The fourth blow. The belt raised. The red-faced and sweating Pearson, straining to get the utmost force behind the blow took half a step back. His foot found one of the rotten boards and he lost balance. Arms flailing he toppled backwards, clutching, as he fell, at anything that might stop his fall. His hand caught at a jagged, rusting and very sharp edge of the corrugated iron wall. The skin of his palm tore, blood spurted. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he screamed. ‘Bloody done for myself!’ He righted himself to a crouch, his uninjured hand cradling his bleeding hand and fingers. Snarling like a wounded animal, he staggered to his feet. He turned to his son who stood, open-mouthed. ‘Finish off the little swine,’ he said as he lurched from the room.
Darcy Pearson required no second bidding. There was now a score to settle and he’d been invited to settle it. Jake had twisted, curling around and resting on one elbow, half on and half off his bed. White-faced and trembling, he made one feeble attempt to get to the door but didn’t stand a chance. Darcy was there before him. One boot in Jake’s chest forced him back onto his bed.
‘And now it’s just you and me,’ Darcy muttered through gritted teeth, absolute venom in his voice, his eyes glittering. Almost negligently he took Jake by one arm, twisted it, flipping the smaller boy over onto his stomach with ease. Using the same hand he pulled Jake’s pants down to his knees and then his shirt up to his neck. ‘I hate you, you little pommie bastard,’ he hissed. He reached for his father’s belt that lay on the floor and finished the beating his father had started.
There was none of the older man’s self-righteousness in Darcy Pearson’s assault on Jake. There was also one other critical difference. Clarrie Pearson had held the belt by the buckle. His son reversed this order.
Jake screamed once, very loudly. He screamed a second time, but it was more muffled. His small body convulsed at the savagery being inflicted upon it. Blessedly, he lost full consciousness. At some stage, after about ten or a dozen blows the dreadful enormity of his frenzied actions got through to Darcy Pearson. All of a sudden he saw what he had done. The criss-cross of lashes, bleeding, raw on the boy’s back and buttocks…the stillness of his victim. He shut his eyes, opened them again. The sight hadn’t gone away. ‘Arrgh…‘ was the only sound he made. Throwing the belt from him, he turned, rushed from the room and back to the house.
Some two hours later Jake came back into his senses. His body burned with a fiery intensity. Slowly he made himself sit. He felt around to his back, groaning at the pain. He withdrew his hand and looked at it, his eyes dull. It was covered in blood. He tried to stand. He swayed, groggy. He fell down again, back onto the bed.
The light was still on. He had no idea what time it was or how long he had lain in his own blood. He looked down. Not only in his own blood. In his own blood and piss.
He summoned every tiny atom of energy within his battered body and stood, forced himself to walk. Every step tore his aching body further apart. He walked a little more, up and down the room. It got easier. Slowly, with infinite care, he pulled off his shirt and pants. He shivered, from the after-shock of his battering as much as from the cool night air. From the jumble of his clothing that had been thrown into the room he picked out what he thought would be the most comfortable and, even more slowly now, dressed himself and put on what footwear he could find. He couldn’t stop crying, didn’t even know he was crying. Finally, he picked up his Harris tweed jacket and dragged himself from the room.
He crept and he crawled, did Jake. Along ditches, scraps of roadway, farm tracks, over or under fences, into trees and scrubby bush through swampland, farmlands, across streams. At some stage he came to the railway line and followed the track for a mile or so until he imagined he heard the approach of a train. Some instinct drove him onward and away from the Pearson farm. Sometimes he was within his mind, at other times he could have been anything, anywhere. He didn’t really know what he did, but he covered ground, he made distance from the place of his agony.
As dawn broke exhaustion overcame him and he crawled into a cave of grasses and flax, took cover and slept. Sometime in the early afternoon he came to, bewildered, bemused, feverish. The pain he now felt ripped and burnt with a fierce and bright intensity, consuming his entire body. There were no more tears. He didn’t have any spare energy for the luxury of tears.
Neither did he feel hunger. He took water when he could find it in ditches, streamlets and, once, from a puddle on a roadway. In the hours he poured into that incredible trek he saw not one other living soul. Some instinct kept him away from places of human habitation. There were times when he thought he might die, but some inner spark kept him going. Jake crawled on.
On a grassy embankment he stopped for a moment to regain a vestige of strength. At first he thought he was dreaming and he blinked through mucous encrusted eyes at what he saw. It was dusk, and what had taken his attention were the lights of a town.
Slowly, agonisingly, he dragged himself towards those lights. His shoes were gone, by some miracle he still had one sock, and the Harris tweed jacket was somewhere in the back of beyond. He had no thought other than that wherever he ended up, nothing could be as bad as what he’d left.
Towards midnight he reached the town. His journey had taken more than a day. Delirious now, he managed to stand and stagger into the outskirts. As he reached the first of those lights, they all went out. He stood, stock-still, for a moment and somewhere within a corner of his mind there registered a thought that he might have died. He shook his head, moved on. Of course he hadn’t died. Death would mean release from the all-consuming pain.
Jake never knew he crossed two or three streets of the darkened town. Mercifully, his agony closed in upon him and he collapsed, passing completely from consciousness. His small, broken body fell into the resisting growth of a garden at the gateway of a large house.
1947–1948
I
‘Didn’t happen to collect the paper as you rode in, Molly?’ the man asked.
‘I wasn’t looking,’ said the woman. ‘I’m normally not here at this time and you’ve usually had the paper hours before I get here. If it weren’t for those dratted curtains…’
‘All right, all right, woman. No need for a lecture. Have another cup of tea and I’ll wander down.’
‘No time for tea,’ she said. ‘Got to get those curtains down, washed and dried and up again. God knows, another day up there and they’ll be falling from the weight of their own dirt.’
‘Please yourself, there’s plenty in the pot. Back in a minute,’ and picking up a walking stick he went out into the early morning sun.
He couldn’t find his newspaper and cursed the paper boy in a ritual and good-humoured curse he offered up most mornings. ‘Little blighter does it on purpose! Where’s he flung it this time?’ He began his customary search in and around the border of hydrangeas at the front of the property. ‘Not again!’ he grumbled. ‘Bloody dogs wrecking every damn thing I try to grow,’ and he moved, limping slightly, towards one bush he could see was out of kilter with its neighbours. ‘I don’t believe it! Some little devil actually hiding in the damn thing!’ He raised his voice. ‘Out of there, you limb of Satan! What d’you think you’re playing at?’ and using his walking stick he poked at the form hiding in the bush. ‘Out of there. Let’s be having you!’ There was no reaction. None at all. With some difficulty, the man knelt.
‘Sweet Mother of Jesus!’ He cast both stick and his afflictions aside and crawled to the body, breaking away the soft growth of the plant. He said nothing more for a moment. With well-practised ease he felt the forehead, raised a closed eyelid, lifted a wrist, felt for a pulse. ‘Dear Christ. What in God’s good name has befallen you?’ He got to his feet, looked around, saw nothing else, and as fast as a gammy leg would allow, made his way back up the driveway, yelling, ‘Molly! Woman! Molly! Molly, where are you?’
‘What is it now?’ She came out of the front door. ‘What’s…’
‘Come on, woman. Stretcher. I’ll need
your help. There’s that old stretcher in the surgery the St John’s folk borrow…Child, down there at the gate…badly injured. We’ll get him back to the surgery.’
‘You can’t lift…’
‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do! I’ll…We’ll do it.’
With speed and with infinite care, the old doctor, his housekeeper and Robert, the late-arriving newspaper boy, moved Jake from his bed of hydrangea, onto the stretcher, up the driveway, through the house and into the surgery. ‘Well done,’ the doctor nodded to the other two. ‘As for you, you grinning imp of mischief, now I’ve got you at my mercy, throw my damn paper in the driveway in future.’
‘Yes, Dr Mac.’
‘Get down there and find my stick and bring it back and put my paper on the kitchen table and then get the hell out of here or you’ll be late for school.’ All the while he continued tending to Jake.
‘Gee, Dr Mac, can’t I stay and watch? Reckon he’ll die?’
‘Out! Out!’ was the only reply and his helper left.
Molly Henderson stood at Jake’s head, stroked his matted hair. ‘Who? What?’ she looked at the doctor. ‘Mac, even I can see someone has done this to him.’
‘That’s as may be. If you’re going to stay, woman, make yourself useful.’ He handed her scissors. ‘Start cutting off his clothing. All of it. No need to be too gentle, he’s well out to it and will be even more so with this in him.’ He injected Jake and they worked on in silence until, together, they turned Jake to lie on his stomach and Molly Henderson peeled away the last of the clothing that covered the boy’s back.
‘And I thought I’d seen everything,’ said the doctor, very softly.
‘He’s so…he’s so thin. Little mite,’ said Molly Henderson. ‘Are you all right?’ She looked at her employer. ‘Pain? Your fingers?’
‘No more than usual. Fingers still know what they have to do.’ He looked down. ‘Any pain I have is nothing compared with what this little feller has felt.’
‘What else can I do?’ asked Molly.
‘You’ve done enough. Barbara will be here by ten. I’ll sing out if I need more help.’
‘Make sure you do. I’ll bring you in a cuppa. Shall I ring through to the hospital? The ambulance?’
‘No,’ said the doctor, and stretched the sound of the word. ‘Not just yet.’
‘The police?’
‘The police?’ He looked again at Jake. He spoke slowly. ‘I suppose…No. I think we’ll wait just a little while…’
‘Are you sure, Mac?’ She sounded worried.
‘On my head be it,’ said the doctor. ‘I think I’ll wait until the boy comes round. He’ll get no better attention from cop or hospital than he’s getting here. No broken bones that I can tell. Bit too soon to tell about a broken spirit,’ he looked at his housekeeper. ‘I’ll call if I need help, but I think I can bend and twist enough life out of these old fingers to do a bit of embroidery. A goodly number of stitches needed on the reverse side of this little monkey.’
‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘I wonder who he is? Someone must be missing him.’
He spoke slowly. ‘Not a town kiddie, Molly. Between the two of us we’d surely know that. Not a local…not quite. Country laddie? Don’t know. Some bell’s ringing in the back of my mind…‘ he turned to her. ‘Take a good, hard look, Molly, at the damage that’s been done to the child. A good look. Remember it, your memory may be needed. There’s one more thing you can do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Bring me my camera. The good one. It’s through in the study, I think. Forget the curtains, woman. They’ll hang for another year—or maybe it’s time for some new ones. If you can spare a moment, check that the little bedroom just along the hall is shipshape.’ He looked down at Jake. ‘Very old, very soft sheets. Old ones.’
‘The sheets are all old,’ said Molly. ‘Overdue for some new ones in that department, too! I’ll price some for you when I pick up the curtain samples.’ She winked at him as she left the surgery and the doctor settled to work.
His practice nurse, Barbara Green, arrived before ten. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing? It’s all right. Molly’s told me. Here. Give it to me. Doctors!’ she sniffed. ‘Think you know it all. I’ll fix up your stitching.’
‘It’s as perfect a bit of work you’ll see this side of the black stump,’ he said.
‘Tell that to the marines!’ she said. ‘We’ve got a bit of work to do here.’
‘I’d almost finished, when you so rudely interrupted me,’ said the doctor.
‘You know that’s not what I meant,’ she said. The two of them spoke with the familiarity of working partners who’d been in business for a long time.
‘How many down for this morning?’
‘Only old lady Stacy—and don’t worry, Molly’s already phoned her and she’ll come this afternoon.’ She examined Jake. ‘You’ve done a passable job, Mac,’ she smiled. ‘He’ll be coming round any time now. And what’s all this nonsense about Molly making up a bed? Why?’
‘I don’t know why. Humour an old man. No more, maybe, than I looked at this poor little laddie and thought that the last thing he needed right now was Matron Lil up at the hospital, good woman that she is, regimenting him at six in the morning, breathing hellfire and brimstone and acting the sergeant-major.’
Barbara Green laughed. ‘I’ll tell her you said that!’
‘No you won’t. Besides, the place is full. He’d have to be trucked off down to the city.’
‘You can’t have him here, Mac. You don’t even know who he is.’
‘Not a hundred percent sure, but I think I do, Babs. Come on. We’ll get him through to his bed and we’ll talk in there. He’s stirring himself up from whatever dark nightmare he’s been through. Come on, little lad, let’s get you through to a proper bed.’ He sighed. ‘Then I guess I’d better get to work on the telephone.’
Jake came to in a little blue bedroom. Three old faces looked down. As they loomed in and out of focus, he flinched and despite the pain, pulled himself away, cowering into the furthest corner of the bed.
‘It’s all right, boy. It’s all right. You’re safe. Do you understand?’ James McGregor spoke slowly, loudly.
Jake didn’t speak. He couldn’t speak. A slight groaning sound was all he made.
‘Don’t speak, child,’ said Barbara Green. ‘Just give a little nod if you understand. You are safe. Just nod if you understand.’
His eyes, pain-filled, grogged, closed again. But he did nod before slipping again from consciousness.
‘Hospital,’ said Barbara Green, very firmly.
‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘He’s got a bad couple of days ahead of him but he’s all in one piece. A ragged piece, admittedly, but he’s all there. This old place has catered for more than a few damaged souls over the years.’
‘Molly?’ Barbara turned to the other woman for support.
‘Strange as it may be, I find myself agreeing with Mac. God knows what the boy’s been through but I have a feeling it’s a bit of comforting he’ll be needing rather than dear old Lil’s camp on the hill. She’s tops on broken limbs but not too hot on broken hearts and spirits.’
‘Mac can’t care for him,’ said Barbara.
‘Not by himself, he can’t,’ said Molly.
‘Stop talking about me as if I weren’t here. Been a quack for forty years. Wouldn’t think that one battered kid would be beyond my fading capabilities.’
‘Well it would be,’ said Molly. ‘Except, if he’s to stay here, I shall move in for the next few days…’
‘God help me,’ said the doctor.
‘No more than you deserve,’ said his nurse. ‘Don’t worry,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll lend a hand.’
James McGregor smiled. ‘I knew you would! Both of you.’ He looked at his nurse. ‘Now to the nasty bit. Get on to the constabulary for me, Barbara. Not the local chappie. Never had much time for him, and I’ve a hunch…Get me Bob Davis, the bos
s down the city. Old Bob owes me more than a few.’
‘Who d’you think this boy is?’ asked Barbara.
‘I wouldn’t be betting on it, not just yet,’ James McGregor stroked Jake’s head. ‘But I’ve a feeling it’s the little English laddie, war orphan or some such, came to live—and presumably work—on the Pearson property. You’d know the folks, both of you.’
‘Of course we know them,’ said Molly Henderson.
Jake stirred back into consciousness. ‘He’s trying to say something,’ said Barbara. ‘Don’t worry, little lad. You’re all right now. You just rest.’
‘Let him speak,’ said the doctor. ‘Here…slip a few drops of this down his throat,’ and he passed a feeding cup to the nurse. ‘What is it you want to say, boy?’ softly. ‘Who are you lad? What’s your name?’
They thought he said he was Jack. He said the one word three, four times, and then, before slipping away again he said something else another couple of times. ‘Can’t make it out,’ said Molly Henderson. ‘Something, I think, about a black sambo.’
‘No. I don’t think so. It’s something about a cat. I’m sure,’ said Barbara.
‘Black Sambo, it’s a kiddies’ book,’ said Molly. ‘Yes. There he goes again.’
‘Something and nothing,’ said James McGregor. ‘Let him rest now. I’ll give him another jab.’
‘Infection?’ the nurse queried.
‘Minimal so far,’ said the doctor. ‘There’ll be some, but the scraggy little blighter should fight it off. I’ve pumped enough penicillin into him to bring a dead horse back from the grave. If, as I suspect, he’s dragged himself all the way here, unaided, and over some rather tough terrain, he’s a helluva lot stronger than he looks. Judging by the state of his hands and feet I doubt that anyone dumped him in my hydrangeas. Come on ladies, leave him be. Back to sleep with you, little Jack.’
Land of Milk & Honey Page 6
