Like Father

by Nick Gifford

  It had been fine last night.

  David had described it as some kind of prank. Danny’s mind raced. Hodeken was a joker, a prankster.

  Could this be his work?

  Back in the flat, Danny rushed to get ready for school. He was late.

  He pulled on his shirt and looped the ready-knotted tie over his head. He took his blazer from the wardrobe, although it would be too warm today to wear it before he reached the school gates and had to put it on.

  His bag. He reached up to the cupboard over the wardrobe, pulled the door open, and a shower of heavy wooden tent pegs tipped out onto him.

  He put an arm up to defend himself, and staggered back.

  An instant later, he stepped over and shut the bedroom door so no-one would see.

  There were hundreds of the things, some still with moist earth stuck to them.

  Hodeken!

  He reached up, and took his bag, and put his books in it for today.

  What to do with the pegs?

  There was nothing to put them in, so he took his sleeping bag and started to put them in there. When it was full, he put it into the wardrobe and managed to shut the doors.

  17 Gather and share

  It was late, and he walked to school on his own. Rick had borrowed his father’s old Mini, and Tim, Won’t and Jade had all piled in. They could have fitted Danny in, at a squeeze, but when he saw them in the car park he slipped away through the trees, avoiding them.

  He walked, with his blazer slung over his shoulder and his bag dangling.

  There was a great pressure in his head, a sense that things were building up.

  Soon, something must give.

  He turned onto the track across the fields, and as he walked he listened.

  There was a faint whistling of tinnitus in his ear but nothing else from within. The only sounds were the wind in the branches of the trees that lined the brook, the ceaseless droning of a woodpigeon, the occasional bursts of song from greenfinches and blackcaps, the traffic on the main road. All the normal sounds of a country lane in late spring.

  No voice.

  Was Hodeken resting, or simply biding his time?

  Danny reached Morses Lane, hesitated, and then turned right.

  He couldn’t face school today. He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t imagine sitting in a class thinking about trigonometry or Shakespeare and all the time, just waiting ... waiting for the voice to start up.

  The road cut through an industrial estate. In the lane by the tyre-fitter’s, he paused and stuffed his blazer and tie into his bag. He knew he would still look like a fourteen-year-old bunking off school, but it was a little less obvious now.

  When he came to the New Meade Estate, he was sure everyone was looking at him. The old man mowing his tiny front lawn. The young mum holding a baby in the window of one of the small, modern houses. The teenager in blue overalls who passed him heading the other way and didn’t look much older than Danny. The post-lady wheeling her bicycle along the pavement from house to house.

  All staring.

  He studied the cracks in the pavement as he walked, head down, trying to blend in.

  He had never done this before.

  He felt terribly exposed.

  Across the estate, there was a track down past the allotments to the river. Away from the houses, he felt less vulnerable, but still this felt wrong.

  It was a mistake. He knew that now. Ahead of him, he had a day on his own, just himself and the thoughts in his head.

  ~

  “So. Where have you been, then?”

  Val stared at him, her arms crossed.

  Danny slung his bag through the open door of his bedroom.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you ‘what’ me. Why weren’t you at school today?”

  He walked past her, into his room. He took his blazer off and made as if to put it in the wardrobe, then stopped himself, remembering the sleeping bag full of the marquee’s pegs. He dumped it across his chair instead.

  He turned, and she was in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

  “So?” she said.

  He turned away from her again, and went to sit in the window seat.

  “Rick came round. He thought you were unwell. I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

  He felt a sudden twinge of something, deep inside his head. A stirring. He breathed deeply, and held the air in his lungs. Then out again, and held.

  “So?” she said again.

  He looked at her. He remembered the stone, heavy in his hand last night. He blinked. “I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “I won’t do it again.”

  Later, he went out to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. Val was there, putting a load into the washing machine. She looked up at him. “You going to the Gather and Share tonight?” she said brightly. “It’s at six-thirty.”

  He shrugged. He wasn’t sure if he could face a gathering of the residents of Hope Springs.

  “Hey, did you see they’d put the marquee back up today?” she added. “We found the pegs this morning.”

  He stared at her.

  She was smiling, trying to be positive. There was no hint of accusation in her expression.

  “I...” He stopped. He didn’t know what he had been going to say.

  “They were in the woods,” Val went on. “All of them, hammered into the ground in circles, like fairy rings.”

  He made his sandwich, then went back to his room with it. With the door closed, he went to the wardrobe. He opened it carefully, remembering the cascade of pegs when he had opened the cupboard above it this morning.

  His sleeping bag was there, but it was empty, slumped on top of a stack of shoes. He picked it up. There was mud inside it, but no pegs.

  Hodeken, up to his tricks again.

  ~

  They sat on plastic chairs arranged in a circle in the old school refectory. That was the Hope Springs way: in a circle everyone was equal.

  Despite this, they all turned to David to start the meeting. They might have no leader, but David was the one who had founded Hope Springs, and the Hope Springs Trust had been created around his ideals and ideas.

  Danny took one of the few remaining seats. There was a good turn-out tonight. Most of the adults were there. Jade, Won’t and Tim were there, too, and Josh sat on the floor at Val’s feet, grinning evilly and trying to twist the head off a rag doll.

  “Okay, okay,” said David, holding his hands up, palms outward, to get people’s attention. He spoke softly, but his voice carried clearly around the group, easily expanding to fill the tall-ceilinged room.

  “Is it okay with everybody if we begin? We have some issues to get through here tonight. If it’s okay with everybody, I’d like to raise the practical details of Saturday’s Open Day stroke Village Fete, but first of all I’d like to initiate a discussion of HoST’s relations with the wider community, using the marquee incident as a sounding point. But also, in accordance with our constitution, as this is a formal gathering of the Trust’s residents, this is the opportunity to explore any other issues you may have brought with you, and to share thoughts, feelings and experiences with us all. Okay, then? Shall we begin?”

  Danny sat and listened and watched. Val had taken a seat a short distance from Rick rather than taking the empty seat next to him, where Sunil now sat. There was a lot about Rick and Val that Danny didn’t understand, a tension that seemed to run between them whenever they were together.

  It must be lurrrrve.

  He put a hand to his forehead. The voice... it was back.

  “...the owners of the marquee have very kindly waived any charge for coming and sorting it out today,” David was saying. “Which saves us having to confront the issue of whose responsibility such a charge would have been. The Village Fete Committee hired the marquee, but it’s on land we look after, so it’s not clear where responsibilities lie.”

  “We should post guards,” said Sunil, leaning forward in his chair
, staring around the gathering through his tiny circular spectacles. “Fend the buggers off, I say.”

  Sharmila swept beaded hair back from her slender, lined face and smiled warmly at Sunil. “With respect,” she said, “that is hardly the most enlightened approach. The question this raises in my mind is how this incident reflects on our relationship with the village. We’re holding this open event to stimulate local interest in the alternatives we offer, but was this just a practical joke or was it some kind of gesture?”

  “Why not ask Daniel Smith?”

  Everyone turned towards Luke, who had just spoken. He fiddled with his moustache, and nodded towards Danny. “He was out there last night, sneaking around. Hiding in the bushes by the path into the lunaculture plots.”

  “Is that right, Danny?” asked David, fixing him with his pale blue eyes. “When was this?”

  “A... about half-ten,” said Danny. “I went out for a walk.” It sounded lame. He knew they were accusing him, blaming him.

  “And what happened?”

  “Nothing. I saw Luke. The marquee was still up. Nothing.”

  “He ran away when I caught him,” said Luke. “He did a runner, didn’t he?”

  Danny didn’t know where to look. They were all staring. Accusing him.

  See where it gets you if you don’t trust old Hodeken?

  His skin was burning, and he knew that made him look guilty, but knowing that only made it so much worse.

  Why was this silence dragging out? Why would nobody say anything?

  You don’t like it when I talk to you. You don’t listen to me. You don’t trust me, and like I told you, if you don’t trust me things might go wrong. Like your grandfather, shot in the river. Like your father...

  Little Rick was speaking. Danny tried to block out the taunting voice in his head.

  “...were out around then,” Rick said. “Weren’t we, Val, love?”

  Danny’s mother was staring at the wood tiles of the refectory floor.

  “You must have seen us, Danny,” Rick continued. “You must almost have bumped into us.”

  Rick was staring at Danny now, another accusing look. But he was accusing Danny of something different.

  He knows, Hodeken chanted. He knows you were following them. He’s scared of you now, Danny. We’ll see him off yet!

  Danny couldn’t look away from him, but he couldn’t answer, either. He felt well and truly trapped.

  Then, at last, Little Rick smiled, breaking the spell.

  “So if anything had happened while Danny was there we’d have all seen it, wouldn’t we? It must have happened later.”

  “He could have sneaked back afterwards,” said Luke, unwilling to give up.

  Little Rick raised his hands, just as his father had raised his hands for attention earlier. “Go easy on him, Lucas,” he said. “Danny’s had a hard time. He’s been through a lot. They all have, haven’t you, Val?”

  Danny looked at his mother. She was staring at Rick, willing him to say no more.

  He knows everything, the voice told Danny.

  “I think we’re moving away from the purpose of this discussion,” said Sharmila. “I’m not sure now is the time to discuss the wider implications of the incident with the marquee, after all. We would only be speculating. Let’s focus on the positive, the coming together of Hope Springs and Wishbourne on Saturday.” She sat back and smiled encouragingly into the silence that followed her intervention.

  “I still think we should post guards,” said Sunil, and then Warren asked for volunteers to help him organise the stall that would give away HoST produce to their neighbours and, slowly, the meeting moved on.

  Danny sat through it all, saying little, still convinced that whenever anyone looked in his direction it was an accusing look, a challenge.

  At the end, as everyone started to leave, Sharmila caught Danny’s eye. “Hey,” she said, bringing her hands together in front of her chest. “Danny. Give me a hand with the chairs?”

  He nodded, and picked up the nearest chair and stacked it on the next one along.

  “You didn’t share much tonight,” said Sharmila. “You hold everything within, don’t you? You think that’s a good thing?”

  It was how he coped. He said nothing, which was probably answer enough.

  “I didn’t know Rick and your mother were an item, if that is still the phrase.”

  “Are they?” He dragged a stack of chairs across the floor, then paused to pick them up when they made too loud a scraping noise.

  “You don’t know? Aren’t you interested? You’re not much of a gossip! I thought you would spill all the beans for me.”

  She was trying to be jolly but there was something not quite right. Danny couldn’t work out what it was.

  “They’re both single,” he said. “They can do what they like.” And all the time, trying desperately to block the little voice in his head.

  “As long as you’re okay with it. You seem troubled, though.”

  “I’m a teenager,” said Danny. “It goes with the territory.”

  Sharmila laughed. Then she said, “Danny, if there are any problems, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “Well... it’s just... You know I am not David’s first partner?”

  Danny nodded, thrown a little by the sudden change of direction.

  “David is an intense man. Very focused. It is one of his strengths. Only... when I first knew him this was more extreme. He was an obsessive man. One reason the school closed was that he was such a perfectionist he drove his best staff away with his demands and his expectations. He drove Ruby away, too – Rick’s mother. He always found fault in what others did, he fussed over every detail, he was convinced that where the world did not meet his high standards he could make it do so simply by applying his own will. Everything collapsed around him. He lost his wife and his school and he has had to reconstruct both himself and his life from all that went wrong. He is an entirely different man now.”

  She stopped, and Danny watched her, his eyebrows raised. “And?” he prompted her.

  “Rick... he has had problems,” said Sharmila. “He is like his father was, only perhaps more so. I’m sure he’s fine with your mother and I wish them well. But Rick can be very single-minded at times. Like I say, I’m sure everything will be fine. I shouldn’t be saying all this, but hey, I gossip.”

  She smiled. “You will tell me, won’t you, if there’s anything I should know?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Good. I will talk to David. He is a calming influence on Rick. He will tell me I am being silly.”

  18 A little word in your ear, Danny

  “Is it catching?”

  Cassie. Round the back of the science block, throwing him with her questions again.

  She laughed. “Whatever it was you had on Monday.”

  He’d come round here to get away from Won’t and Jase and the others. He just wanted a peaceful lunchbreak. He hadn’t been ready for this.

  He kicked at the ground.

  “You were on the hop, weren’t you? Skipping off. You’ll be in deep do if they catch you. I thought you were smarter than that, Danny Schmidt.”

  He looked up now, at her use of his name. She was smirking.

  She’s not a looker now, is she?

  The voice in his head ... spying. Taunting him. Hodeken had been quiet until now.

  “You’re no more talkative, are you? You can take the strong silent act too far, you know.”

  He shrugged and looked away, across the playing fields to where the trees marked the bank of the river.

  “How have things been?” Cassie asked, after a long silence. “You know... After the chatroom. You can tell me now, you know.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “That it was a set-up. That you typed all those messages and you made it all up just to wind me up. I tell you, German Danny, you really had me going for a while there. You really fooled
me.”

  He shook his head, and walked away from her.

  He couldn’t take this right now.

  He didn’t understand her. He never knew when she was serious or when she was joking. She did things to his head.

  Women. They’re half the problem, eh?

  He shook his head, as if that might rattle something loose.

  Later, sitting at the foot of a tree in the lane above the school, his phone vibrated in his pocket. Cassie.

  Call me if u wnt ...C

  He saved the message, then turned the phone off and put it away. He breathed deeply, and held the breath in so that he felt his lungs pushing harder, harder against his ribs and the base of his throat. He breathed out and held.

  His head was calm. His head was empty of thoughts. He was in control.

  See? You can do it when you want.

  ~

  At the end of the day, Danny’s maths teacher, Ms Nesbitt, caught him just as he was leaving the classroom. “Danny,” she said, holding a hand up, a finger pointing towards the ceiling.

  He stopped, waited.

  “Mr Sullivan asked me to pass on a message to you. Would you call in and see him before you leave? He’ll be in S1.06, or the prep room next door.”

  Danny nodded and left the room. Little Rick probably had the Mini again, and was going to offer him a lift. He was tempted not to go and see him. He would walk home instead. But he’d be in trouble if Rick waited around for him and he never showed up.

  He headed downstairs, part of the general rush for the exits. Then he turned back against the flow, and headed through to the science block.

  At first, he thought the lab was empty.

  The stools were neatly arranged, tucked under the benches, everything tidied away into plastic drawers and glass cabinets. Even the locust tank looked neat and ordered.

  Rick was over in the far corner. He raised a lazy hand just as Danny spotted him. He had a cup of coffee, but he hadn’t drunk any.

  “Danny,” he said. “I’m glad you could come. Here, take a seat.” He pushed a stool out with one foot, and it tipped, wobbled as if it was going to fall over, then righted itself.

  Danny dropped his bag on the floor and sat. Through the blinds he could see the crowds of children, pushing and jostling in the queues for the buses.