages,’ James said. ‘She’ll be relieved, I think. He isn’t slurring his words or anything, Lily. The trauma seems to be entirely physical.’
‘Time will tell where that’s concerned,’ Lillian said. ‘But it sounds as though it’s better to bring her than not.’
They burst into the room less than an hour after the summoning call, a beautiful woman and her equally beautiful daughter, both possessed of a careless glamour their ordeal of concern over Jack had done nothing to diminish. They looked stylish and prosperous and a little fraught. And then they looked dismayed at the quantity of gauze wrapping the head and concealing the features of the prone figure on the bed.
Jack sensed the presence of his mother immediately and managed to sit up as James got out of the way and she sat and hugged him hard, holding his damaged head against her chest, the tears leaving her eyes so forcefully with sorrow that they dribbled down her cheeks. Olivia had started crying too. She turned to her father for comfort and he put his arms around her and her face, hot and damp now, not composed and beautiful, sought refuge and consolation against his chest.
There was a clock on the wall of the hospital room. It was an old-fashioned item with a ridged case fashioned from black Bakelite. It was an electric clock, not battery-powered, the movement fed by a current that sent the second hand coursing smoothly in its circular progress rather than jerking around the face by the second.
James Greer looked at the clock, quietly recording time, as it must have for decades
. And he thought about how unbearable that moment and the moments to follow it would have been had his son not survived the attack that had put him in the hospital.
Time would heal. The old cliché would vindicate itself now. But if Jack had died, time instead would goad and torture and stretch forward bleak and interminable. Where there was sadness and relief in their togetherness in that room, there would have been only loss and desolation and he did not think they would have survived it, the three of them, intact. It would have broken what remained of their family. The grief would have sundered them. He was certain of it.
About fifteen minutes after the arrival of his mother and sister, Jack fell asleep again. James was not surprised at this. The attack had taken its physical toll. His body was tired. He had eaten a soporific bowl of broth only a few minutes before their arrival. And the emotion of the moment, intensely felt, would have fatigued him further. He had a long way to go to recover his strength, despite the surgeon’s upbeat prognosis. But it was sleep and not unconsciousness he had lapsed into and sound sleep was a healer in itself.
James asked Olivia to stay with Jack. She nodded and smiled. Her expression told him it was a duty she was pleased to be charged with. She would text them should her brother stir in their absence. He took his wife across the cobbled courtyard of the hospital and out through its historic gateway. It was late afternoon now but the traffic was heavy, as it always was. They crossed the road and found a coffee shop and sat where it was quiet, at the rear.
Lillian smiled at her husband over her cappuccino. ‘I could do with something stronger,’ she said.
‘It could have been worse.’
She sipped. ‘Infinitely so,’ she said.
‘Do you blame me?’
‘Not in the slightest. Do you blame yourself?’
As the parent with the stronger academic background, James had carried the deciding vote in choosing their children’s schools. There had been some debate about private education. They had opted against it on the principle that real life had to be lived in public. Education was the preparation for it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do. I think it is entirely my fault.’
She had put down her cup. He reached for his wife’s hands across the table. She returned his grip with gentle force. ‘I want us to get out, Lily.’
‘We’ve endured a nightmare, so you want us to pursue a dream. That’s very you, James. Let me guess: Ventnor? Whitstable? It’s always some idyllic coastal location you fantasise about.’
‘There’s no reason we couldn’t do it, Lily. And every reason now that we should.’
‘No reason other than the disruption to four lives, two of them only half-formed. And there’s Jack’s rehabilitation. That will take months.’
‘Weeks, the surgeon said. There could be no better rehab than resettlement, somewhere beautiful and safe.’
‘Where do you have in mind, James?’
‘Somewhere you once knew pretty well. I’m thinking about Brodmaw Bay.’
‘I don’t know it.’
‘You do.’
‘I don’t tell lies. And I can assure you I’ve never heard of Brodmaw Bay in my life,’ Lillian said.
Chapter Two
Jack was allowed home after five nights in hospital. By that time the bandages had been unwrapped from his eyes and the swelling had lessened. He was given what he called his Phantom mask to wear to protect his damaged eye socket. He liked it because he’d seen some famous footballers wearing the contraption in matches on television, after suffering similar injuries. But he had no intention of wearing his. He did not plan to risk further damage until well after his facial bones had knitted strongly. The mask would be nothing more than a souvenir.
After a week, he was interviewed, in the presence of his parents, by Detective Sergeant McCabe. By then three Somali youths had been arrested and charged with aggravated assault and robbery with violence. They had been bailed. A trial date was yet to be set. The weapon had been found and from that had been recovered the DNA of both Jack and one of his alleged assailants. There may have been no heroes on Peckham High Street that afternoon, but there had been two fellow bus passengers prepared to come forward and make detailed witness statements.
Then there was the CCTV evidence. This was not only admissible but also quite damning, DS McCabe told the Greer family. The case was not exactly cut and dried, because no case ever was. But it was very strong. Despite it, the perpetrators had indicated that they would enter a not guilty plea. He was obliged to caution Jack that defence counsel would likely call him to the stand for cross-examination. It would bring the event vividly back to the present. It would be an ordeal for him.
‘Are you comfortable with that, Jack?’
‘I want them punished, Alec.’
The detective had insisted that Jack address him by his Christian name. They had bonded very quickly over a shared allegiance to a particular football club. James Greer took no interest whatsoever in the game. But Jack was a talented player and, like DS McCabe, a passionate supporter of Chelsea FC. They had waxed nostalgic about the great days under the management of the Portuguese maestro José Mourinho, the self-elected Special One. They had swapped eulogies about the world-class midfielder, Frank Lampard. This had all quietly amused James, who calculated that when the Special One had left Chelsea, his son had only been about eight years old.
Even at that age, though, his birthday present had been a replica kit. He’d won a Southwark-wide, borough-run keepy-uppy competition held for under-tens that year. Now a couple of London clubs were sending scouts to watch the games he played for South London Boys. Or they had been, before the attack and his injury. He had the off-season, the whole of the summer to recover. He would recover of course, but, if his father had his way, Jack had played his last youth match for any team based in the capital.
They were in the sitting room of their handsome Bermondsey house. James had seen McCabe raise an appreciative eyebrow when he’d shown him in. He had inventoried the wall-mounted Bang and Olufsen plasma widescreen and the Naim audio components stacked in their steel and granite rack. He had catalogued the artwork, carefully accrued and proudly hung by Lillian. You could not live like this on a detective sergeant’s remuneration. Not if you were honest, you couldn’t, and James thought DS McCabe probably as straight as they came. He had accepted a cup of coffee and James had gone and made it and he sat with the mug rested in his hand on his knee.
Lillian said to him, ‘Would it jeopardise the chances of a prosecution if Jack refused to take the stand?’
‘I’m not going to refuse to take the stand, Mum,’ Jack said. ‘I want them punished. I want to help to put them away.’
‘It would be far better if he were prepared to testify,’ McCabe said to Lillian. ‘He’s clearly attacked in the CCTV footage. The attack is sudden and unprovoked. But before he’s hit with the tyre iron and subdued, for the first half minute of the fight, Jack is actually getting the better of it. It would be much more damning if he could talk the jury through the film. He could stress the fact that they were total strangers to him. That’s more effective coming from him under oath. Your son has an engaging personality. He’s a very sympathetic character.’
And you want them nailed, James thought. You’re a copper for reasons that go a long way beyond the uniform and the pension provision. He wondered what sort of childhood McCabe had endured. He looked more than capable of taking care of himself now. He looked well capable of taking care of anyone else, come to that. But he had been small and vulnerable once. He’d said he had a daughter. Should he go on to have a son James thought the boy would be very fortunate in having him for a father.
To his mother, Jack said, ‘I don’t need the kid gloves treatment, Mum. I’m not traumatised.’
‘You were violated.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I was beaten up. I got my head bashed in by a gang of scumbag thieves who robbed my wallet and mobile. What was in the wallet? A five pound Virgin top-up voucher and my Oys
ter card, that’s what. They could have killed me for that. They didn’t care. I want them locked up and the key thrown away.’
McCabe stood. He put down his empty coffee cup on the low table in front of where he’d sat as he rose. He tugged his tunic absently straight and looked from Lillian to James and said, ‘With respect, the lad has a point.’
‘We’ll be the judge of that,’ James said. But he said it for Lillian’s benefit. He actually felt proud of Jack’s mental strength and decisiveness. He had never thought of himself as decisive and it was a quality he could easily admire in his son. Of course, Jack had inherited it from his mother.
That evening James went on to the Bookfinder website and sourced a copy of the illustrated Brodmaw Bay volume published in 1993 by Chubbly & Cruff. A shop in Hay-on-Wye had a copy they claimed was in pristine condition priced at thirty-five pounds and James ordered it with a feeling of relief. He had begun to think that it did not actually exist, that it was a figment of an imagination heightened by the awful anxiety of waiting for his son to return to consciousness and cogent life in the hospital room.
He did not really allow himself to believe in the book’s existence until two days later, when a large heavy envelope lined with bubble-wrap arrived in the post, bearing the logo of the shop he had sourced it from on its gummed flap. He opened the envelope straight away, in the kitchen. The kitchen had a glass wall for which they had sought and been granted planning permission seven years earlier, shortly after moving in, a couple of years before the dwellings in their street had acquired their current lofty status in the property market.
Their glass kitchen wall seemed more and more an act of vandalism or even desecration to James. But it did allow in a lot of light and in the bright morning he was able to sit at their breakfast bar and examine the book in a way he had not been able to, distracted, a week earlier in Jack’s hospital room.
