Compulsion

by Shaun Hutson

  More laughter.

  She took a step towards him.

  Brown grinned at the advancing teacher.

  She was no more than two feet away from him when he allowed his chair to tip forward.

  It landed with a loud thump.

  “I won’t tolerate that kind of language in the classroom,” she said.

  Brown held her gaze.

  “What language?” he sneered.

  “Cunt?”

  “Go to the headmaster’s room now.”

  He didn’t move.

  “I’m not going to tell you again,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Fuck off.”

  He saw the colour drain from her cheeks.

  “You get to the headmaster now,” she repeated, her voice catching.

  “Make me.”

  All heads had turned towards the back of the room.

  Towards the confrontation.

  Brown sat immobile.

  “What can you do?” he challenged.

  “You know you’re not allowed to put your fucking hand on me. It’s assault. And if you do, I’ll fucking kill you.”

  For interminable seconds the two of them glared at each other.

  The teacher finally leaned closer.

  “If you won’t go to the head, then I’ll go and fetch him,” she said, turning away.

  She was at the door when Brown stood up.

  “Miss Sinclair?” he shouted.

  “I’ve got something for you.”

  She turned.

  As she did she saw that his flies were open. His penis jutted from the gap in his trousers. He closed his hand around it and grinned. She slammed the door as she left, the jeers and laughter ringing in her ears.

  RONNI HANDED HER father the mug of tea, then sat down opposite him.

  James Connor smiled appreciatively and touched her hand as he accepted the drink.

  “Any chance of one of those biscuits you brought?” he said, winking.

  “One, Dad,” she said, mock reproach in her tone.

  “You’ve got to watch your cholesterol.”

  “One’s not going to hurt, is it? Anyway, last time I went to see the doctor he said it was all right. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I know, I was with you.”

  “Then pass the biscuits.” He grinned.

  “That doesn’t mean you can start eating what you like again.” She pushed the digestives across the table towards him, watching as he took one and nibbled it.

  “Your mum used to go on at me about it too,” he said quietly.

  Ronni nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “She made sure I ate the right things,” he continued, rubbing his wedding ring with one thumb as he spoke, turning it on his thin finger.

  “You’re just like her, you know.”

  When he looked into her eyes, she saw the sadness in his.

  “I miss her too, Dad,” Ronni said softly. She reached out and touched her father’s hand.

  “It doesn’t seem like two years,” he muttered.

  “I still expect to see her sitting in her chair doing one of those bloody jigsaws she was always doing.”

  Ronni saw a solitary tear roll down his cheek.

  He wiped it away almost angrily.

  “They say time is a great healer, don’t they?” he snapped.

  “Well, they lied. I still miss her as much now as the day she died.”

  He touched his wedding ring.

  Another tear.

  Ronni got to her feet and hugged him tightly.

  “Thank God I’ve got you, eh?” her father said.

  “You should leave here, Dad. Move,” she offered.

  “I lived in this house for more than forty years with your mother. You were born here. I don’t want to live anywhere else.”

  “But perhaps that’s the problem. Perhaps there are too many memories here.”

  “So where am I supposed to go? Do I come and live with you? How would Andy like that?”

  “He wouldn’t mind.”

  Her father raised an eyebrow questioningly.

  “If we had the room, Dad .. .” She allowed the sentence to trail off.

  “Look, Ronni, I’m seventy-three,” he reminded her.

  “I’m too old to be moving.”

  “You shouldn’t be on your own, Dad.”

  “I can look after myself. I appreciate you coming in every day, but you don’t have to.”

  “I just like to make sure you’re OK. If you need anything, I ‘ “I can walk down the shops. It’s ten minutes, that’s all.”

  “How’s your leg?”

  He turned away from the table slightly and massaged his right leg.

  “It’s a bastard, if you want the truth,” he told her.

  “But it doesn’t stop me getting around.”

  “Do you get any help from the neighbours?”

  “They’re never there. Out working every hour God sends.”

  “But if you fell or something...” she persisted.

  “And it’s not just that. This area worries me too. There’s so much crime, Dad.”

  He held up a hand to silence her.

  “Ronni, stop it. I’m fine and just because a few kids have been getting out of hand it’s no reason for me to move. This is Kempston, not New York.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Ronni sipped her tea.

  “Anyway, you live on the same estate,” he continued.

  “Why aren’t you thinking about moving if you’re so worried about the crime?”

  “We’re less vulnerable.”

  “Because you’re younger? Don’t kid yourself.” He reached for another biscuit as silence descended once again.

  “Perhaps you should be thinking about moving,” he said quietly.

  “I might not want my grandchildren living around here. If I ever get any.” He looked at her with a gleam in his eyes.

  “Dad, the time isn’t right for Andy and I to have kids,” she said wearily.

  You see, I’m not even sure I want to be with him anymore, let alone have his kids.

  “If you don’t get a move on, I won’t live to see them.” He grinned.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Seventy-three and counting,” he reminded her, tapping his chest.

  “We’re not ready for kids,” Ronni said, avoiding his gaze.

  “And you should have more important things on your mind than grandchildren.”

  Ronni sipped at her tea. Her father turned his wedding ring gently on his finger.

  “There are places at Shelby House ...” Ronni said finally.

  “No,” he told her flatly.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t afford it for one thing, and for another I’m not finishing my life in an old people’s home.”

  “Dad ‘ He cut her short.

  “No, Ronni,” he insisted.

  “I’m staying here and that’s it.”

  “Is that you putting your foot down?”

  “As hard as I can.” He smiled.

  She finished her tea and got to her feet, crossing the small kitchen to rinse the mug under the tap.

  As she did so she noticed he’d sneaked another biscuit from the packet.

  “I saw that,” she said, grinning.

  “Go to work, you,” he told her.

  “And stop worrying.”

  She kissed him on the top of the head and pulled on her coat.

  “I’ll be in again tomorrow, Dad.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  He got to his feet and followed her to the front door, where he stood and watched as she walked down the short path, waving until she was out of sight. Then he closed the door behind her.

  The silence inside the house enveloped him once more.

  THE CLUSTER OF shops that served the Waybridge Estate was small.

  There was a grocer’s shop. Next to it was a small news agent and tobacconist’s that actually sold fifteen differ
ent types of loose tobacco for the more discerning smoker.

  There was a fish and chip shop, a launderette, a hairdresser’s (bearing the name “Cutz R Uz’), an off-licence, a small supermarket and, for reasons that no one had ever worked out, a shop that sold sporting trophies.

  The puzzle to estate residents was not so much why the shop was there, but how it had managed to remain open for so long. And yet it had stood, like most of the others, for more than ten years. It sold bicycles and the most elementary of car spares too, along with a peculiar assortment of ironmongery. But sporting trophies remained its most immediately noticeable commodity. The window was full of them.

  Trophies for darts. Football. Fishing. Bowls.

  If there had been a competition for thickest nasal hair they would have had a trophy for it.

  They supplied most of the local schools with their shields and trophies for sports days; at least in those schools that still upheld competition to be a good thing and not a psychological handicap to those athletically less gifted.

  The news agent also contained a tiny post office. Giros could be cashed. Food stamps could be collected.

  There were a couple of public phones, one of which had been ripped from its housing, and a postbox on the central concourse.

  Carl Thompson sat on one of the wooden benches beside the phone that worked and took a drag on his cigarette.

  He glanced at each of the shops in turn at those who frequented them.

  It was almost one p.m. The fish and chip shop in particular was busy with lunchtime customers.

  There were also a number of kids from the local school milling around the concourse, clearly visible in their dark blue uniforms.

  Young women pushed prams or push chairs One dragged a screaming toddler by the arm.

  An older woman pulled a tartan (why were they always tartan?) shopping trolley behind her while she gripped the lead of a small dog in her free hand.

  Two men talked animatedly outside the entrance to the news-agent’s.

  “Where are they?”

  Thompson heard the words, but didn’t speak. He merely sucked on his cigarette, watching the smoke rise from the glowing tip.

  Beside him, Tina Craven chewed away at fingernails already bitten to the quick.

  She was gazing in the direction of the off-licence.

  “I wish they’d get a move on,” she said, still picking at her ravaged fingertips.

  Thompson looked briefly at her.

  Thirteen years old. Long brown hair that looked as if it hadn’t been combed for days. Her eyes were narrow, giving her the appearance of a perpetual squint, something not helped by the large amount of mascara she wore. It seemed to have been applied so heavily the sheer weight of the make-up prevented her from fully parting her eyelids. She had one small whitehead on her forehead. Thompson gazed at it as if transfixed by the glare of a third eye.

  There was a sudden flurry of activity nearby.

  Shouts. Raised voices.

  Both Thompson and Tina turned to see two small boys running from the off-licence.

  Neither was older than eleven.

  They were both carrying bottles of liquor.

  Two cycles had been propped against a wall nearby and, as Thompson watched, the boys leapt onto the waiting bikes, stuck the bottles into rucksacks hanging off the handlebars and began peddling furiously.

  The two bikes sped away just as a man came hurtling from the off-licence, shaking his fist at the two young thieves. He picked up a discarded can and hurled it, the metal ricocheting off a low wall. The lager inside trickled away through a crack in the pavement.

  “You little bastards!” he roared.

  The cyclists were already on the road, peddling away up the hill, past the small petrol station on their right.

  One looked back and jabbed a “V sign in the direction of the shouting man.

  Other eyes turned to watch the action.

  The two men outside the news agent stood motionless for a moment.

  The old woman with the shopping trolley and the dog peered in the direction of the fleeing boys.

  Two teenage mothers broke off their conversation long enough to look round at the furious off-licence owner.

  Then it was all over.

  The moment passed.

  Conversations continued.

  “Come on,” said Thompson, getting to his feet.

  “I hope they got vodka and not gin again,” Tina said as she followed him.

  “I hate fucking gin.”

  SHELBY HOUSE RESIDENTIAL HOME. The blue sign at the bottom of the drive displayed the words with pride.

  No hint of the words ‘old people’s home’. They belonged to less enlightened days. No one who worked or resided there ever referred to the building as such.

  The gravel drive was flanked on either side by cedar trees. Beyond were carefully manicured lawns, cut by a private firm, who visited once a week to trim the grass and tend the flower beds.

  The drive itself curved slightly as it left the road until finally coming to a halt before the building itself.

  Here there were parking spaces for up to twenty cars, but there were rarely more than two parked there at any one time.

  Shelby House was a red-brick edifice, built in the early sixties and remarkably well maintained. The exterior paintwork was given a fresh coat once every two years. Only odd patches of green mould on the brickwork gave any indication as to the age of the property.

  The well-kept gardens were enclosed by a high, wire fence and more trees, giving a feeling of peaceful solitude and isolation despite the fact that Shelby House stood more or less on the periphery of the Waybridge Estate. Some houses backed onto the rear gardens, but, for the most part, they were hidden from the view of the residents by high privet hedges and more fencing.

  There was a patio area to the rear where residents could sit out in the summer. A number of bird tables, constructed by one of the residents, were dotted around the rear lawns and several nesting boxes, built by the same resident, had been bolted to the walls of the building. Wrens and blue tits regularly made homes in them.

  The building itself was two storeys and contained eleven single and two double rooms, three of the singles being on the ground floor for the benefit of wheelchair-bound residents.

  A small lift could be used by those not able to cope with the stairs.

  Also on the ground floor was a pharmacy that dispensed the necessary medication to those residents who needed it. It was situated next to the large day room that looked out over the rear gardens and also contained a television set.

  One of the single rooms had been temporarily transformed into a reading room, due to a temporary shortage of residents, but staff had found that its most common use was as a smoking room. A practice frowned upon, but tolerated.

  Meals were served either in the rooms or, more often than not, taken in the small canteen, also on the ground floor.

  There were staff quarters on the first floor. They were somewhat spartan, but comfortable enough for the worker on the night shift.

  At least one carer was present on the premises throughout the night in case of emergencies.

  Spare mattresses, bed linen, pillows and chairs were stored in a large, well-lit cellar that could be accessed both by stairs and also by the lift that carried residents from floor to floor.

  Nine residents lived in Shelby House, cared for by three permanent staff and visited once a week by a physiotherapist and, once a month, by a chiropodist.

  For those who still had family, visiting times were flexible although the majority of visitors came at weekends.

  The day-to-day cleaning of the home was carried out by the staff themselves, often helped by the residents, who appreciated the relative luxury of their surroundings and also the selfless dedication of those who cared for them.

  The home was owned by a private corporation, who, as long as they were making a profit, saw no need to interfere in the running of the place. I
t hadn’t featured in any media exposes either so they were more than happy and satisfied their investment was safe.

  The atmosphere was one of fulfilment and happiness, for both staff and residents.

  The sparrows and starlings that fed from the bird tables in the grounds accepted the bacon rinds, the peanuts and whatever other scraps they were given gratefully.

  On the roof of Shelby House, several crows were perched.

  Black eyes fixed on the smaller birds.

  Watching.

  Waiting.

  “KiLL THE CUNT.”

  The words were said through clenched teeth.

  Four shots were fired; one struck the body. Another the head.

  The third missed.

  The fourth blasted the head to atoms.

  “Yes!” howled Liam Harper, watching as the zombie toppled backwards.

  He hit the “Pause’ button of Resident Evil 3 and reached for the bottle of vodka close to him.

  Terry Mackenzie snatched up the handset and restarted the game.

  “Don’t lose any of my lives,” Harper warned, prodding his companion with the toe of his Adidas trainer.

  “The Dreamcast one’s better anyway. The picture’s really good,” Mackenzie said, avoiding a swipe from a meat-cleaver and shooting a zombie in the face.

  “The graphics, you mean,” Harper chided.

  “Whatever.”

  Carl Thompson glanced at the two eleven year olds as they sat just a foot or two from the TV screen, the flickering images reflected in their eyes.

  Tina Craven, seated on the sofa beside him, swigged from the other bottle of vodka.

  “Are we going to sit around here all day watching them? she wanted to know, nodding in the direction of the two younger boys.

  “Shut up, you slag,” called Harper and Mackenzie and they both laughed loudly.

  Tina pulled a cushion from behind her and hurled it at them.

  Thompson took a drag on his cigarette.

  “Carl, I said ‘ “I heard you,” Thompson interrupted.

  “What do you want to do?”

  She moved closer to him and ran one hand over his thigh and up towards his groin.

  He grinned and pushed her away.

  “I bet you wouldn’t say no if it was Donna, would you?” she rasped.

  Thompson got to his feet and wandered out of the room.

  “You never complained before,” she reminded him.

  She waited a moment, then got to her feet and followed him through into his bedroom.