Out of Bounds

by Mike Seabrook

  BOOK THREE

  THE FOLLOW-ON

  At Dover police station he was sat in a grimy room and left for some time with only the younger PC, Metcalfe, who was detailed to keep an eye on him. The officer, who was barely three years older than Stephen himself, made several attempts to engage him in conversation, but after meeting with a sullen, scowling silence for the fifth time, he gave it up, unbuttoned his jacket and took off his tie, took a paperback from his pocket and ignored Stephen altogether.

  After twenty minutes a lumbering, grey-haired sergeant came in with PC Hubbard, and took a lot of details of Stephen. They went through the entire incident of his arrest. Entries were made in assorted forms, heavy books with numbers on the covers, and more forms. The sergeant, a kindly, slow-spoken Lancastrian, tried to make conversation with Stephen, and got the same reception as Metcalfe until at length he asked Stephen if he was hungry or if he would like a drink. “I’d sell my soul for a pint of lager”, said Stephen, hoping to provoke the Sergeant to anger.

  The Sergeant, needless to say, was far too old and wise to fall into that “So would we all, sonny”, he said sorrowfully, “so would we all. But I’m afraid the Prisoners’ Drinks Kitty’s run a teeny-weeny bit low, just for the moment, y’understand. Must be the hot weather we’re having. Still, I think the funds’d stretch to a cuppa tea, or coffee, if you prefer it. Actually”, he confided, leaning across the battered table and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, but we like to give our guests the choice. It makes ’em feel that we’re concerned about them, their tastes and preferences, y’know.”

  This, delivered without a trace of a smile, worked a small chink in the ramparts of righteous rage, wounded dignity and prolonged sulkiness behind which Stephen had taken refuge.

  He fought a losing battle against the smile that wanted to come up to the surface, and it popped out onto his face, a little lopsided, but visible.

  “There”, said the Sergeant. “I knew you had it in you there somewhere. You’re really very nice-looking when you want to be, lad”, he went on. “Much better than glaring at all and sundry. We’re only doin our job, y’know…”

  In ten minutes he had Stephen chattering almost as if to a friend, in twenty he had succeeded in prising a laugh out of him, and in forty he was telling him stories of prisoners, lunatics both in uniform and out of it, prostitutes golden-hearted and otherwise, thieves he had arrested years before, “when the job was a much more gentlemanly affair than it is now, lad. It wasn’t that they weren’t just as villainous, or that we were any softer on ’em, but when we hit ’em the boogers never used to complain like they do now…” He had him so spellbound that Stephen felt disappointed and resentful when a sudden commotion from beyond the room caused the Sergeant to jump up with surprising agility for a man of his bulk and go quickly out.

  “I’ll get you that cuppa when he comes back”, said young Metcalfe, who had been edging closer and closer so he could hear the unending fund of anecdotes, and so emollient had the elderly Sergeant’s effect on Stephen been that he forgot his refuge of sulks and smiled at Metcalfe before he could stop himself.

  After a while Hubbard returned, however, with the unwelcome news that he would have to be locked up for a while. “Not long, son”, he said, “the Herts boys should be here in an hour to take you home.”

  “Home?” queried Stephen, surprised.

  “Well, your home town”, said Hubbard. “Your local nick. That’s where you’ll be charged — if you’re charged at all. If you want my opinion, you won’t be charged. I got a strong suspicion your old man’s using us as cut-price truant-catchers. It would never surprise me if he decided he wanted you stopped, called the local law in and found you were of age and couldn’t be legally stopped from going where you wanted, and then had a brainwave. Oh, thinks Dad, so the little bugger can go swanning off to gay Paree, can he? Well, not with my loot, he can’t. So he makes a complaint to the local boys, who have to act on it, theft of a lot of cash and a stone-bonk suspect. We nick you, Hertfordshire come toiling and sweating down here to give you a nice taxi-ride home courtesy of the taxpayer, and then, when you get home, all Dad’s gotta do is withdraw his complaint and there’s one nice conviction for the crime figures gone for a shit.

  “So you and your ideas of independence get it where the chicken got the chopper, Dad’s got you home where he can keep a fatherly eye on you, and he’s got you there free of charge, he’s got his money back, and all in all, Dad wins all round. Does he care about our clear-up rate sufferin to the extent a one desperate master-burglar goin scot-free instead a languishin in a dungeon as he ought to, or about all that valuable diesel Herts are burnin at this very moment, floggin their motor round the M25? Does he buggery!”

  And so, by the time he had to endure an hour’s claustrophobia in a dingy, rather smelly cell, Stephen’s animosity towards the police had largely been dispelled.

  It was not by any means the same where his parents were concerned. Towards them, and especially his father, his feelings were still the bitterest possible.

  On the drive home he managed to remain calm, and even retell a few of the kindly Sergeant’s tall stories to the two young Hertfordshire officers in charge of him, and had the satisfaction of an absorbed and appreciative audience.

  When they reached his local police station it turned out to be exactly as Hubbard had sardonically forecast. The complaint of the theft of the money was withdrawn, and he was allowed, at last, to go, under lynx-like watchfulness and a heavy hand on his shoulder from his father. By the time they arrived home, it was late in the afternoon. Stephen had had very little sleep after the late night adventures of the night before, followed by a long journey; all this, together with the accumulated strain on his nerves of all the events of the last few days, had finally brought him to a pitch of exhaustion approaching collapse. He wolfed a light meal, while his parents stood over him watching for signs of rebellion, and when he was then banished to his room he had not even enough spirit to protest. He flung himself down fully clothed on his bed, not even troubling to kick off his trainers, and was asleep so quickly that he never even heard the key turned in the lock.

  He slept for thirteen and a half hours, waking at seven-thirty the next morning. He discovered the locked door quickly enough then, when he tried to get out to empty his bursting bladder.

  “Hey”, he bawled at the top of his voice, kicking savagely at the panels of the door with the flat of his foot. “Lemme out, d’you hear? Lemme out! Or shall I piss out of the window, you bastards?”

  As he stood there in fast-mounting discomfort which he was powerless to relieve, his feelings for his parents were altered by a seething fit of passionate temper; from fallen illusions and a kind of vague, generalized awareness of incompatibility, for a few moments they mutated into something very like hatred. The events of the day before felt as if they had taken place in a different age or another life, and already seemed to have taken on the distorted, surreal character of nightmare, almost as if they had been happening to someone else, with him as an impersonal, disembodied observer.

  There was nothing surreal or disembodied about the state of his bladder, however: it was rapidly becoming an emergency. He thumped and kicked and yelled again, and redoubled his efforts when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The key turned in the lock and the door opened to disclose his father, grim and forbidding. Stephen’s discomfort was too desperate for him to worry about, or even notice, how his father looked, however. He shot through the door like a greyhound bursting from its trap, almost bowling his father over, squirmed past him, and flew in a single bound into the bathroom, fumbling to get his zip down as he flew. With one of the odd little quirks the mind plays sometimes, he remembered quite clearly afterwards the thought coming cleanly into his mind, even in the frantic desperation of the moment, that if his mother was on the lavatory when he got there he would piss in the basin, if not in the bath. He
even remembered his quick flash of amused surprise that his mind should be capable of thinking such a thing, with such deliberation, in such a moment of panic.

  His father took a couple of furious paces after him and stood at the bathroom door, ready to hurl it open and administer an angry reproof. But hearing the powerful stream hitting the water in the bowl, under great pressure and seeming to go on and on for ever, he acknowledged that perhaps the urgency had been desperate, and relented. He waited, silent and still deeply incensed at what he had heard, on the landing.

  When Stephen came out, enormously relieved, his face still flushed from the terrible strain of holding himself in, his father made the second instant change of plan in the space of those few minutes. It had been his intention to take Stephen by the collar and march him downstairs to the tribunal awaiting him; but even as he stepped forward he dropped his hand to his side and merely motioned Stephen to follow him. He could not have said precisely what he had seen, but there was something in his son’s demeanour, or perhaps in the way he carried himself, which, though he would have cut a hand off rather than admit it, caused him to flinch slightly inside, and to back away half a pace.

  Stephen did follow him downstairs, though it was for his own reasons. He knew that there was certain to be some sort of reckoning before the day was out, and he had already decided in general terms how he intended to handle it. His father went from the foot of the stairs and stationed himself in front of the front door, standing with his legs apart and braced and his arms hanging by his sides, ready for instant action if Stephen was thinking about making a break as he had before. Stephen glared at him as he swung round and entered the dining room.

  He threw the door back with a crash as it hit the heavy doorstop and rebounded. He stamped into the room, still feeling mortified by the indignity of his enforced dash to the bathroom under his father’s eye, and in the foulest of tempers. He barely glanced at his mother, sitting at the far side of the big table, and dropped into a chair at the farthest point from her. His father came in, pulled the door to, locked it and pocketed the key. This at last elicited some response from Stephen. He laughed, a short, unpleasant, sneering yap of a laugh. Then he sat back and looked round at the two of them, one after the other, meeting then holding their eyes and enjoying watching them colour under his baleful stare.

  “Well, Stephen”, began his father after a long, awkward pause. He had succeeded in suppressing his anger. “It’s rather difficult to know quite where to start. I suppose, first of all, I’d like to apologize.”

  This wasn’t at all the beginning Stephen had been expecting, and it took a good deal of the wind out of his sails. He simmered down a little, and waited.

  “For two things, really”, went on his father. “First of all for locking your door last night. I don’t imagine you were even aware of it then, because you were snoring almost before I’d got the door shut. You must have been quite exhausted, of course, I realize that. I’m sorry you had to wait to get to the bathroom just now. It looked as if the case was rather urgent.” He grinned faintly, somewhat to Stephen’s surprise, for he was normally a little prim about anything to do with bodily functions.

  “I’d like to explain about that in a moment”, his father continued. “Before I do, I think I also owe you an apology, and a rather bigger one, for what happened yesterday. It didn’t need a mind reader to see how you felt about it, and I must admit, it was hitting well below the belt. I’d like a chance to explain that too, if you’ll allow me to, Stephen.”

  Stephen stared from him to his mother, who gave him a rather strained smile. He had been expecting almost anything except this, and it took more wind from his sails. He fidgeted, the portentous frown of ill-humour that he could feel settled firmly on his face beginning to feel faintly ridiculous. His brow cleared a little, and he nodded uncertainly. “Well, I… er… well, thanks”, he said, a little grumpily. He felt that it wasn’t quite playing the game to disarm him in this unexpected fashion when he had come in quite obviously spoiling for war. “I, er, I rather wanted to do some apologizing myself, actually”, he said awkwardly.

  “All right, Stephen”, said his father. “Let me get mine over with first, though, eh?” Stephen nodded. “Well, then, to begin with the locking of your door, I did that simply because I wanted to make sure I got a chance to talk to you. I think that, however the various things we’ve got to discuss today turn out, you owe us that much. I mean, you owe us at least the chance to talk. We may not find ourselves in agreement, we may find that we can’t actually resolve anything. It may be that the talk does no good, achieves nothing. But I do think we’re entitled to the chance to find that out—even if it turns out to be the hard way, don’t you?” Once again he surprised Stephen with a brief half-smile. Stephen found himself hard put to it not to respond. “I… yes”, he said, hesitantly.

  “All right. Well, we did try to talk to you about… ah… about recent developments the other day, but you didn’t give us a lot of chance then, I think you’ll agree. I blame myself as much as you for that. I thought that having the rector there might help in persuading you to unbend a little. That, I now accept, was a mistake. Anyhow, feeling as I’ve explained, that we were owed that much, I wanted to make sure I got a chance to collar you before you decided to make another run for it.

  “And that, of course, brings us to yesterday’s fiasco. Well, I could see clearly enough what you thought of me for setting the police after you like that, and I suppose if I’d been in your shoes I’d probably have felt much the same. I’ll tell you what happened.

  “We realized very quickly that you’d gone, and from what you’d said, I thought it was pretty certain that you would try to get abroad. I did a little checking, and found that you were not in any of the places you might normally be expected to be found in. So I did the only thing I could think of, and went to the local police.

  “It was faintly amusing, I suppose, in a way. I tried first of all to report you missing. Well, the first thing the policeman said was ‘How old is he?’ I said you were eighteen, and he said ‘He’s an adult, then. Nothing we can do’, before the words were out of my mouth. I tried to explain that we urgently needed to discuss personal problems of a private nature. ‘Mentally disordered, is he?’ he said. Well, I suppose I got rather indignant at that, but then he explained that unless you were of unsound mind your being eighteen left them with no power to stop you from going where you pleased. ‘Either that or if he’s committed some offence’, he said, just as I was turning to go. Well, Stephen, I’m afraid it rather put ideas into my head.

  “‘Suppose he has committed an offence?’ I asked. ‘Well, has he?’ he said. He didn’t seem to want to discuss hypothetical cases. ‘Well, yes, he has’, I said. ‘He’s stolen some money. Rather a large sum, actually.’ So then he asked for details, and when I’d explained that I had no idea of making the matter official, he said ‘Well, sir, if you really want him stopped, just so you can talk to him about his problems at home’ — the man seemed to assume automatically that the problems concerned us, which rather nettled me, I must say, but that’s by the way — ‘if you really want to spike his guns, you could play dirty, hit him below the belt, like, and lay an information concerning the theft of this money’, he said. And, to cut it short, that’s what I did.

  “I hope you’ll accept my word for it, Stephen, I had no intention of having you charged with theft. It really was merely a subterfuge to stop you before you got out of the country, so that we could have this talk. I’m not altogether proud of having resorted to it, but we were, naturally, very worried, so… well, I felt that the end justified the means. I trust that you’ll understand that.”

  Stephen sat in thought, watching his father’s face covertly from under his lashes. “I understand, Dad”, he said eventually. “Actually, the policeman at Dover guessed all that. He got it dead right, too”, he marvelled. “It’s amazing. He knew exactly what had happened. I wonder how he knew.”

  “
I dare say it’s not the first time such a ploy has been used”, said his father. “I don’t suppose there’s much that’s new, to a policeman. Anyway”, he continued, “what the policeman here suggested was exactly what we did. He would contact the Kent Constabulary, who would stop you, thinking they were detaining a suspect for theft, and then, when you were brought back here, I could simply quietly withdraw my complaint over the theft, and that would be that. As I say, I’m not very proud of what I did, but there it is.

  “Now I’d like to move on to the next logical step, which is, of course, the money. I must confess, Stephen, when I found that money missing I could have…well, let’s say I was very angry indeed. I suppose if you were setting off on this desperate venture, perhaps you needed more money than you could readily lay your hands on, but do you really feel that it justified theft — especially of such a large sum? Nearly five hundred pounds?”

  Stephen looked shamefaced. “N-no, Dad. That’s what I wanted to apologize for. I wouldn’t have kept much of it, I promise you. I didn’t know how much there was there, you see, until I was halfway to Dover on the train. I came in here in the dark, and just grabbed it and stuffed it in my pocket. When I counted it I nearly fell off the seat, when I saw those fifty-pound notes. But I would have sent most of it back straight away, Dad, honestly. I had the fifties set aside in a separate pocket, all ready to send back as soon as I could get an envelope and a stamp. And I was only intending to borrow the rest. As soon as I got to… where I was going, I was going to send back whatever I had left, then, as soon as I got a job I was going to send back whatever I’d spent. I didn’t think it counted as theft. That’s the truth.”