Dragging himself from his tumbled bed and into the cold light of day, Jake prayed that whatever was to come would come sooner rather than later.
But, as day followed day and night followed night, nothing happened and the nightmares faded.
‘Coming weekend in Wellington, laddie. Already told you about it. Time you saw our fine capital. Damn fool medical conference and the buggers want me to say something about country practice. Need to see the old legal eagles of mine, too. Kill two birds with one stone.’
‘I don’t think you’re supposed to kill eagles, Dr Mac, not even the legal ones.’
‘I’ll kill whoever I like, boy.’ The doctor smiled at him. ‘Us quacks do, y’know. And I’ll start with your damn cat unless it jumps off my lap. So, lad, what d’you say? Ready for the big smoke of Wellington?’
IX
‘Seein’ as we’re doin’ history, how’re you getting on with Gary’s lessons?’ asked Robert, as they worked together on their homework at the Te Huia kitchen table.
‘I haven’t seen him for a while. He might’ve got his job down the city. Let’s see—last time the Gestapo had me tied up in a cellar ‘cos they caught me spying for Mr Churchill.’
‘You?’
‘Yes. Me.’
‘Bull,’ said Robert. ‘I’m not Gary Miller! He believed you? Bullshit!’
‘And I shall wash your mouth out with soap, young man,’ said his mother. ‘I won’t have that foul language in this house. Stay away from Gary Miller, Jake. He’s no better than that Pearson wretch. I can’t understand you giving him the time of day, for all he might have apologised for what he did to you.’
‘Aw, Mum. Gary’s not that bad,’ said her son.
‘No. He’s quite likely a deal worse. Now, feed the fire and boil that kettle—and then make a cup of tea. I want to hear all about Wellington from Jake. Robert tells me Mac took you to hear the National Orchestra. My word, you’re a lucky boy. I’d give my eye teeth to go to something like that.’
‘You could have had my seat,’ he grinned. ‘I went to sleep.’
‘Tsk, tsk. Some people! And now, you two, another half hour of this history or whatever it is you’re doing and then off home with you before Mac gets worried.’
‘Dr Mac won’t be worried. He’s got the cop, Barry Jackson, and his new wife and Mrs Henderson all having dinner,’ said Jake.
Jake and Robert spent three or four evenings a week studying together. There was a no nonsense approach to what they had to do. They didn’t waste time. ‘We do this, now,’ said Robert, ‘then we won’t have to do it all at the last minute. Besides, I want to play serious footie. And so do you.’
‘No I don’t,’ said Jake.
‘Of course you do,’ said Robert. ‘You’re a natural. Everyone says.’
‘Like who? Who is there to say anything?’
‘Well, that’s what I say. It’s what Maisie said, too, when she watched us play against Black River High.’ He winked at Jake. ‘She likes you, old Maisie. I can tell.’
‘I don’t know why, seeing as you gave me her place in the damn rugby team.’
‘I was only joking,’ said Robert.
Another half hour of European history and Jake got ready to leave. ‘I’d come with you for the walk,’ said Robert. ‘But it’s too cold and I haven’t got any smokes and neither have you and there’s a limit to my friendship.’
It was a still, cool night. Full moon and a touch of frost in the air. Jake had walked to the Te Huia home; his bike had a puncture and he hadn’t got round to fixing it.
He took a shortcut, ducking down a rough alley between the pub and the post office, intending to cut across the empty site at the rear of the hotel. A five-minute walk.
The Weatherley Hotel did a brisk, back-door, after-hours liquor trade and the rear section provided handy private access and parking.
Jake huddled into his jacket and walked head down. He was almost across the wasteland when he spotted the truck. A warning registered in his mind but it was too late. The outer edges of his thinking took in the sight of the vehicle, the two or three figures lounging in the dim light around the deck of the truck, the clink of bottles. But it was almost the whole of his being that took in what confronted him. The bulky frame of Darcy Pearson.
‘Now I’ve got you. Never thought it’d be this quick, this easy.’ His familiar jeering voice. ‘I’ve got you this time, Pongo. Jesus has answered all my prayers.’ He snarled and lunged at Jake.
Jake, startled, started to turn, to run, to get away, but he was too late. No escape. With careless ease, Pearson’s arm shot out and grabbed Jake, one hand around the boy’s throat. An iron grip. Jake dropped his satchel and his books and papers scattered. ‘I’ll pay you back, you little bastard, for what you done to me.’ He drew Jake towards him, shaking him, breathing beer fumes into his face. Pearson’s eyes glittered in the moonlight. ‘I’ve been dreaming of this for so long. Look at you! What are you? Nothing but useless pommy slime.’
Rabbit in a trap, mesmerised, terrified, its eyes on its captor, numb…Darcy Pearson held Jake slightly further away from him, shaking the boy, enjoying his strength and a rediscovered feeling of power. But the captor miscalculated. He’d been drinking.
‘Couldn’t take what was coming to you back then…you’ll bloody take it now!’ He shook Jake again. Darcy Pearson felt really good.
There was no way Jake could speak, say anything. Held in a vice-like grip it was hard enough to breathe much less make a sound. But Pearson had given him time to come out of his initial shock and back into at least a corner of his mind where he knew he had to do something to save himself. As Pearson wound himself into further fury, Jake did the only thing he could; he pulled back his right leg and kicked with every ounce of force and desperate strength in his body. His good solid shoe connected with Darcy Pearson’s balls.
Two things happened. Pearson released Jake and Jake fell backwards onto the ground. Pearson crumpled, bent double, yelling in agony and clutching at himself.
Jake sprang to his feet as Pearson staggered upright, still groaning, still holding onto himself. Jake didn’t give him a chance to recover. No thought, now, of flight! Every ounce of force that had gone into his foot was transferred to his fist and a right hook slammed into Darcy Pearson’s jaw. Pearson dropped.
Jake became aware of Pearson’s companions for the first time and recognised movement away from the truck and towards him. But it was only a slight recognition because one thing was uppermost in his mind. With his enemy prone at his feet all Jake wanted to do was to kill Darcy Pearson while he had the opportunity.
Screaming, now, at the top of his voice, Jake Neill gave vent to his pent up fury. Having started with a kick, first he went on booting, and then he sprang on the other as if possessed, straddling him and pummelling, punching, gouging…at one stage pulling Pearson’s head up by his hair and bashing it two, three times, hard into the ground…‘You won’t get me again you bloody bastard! You’ll be dead! Bloody dead!’ he gasped.
Jake had no perception that a further battle was now raging around him. Two of the three half-drunk mates of Darcy Pearson tried to come to the rescue of their fallen comrade. The third, only slightly less drunk, held them at bay.
‘He’s killin’ Darce!
‘Gotta save Darce.’
‘He’s murderin’ ‘im!’ and this one started to scream.
‘Gotta let ‘im do it,’ yelled Gary Miller. ‘Darce done it to him! Fair’s fair,’ and with relative ease he held the two strugglers away from the maniacal and one-sided encounter taking place on the ground in front of them.
Jake may well have killed Darcy Pearson. Yelling even louder in a high-pitched screaming wail that made no discernible sense, Jake now booted Pearson repeatedly, not caring where his kicks landed.
The yelling and the screaming probably saved Darcy Pearson and Jake Neill from dire consequences. As Jake’s hand grabbed at a discarded beer bottle and he prepared to crown Darc
y Pearson for good and all, two pairs of strong hands pulled him away. It took the combined strength of Robert Te Huia and the publican to hold Jake while Gary Miller and his two mates knelt at Darcy’s side.
‘Don’ think he’s dead ‘cos he still doin’ some breathin’. I think I can see some little wee breaths,’ said Miller. ‘Geez, old Darce’s got a lot of blood in ‘im. Well, it’s not all in ‘im, now.’
Jake pulled himself away from Robert and the publican. He was trembling, shivering, shaking. Wild-eyed and dishevelled, he stepped back and looked down at Pearson. ‘I killed him! I killed him!’ A triumphant yell, and then he looked at Robert. ‘He’ll never ever get me again!’ He blinked, and then the enormity of his actions started to sink in. ‘Bugger off! Leave me alone,’ he yelled, and ran off into the darkness.
X
Jake burst into James McGregor’s sitting-room. Clutching onto the door, he yelled at Dr Mac and Barry Jackson, the policeman, as they enjoyed a last nightcap. ‘I got that bastard! I killed that bastard! You can arrest me now.’ And he held out two hands.
The noise brought the two women through from the kitchen, Molly Henderson hastily wiping dry her hands on a tea towel. ‘He’s dead now,’ Jake’s lip trembled. ‘Stone dead. He’s out the back of the pub on the ground. Dead. You can take me. He won’t get me now and I don’t care if I get hanged.’ And then he crumpled.
Molly Henderson moved towards Jake. ‘Leave him,’ said James McGregor, quietly. ‘Leave him to me.’
‘I’d better go and have a look,’ said Barry Jackson. ‘Back of the pub? Hmm. Yet again! Young Pearson, I imagine. I’m picking he’s not dead.’ He wore a small and wintry smile. ‘I’ll be back—or I’ll phone. Come on, love,’ he said to his wife, and they left.
‘No, Molly. I’ll see to this one,’ James McGregor said firmly. ‘You take off now.’
‘Are you sure…’
‘Yes. Quite sure.’
‘Get up, lad,’ said the doctor. ‘Can’t bend down there. Here,’ he held out a glass. ‘Have a sip of this. Not whisky, the cop’s drunk me out of it. Drop of brandy.’
‘I’ve killed him,’ Jake muttered, taking the glass.
‘We won’t talk about it now. You got anything broken?’
Jake shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. No.’
James McGregor looked at the boy. ‘Then, finish your drink, go wash yourself up and then get to your room for half an hour or so. Then both of us might be ready to talk.’
‘Don’t want to talk.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ said Dr McGregor. ‘Be off with you.’
The doctor answered the phone. ‘I take it he’s not dead?’ Pause. ‘Bit of a pity.’ Another pause. ‘You don’t want me to open up the surgery? Good. I’ll see him in the morning, then.’ Pause, slight smile. ‘Good idea. I’ll fix him up while you have a chat to the lad. Sorry it wrecked an otherwise pleasant evening. Hmm. Inevitable, I guess.’
James McGregor went to Jake’s room.
Jake sat on the far corner of his bed, his back to the wall, knees up to his chin and arms hugging his legs.
‘Tell me about it,’ said James McGregor, and he sat on the bottom of the bed.
‘Nothing to tell. I killed him.’
‘Nonsense. I’m told he’s battered and bruised, but otherwise he’s all there.’
‘I wanted him dead. I wanted to kill him. I tried to kill him.’
‘I’m sure you did.’
‘Is the cop coming back to get me? Is he going to arrest me?’
‘I doubt it. The cop, young man, is the least of your worries,’ said the doctor.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Getting into a brawl with that scum, you could have been seriously hurt yourself. Worse, even. Why? For what?’
‘He attacked me.’ His voice was sullen.
‘I don’t doubt it. I don’t want to know the details. Clearly you gave the blighter a thrashing. Clearly you let yourself be reduced to his level. I trust you’re satisfied. You’re now one with him. Happy? Eh?’ James McGregor did not relent.
‘You don’t know what happened.’
‘I can guess. Somehow or other you got the bugger down. Somehow or other you had him in your power. And somehow or other, young man, there was a moment when you should have cut and bloody run; got the hell out of it. You didn’t!’ He stood. ‘You, young man, you…your behaviour disgusts me!’ The old man’s fury intensified.
Jake stood up, away from the bed, looked the doctor in the eye, and yelled. ‘You saw what he did to me. You can still see what he bloody did to me, it’ll always be there. He would’ve done it again. That bloody bastard would have bloody done it again!’
‘Moderate your bloody language, sir!’ James McGregor breathed heavily. ‘You reduce yourself to a gutter level. Violence! You don’t know the meaning of the word and you know less where it leads, where it ends up. I thought, given your sad background, that was one lesson you’d never have to learn from an old bastard like me. Sit down! Don’t you stand there as if threatening me! Sit, sir!’
Jake sat. He ground his teeth, glared at the old man, said nothing.
‘You came here, God knows how, all those months ago, as wretched a scrap of humanity as I’ve seen in one hell of a long time. Bewildered, bemused, lost, in pain. The hurt in your eyes told it all in a way that took me back a long time to times I try not to remember and the three years or more I spent patching up young men, little older than you are now, who had taken worse than they ever deserved, worse than they had ever dreamed of…The other great war, laddie…and their eyes looking up at me, telling me they had not the foggiest notion of why it had happened to them.’
‘I don’t think…‘ Jake started.
‘I’m talking, lad. And there is not the slightest need to tell me you don’t think. I know you didn’t think.’
‘I didn’t…’
‘Be quiet. If I learnt one thing, all those years ago…one lesson that remains with me to this day, and will until the day I die, is that the end product of violence is more violence…I’ll say it again; violence begets violence! If suffering humanity is to have any chance of survival we must find better ways to live with each other and our differences,’ James McGregor’s voice lowered and he sat again. ‘I thought, Jacob, lad, that you might have absorbed a little more of that philosophy by living here with me.’ He looked at the boy. ‘I’m not blind, you know. I’ve watched, observed and approved of how you seem to have patched up matters with that other brute who abused you, young Miller. I’ll never like the oaf, but I do give him, and you, full credit for however you managed what must have been a difficult transition. That is behaviour I admire. Maybe I should have told you so at the time. The other way, Jake, fills me with despair, dismay…’ He sighed deeply.
For a half minute or more the young man and the old man looked at each other, eyes locked. It was Jake who broke the silence. He stood and looked down at James McGregor and said, ‘I’m not threatening you because I’m standing up,’ he spoke quietly, politely. ‘I think I must leave now,’ and he walked over to his wardrobe, opened the door and pulled down from the top shelf his battered cardboard suitcase. ‘I’ll pack my things. I can leave school because I’m fifteen.’
‘Where will you go?’ Said quietly, with the very faintest of smiles.
‘Wellington. It’s a good place. I like it.’
‘Oh, yes. What will you do there?’
‘I’ll get a job. I can work.’
‘I know that,’ said James McGregor. ‘Ample proof of that, every day.’
‘I’ll have to take the clothes you got me but I’ll pay you back when I can. All my things are gone except my jacket and that doesn’t fit any more. Molly said I should keep that as a reminder and she used the rest of my things for dusters.’ And even more quietly. ‘I’m sorry I disgust you. I wouldn’t ever want to disgust you. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, but I can’t be any better than what I am. Shit, I don’t want t
o cry…’
The old man didn’t move to comfort the boy. He just sat there with his eyes on him, still wearing a faint smile.
‘I disgust you. I can’t stand that, not after all you’ve done.’ Jake hung his head.
The doctor finally spoke. ‘Sit down, laddie. Wipe your eyes and your nose. Here.’ He held out a handkerchief. ‘I have not the slightest intention of going back on anything I’ve said other than to point out one quite important detail…’
‘What’s that?’
‘I did not say that you disgusted me, Jacob.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘Stop interrupting me, boy. You don’t disgust me. You should bloody listen. I told you that your behaviour disgusted me. Your action disgusted me. Think about what I said. Sweet lad, you’ve grown to fill my life with a great deal of joy, much happiness and more than a little laughter. I watch you grow into a fine and good young man and I am delighted. You repay me in so many ways for what was quite likely a nonsense notion of thinking a doddery old fool could do something for someone else who, God knows, surely needed something done for them! Put your bloody suitcase back in its cupboard. There will come a day when you have to pack it, but it’s not now.’
‘But…’
‘But nothing. I said what had to be said. I’ve had serious words with you. You have no option but to allow me that. It’s not a privilege on my part. It’s a responsibility. I make absolutely no apology. You did wrong. It’s my job, whether you like it or not, to point out what I see as the error of your ways. You’re going nowhere, except to the kitchen to make us a cup of tea. This is your home, Jake. For right or wrong, this is your home. It continues to be your home no matter how many strips I am forced to tear from you! Do you understand?’
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