Chain Reaction

by Gillian White

  The wrong response. Vernon looks worried, keeps pushing his brown-framed glasses back on his head. Why couldn’t his wife stay home and cook something cheap and sensible? Why does she have to go over the top? She knows what the situation is, doesn’t she? You only buy food from Marks when you’re really flush. They used to joke, Joy and Vernon, that when the children left home not only would they go on that cruise but they’d either dine out or buy Marks’ food every day. It was a dream. Where’s it gone now? I mean, one packet of lamb’s liver and poor Vernon’s blood pressure soars through the roof.

  But Joy needs him desperately; she loves him and she hates to hurt him. It’s all so perverse because why is her behaviour so bad? She looks at him with a warm glow of love. Thank the merciful heavens she’s got him, he is too fine a man to succeed in a vulgar world. Vernon is far steadier than her; Joy knows this and depends upon that fact. While she is like a tuft of down, blowing along with her moody and peevish emotions, Vernon’s a deeply-rooted tree. Defeated yet not disgraced, he bends but he does not break.

  At least he hasn’t done so far. Phew.

  THIRTEEN

  Penmore House, Ribblestone Close, Preston, Lancs

  THE SACRIFICE OF HIS son. His only son, Jody, has been taken to the mountain, and just as Abraham offered his own son to God, so Len Middleton feels he is offering Jody to the God of this screaming decade—the Mob.

  Jody is definitely innocent of the crime for which he has been accused. From what the boy tells him, and Len is used to believing a son who was rarely a liar, there was no force involved. Janice Plunket sacrificed her virginity quite willingly, and it’s not fair the State suggesting that Jody took wicked advantage of a woman with the mental age of a six year old. That’s not the point. She was battered and bruised and scratched all over, yes, but that happened as she struggled to find her way back home.

  If only Janice would stand up and tell the truth instead of repeating over and over that she cannot remember.

  One way or other, Jody has hurt her; perhaps he ought to be facing a charge of neglect. But rape—good heavens, never!

  Yet the Middletons have been hounded out, and much as Len would like to turn his back to the wall and fight, he has his wife and two daughters to consider. Cindy and Dawn can no longer attend school because of the bullying there.

  They have written off his son’s life.

  Lenny loathes visiting Jody on remand, in a building that seems to have been designed precisely to magnify sound—doors clanging, scuffling, banging, someone crying, someone moaning. And the place stinks. It is dirty, ugly and noisy and it smells of despair. They are forced to talk to their son in that dreary room sitting round those terrible tables supervised by a bored official as they try to wring some sort of intimacy out of the couple of feet between them. Hopeless. Hopeless. Babs ends up weeping, trying to understand what she did wrong, and Jody terrified and negative, making things worse.

  Shocked to the very core of himself, Lenny Middleton has taken to going for long walks alone, seeking the time for contemplation. And while Babs, guilt-ridden and withdrawn, has taken up the role of insecure child-woman, after his initial anger Lenny has sunk into a cold, unfeeling lethargy, the only way he can take the strain. It started with dog mess pushed through the letter box. You read about things like this and you tend to assume that the victims in question must have done something to deserve their plight… why else would such malicious attention be focused on one particular party? But it doesn’t work that way. There’re background forces which stir the ever-simmering soup of crowd malevolence. It’s the way the police spokespeople handle it, the way the press describe it, the gossip that suddenly oozes from nowhere like a leak in a sewer, smearing everything with filthy insinuation.

  Oh yes. Shit sticks.

  Even to a kid who was once the most popular lad round here.

  Oh, they have been lucky parents. The less fortunate, of which there are many, occasionally used to confide, ‘I don’t know where we went wrong. Look at you, look at your three. If only…’ Babs and Lenny would feel so self-righteous it makes him cringe to think of that now. ‘It’s so simple to produce well-adjusted, contented children,’ they used to compliment each other with pleasure. ‘It’s all in the way you love them. You show them they’re loved, you praise them, you discipline them and you lead by example.’ OK, Jody could be difficult, that’s natural after all. During adolescence the Middletons went through the normal traumas, but they talked them through sensitively and carefully, and Jody always knew where to come if he was unhappy or in trouble. Ever a popular boy, his close friendships helped boost him at any difficult times, as did his sport, his football and cricket. Was he too easy-going? Too good-natured? A kindly lad, a natural leader, he was bright, he was fun, and now look, Lenny is thinking of him as if he is gone for ever. There’s such an emptiness since they took him away.

  The hair that was once a shock of gold is limp, now, and without lustre. The prison seems to have stolen his colours and Jody was such an attractive child with those deep blue eyes and that healthy skin. His body was rigid under Lenny’s hand last time he tried a reassuring squeeze to the shoulder, and the boy would not meet his gaze when he told him he loved him.

  ‘Talking’ was always their answer to everything. Talking and working things through. They didn’t need experts to tell them that. The boy had everything to look forward to, including a conditional place at Birmingham to read Law in October.

  Where were the slums, the bleak poverty, the drug gangs and the loud house music? Everyone is nonplussed by the fact that Jody comes from a ‘normal family’, parents still married, homeowners, respectable middle-class people with two daughters to be proud of, never the slightest problem with either Dawn or Cindy. It’s not right that those sweet girls should suffer so. They have suffered enough already.

  ‘There’s people outside the house, Dad, I can hear them.’ Dawn woke Lenny soon after the nightmare started. It must have been gone midnight; he was sleepily befuddled while she was sobbing with fear.

  ‘What? What people?’

  ‘I dunno, I dunno, Dad, but they’re outside in the garden.’

  This was the terrible night after Jody had been arrested. They were all dazed and confused.

  Armed with a golf club, all the lights in the house blazing and his womenfolk huddled behind locked doors upstairs, Lenny was about to open the back door when a brick came crashing through the kitchen window and a slurred voice yelled, ‘Bastards!’

  ‘Who’s that?’ called Lenny, limbs shaking, heart playing tricks. He was too old and cowardly for this sort of thing.

  ‘Fuck off, you wankers! Shit’s too good for you. You’ll suffer for this…’

  Len could not speak. His eyes burned. He breathed deeply, quickly, as if an overdose of oxygen would calm him. The violence in the obscene voice was worse than the shattering force of the brick. Shaking and vulnerable in his dressing gown and pyjamas, Lenny dare not open the door, and when he looked out into the darkness he could make out shapes but no faces. That was the most unnerving thing. He thought of the Ku Klux Klan and its cunning use of masks: it’s the faces that make a crowd human. When you have no faces, you have only a baying tide of violence and hostility.

  ‘RAPE, RAPE, RAPE’ chanted the faceless mob.

  The following day a wreath was delivered to the door. Cindy answered.

  Babs was hounded by anonymous phone calls. She’d had to give up working at the surgery straight away, just as Len stopped going to the golf club. Nobody said anything, but sometimes you just know when you’re not wanted. When Babs answered the phone, there was just silence, or sometimes abuse, even threats against her life and the life of the girls. The police could do nothing, they said, unless they had proof, or a name. There was no point pushing it, you could see you’d get no sympathy there.

  At work, those who did not visibly recoil were a bit too nice, going out of their way to speak to Len, avoiding all references to children, f
amily, home life, finding sanctuary instead in sales figures, office gossip, new and interesting brands, conferences and the incredible behaviour of upper management. He wanted to hold out his hands and beg them to be natural. Whatever natural was. He has already forgotten. It is disconcerting and uncomfortable to say the least and he was weak with relief, quite overcome by the man’s understanding when his immediate superior had him in and suggested he move to the West-Country branch.

  Len is finding it hard to be loving and tender these days, although he knows it is desperately required of him at this time. After all, his tranquillised wife isn’t to blame—or is she? She was the mother after all, the one who brought the children up while Len made perfunctory gestures at helping. Jody should never have touched Janice Plunket. What made his boy do something like that? Babs loved Jody deeply, she still does. Did she spoil him, pamper him, reward him for the wrong behaviour, give Jody too much attention? His sisters were often jealous. The lad had certainly been given most things he wanted—most kids are these days, but then Jody frequently helped in the house and the garden without being asked. The Middletons used simply to feel glad that they had the resources to be benevolent like that.

  So what a blessed relief it was when the agents phoned yesterday with the offer from the Smedleys in Clitheroe, of £98,000. Up until then it had been unofficial, but it meant they, in turn, could make an offer for the house in Milton and their offer was immediately accepted. No attempt to push them up, and Len would have been perfectly happy to pay another £10,000, even £20,000, to escape from here.

  He prays that the Smedleys do not find out about the notoriety of the place, or that if they do, this odious taint will not put them off. After all, they are not talking about murder here, it’s not like the West house in Gloucester with bodies under the floorboards although, from the local reaction, you would have to believe it was equally sinister. No crime has been committed on these premises. Perhaps the settling in to a new lifestyle, the organising of a new home will be the healing of Babs who, contrary to his reaction, loathes being alone these days having nothing to do but think.

  But today the house he comes home to is unnaturally quiet, no whir of the mixer, no hum of the Hoover. The television is seldom on nowadays. Babs just sits and frets and loses weight, or gardens compulsively. She won’t be leaving friends behind, not after this. You soon learn who your friends are when you are struck by this sort of disaster.

  They haven’t had sex since the day they took Jody away. If Len tries to approach her Babs looks disgusted, and he, in turn, feels ashamed that he should require this basic animal satisfaction when their only son is in jail. He feels the same when he finds himself inadvertently laughing. Will they ever laugh naturally together again?

  ‘Sometimes I wish he had died,’ Babs sobbed to him, ‘or been the victim instead of the criminal. I would so love to have all that sympathy, and it does feel as if Jody has died and yet everybody hates us. You think I’m awful for saying that, don’t you?’

  No. Comforting her was easy, for there are times when Len wishes this himself. Particularly when the girls are involved. At school they’ve been sent to Coventry, not invited to the homes of their friends any more, excluded from the usual social roundabout so essential in a teenage world. No longer do they sit on the stairs hugging the phone and giggling. They daren’t go out any more in case they bump into someone they know, and their former companions have started crossing to the other side of the road when they see Dawn and Cindy approaching. Cindy has had her satchel snatched. Dawn found her PE gear in the swimming pool; there was a brand-new badminton racket with it. It is all so terribly cruel. Len never knew the world could behave so callously towards the innocent. He should have known, he supposes. After all, he reads the papers, he watches the news.

  If this move goes well, they will make new friends, build new lives, and all without Jody’s unjust notoriety to cast a shadow over everything and everywhere they go. The trial itself is bound to be awful but there is still hope, and it’s hope that keeps them going, hope that Janice Plunket will tell the truth—if she knows it. Hope that before the trial, Jody’s story will be believed by somebody other than his closest family. Hope that the highly-respected barrister who is representing Jody will manage to convince the jury…

  But it’s all out of his hands now. Len cannot protect his beloved son any longer.

  Len heads for the chocolate fingers. The womenfolk must have gone into Preston together, shopping most likely. There’s security in numbers. Yes, they are shopping—the basket’s missing from the back of the door. When the phone rings Len regards it with apprehension before bending to pick it up. Friends rarely ring any more. He is ready with a vitriolic response to whoever might be there, getting sick kicks from hounding the Middletons.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Jody?’ Len shirts gears. This is a surprise. He has never rung them from prison before.

  ‘Dad, I have to be quick. Are you on your own?’

  ‘Yes, I am. The others must have gone shopping. What’s the matter, son? What’s happened?’

  Jody’s voice is puffy, his breath harsh, short. Len can almost taste the fear. ‘Dad, I can’t speak for long in case they’re already monitoring your calls. I’m out…’

  ‘Out?’ Len’s eyes widen.

  ‘I’m on the run. Me and two others went over the wall this afternoon.’

  ‘But Jody, wait! Listen, you can’t—’

  ‘It’s done, Dad, and I’m out, but I desperately need some money.’

  Lenny’s mouth goes tighter. ‘Jody, wait a minute, listen to me!’

  There’s a sob in the lad’s voice this time. ‘Don’t shout, there’s no point. Just tell me, Dad—can you help me?’

  Stupidly, in his confusion, Len pats his pocket as if it’s Dawn or Cindy asking for a sub. ‘I don’t think I’ve got any on me right now, son.’

  ‘But you could get it—out of the wall?’

  Hesitation. ‘Well, yes, I could get it, but—’

  ‘I haven’t got long, Dad.’ He is galvanised, talking faster. ‘And I can’t stay here in the phone box. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Listen, get me some money, please, please, and be at the park in half an hour, the bench nearest the cafe—you know. The old wooden cafe where we used to go with the boats. I’ve got to go now. Bye, Dad. See you…’

  Dear God, this is all they need. Len stares, mesmerised, at the silent phone while his body shakes and his brow moistens. It’s all so absurd and melodramatic. It’s the shock! Not only the shock of hearing Jody so out of the blue like that, but the awful realisation that his son has done something so appallingly foolish. He has played right into the hands of his enemies and now Lenny has the choice of either aiding and abetting him in this reckless behaviour, or handing him over to the law in the kind of betrayal that might result in his being imprisoned for the rest of his young life.

  He raises a tortured, anxious face, listening for his wife’s car. What would Babs’ reaction be? What is his own reaction? At the moment he only feels numb, sick and confused. Sometimes, when the family were watching Crimewatch together they used to ask each other what they would do if they suspected someone they loved to be guilty of one of the crimes featured on the programme. Would they give them up to the law, or would they protect them, guilty or not?

  Should he feel pleased that his son is free? After all, a fair trial for Jody, after this publicity, will be out of the question. But if Len is pleased, then what is this heavy weight that presses against his heart? Running away is never the answer and yet, if he had been in Jody’s position with a chance of escaping that dismal place and that terrifying future, what would Len have done?

  Jody can’t stay in hiding for ever. They’ll catch him and his mates in the end and there’ll be worse trouble.

  The boy is innocent. Innocent of the charge he faces. So perhaps Len should attempt to use the next lot of publicity—oh, those awful headlines again, shouted from street corners!—
to try to convince the public of this. But how should he do this, and when? Len is so out of his depth—they all are.

  High-shouldered beneath his umbrella, Len slips out of the house and into the rain. The note he leaves on the kitchen table says, quite truthfully, that he’s gone to get some money from the hole in the wall. What if he’s seen? He holds the umbrella well down. He could lose his job. He could lose his home. By the time he sets off towards the park the rain is in full force. The damp penetrates his knees and shins and trickles down his arm. A patrolling policeman passes by and Len is moved to glance at his watch, considering this a gesture of innocence. But he is a guilty man, going about bad business. Does he look as furtive as he feels? Other people pass him, ordinary people, going about the simple business of their lives. With a gasp of relief he reaches the park and lowers his umbrella when he’s under the shelter of the trees. He heads speedily for the café, his eyes watering from the strain of staring, his body shivering as his summer trousers blow against his legs.

  And there is Jody, half-hiding, standing nervously beside the wall of the dilapidated café, closed at five-thirty, of course. He looks so young and frightened as he sees his father and raises a hand. That, and an incomplete smile, is the only acknowledgment of his father’s arrival.

  No more hugs. No more slaps on the back. Just, ‘Thanks a lot, Dad,’ as Len hands over the five £20 notes. ‘I owe you.’

  Len is nervous, twitchy. ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Back there somewhere.’

  ‘Where will you go after this?’

  ‘There’s a place.’

  ‘A safe place?’

  ‘Safe enough, they say.’

  ‘They’re going to find you, Jody.’

  ‘What else could I do?’

  ‘Mum’s going to be so worried.’

  ‘Better than being inside.’