Convalescence

by Maynard Sims

  Hughie sat on the bed, rubbing his chin. “I knew he hadn’t run away,” he said. “That’s what they told me and the nuns at St. Joseph’s. The nuns bought it, but I never did.”

  “Who told you he’d run away?”

  “Your uncle…and my mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes, Daphne Rogers, the great facilitator. The enabler,” he said. Bile almost dripped from the words.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “Your Uncle Thomas is not the man you believe him to be,” he said.

  “So who is he?” None of this was making any sense.

  “It’s not who he is, it’s what he is,” Amy said.

  “I don’t understand this, any of it.”

  “Your uncle is a man of strange appetites,” Hughie said. “And my mother helps him in his quest to satisfy those appetites.”

  “You’ll have to explain what you mean,” I said, my voice rising.

  And so he did.

  “It’s a lie,” I said tearfully. “I don’t believe you.” I leapt from the bed and ran to the door.

  “Jimmy,” Amy said. “Come back.”

  I turned, glared and stuck two fingers up at them, then yanked the door open and ran down the stairs.

  Back in my room I threw myself onto the bed and stared blindly up at the ceiling. The tears were pressing at my eyes, but I kept swallowing, keeping them at bay. I would not give in to them. I had only just reconnected with Uncle Thomas. He was my only family now, and I refused to believe what Amy and Hughie were saying about him. It was too horrible to contemplate.

  My uncle? A man who got his pleasures— No!

  I was a young boy and he had shown me nothing but kindness.

  At that moment I hated Hughie Rogers. Why had he come back here, spreading his poison and dragging Amy into his web of lies?

  I hated her too for siding with him.

  The Eagle annual was lying on the bed next to me. I picked it up and threw it at the wall. It slapped against the wallpaper and slid to the floor, falling open as it landed—falling open at the pages showing the “Sporting Heroes of Our Time” with all but one of the pictures scribbled out and with the yellow TB scrawled across them. I glared ferociously at it.

  This all started with Michael, his stupid crying and that ridiculous marching tune. It would finish with him.

  I swung off the bed, left my room and stomped along the landing to the door at the end. Once I was in the corridor I hesitated just inside the doorway. I wanted to confront Michael and rip apart his tissue of lies, but the hallway was silent—no pathetic blubbering, no bands playing. What if he wasn’t there?

  I didn’t have a choice. I had to try.

  Resolutely I pressed on towards the black door. I reached it, turned the handle, stepped into the room and stopped dead.

  The room looked very different. The beds still lined the walls, but this time six of them were occupied. Young boys, my age and younger, sat in the beds, their legs covered by sheets and blankets, their backs resting against their pillows—each sipping from an enamel mug clutched in their hands.

  Michael O’Herlihy was in the bed farthest away from me; he too had a mug and was drinking from it.

  Mrs. Rogers was standing at his bedside. “That’s right, boys. Drink your cocoa. It will make you fit and strong,” she said.

  I stood in the doorway, but no one turned to look at me. As far as they were concerned, I was invisible or I simply wasn’t there.

  I must have blinked or something because the scene changed.

  The room was now dark, and a door at the far end was opening, letting in a sliver of light. In that small quadrant of light, I saw my uncle slip into the room.

  Dressed only in a bathrobe, he moved silently across the room until he was standing at Michael’s bedside. I heard the rumble of his voice, but the words were indistinct.

  But I heard Michael’s voice clearly. “Noooooooooooo!”

  My uncle reached down and grabbed Michael roughly from the bed. I could see him struggling, but Uncle Thomas was too strong for him, and he pulled him towards the door. They were halfway across the space when Michael kicked out with his bare foot.

  My uncle’s reaction was swift and terrifying. He drew his hand back and brought it scything down, catching Michael with a savage backhanded blow across the face, knocking him off-balance. Then Uncle Thomas dragged him the rest of the way, pushing him roughly through the doorway, and followed, pulling the door closed behind him.

  I stood there stunned.

  In the other beds no one had stirred, and their deep, regular breathing was like a surreal soundtrack to the savagery I’d just witnessed. On the small cabinets at the sides of the beds were the empty cocoa cups.

  I’d sampled Mrs. Rogers’s cocoa the night before, and knew about the sleep-inducing power of that hot, sweet drugged liquid. She’d put the other boys to sleep to enable my uncle to drag Michael from his bed.

  I felt sick.

  Everything Hughie and Amy had said was true. My uncle was a monster—a monster of the worst kind.

  I turned and ran from the room, back along the corridor and out onto the landing. Amy’s door was open so I ran up the stairs and into her room.

  Hughie Rogers was still sitting on the bed. He and Amy were deep in conversation.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” I yelled at him as I burst into the room. “Why didn’t you stop your mother?”

  “Do you think I didn’t try?” Hughie said. “But I was fifteen, and your uncle is a powerful man, not only in strength but in influence. He pulls strings in all the right places, and counts JPs, high-ranking policemen and people as equally rich as him as his friends.

  “Who would I tell? Who would take notice of a boy sullying your uncle’s reputation? Everyone knows he played cricket for England, in a Test match of all things, and scored a century. He’s something of a local legend. Are you aware of the power that kind of celebrity brings?

  “No, someone has to bring him down, but it will have to be someone with more courage than I have. I fall short on every level.”

  “But couldn’t you have said something to your mother?”

  “I did, and I’ve lost count of the number of arguments we had over it. It’s why I left here when I was old enough to do so.”

  “It’s true, Jimmy,” Amy said. “Your uncle was really upset when Hughie left. He swore he’d track him down and bring him back, which is why I could never let on that I knew where he was.”

  “What about the girls who came to stay here?” I said. “Did he ever—” A sickening thought struck me. I turned to Amy. “Did he ever—”

  She shook her head quickly.

  “Amy and all the girls were safe,” Hughie said. “Their dormitory was on the other side of the house. Besides, he’s only interested in boys, especially pretty boys like Michael. Poor little bugger didn’t stand a chance.”

  I stood there for a long moment, not speaking. Thoughts were whirling around in my mind like a dervish, and I picked at them at random, trying to build them into a cohesive whole.

  After a while Amy said, “Jimmy, what are you thinking?”

  Her words seemed to break the spell, and suddenly everything became very clear.

  “We have to stop him,” I said.

  “I told you,” Hughie said. “I don’t have that kind of strength.”

  But I did.

  I think I understood now why my father and my uncle had fallen out. Dad must have known about his brother’s weaknesses, and wouldn’t have him in the house—to protect me, if nothing else. I dare say that when he learned Uncle Thomas had left the country, he breathed a huge sigh of relief, figuring that his brother would be somebody else’s problem and that he himself would not have to deal with it. I can’t begin to imagine what
he felt when he learned that Uncle Thomas had returned from South Africa.

  If there were any conversations about him at all in the house, then they were conducted in a system of guarded whispers and stolen glances between my father and my mother, and together they adopted a policy of near silence around their children. If Thomas wasn’t mentioned, it would be like he didn’t exist. I wondered how many young boys they had condemned to a living hell—as victims—by the simple act of not speaking out.

  My father’s weakness would not be mine.

  I didn’t know yet how I was going to bring Uncle Thomas down, but the tuberculosis had spared me. I had been given another chance at life, and I wasn’t going to squander the opportunity I’d been given to atone for my father’s tacit complicity in his brother’s crimes.

  “I’ll stop him,” I said flatly.

  Both Amy and Hughie looked at me as if I’d gone slightly mad. And I suppose, in a way, I had.

  “We need to bring this out in the open,” Amy said.

  “We just can’t go around making unfounded allegations,” Hughie said. “We need evidence to back them up.”

  “How about Michael O’Herlihy’s body?” I said.

  “You’re off your chump,” Hughie said. “They probably got rid of it ages ago.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s still here,” I said. “I’ve been blind and stupid. It’s what Michael’s been trying to tell me all along.”

  “What do you mean?” Amy said.

  “When I was in that room under the summerhouse, Michael appeared to me, standing in the center of the room. He drew me to that room with more of that bloody music, but the only thing he had to say was ‘I’m here’, and I misunderstood what he was saying. He meant it literally. I think he’s buried in the ground there. Amy, your boyfriend’s a gardener. He must have spades and a pickaxe. We need tools to dig with.”

  “I know he does,” she said. “I’ve been in his workshop. I’ve seen them.”

  “Borrow them,” I said. “We’ll go down to the summerhouse once it gets dark. My penlight’s smashed so we’re going to need light.”

  “He has a couple of hurricane lamps too. Will they do?”

  “Bring them with you. We’ll meet there after dinner, agreed?”

  “Agreed,” they said.

  Uncle Thomas took dinner in his rooms that evening, which was just as well because I wasn’t sure I would have been able to hide my feelings. Thinking about him and his vile acts made me feel physically sick. I ate my meal quickly and avoided conversation with Mrs. Rogers.

  I again made the excuse that I wanted to read in the library, so I went there until it got dark.

  Amy and Hughie were waiting for me when I finally made it to the summerhouse.

  Getting out of the house hadn’t been easy. I’d tried a couple of times, but Mrs. Rogers seemed to be patrolling that night, almost as if she knew what we had planned to do. I managed to sneak out through the kitchen when I knew she’d gone to the bathroom.

  “We have to look out for my uncle,” I said as I joined them. “He was watching from an upstairs window the last time I came here.”

  “It’s Wednesday,” Amy said. “He’s out. The Rotary Club meets once a week on a Wednesday and he doesn’t miss the meetings.”

  “Pillar of the community,” Hughie said with heavy sarcasm.

  “Right, then, let’s get started,” I said and lifted the trapdoor.

  Hughie went down first, followed by Amy, and I handed her down the tools and the lamps. By the time I made it down the ladder, Hughie had lit the two hurricane lamps and was attacking the beaten earth floor with the pickaxe. For some reason, he seemed jittery and was swinging the pickaxe with something close to blind rage.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  He wheeled on me. “Look, this isn’t one of your bloody Boy’s Own adventures,” he snapped. “This is serious business. We’re attempting to dig up a body here.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know.” I picked up a shovel and started to clear some of the earth, piling it in the corner, where it was slowly forming a small mound.

  Amy stood in the middle of the room, holding one of the lamps aloft to give us light as we worked. Soon the hole was more than two feet deep, but we had uncovered nothing.

  Hughie stopped digging and leaned on his spade. “This is bloody useless,” he said. “Are you sure this was where he was standing when he appeared you?”

  “It’s close enough,” I said with a conviction I didn’t really feel.

  I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake. Was it, as Hughie had said, nothing more than a Boy’s Own adventure? A desire to experience the type of adventures I’d read about in Bannermere and other books of that ilk?

  I pressed on, lifting spadeful after spadeful of earth out of the hole and dumping it at the side.

  “Wait!” Amy’s cry stopped me, my spade poised to dig again.

  “Look.” She moved the lamp so we could see clearly.

  I crouched down and peered into the hole. I brushed away a small mound of earth and saw what she was looking at. Material—dirty blue denim. It looked like the leg of a pair of jeans.

  Hughie squatted down beside me and together we worked, clearing the earth away until we had exposed two denim-sheathed legs.

  Amy started to cry. “Oh my God. Poor Michael, all alone down here,” she said softly and began to pray.

  “Keep that light steady,” Hughie snapped at her.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get up here this instant.”

  We all turned to the mouth of the trapdoor. Through the hatch I could see Uncle Thomas standing there holding a very large flashlight, a look of fury on his face.

  I was the first to climb the ladder, and he cuffed me on the ear as soon as I emerged.

  “Go and stand over there.”

  Amy was next. He grabbed her roughly and pushed her in my direction.

  After what seemed an age, Hughie climbed out of the hole and the look on my uncle’s face was almost comical. Disbelief mingled with something close to panic.

  “Hughie? Does your mother know you’re here?”

  Hughie said nothing, but came over to stand by us.

  Uncle Thomas took a while to gather himself. Hughie’s presence had thrown him

  Eventually he turned to us. “Would you mind explaining yourselves? What do you think you were doing down there?”

  “We know what you did!” Amy said.

  “What are you talking about, girl? Make sense.”

  “Michael O’Herlihy,” I said. “You killed him and buried his body under the summerhouse.”

  My uncle turned to Hughie. “And you, Hughie, are you going along with this madness?”

  For a moment Hughie stayed silent, and I wondered if he was about to betray us. A plethora of emotions was playing in his eyes.

  When he finally gave them voice, he said simply, “It could have been me, you bastard.”

  “But, Hughie, I loved you. You must know that,” Uncle Thomas said.

  “The same way you loved Michael and the others?”

  Something registered in my uncle’s eyes. “You know I would never have hurt you,” he said. “What we had was special to me. So special.”

  Both Amy and I turned to stare at Hughie. “Is that the real reason you left?” I said.

  Hughie Rogers’s face said it all. He was biting his lip and fighting back tears. “You made me feel dirty,” he said to my uncle quietly.

  Amy reached out and gripped his arm. “Oh, Hughie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t realize.”

  She wheeled on my Uncle Thomas. “You sick bastard! You sick, sick…fuck!”

  And my uncle punched her in the mouth.

  With a howl of pain, Amy dropped to t
he floor and lay there crying.

  Uncle Thomas took a step forward and drew back his foot to aim a kick, but stopped, his face suddenly draining of color and his eyes widening. “No! No it can’t be you.”

  He was staring beyond us. I turned and saw Michael O’Herlihy, oh-so familiar to me now, leaning against the glass wall of the summerhouse, with his one belligerent eye peeking out from around his curtain of fair hair.

  With a cry Uncle Thomas barged past us and ran from the summerhouse.

  Only then did Michael move away from the wall. He seemed to glide past us in pursuit of my uncle.

  By the time I reached the doorway, Uncle Thomas was almost at the tree line, with Michael following, his feet skimming the grass of the lawn but leaving no impressions.

  Without thinking about it, I ran from the summerhouse and followed them. I pulled up short when we reached the pond.

  Uncle Thomas was standing with his back to the water, while Michael stood barely six feet away from him, staring at him impassively.

  My uncle had his hands out in front of him, as if fending Michael off. He was gibbering, “No…please…you don’t understand…I had to do it…”

  And then an arm burst from the water of the pond and a bony hand gripped his ankle. For a moment he teetered on the edge of the pond, trying to keep his balance, but another hand broke the surface and grabbed him, and then another, and he fell backwards into the water.

  I ran forward and watched as three misty-white shapes seemed to envelop my uncle and drag him under.

  I turned back to Michael. He was smiling, and as I watched him, he simply faded away.

  A cold October wind blew across the cemetery, blowing leaves in our faces as Amy and I stood by the graveside.

  “How many do you think there were?” she said.

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know that for sure. They found three bodies when they dragged the pond, all young boys. And that’s just in this country. Elise got a visit from some men the other day.”

  “Elise?”

  “Miss Holt,” I said. “They were from South Africa—policemen looking into a number of missing children. Apparently they were investigating their disappearances before Uncle Thomas returned home. Once he left the country, their investigation dried up. They’ve reopened it in light of what happened here.”