Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller

by Alex Matthews

  Even now I can plainly hear her screams…

  I’m sorry, Ruby; I’m sorry I could not help you.

  * * * *

  4

  Thursday

  I must describe my cell. After all, it has become my world. Strange, that I who once had the entire globe to choose from, is now confined within a twelve feet by twelve feet boundary.

  But I guess that’s a lie. In theory I had the entire globe there for the taking, but in reality, as with so much in life, I was chained to my circumstances. It’s just that I like to think I had the opportunity, the freedom, because that’s what I came to expect by right. It’s what a democracy promises. It is a constrained freedom. We are all fooled. We fool ourselves terribly, unashamedly, carelessly, constantly – I know I did. We fool ourselves into believing that everything is ours. We do not see or feel the straps to our constraint, because we have blinded ourselves to them; for us they do not exist. We are free.

  I find myself laughing, but it is a cold, humourless laugh. I can hardly control my pen because of it.

  I have been in here so long now that the real world outside, all those places I have visited as part of my everyday life, for pleasure, for work, has almost ceased to exist, has become a foggy picture, ethereal, belonging to another time, another universe, another person. As with people I have known intimately, their faces are muddy now, smeared memories, and I almost cry out in anguish when I find I cannot recall in exact detail the contours of those I once held dear. Even Ruby is a ghost of a likeness floating against black velvet. I see her white face, but the hair is a shadowy blob, and the eyes – those beautiful eyes – are murky pits. The picture I draw for you, then, is perhaps not the entire truth, and this is disquieting, for I do so need you to know the truth. Yet, perversely, I find Max and Connie remain fixed in my brain needle-sharp, like twin tortuous barbs.

  My room. I must return to the subject of my room. By fixing it as somewhere real for you, it fixes it as somewhere real for me. This is necessary; it has of late seemed to me that I am living a nightmare, my dreams and my tenuous waking hours now so blurred and smudged into each other that the state I thought – took for granted as being reality is fast slipping away, dissolving before me. To see the words I’ve penned helps fix me in reality again.

  The room may be small, but it is comfortable. As comfortable as a living hell might be deemed. I have discovered that even comfort has evil qualities. The walls are painted pale cream, all four. It brings to mind ice-cream. Cornish. Many hours of staring at its glare under the lights results in considerable strain to the eyes. They blaze in their sockets, the only cure being to squeeze them shut or to bury my head under the blankets for respite. The lights are my daylight, you see, for there is no window in my room. When they are turned out I assume it is night, whether or not night has fallen outside. It is a high ceiling and the lights are set into it, too high for me to reach and damage myself upon, nothing to get hold of in case I do. I’d love to be able to poke them out one by one. I daydream of grasping a long pole – a broom handle maybe – and stabbing at each one in turn, hearing for real the shattering glass, feeling an immense sense of satisfaction as they go pop and the room falls a little darker, till they are all out and I stand alone and triumphant in a black void.

  My only furniture comprises a single bed, a table and a chair. The bed is, again, comfortable; or in theory it should be, with its thick padded mattress and feather-filled quilts. The fact is I do not sleep well. I’m not sure whether I actually sleep at all, or lay awake indefinitely, or am at a point in between the two. If I do sleep – and I assume I must at some stage – then I am linked to wakefulness by the flimsiest of mental cords. I’m sure I often mistake my dreaming for memories, attempting to resurface as my dulled brain searches for hooks to grab a hold of. At other times I know that I’ve been so lost in thought, the images so lucid, that I feel I must have been dreaming them. And yet I cannot remember waking.

  I have a desk. I noticed straight away that it was bolted to the floor. All my furniture is. I assume this was done to prevent me lifting it and doing myself some kind of damage. It was wasted effort, for the beast is so heavy that I could barely budge it, even if I had the inclination. If it were done to prevent me altering my room in any way, alleviating somewhat the intense boredom of prickling sameness, then it has worked perfectly. It stands as a solid reminder of my imprisonment, of a condition unchanged, immobile, locked firmly into place.

  There is another room, a small one containing a lavatory and a shower cubicle. Everything is cleaned for me periodically; there is always fresh loo paper, a fresh bar of soap, plenty of hot water. I curse it all. I am not even allowed the privilege of cleaning up after myself, allowed no daily routine other than that of sitting and doing nothing and slowly going mad. I did the opposite once; I dirtied it all – walls, lavatory, shower, everything – spreading faeces with my bare hands in thick swirling impasto. It stank to high heaven. But the joy of expressing myself! I was elated for an hour or so, laughing uncontrollably at what I’d done; till disgust and shame filtered in and I crept into a corner, admonishing myself and weeping like a child. Except I was at once both wayward child and heated parent. It was cleaned up for me, naturally. You couldn’t tell what I’d done. Back to normal. Pristine. Clean. Sanitised. I can do what I like, but everything will return to how it was before.

  There is a mirror on the wall – actually it is sunk into the wall, no sharp edges. It broods darkly, like an eye above my desk where it can always see me. I have ever believed it to be a two-way mirror. I don’t have proof. It’s just a strong conviction that has only intensified with the years (years?). I can feel someone behind it, staring back at me when I stare at it, looking beyond my tired reflection. That, of course, is its other function. It reminds me of who I am and where I am, for when I stand before it I see a representation of myself with the room as my constant backdrop. It says firmly: “You are Philip Calder; you are here; you will stay here.” It might as well be a picture, an oil painting or photograph, for its contents are always the same. The Room and I. I have even written this as a title, in pen, underneath it. I felt at the time I was mocking my captor, but strangely it’s the only one of my numerous attempts at graffiti allowed to stand.

  I’d love to hear music again. Those delicious chords and individual notes, weaving in and out of each other, sparking off each other, rising, falling. Oh, I cry out in my head for music! I whistle, but sadly it is not enough. I sing, I hum, I click my fingers to inaudible beats, but there is no satisfying the hunger. I have food and drink enough. But I am starved of music. My body – my mind – has become malnourished. I’m sure the evidence is there in my dull reflection. Does that sound bizarre? Is it possible to crave something as insubstantial as music? Mere sounds bouncing off the eardrum? Vibrations?

  Still, I am allowed pen and paper, and these are my lifelines to sanity. My words are my surrogate music. I sit for hours scribbling away, often a series of convoluted abstract thoughts, ideas, and the odd-memory that I try to sharpen by writing it down. These writings are also my bricks which I use to reconstruct the person I was – am. They are in no particular order, and it is a peculiar sensation to flick through them, an existence rendered not as something that flowed naturally along a set chronological line, from A to B to C – life to death, youth to adult – but as a confused series of incidents: then, now, then, then, now, way back when, yesterday, ten years ago, a minute ago, now. It is a picture of me, but not a me I easily recognise. I am a stranger to myself.

  This work you read now somehow fits into all this. I cannot afford to let it sink into confusion, as with some of my other writing. It must make sense; it must flow naturally, a spring into a river, the river into the sea, if it is to be fully understood. That is difficult for me these days. Already I am aware I have digressed to such an extent that Max has been partially submerged. Yet you have to know about my room, because my room is me. That will have to suffice as an excuse.
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  I actually pen this last sentence wondering who you are. How came you to read this? Am I dead as you turn these pages and scan the print; or am I alive and here, still in my room? I presume, of course, that the manuscript has not been destroyed. There, I have called it a manuscript – how brave of me! How presumptuous! That presupposes many more pages to follow, and yet I cannot even guarantee you another paragraph.

  Truth is such a complex object to recover.

  * * * *

  I do not know exactly where they came from originally, Max and his mother. They made vague references to ‘down south’, but as to exactly where, I never did find out. Of course, as a child I accepted as sure as the Sun was shining that they were there simply because they were there and as such were a natural part of my existence. That they might have had a life before their life in our town was a concept never given much room for consideration. I thought their accent strange initially, but grew so used to it that it was no more of an oddity in time than, say, the colour of their hair, or eyes. And when I say time, I only mean within a day or so.

  Why Connie Stone chose to settle in the North, in our particular town, remains a mystery. Overthorpe was a typical Northern mining town, crammed with Victorian and Edwardian back-to-backs built to house the migrant workers who came to dig the mines. It had a street of shops, whose origins lay in the need to supply that vast army of miners, nothing spectacular, but enough to prevent you venturing into one of the larger towns if you couldn’t be bothered traipsing there on the often-crowded and irregular buses. There was a cramped supermarket (not more than two years old when I met Max), a dilapidated cinema (destined to become another supermarket), bookmakers, two estate agents and a solicitor’s office. There were nine pubs and working men’s clubs within a short walking distance from my house, and three football pitches of varying appearance, from the sloping and undulating to the bald and muddy, together giving some idea of the key forms of local entertainment. The stumpy hills that held the town on all sides, as if in an embrace, were all man-made, for the land about was naturally flat. They were an unsightly by-product of the mines, some standing black and forbidding against the horizon, others that had been planted with short, coarse grass were older and more deceptive, almost mistaken for real hills. And, because there were no real hills for them, people walked their dogs here, and lovers loved, and kids played their games, getting dog mess on their shoes for their mothers to scrape off. That, then, was Overthorpe. There was little else of note in it.

  Wiping away the rose-tinted mist of childhood memory, I realise it must have been like many other working-class towns thereabouts; mean, dirty, and floating in a stagnant cultural backwater. My conclusions are that wherever Connie and Max had come from ‘down south’ it had been equally as mean, dirty and culturally backward, or potentially worse.

  Connie found employment within a local tennis ball factory, and apparently ‘cleaned’ for someone in the early hours before she started work at the factory. As Max was her only child, money, it appeared, wasn’t too much of a problem. In a town where everyone had a mother and a father – a mam and dad – Connie proved one of the very few exceptions. I once heard my own parents discussing the types of women who lived ‘alone’ in the locality, nudged on by talk of Connie. They named three: the older ones, who’d lost their husbands through death, illness and desertion (the younger ones who’d had this happen to them were soon to marry again); there were a couple who were a bit suspect in the head and lived with their mothers (which I thought at the time surely didn’t count); and there were the nuns who lived a mystery of a life up at the convent on the outskirts of Overthorpe. Then, of course, there was Connie. And she was none of these. She provoked much gossip. It must be remembered that even though this was the close of the 60s and London was at that time swinging, we in the North were still climbing from the moral pit of the depressed 1930s, and didn’t so much swing as shiver a little bit then decide that was too risky and settled down to a good dose of Coronation Street and a pot of strong tea to recover.

  I recall men were occasionally present in the Stone household, however. There was an Uncle Dave, an Uncle Stuart and an Uncle Thomas, who followed in quick succession never to be seen again after a few short months. Don’t get me wrong, Connie wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I realise now she was on a quest to find just the right father for Max, having been disappointed with his real one – the mysterious Mr Stone. Adhering to Connie’s high standards was a weighty burden for the local men, seeped in their hardened cult of masculinity, to take on. I often heard her loudly bemoan the “drink-swilling, chauvinistic bastards,” and prayed I would not become one of them when I grew up, whatever they were. It was as if she tried them on like a pair of gloves or shoes, then discarded them as the wrong fit. It was just this sort of attitude – this ‘trying on’ without a wedding ring on your finger – that so nettled the local women, who I feel were as responsible as anyone for perpetuating the attitudes of the local drink-swilling, chauvinistic bastards as anyone.

  Marriage, if it even entered Connie’s mind at all, was secondary to her desire to care for Max. She was devoted to him, and he to her. In spite of all that Max was and grew up to be, his attachment to his mother never wavered. At times it appeared just a little too cloying, too emotional, as if they drew some sort of vibrant energy from each other, only able to face the world with the other close by. I was close to my parents, but this was different. There would be unashamed displays of hugs and kisses, and they’d laugh genuinely at each other’s jokes and jibes. It crossed my mind often that at that time they really didn’t need anyone else; they were quite happy in their shared common experiences, their own miniature universe. It also sprang to mind much later that perhaps Max’s intervention had some bearing on the early dismissal of unsuitable fathers.

  Connie had a simple philosophy towards life that enraptured me. I never saw anyone laugh so heartily at a comedy film on television, shrill machinegun titters till the tears ran down her painted cheeks. It was the same with a book – and she loved to read, though nothing highbrow – and she’d tut-tut or verbally abuse the hero, or sigh, or chuckle; “You can’t do that, you silly bugger!” she’d exclaim, or, “Don’t trust him, he’s married!” The radio was rarely silent. Her loud voice would sing in accompaniment, tunelessly unfortunately, whether it was The Beatles or Brahms. And dance! Encouraged by a piece on the radio, I saw her many a time take Max by the hands and launch into impromptu wild gyrations, twisting, spinning, kicking her legs till both mother and son collapsed onto the sofa breathless and laughing and in total disarray. By comparison I once saw my mother dance ‘The Last Waltz’ with my father at a cousin’s dreary wedding do, thinking them exceedingly daring. And you never bounced on our sofa for fear of death.

  I guess it was a magical time. I stepped over the threshold of the Stone house and inhibitions seemed to be washed away. It was like entering another dimension, an oasis of difference in a universe of similitude, where I fondly lapped at the water of freedom for the first time in my young life. I was privileged; one of the few people actually allowed to be sucked into their world, allowed to linger and take part in it. She started to call me first ‘Filly’ for Philip, and then shortened Calder to ‘Collie’, which for some reason she thought very funny. And so it stuck. I was never referred to as Philip by them again, only Collie. I didn’t mind; I was fully accepted.

  As I said, magical. It was all so magical. Of course, looking back now, it wasn’t so out of the ordinary, but at the time appeared so to my young mind. My sweetest childhood memories are all satellites revolving around that particular moment in time. It was the end of summer, the school holidays drawing achingly to a close. The future lay warm and colourful on some far distant horizon. It was a time when the senses play more part in living than ever it would as an adult.

  It is sharp still. The picture of Connie sitting in her deckchair outside on the grass; the radio blaring out some pop song or other, her bare foot tapping out
a rhythm, hands clasped around a paperback, eyes riveted onto the page, one hand snaking out to grab a chocolate from a box by her side, delivering it to her mouth without even a blink. And Max and I, on the grass also, playing not far from her with one of his many toys, lost in our own separate world of spacemen, aliens, cowboys and Indians, Batman and Robin, Thunderbirds and Stingray. Magical.

  “Happy, Collie?” she asked me on one such day. Why she did so I don’t know.

  I nodded feverishly. “Very!” I said.

  She went back to her book, smiling.

  It would all end, of course.

  Drain away like sand through fingers.

  * * * *

  5

  Friday

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered under my breath.

  Max was staring at the blackboard. Mr Walton had filled it entirely with maths questions, as he had done every Monday morning for decades. Line after line of pounds, shillings and pence to add up, take away or times – and not forgetting those guineas that always used to cause me such consternation. Decimalisation was still a year away, and Mr Walton was adamant that it would either prove too ‘foreign’ or too much of a switch for people to make after all these centuries and therefore it was necessary that the old system be kept as a tried and trusted backup, whether we approved or not.

  Max was visibly trembling. I asked him again what was wrong.

  “Can’t do it,” he said firmly, brows lowered, his pencil lying redundant on his desk, the paper on which he was supposed to be writing as bare as Mr Walton’s head.

  Walton’s wrath was legendary. I was concerned for my new friend. Being the same age as me, Max was in the same class. All boys, too, this being a year or so before they mixed classes with girls. As this was the first day back at school, and Mr Walton not yet having had the necessary information he needed to grade us according to intellect – bright boys to the front, dunces at the back, a grading arrived at, it must be said, by no immediately recognised qualification process other than that which originated somewhere in Walton’s head – Max and I managed to sit next to each other. Even I, as bad as I was with maths, had some attempt at answering this mathematical barrage down on paper. Max, apparently, had given up. This didn’t auger too well for his first day at a new school, especially with Mr Walton at the helm.