“I believe that the two men who tortured and killed my wife…” Mr. Baldy winced again but Bert was determined, “are in this room now.”
Dad rose to his feet with an oath that even I hadn’t heard before and Gary kicked the table leg in front of him so that the solid piece groaned in protest. He also swore.
Bert’s voice rose over the sudden eruption.
“And those that supported them and looked to gain from the suffering of my wife are equally guilty.”
Mum looked crushed but only, I think, because she saw her thousands of pounds slipping away from her. How could it be otherwise? Sarah just stared open-mouthed and subtly prepared to make a dash for the door if the occasion required such action. I did nothing. There was something underneath all this that I was just beginning to understand, and I was fascinated.
“Stay seated, please sir,” said Baldy smoothly. I noticed that he, as well as being a snappy dresser with a mellifluous voice, had a pair of bulky shoulders that informed a muscled torso and that, although all of us had jumped at the sudden explosion of fury in the room, he had calmly gathered himself as if ready to pounce.
“Stay seated. Mr. Freeman understands your guilt has not be proven and he is entitled to believe as he wishes.”
“But not to slander me,” my Dad thundered, resisting Baldy’s words and the strong hand that gripped his shoulder.
“There is no slander here. Nothing goes beyond these walls. Mr. Freeman will not repeat his beliefs outside of this office, you have his word and mine. Be seated, sir.”
Dad subsided slowly. Gary followed his lead but, slumped resentfully in his seat, he gnawed the cuticles on his thumb until it bled.
“They didn’t bloody do it,” I piped up. It was unjust, and I felt a stirring of anger in me that my father should have to put up with the accusation over and over again. “They wouldn’t never do nothink that stupid. If they ‘ad they’d ‘ave done it proper.”
“Shut up, Mikey,” and a violent punch on my thigh under the table was the response I got from Mum. No one else cared for my opinion or thought it mattered and thinking back I really wasn’t helping much despite my best intentions. Bert, however, raised his eyes to mine again.
“No evidence has been found, the case cannot proceed, the reward has brought no meaningful result,” he continued in a voice deadened by hopelessness. “I believe the police have done their best. Only a full confession might bring a conviction.”
He left those words hanging in the air over the table. They were almost visible.
Neither Dad nor Gary moved. I was riveted to Bert’s every syllable and had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had never had before. It was dread.
“I have no hope that will happen in the time I have left and yet…” he ran a gnarled hand briefly over his forehead.
“And yet I cannot leave this earth having done nothing, nothing. I cannot continue living day to day knowing that her suffering goes unacknowledged and un-thought of by the men that caused it. I have no recourse to the law, they cannot help me. I am a feeble man who longs for an eye for an eye, a life for a life but who turned away in disgust from those who, for a price, would have been more than willing …”
Baldy moved suddenly for the first time and the firm grip on Bert’s arm halted his words. Dad didn’t react. He already knew of course. If a contract had been carried out he wouldn’t ever have known a thing about it and we would have attended his funeral none the wiser either, but enquiries or an aborted contract would have very quickly found its way to his ear. Gary probably knew too. He just gnawed his thumbs the harder.
“No matter. I could not have done it. For her sake, I would not have done it. Peggy,” continued Bert, “was a Christian woman and a soft-hearted one who believed in returning a good deed for a bad one.”
No one dared speak but hope was clawing its way back into my mother’s heart, or what functioned as a heart. Sarah rubbed her rounded belly and tried to look feminine and helpless. It didn’t work.
I was disgusted. So that was it, after all, some Christian claptrap about returning good for evil and forgiving trespassers and all that malarkey. It was nauseating.
“I was reading a book a while ago. You might know it, boy.” Startled to be addressed out of the blue I flushed and tried to look as if I’d never read a book in my life. I’m sure I was convincing. “By Dickens. And I came across a line that I have not been able to get out of my mind.”
Almost as one, we looked away from Bert and to the solicitor. This last statement could explain everything. Bert was losing his marbles. He was clearly as mad as a box of frogs.
Baldy was impassive though and Mr. Freeman continued in that dead monotone.
“When the character who has caused so much agony demands his money and, because there is no legal way that justice can be attained, he is given what he is owed with these words. ‘nothing should have induced me to make this compromise if I had not known that the moment you got any money in that pocket of yours, you’d go to the devil faster, if possible than you would without it.’”
“And that,” he raised his chin for the first time and looked my father squarely in the eye, “is why we are here today.”
My father stared back. Bert’s lips formed a bitter curve that in no way resembled a smile.
“The money was a curse to me. It made my last few days with my dear Peggy uncomfortable and it was the root cause of her lonely death. I have not touched a penny of it since and whilst I wish to respect Peggy’s philosophy of returning good for evil, I nevertheless pass it on to you as a cursed thing and I don’t believe it will bring you a moment’s true happiness. I am convinced that it will destroy you and that your suffering may even be equal to the evil you have been guilty of. However that may be,” he spoke the next words on a barely suppressed sob, “Peggy believed that good will triumph over evil and it is just possible that this money will be your redemption. Either way,” he said wearily,” if you suffer and are destroyed then I get my heart’s desire. If you survive and some good comes out of these terrible events, if any one of you is redeemed and goes on to live a useful life then my Peggy will be happy. Maybe even I will be content.”
He pushed himself shakily away from the table with his two dried hands. He had not removed his coat or his hat during the whole meeting, but he shivered as if he were cold. The solicitor moved towards the door and opened it, but Bert paused and looked back at my father.
“Personally though, I hope that you will all rot in hell for an agonising eternity.”
The old man passed through the door and it was closed behind him.
11
Living well is the best revenge.
George Herbert
Silence. A frozen silence that stretched into long minutes.
My dad stood up.
“We can’t take it,” he said heavily.
“Are you mad?” hissed my mother. “I’ll never speak to you again if you spoil this for me.”
He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t, he knew that, but there was another element to all this that my mother wasn’t thinking of.
“If we take the money it will be like…an admission of guilt.”
Baldy’s eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly.
“So?” snapped my mother. She jerked her thumb at the unmoved solicitor. “He knows they can’t prove it, he said they can’t prove it and even if they could…” she trailed off with uncertainty in her eyes.
‘And even if they could and you rot in jail for the rest of your life, if there is still a chance that I could get my hands on the money, then it would be worth it’ was what she didn’t quite have the courage to say. But my dad heard every word of it anyway.
He stared at the heavy wooden table unmoving and the seconds ticked by. My mother fixed her eyes on him and they never flickered. My sister whimpered pleadingly
just once. My brother…I am not sure what my brother was thinking. He gave nothing away and was just waiting for dad’s decision. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the block, so he would be slow to work out the ramifications. He at least trusted my dad to make the right decision.
Dad began to speak, slowly as he always did, but as he spoke he pressed his balled fists into the table in front of him as if to drive the import of his words home to the listeners as deeply as he drove his hands into the unyielding wood.
“I did not do…this thing. It was not me.”
“No…” breathed my mother, “don’t.”
Dad kept his eyes on the table and the pressure on his fists. He looked as guilty as sin.
Baldy spoke.
“Mr. Freeman expected that you would maintain your innocence and it makes no difference to the…ah…arrangement.”
“I don’t understand it,” I piped up, determined now to have my say but more importantly to do something, anything to banish that frozen look from my father’s face.
Baldy looked at me and, although mum was telling me to shut up under her breath and my sister was fuming silently, he was ready to listen. My father made no objection.
“It don’t make no sense.” Since I didn’t have anything to lose except the torment of obtaining a good education which I in no way wanted, I was willing to show Mr. Freeman and Baldy the error of their ways.
“It don’t make no sense at all,” I expostulated with as much emphasis as I could muster. “I mean if ‘e finks that me dad done it, killed ‘is wife I mean, then why is ‘e givin’ them all that dosh? Why don’t ‘e give it to charity or sumfink. It’s just stupid.”
“Shut the fuck up,” hissed mum again, almost beside herself with terror.
Baldy allowed himself the whisper of a smile.
“It was suggested, and you are right, young man. It doesn’t make any sense at all to most of us, but Mr. Freeman sees the money as a curse and he truly believes that you will be the instruments of your own downfall. I am not sure that I could bring myself to this course of action but even so, I can see that he might just be right.”
Dad sat down suddenly as if his legs had given out, but I was not to be gainsaid.
“And why,” this was the most important point as far as I was concerned, “don’t I get none of the money?”
“I think you have missed the point, young sir.” Baldy leaned back in his chair and picked an imaginary bit of fluff from the knee of his expensive trousers. “You are the only one who is exempt from Mr. Freeman’s wrath. You are to receive an expensive education. Your youth and the assistance that you and your young friend offered on that dreadful day decided Mr. Freeman not to punish you, as he sees it, but to reward you.”
“Urrgh,” was the sort of sound I made to demonstrate my extreme disgust at Mr. Freeman’s generosity. This just served to amuse Baldy but, for some reason, it re-animated my father.
“Let’s get it over and done with then. What do we have to sign?” said my father.
That was it. The battle was won. My father rarely wavered in a course of action. He had said no and at that point he had been committed to refusal but something, something none of us could see, had changed his mind and now that he had said yes there would be no second thoughts. The money was theirs.
“Oh, my god,” breathed my mother clutching the area of her chest where one normally expects to find the heart.
At that point, I descended into a deep and dismal sulk which everyone ignored, and the room suddenly erupted into industry with two clerks appearing from nowhere carrying piles of paper to be read and signed individually by everyone there except me. I took off my tie and tied it Indian-like around my head, dug out my pocket knife and, with my head on my arm on the table, I deployed the said knife in scratching my name in full on the underside of the table. It wasn’t easy to do but it was a secret salve to my feelings of intense outrage. The day had started so well and had held such promise.
It took about an hour. The business stuff, I mean. I finished my carving on the underside and would have created something interesting on the top for everyone to share but my father deftly divested me of the pocket knife just as I was about to sink it into the shiny lacquer and so I was left to make a nuisance of myself in several other ways.
Wotsername with the neat legs came in to be a witness or something. I don’t think she knew that my brother was a very rich man, or she wouldn’t have treated him with such contempt when he leered optimistically at her and called her ‘darlin’. Or maybe she would. She was a classy bird.
“No chance,” she responded quietly with an elegant turn of her shoulder.
“Lesbian,” I heard him mutter. She leaned over to collect the coffee cup in front of him and smiled sweetly into his face.
“Well, if you’re the best that the male sex can offer I think lesbianism might well be a better option.”
Gary bit his lip and even the thought of all the money he would soon be able to flaunt couldn’t quite neutralise the sharpness of that remark.
When at length we found ourselves released from the expensively hushed offices into the bright seaside sunshine, Mum did a little skip, clasped her breast and let out a suppressed squeal. My sister sat down heavily on a nearby wall and muttered something about going into labour with the shock of it all and my brother looked at my dad and waited. Dad rubbed his chin.
“Well, what now?” he said, looking at my mother who shrugged her shoulders and turned her face away.
“We celebrate, don’t we? I dunno what you’re lookin’ so bloody miserable about. This is a dream come true. For all of us. Think about it. I’m goin’ to kick the dust of this shithole from my heels and move to Spain or the Bahamas or somewhere that the sun always shines. Hell, I am going to have myself a friggin’ ball.”
“And me, your husband? Where do I fit into all this?”
“I’m bloody serious,” gasped my sister. “The excitement ‘as brought the baby on early.”
“You?” spat my mother, oblivious to everything except freedom. “You can do what you want to. You don’t ‘ave to kowtow to those toerags in ‘Ackney now. You can live the life of bleedin’ Riley with as many mistresses as you can pay for, and as you ‘ave a taste for the cheap, that will be a lot, believe me. As soon as that money comes through I’m out of here and don’t try and stop me this time.”
“What about Mikey?” Dad asked surprisingly. I thought he had forgotten me. Mum had.
“Ee’s taken care of,” Mum sneered. “You ‘eard, e’ll be educated and be a doctor or an accountant or somefink and do you really think he’ll want to remember where he came from then. He won’t want to know me…or you.”
Even I could see that she might have a point there. Dad didn’t wince because Dad never winced and anyway he was only using me to appeal to her finer feelings, which of course she didn’t have. He really was clutching at straws. There was a pregnant pause, which the pregnant Sarah broke into with a desperate groan.
Mum looked across the pavement at Dad. “It’s no good, ‘Arry. I have to go, let me go.”
There was a moment more of silence. It was one of those heavy moments when someone has said something that everyone around wishes had not been said except the person who said it. Then Dad nodded curtly. My sister groaned and, as I happened to be the nearest, grasped my arm and squeezed it until I squealed. Mum glanced over but then with only the barest hesitation walked away. Dad jerked his chin at my brother.
“Get the car,” he said, then put a hand on my sister’s shoulder. She grimaced up at him.
“Da-ad?” she groaned, “can I go private?”
My sister was driven to the hospital by my brother accompanied by my father.
“Get yourself home, son,” said my father to me as he tried to fold Sarah’s splayed legs into the back seat of the old Jag.
“
And,” he added as an afterthought. “Don’t even think of running away because I’ll find you.”
That blew that, I thought dispiritedly kicking the kerbstone. I might have been in with half a chance if Dad had been distracted enough to give me a few hours head start but as it was…
The car, driven by Gary, who having concluded that a woman giving birth in the back seat gave him legal carte blanche to drive like a lunatic, screeched into the centre of the quiet road with wheels spinning and bombed as far as the intersection where I saw, past Sarah’s flailing legs, Dad give him a hefty wallop on the back of the head. It proceeded at a more sedate pace thereafter.
I spent a few hours knocking around Southend seafront, contemplating my fate and wondering exactly what the ‘best education money could buy’ was likely to entail. My best guess was based on Nicholas Nickleby, it being about the only book I had read that dealt with education in any form, and I sincerely hoped that things had moved on a bit since Dotheboys time. Nonetheless, it was a daunting prospect. Someone from my primary school had once sat an exam for a private school in Southend. He had been good at Maths and I was pretty rubbish, so I had a confused idea that they wouldn’t let me in because of that.
In fact, the more I thought about it the more I began to believe that I might just be stupid enough to get away with it. They couldn’t educate me if I didn’t want to be educated.
Having eaten more candy floss that was good for anyone, I eventually turned my footsteps home, taking a slight detour to see Bill who kept a mottled bunch of untidy ponies on the salt flats on Long Road and who sometimes let me ride them in return for a bit of grooming and mucking out. He was in a good mood that day, so I clambered on one of the old nags and pottered about for a half hour or so as the sun slid into obscurity and the streetlights flickered in the dusk.
No one was home when I got there. Mum would be with Vi no doubt and, as she had something to celebrate, would not be home until the small hours and maybe not even then.
A Patient Man Page 10
