Beyond the Rage

by Michael J Malone

  He closed his eyes. So tired. The knock to the head must have taken more out of him than he realised. Five minutes. He could sleep for five minutes.

  ‘Shouldn’t we get you checked out for concussion?’ asked Calum.

  ‘I’m bloody fine,’ Kenny replied, sitting up straight. ‘Totally fine. Nothing that a few hours kip wouldn’t cure.’ He’d suffered through the symptoms of a simple concussion several times before. The doctors would just take a note of his vitals and leave him in a cubicle for a couple of hours before coming back to check on him again.

  He made a mental inventory of his body and his reactions. Nausea, tired and irritable. Confused thinking, initially; that had made him leave without finding Alexis. Apart from that he was fine. He just couldn’t afford to take another one to the head for a few more days.

  He closed his eyes.

  Five minutes. All he needed was five minutes.

  His phone rang. Anxiously, he read the display. Disappointed, he answered.

  ‘Ian, what is it?’

  His cousin’s voice sobered him instantly.

  ‘It’s Mum,’ Ian said.

  27

  Corridors. Kenny hated corridors. He hated the way his footsteps echoed along them, the linoleum they used for the floors and the inevitable grey paint on the walls.

  For most people corridors were a sheltered link from one room to another. A way of moving from A to B. To Kenny, they signalled an institution. Miserable places where the needs of the helpless were met by the uncaring. He’d been in a couple as a boy. When his dad disappeared, he was taken to an orphanage before his Aunt Vi claimed him. It took her six months to satisfy the bureaucrats; six months in which he needed the love and support of those closest to him but received nothing but lukewarm food, cold sheets and a cool disinterest. Then when the hormones, assisted by a gutful of anger, surged through his body, a number of misdemeanours got him locked up in a borstal.

  When Kenny arrived in such a place, bursting with acne and attitude, the term borstal had officially been replaced with ‘Youth Custody Centre’. His time had been brief and vital, but the education he received there was not the one intended by the authorities. He learned when to blend in, when to make use of his natural aggression and how to hide the evidence of nocturnal masturbation. This was expressly forbidden and to the young Kenny it was bizarre that the guards would check their beds each morning for stiff sheets.

  He also observed that in the main the boys around him were stupid, lacking in education and minus the drive to do anything about it. He vowed that he would do what he needed to do, but that he’d never get caught again.

  When his sentence was over, there was Aunt Vi at the end of a corridor, ready to pat his shoulder, offer advice and the shelter of her home.

  This time the corridor was in a hospital and again, Aunt Vi waited at the far end, but now he was the visitor. She’d suffered from a massive stroke, Ian told him.

  She was in the High Dependency Unit in Southern General Hospital. This was situated on the far side of the River Clyde and would take him twenty minutes, traffic-dependent. Visiting time began at 2:30pm, which had given him a couple of hours to sleep.

  Not that he could.

  He’d sent the brothers packing and lay down on his bed. His mind wouldn’t allow him rest. It jumped from one worry to the next. Aunt Vi, Alexis and Diana. His father. He’d promised himself he’d find out the truth of his past, but the danger that Alexis was in had thrown all of that from his mind.

  His stomach twisted and his jaw ached with it all. When he was a teenager and in this much turmoil he’d simply find a car and take a joyride or he’d find a boy bigger than him and challenge him to a fight.

  He was beyond all that now, wasn’t he? But if a certain sick fuck had been in front of him right then he’d have taken take great joy in jumping on his head until grey matter leaked out of his ears.

  His heels thunked on the concrete-grey, linoleum-clad floor as he walked down the corridor to where his aunt was being looked after. He approached a desk and several tired faces turned to address him. He gave his aunt’s name. A nurse stood up and walked over to the desk. Her uniform struggled to contain her, buttons threatened to pop from chin to knee.

  ‘You’ll be Kenny,’ she said, her face warmed through with concern. ‘She’s had a hard time. Don’t expect too much, son.’

  Son. She looked younger than he was.

  She pointed where the corridor split in two. He was to go to the right. ‘Room Four,’ she said.

  The door had a glass panel, through it he could see his uncle in a chair by the bed. Vi was out of his line of sight. Colin was leaning forward, one hand reaching across the bed, his full attention on the bed’s occupant. To Kenny, he looked smaller and thinner, his face slack with worry and the sudden onslaught of age.

  Kenny took a deep breath and replayed the nurse’s words.

  Don’t expect too much.

  He set his features and walked in to the room. His Uncle Colin looked up at him, his face registering nothing by way of a reaction to Kenny’s appearance. It was like he had left the room minutes ago on an errand and simply returned.

  ‘I sent Ian home,’ Colin said, his eyes back on his wife. ‘He’s been here all night. Needs to get some sleep.’

  ‘How is she?’ Kenny asked, finally turning his attention to his aunt.

  Shock stole a gasp from his lungs. He closed his mouth and set a smile on it. When had he seen her last, he tried to recall. It was only a matter of weeks ago. The difference was incredible. If Colin’s pain hadn’t been so evident, he would have thought he was bent over the wrong woman.

  Her body had shrunk, barely causing a ripple on the sheets that covered the low-lying line of her limbs. Her head and shoulders were held up by a small tower of pillows, her face twisted to the side. Her bottom lip had worked its way to the left, a swollen lump. One eye was closed and the left eye seemed to have grown to dominate the space all but vacated by the other. This eye fixed on him as he moved closer to the bed.

  ‘You been in the wars, Aunt Vi?’ he asked. It felt like his voice was loud and harsh in the confined space.

  He could tell that she was fighting to respond to his question but whatever her brain demanded of her body nothing happened; the signals blocked and incapable of reaching muscle. Her eye seemed to grow larger in her urgency to communicate with him.

  ‘You alright, Colin?’ Kenny asked, keeping his smile loaded and locked on his aunt.

  ‘Just feckin’ dandy,’ said Colin.

  The eye moved to Colin’s face. Even now, Vi was working to keep the peace between them.

  ‘You want a break? Want to go for a coffee or something and I’ll keep her company?’

  Colin said nothing. Simply sat where he was, gripping his wife’s lifeless hand in the great wedges of skin, bone and muscle that were his. He opened his mouth as if to speak and closed it again. He was so tired he was beyond making a decision.

  Kenny studied his uncle – the brown Marks and Spencer cardigan, the jut of his Adam’s apple, the grey stubble and the throb of defeat in his eyes. If Vi didn’t recover from this, he expected the next phone call from Ian might be to say that his Uncle Colin had driven headfirst into a tree.

  ‘Uncle Colin, take a break. I’ll sit with Vi for ten minutes.’ As he spoke, Kenny moved towards the seat his uncle was crouched in, his actions telling the older man that he’d not take a refusal. Without taking his eyes from his wife, Colin got to his feet as if it was a monumental effort to reach his full height.

  ‘See you in a minute, love,’ he said and gave his wife’s hand a little shake then, without a glance at his nephew, he left the room.

  Kenny was used to his uncle’s gruff treatment of him and on this occasion brushed it off like lint from cloth. Sitting down, he adopted his uncle’s posture and gripped Vi’s hand in
both of his. Her focus was completely on him now, her stare unwavering. So much so he wondered if she had lost the ability to blink.

  ‘You’re in the best place, eh?’ he said, completely at a loss. It was apparent that his aunt was able to understand what he was saying; he just didn’t know what he should say other than a stream of inanities. A sentence about the weather edged towards his tongue but was blocked off by his refusal to issue the words.

  ‘They ran out of grapes down at the gift shop.’ He smiled and held his hands out. ‘Sorry. Oh and the Lucozade was also gone.’ He laughed. It always seemed as a child that when he was forced to visit relatives in the hospital that everyone came supplied with Lucozade and grapes. Like they were on some universal prescription.

  He looked at the living petrification that the stroke had visited upon his aunt. How quickly the human body could be turned off. This was not his aunt. She was in there somewhere and all that was required was some arcane science to bring her back to the surface.

  Holding her hand was giving him an anchor of sorts, her skin as dry as cotton, the bones so light he fancied that it was nothing but slender straws held together by muscle. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against her skin. Emotion clogged his chest, restricted his breathing. Tears stung his eyes.

  ‘You’ve got to get better, Aunt Vi,’ he whispered onto the back of a hand as ineffective as a glove. ‘Who else have I got?’ He fought for some control. This wasn’t fair. She could understand everything and he shouldn’t be putting her under any pressure.

  He lifted his head to see a tear squeeze from the corner of her eyelid. He reached for it and wiped it dry. Smiled ruefully. ‘If only I could return you to you so easily.’

  A memory breached. One of the few times he could actually remember his mother and his aunt together. He must have been about five or six. He’d fallen off his bike and his knee was a patch of gravel and torn skin. His howls could have woken the catatonic.

  Mum and Aunt Vi came rushing to his rescue and between them they carried him into the kitchen. Once there, they sat him on the table. The very table he found his mother slumped over all those years later. As he sobbed, snot bubbled out his right nostril. His chest heaved and he tried to tell the women what had happened.

  ‘A dog...’ – sob – ‘...ran out...’ – sob.

  His mum pressed his head to her chest and issued words of calm and soothing while Aunt Vi picked at the stones that had been pushed through his skin. When he wouldn’t calm down, his mother lost patience.

  ‘What’s all the crying for?’ she said. ‘Big boys don’t cry.’

  ‘Don’t you do that, Vicky. Don’t be pressing that rubbish onto him. If little boys were allowed to cry, maybe they’d grow up to be real men and able to deal with emotional stuff.’

  Through his sobs, Kenny watched his mother study his aunt as if she’d just dropped in from a far-flung corner of the Earth. Eventually her need to be dominant in her own home surfaced.

  ‘Don’t you tell me how to raise my son, Vi.’

  His aunt shrugged, made a face at Kenny as if to say, Sorry son, but I tried, and without a word went back to cleaning the wound. Once she was finished she applied some disinfectant with the warning that it might sting. Then she moved out of the way to allow his mother the elbow-room to add a large brown sticking plaster.

  That was his aunt, Kenny thought. Ahead of her time. Issuing advice long before the experts thought of it.

  ‘You know I’ve never said this, Aunt Vi. And it’s a disgrace that it had to wait until now, but I was very lucky to have you.’ He bit his lip and closed his eyes tight, trying to hold back the emotion that threatened to surface. ‘You were... are a better mum than I deserved.’

  The door opened and the nurse he spoke to earlier bustled in. As she walked, her thighs rubbed together, making more sound than the tread of her feet.

  ‘Your aunt needs her rest, son,’ she said. The nurse looked at him, her mouth bunched tight like a knot at the end of a child’s balloon. Her expression an offer of sympathy and apology.

  ‘Right. Of course. ‘ He stood up and dried his face with his sleeve. ‘I’ll go find my uncle.’

  • • •

  He found his uncle in the hospital cafeteria sitting at a table on his own, a full mug of coffee in his hand. He was staring at the mug as if he needed instructions to tell him how to get the drink into his stomach.

  Kenny joined the queue of people waiting to be served and looked around. The room was a long rectangle, painted hospital-blue with tables lined up along each wall like beds in a ward. By way of offering an atmosphere, the hospital authorities had placed a wooden trellis between tables. Each trellis supported the weight of an artificial plant. Given that official visiting times were over, most of the people at the tables were in uniform. Kenny made a face at the thought of spending his breaks from work in such a place.

  The woman behind the counter offered him a smile at odds with the cool of the room.

  ‘What can I get you, love?’ she asked.

  ‘A mochaccino?’

  ‘What’s that, love? One of them fancy coffees?’ She laughed. ‘That’s a new one. Wait till I tell the lassies.’

  ‘White coffee will do,’ Kenny grinned, responding to her good cheer.

  ‘What about some munchies to go with it? You’re way too skinny, son. How about a nice wee muffin?’ She pointed at a basket that held some mass-produced bakery goods.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Kenny said. ‘I’ve had my chemicals for the day.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, adopting an expression meant to convey grief, ‘you’re on a diet?’

  ‘You got it,’ he replied. ‘I’ve lost twenty stones in the last twelve months.’

  She paused in the act of pouring his coffee. ‘Don’t tell me. Gastric bypass? Everybody’s doing it these days. Here’s a wee trick for you, son.’ She leaned forward and held a hand to the side of her face. ‘Pop some chocolate cake in the liquidiser. It’s genius.’

  Kenny laughed, shook his head and walked over to join his uncle. The older man didn’t move his eyes from the top of his mug.

  ‘You left her on her own?’ His voice was a low rumble.

  ‘The nurse told me to leave the room,’ bristled Kenny. ‘What was I to do? Tell her to go fuck herself?’ Kenny closed his eyes and listed the reasons why what he had just said was inappropriate. Then he listed the reasons why he was justified. It was a pretty even list.

  ‘Always were one with the smart mouth,’ said Colin. ‘Always knew more than everybody else.’

  ‘What did I ever do to you, Uncle Colin?’ Kenny asked, tired of the tension that was always between them. ‘Why could I never please you?’

  Colin looked at him, the line of his mouth twisted as if he had just drunk something sour. ‘You were your father’s son.’

  ‘Great. Wonderful.’ Kenny clapped his hands. ‘Your wife is seriously ill. The gloves are off. C’mon, tell me more. What else have you been burning to say to me all these years?’

  Colin’s eyes bore into Kenny’s. They burned with the need to offload. Words piled up behind them and then faded into the mists of the unspoken. Words without a voice; sound stolen from them, perhaps by an old promise. Colin returned to his drink. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Well guess what, Uncle Colin,’ Kenny said, ‘I have plenty to say to you.’ He didn’t know what prompted him to offload in such a way. Blame the concussion, blame his fatigue, he didn’t really give a toss who to blame, he just needed to get the words out and he didn’t much care that the man was worried sick about his wife. ‘That woman up those stairs is worth twenty of you. Thirty. Why she stuck around a miserable old cunt like you I’ll never know.’ He paused, searching to see if his words were reaching through. ‘You do nothing but complain. How long have you two been married? Twenty-o
dd years? Fuck me. Folk get less for murder and that’s what it would feel like being married to you. Murder.’

  Kenny leaned back in his chair, disgusted with himself. What was he achieving here? Nothing. This was like pulling the legs off a defenceless spider. He took a sip of his coffee and swallowed. ‘I was just a boy. My mum died. My dad vanished and you turned on me.’

  ‘I never raised a hand to you.’ Colin roused himself. ‘God knows I should have. You might have turned out better.’

  ‘You didn’t need to lay a hand on me. Sticks and stones, Uncle Colin. That’s the lie that every adult passes to children, but every child knows the truth of it. Long after the bruises have faded, the petty insults, the sting of the sarcasm carries on burrowing under the skin.’ Kenny pushed the coffee mug out of reach. He couldn’t bear the taste of it. ‘You had the chance to do some good. The chance to offer a little kindness to a wee boy whose whole world had been ripped apart. But you chose to give in to your petty jealousy and to make that wee boy’s life a misery.’

  ‘Jealousy?’ Colin laughed harshly. ‘You haven’t a fucking clue, boy. What did I have to be jealous of a wee skelf like you?’

  ‘I was my father’s son,’ Kenny said and watched the other man’s expression. ‘You and him were friends, were you not?’

  At least that was the family legend. They had been inseparable from school, went in to the same line of work and met the Collins sisters. Got one each, got married and had a child each. Then the timing belt snapped in that particular engine and it all fell apart.

  ‘Then my mum died.’ Kenny spoke the words out loud, not sure where he was going with them. The idea pressed at his mind, looking for articulation but remained just beyond him, like a note of currency blown just out of his reach by a stiff breeze.

  ‘Your mum was worth ten of him. Twenty,’ Colin said.

  The breeze fell and the note landed in his hand.

  ‘You married the wrong sister.’ The words were out of Kenny’s mouth before the thought was fully formed.