The Insect Farm

by Stuart Prebble

  “Can I get you some tea, Jonathan?”

  I declined, still more confused than anxious to find out what was going on. The warden asked me to sit down and I did.

  “Jonathan, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.” Looking back on it, I can see that he knew what he was going to say, but was measuring the pace at which to say it. Just as, when you are imparting words of great import, you need to ensure that each one is going in before moving on to the next, and you don’t want to cause confusion by getting ahead of yourself. His words came out one at a time, with no joins between them, all carefully enunciated. Exactly, in fact, as though he was talking to an idiot.

  “Jonathan, there has been an accident at your parents’ house,” he said, and waited for that thought to sink in. “There has been a fire.” He paused again. One step at a time, making sure it was all computing before proceeding. “I’m afraid that there has been some serious damage and that your parents have been badly hurt.” Another pause. “They were both taken to hospital.” One, two, three seconds. “But I’m afraid that they seem to have suffered from smoke inhalation.” One, two, three more seconds. “And Jonathan,” beat, beat, beat, “I cannot tell you how sorry I am to have to say that both are in a critical condition, and are being treated in intensive care.”

  God knows what I was thinking. I was aware of the warden’s wife planting herself on the sofa beside me and taking one of my hands in both of hers. The face of the warden was a mix of sadness and apprehension, like someone standing at the bedside of a dying man, expecting at any moment for them to expire. But he was waiting, waiting for just a few more seconds. “Jonathan,” he said at last, “I am so so sorry.”

  I can still vividly recall the feeling that the electronics of my brain were exploding, as thoughts and shock waves burst down the nerves, scrambling anything that got in their way. Even now I don’t know why this was the first more or less coherent thought that came into my mind.

  “What about Roger?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Who’s Roger?” It was the first time the warden’s wife had spoken since the offer of tea. I looked at her as though the answer to her question was too obvious to justify a response.

  “Roger. My brother Roger. He will have been in the house too.” I think the volume of my voice was increasing with the intensity of my panic. “What has happened to Roger?”

  Now the warden was confused and obviously at a loss. “I’m so sorry, Jonathan. I am just passing on what we have been told.”

  “By who?”

  The warden stood up and went towards the window, pulling back the curtains. I could see that outside there was a police car. A uniformed officer was standing beside the car, apparently waiting for this signal, and another officer was sitting in the driver’s seat. The warden beckoned, and I saw the policeman walk around towards the front entrance to the halls.

  I sat with my head in my hands, my fingers digging painfully into my scalp, and was only aware of the warden standing just inside the outer door, conferring in muted words with the policeman. After a few moments I could see the officer step back into the hallway and bring his two-way radio to his lips. In a blur, through the maelstrom of thoughts in my head, I could just make out the odd word here and there.

  “Brother… Roger… Yes, in the house apparently.”

  There was a further conference between the policeman and Mr Stroud before the latter came back and knelt down in front of me. I remember thinking it was not a stance in which he could have been comfortable, and wanting to assure him that I had not suddenly become an invalid.

  “The officer says they have no information that there was anyone else in the house. The fire brigade are still out there, and he has asked them to conduct a full search to be sure.” Now I wondered if Mr Stroud knew about Roger, because he added, “Could he have been out on his own?”

  “No, he couldn’t.” It came in a louder volume than might have been appropriate, but I don’t think I was being rude, maybe just abrupt, the result of anxiety rather than of impatience. “Roger has a handicap. He is twenty-five, but he isn’t able to be out of the house at night on his own. He must be there; in the back bedroom. Tell them to look in the back bedroom.”

  The warden’s wife went to speak to the police officer once more. I could half-hear snatches of the conversation in the hallway, but their words were interrupted by the crackle of life from the policeman’s hand-held radio. More muffled voices, and after a moment I heard Mrs Stroud suggest that maybe the officer should come in to speak to me himself.

  He was a police sergeant, a big presence suddenly filling the room, the blue uniform and brass buttons bringing a new dimension to the occasion. Now it was official; now it was real.

  As he entered the room, the officer took off his peaked cap, the first of many prescribed gestures of sympathy which were to characterize the coming weeks. Mrs Stroud was still in the hallway when there was another tapping on the door. She opened it to find Harriet standing outside. Instantly I could see the look of alarm on her face as she registered the warden, his wife and a bloody big policeman. Later she told me she thought it was about the little bit of pot we had been using, a thought which was banished by her first glimpse of the expression on the face of the officer. I got up and walked towards her, now concerned about what would be her reaction to the appalling news.

  “Harriet,” I took her by the arm and led her to the sofa, urging her to sit. “The warden has had to tell me that there has been a fire at my parents’ house. It seems that they were both in the house and have suffered from smoke inhalation.” I found that I was doing with Harriet exactly what, just a few minutes earlier, the warden had been trying to do with me. “They’ve been taken to hospital, but it seems that both are very badly hurt. The warden says they are in a critical condition.” The next cliché in the series would no doubt have been “and are not expected to live”, but that was not for now.

  It was the first time in my life that I had spoken any version of these words, and they seemed to me like a new and bitter taste in my mouth. I felt a wave of nausea run through me and in that instant thought surely that I would vomit. Then I caught sight of Harriet’s face, still not comprehending what she had heard, and struggling to take it on board. When finally she did, I was amazed by what she said.

  “What about Roger?”

  Now the policeman, who had been just about to speak when Harriet arrived, resumed what he had been saying.

  “It seems that the first reports were correct, and that there was no sign of any third person on the premises.” He had lapsed into the mode which is usually reserved for giving evidence in court, choosing his words carefully and instinctively protecting and justifying the actions of the force. “However, one of my colleagues has subsequently carried out a full search of the whole premises, and he found a young man in his early twenties, apparently hiding in a shed at the bottom of the garden.”

  My mind whirled with questions, and foremost among them was what on earth was Roger doing in the shed at that time of the night.

  “That will be Roger. Is he OK? Is my brother all right?”

  “We believe he is, sir, yes. He seems confused and is probably in shock.”

  “He’ll be traumatized.” I turned to the warden. “Roger has a mental handicap. He’ll be terrified. He won’t know what the hell is happening. I have to get there as fast as possible.”

  “And to the hospital before there are any further developments with your parents.” The words from Mrs Stroud were out before she could catch the look of disapproval on her husband’s face. “Not that I mean…” – but it was too late, and no one was in any doubt what she meant.

  It seemed that the warden and the police had already had the discussion. There were no trains or planes for several hours, so the police car outside was waiting to take me on the three-hundred-mile journey south “blues and twos”.

  “What does that mean?” asked Harriet.

  “It means
that he’ll get there in a hurry,” said the officer. I could tell it was a question they loved to be asked.

  “I want to come with you,” said Harriet instantly, and I was about to demur, but decided against it. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Nine

  It was January and a thin layer of snow covered the fields alongside the motorway as we blasted through County Durham and on our way south. I never did ask any questions on the journey. Probably it was because I did not want to know the answers, but I think I also knew that the two silent officers in the front seat would not tell me even if they had anything new. Several times they took calls on their comms system, but I could not make out the import of the muffled words and did not strain to do so. I feared my own misinterpretation of any slight shake of the head, and also any confirmation it might bring me.

  It was light and the rush hour was in full swing when finally we reached Croydon Hospital. In spite of the time of day, we had made the journey in just over four hours, so it was about 8.30 when the car stopped outside of the A-and-E department. The expert drivers had played their allocated roles, and I felt that my part in the unfolding drama was to leap out of the door and rush inside, screaming to be directed towards my parents. But I found that I could not do it, much as though my mind and body were reluctant to embrace what was destined to unfold. If I failed to move, failed to enquire, failed to absorb what was coming next, maybe none of it would be true. At last I became aware of the officer who had been driving standing beside me with the door open. By my side, Harriet whispered, “Better go in.”

  Once inside the reception area, it was clear that we were expected. The glow from our blue light continued to flicker rhythmically onto the glass doors, half reflecting and half penetrating inside. I saw the young man behind the desk reach for the telephone, and he had finished his conversation before Harriet and I reached the counter.

  “Mr Maguire?”

  “No, that’s my dad.” It wasn’t intended to be flippant; it just came out and the poor bloke was thrown into a little panic.

  “Oh yes, sorry,” he said. “But you are Jonathan Maguire?” I confirmed that I was. “And your parents are Mr and Mrs George and Judith Maguire?” Hearing their names from the mouth of this stranger stung me, and I felt one side of my face go into an involuntary twitch, as though I was flinching in response to a threatened slap. I nodded. “Will you just wait here a moment? Someone from the ward is coming down to see you.”

  That was all I needed to know. I could feel the primal scream of the newly orphaned welling up inside of me, and I had to place my hand over my mouth and seem to cough hard in order to suppress the sound. Why did I feel the need to suppress it? Even then, the requirements of convention held sway. I did not wish to make a scene.

  We waited, we sat, I paced a bit and then we paced together. It probably wasn’t as much as three minutes, but it’s funny what goes through your head. What was the point of that mad and dangerous overnight dash if we are now going to have to wait in an antiseptic foyer? We could have waited at that stop sign that we ran through. How do they dare to fritter away the seconds that we had gone to so much effort to save?

  I struggle to recall the immediacy of that moment, the turmoil of interacting thoughts buzzing backwards and forwards across the synapses of my brain. What I do remember as clearly today as I saw it then is the expression on the face of the nurse who approached along the corridor a few moments later. The look of someone whose next words were going to change for ever the life of a person they had never met.

  “Are you Jonathan Maguire?” You cannot be too careful. You don’t want to tell the wrong person that his parents are dead.

  I confirmed that I was. She took me by the arm and steered me towards a little alcove off the main foyer – a space with six hard chairs tucked away, just a little aside from the bustle of activity. I had time to register a poster warning against the dangers of drugs, and also indicating where to go to get counselling for obesity. Something in their exhortation rang a bell from a long time ago.

  “Would you mind sitting down?”

  I had time to wonder how many people had been told this kind of news when standing up and had instantly fallen over. Harriet was alongside of me, and I remember detecting a barely audible whimper as she put her hand on my arm. Oddly enough, it was her distress that sent a pang through me, bringing the tears to the edge of my eyes.

  The nurse started to speak, but her words did not compute. I could see her lips moving, but suddenly I could not focus on their meaning, and the only thing I could think about was Roger. Where was Roger? I realized that I hadn’t thought about Roger at all for all these last hours, not since asking the question in Newcastle. How weird that now seemed. Ordinarily he would be among my first concerns, yet for all that time I had been thinking about my parents and about myself, about what had happened to them and what was happening to me.

  I could make out a few phrases such as “did what we could”, and “hung on for as long as possible”, but the bottom line was that they were no more. They had not been burnt; the nurse was at pains that I should know that. They had died in their beds from the effects of smoke inhalation. The fire brigade had managed to get into the house to bring them out, before the rest of it was destroyed. They probably had not even been aware that anything was amiss. No doubt the police or the fire officers could answer any further questions I might have.

  “What about Roger?” It seemed to be the only question I was capable of asking since being woken in the small hours of the morning. “Where is Roger?”

  My question threw everyone into another panic. I explained to the nurse who Roger was, and she was visibly dismayed that she had no idea of the answer. She looked across at the receptionist as if to seek information, but did not find any. She turned around and made a facial enquiry of the officers who had driven us from Newcastle. The response was the same.

  “Please wait just a minute, Mr Maguire.”

  It was some time before the nurse was able to ascertain that Roger had indeed been brought to this hospital, and another few minutes before she was able to determine that he was currently being taken care of in a small side ward just off the main area of the Accident and Emergency Department, just a few steps away. I had the feeling that someone somewhere was going to have to explain why she had not known that there had been another relative in the house, but for the moment that was the least of my concerns.

  I was shown to a side room with a small hospital bed on wheels, a steel-framed chair, a sink and a locked cabinet with glass windows full of pharmaceuticals. Sitting upright on the chair, way over in the corner of the room and facing the blank wall, was Roger.

  He did not raise his head as I entered the room, and was apparently unaware of my presence as I looked at him. I was about to speak his name, but instead I stood silently for a few moments and watched as he picked up a stethoscope from the table and carefully fitted the earpieces into his ears, and then took the chest piece and pressed it against his heart. I watched as he breathed in, held his breath for a few seconds and then breathed out. Then he gently shook his head, as though preparing to give the patient some bad news. This was my older brother Roger, shortly after his experience of a fire which had killed our parents, almost literally inhabiting a world all his own.

  Only then, when gazing across this tiny space at this lost and lonely soul in the corner, did the full weight of what had happened flood into my brain. Like a tap that turned suddenly from a trickle to a torrent, I looked at Roger and felt a deluge of distress filling my head, welling up inside me so that suddenly the tears were pouring down my face in a joined-up stream. Amazingly so, at a rate which I would not have thought possible, it was as though my head was an empty vessel filling up with water which had at that moment reached the overflow and was now pouring out. I could feel the dripping on my shirt, and the snot running from my nose. Despite even all that, something within me was able to suppress the audible sound of the sob which I knew mu
st equally overflow from me. I turned away and back out of the room, quickly identified the route to the exit and ran towards it, just as though I was trying to avoid vomiting in someone’s living room.

  Harriet was at my side, but I shrugged her away and leant against the wall, instantly bent over as if to throw up. I wasn’t going to do so, but I could feel my stomach and chest straining in a physical reaction to the stress.

  Harriet, poor Harriet, had no idea what to say; how could anyone know what to say? At that moment I think she was probably more concerned that I might faint than about my emotional state. I saw her glancing around, plainly wondering whether to call for help. But what help could there be? Suddenly the framework of my world had collapsed. The structure upon which rested my equilibrium had been swept away. Where once there had been stability and support, now there was a vacuum. Our family had been halved in an instant, and now it was just me and my older brother Roger. And in so many ways that simply meant that it was just me.

  Chapter Ten

  No one was able to say for certain what had been the cause of the fire. The forensic people from the fire brigade established that it had started in the kitchen, but such had been the ferocity of the inferno that any evidence that might ever have existed at what they referred to as “the seat of the blaze” had been obliterated.

  I went to see the ruins of the house. I don’t know why I did, because I had been warned that there was nothing left. The police decided that I should be accompanied by a policewoman when I went along. Again, I’m not sure why – perhaps they thought I would break down among the ashes of my early life. There was, indeed, nothing left other than the charred and blackened shell of what had once been our home. Curiously, the adjoining houses on either side of ours had remained more or less undamaged. I learnt that the neighbours on one side had been away on holiday at the time, and on the other side the family had quickly been evacuated.