A Patient Man

by S. Lynn Scott

  “Bugger off Mikey, I don’t want you.”

  She wasn’t a strong woman by any means, but she flung me from her as easily as if I were a piece of rubbish. I staggered backward, lost my balance and descended into the gutter. My head hit the kerbstone. For a few moments, a merciful blackness descended.

  I struggled back to half-consciousness to believe myself cradled in her arms, but it turned out to be some motherly creature from one of the pretty little houses who crooned platitudes interspersed with shocked exclamations about the treatment she had witnessed. I flung her off as soon as the world stopped spinning and, heedless of her gentle pleading and the gathering crowd of shocked bystanders, I started running again.

  She must have gone along the Esplanade towards the seafront. She must have.

  I felt sick and giddy. In fact, I stopped twice, once to throw up into someone’s begonias and once more over the bonnet of a car before I caught sight of her again. She was a long way ahead of me, still running barefoot along the green verges of the seawall. The weather had changed. Grey-black clouds were scudding in over the estuary and the wind was strengthening into noisy gusts. People who had taken to the beach in the optimistic expectation of a lazy afternoon’s sunshine were flocking back to cars and homes before the first drops of rain could fall. But my mother ran on regardless and I followed queasily in her wake, sometimes in sight of her and sometimes not. She was still a long way in front of me and moving slowly now as if she was all run out when I saw her cross the road to one of the old red telephone boxes that they still had everywhere in those days. By the time I stumbled up to it she was gone again. She had left the handset swinging and no other clue as to who she would have called.

  I could not see her anywhere.

  Big drops of water began to fall from the sky and a rumble of thunder rolled in from the channel. My head felt as if it were splitting open and when I put my hand on the back of my head I could feel sticky blood and a lump the size of an egg. I leaned against the telephone box, panting and queasy. I didn’t give much thought to who she had tried to phone. I knew. It would have been my father. He was the only one who would help her now. He would unquestioningly do whatever he could to save her from herself, just as he always had done. Whether she had managed to get through to him I did not know but I did know that he would find her and that so must I.

  Barefoot, with no handbag, no keys, no car she could not have gone far. I struggled to regain my breath as I looked wildly right and left. The summer cloudburst hit as the last few people leaped for shelter and as I started running again. I re-crossed the road and ran once more along the grassy verges of the seawall, then up the steep bank and onto the path next to the concrete walls, past the cinema, the casino, the café and the Gold Mine nightclub on my right, past the little fun fair and the crazy golf and on towards the Labworth café rising like an art deco spaceship over the sea wall. Still nothing. Surely, she could not have gone so far, and why should she? The small seafront made a better landmark to direct my father to. As the thought struck me I climbed the first access point that I came to that would take me over the sea wall. The other side of the seawall would provide some shelter from the driving rain and so I doubled back the way I had come on the seaward walkway.

  For five, ten, fifteen desperate minutes I stumbled on, through the summer storm, my breath catching on violent sobs as the lashing rain soaked my clothes and washed my face. I had almost reached the salt flats again when I found them.

  My mother was a crumpled bundle of wet cloth at his feet. He stood tall and ramrod straight, his flat cap and long raincoat providing him with some protection from the wind and the water that flung itself down from an angry sky.

  “Leave ‘er alone,” I screamed as I threw myself at him. He staggered slightly under the unexpected onslaught but kept his feet and his stance and his eyes on my mother.

  “Leave ‘er alone,” I screamed again and again until the words rasped and died in my throat and I was left hanging on his sleeve and tugging with all the strength I had left to pull him away from her. “She ain’t done nothink wrong, she ain’t.” Of course, I knew she had but I persisted as if saying so would make it so. “She ain’t, just leave ‘er alone.”

  He ignored me, ignored the rain and the wind. He had waited far too long for this moment and could hardly believe it had come at last.

  “It was you,” he said.

  She was seated against the cold iron of the seawall, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms and head hunched over them. Her lovely hair was lank and streaming, her mascara running in rivulets down what we could see of her face and, most heart-breaking of all to see were her little feet, still dainty with rosy polished toenails but dirty, bloodied, wet and so childlike as they rested on the cold grey concrete.

  In one of those volte-faces that the British weather is so notorious for the storm clouds brightened briefly and the rain eased.

  “Yeah,” she raised her chin slightly and said it clearly. “It was me.”

  “No, mum,” I shouted and, relinquishing my hold on Mr. Freeman’s coat, I flung myself down next to her. “Don’t say nuffink. You mustn’t say anyfink.”

  I threw my arm around her shoulders and put my head on her breast and sobbed. They were loud, exhausted, all hope gone sort of sobs. They must have been very hard to hear, even for my ungentle mother and the vengeful Mr. Freeman, but neither moved until the sharp wail of a siren meeting the howl of the distant wind reminded us that the whole world was looking for her. Eventual discovery was inevitable, but I refused to let hope fade. If we could just hold out long enough for Dad to get to us, he would make it all right. He would spirit her away and keep her somewhere safe and I would look after her for the rest of my life.

  “Come with me,” said Mr. Freeman to my mother. “You must face it sometime. Come with me for the boy’s sake.”

  “I’m stayin’ ‘ere,” she responded sharply, defiantly. “Leave me be.”

  He stared coldly at her and said nothing. She shouldered me away from her impatiently and lifted her chin to face him with all, I mean every little bit, of her former cockiness.

  “I’m stayin’ ‘ere. They’ll ‘ave to come get me, won’t they?”

  There was almost the old smile in her eyes as she said that, and I was, oh so innocently, comforted to see the fiery, defiant little woman that was my mother back with me again.

  Mr. Freeman nodded as if he expected no less, or no more, from her but he did not move.

  “Take the boy with you,” she said. Not Mikey or my son but ‘the boy’. “Take ‘im wiv you. Gerroff will you?”

  She pushed me away and when I refused to let her go she pushed again harder, vindictively and again I sprawled, cruelly thrown down for the second time that day onto the filthy floor.

  There was something of her in me though, for having reached the depths and when we could get no lower, natural-born defiance would buoy us up again. I dragged myself painfully to my feet and, pushing past old Mr. Freeman, I walked away. Mr. Freeman followed. We left her there, hunched and filthy against the seaward wall that protected the island. I did not look back. You know enough of me now to know that I did not look back.

  23

  Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;

  Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.

  William Shakespeare (King Richard III.)

  We climbed the iron steps that took us over the sea wall and from the shore to the land. Neither Mr. Freeman nor I managed those few steps easily, but I think they were even more of an effort for me in my damaged youth than they were for him in his advanced years.

  The wind still blew in indecisive gusts, but the sky was lighter and behind us, the tide was on the turn and receding swiftly to the sea. I regretted the dwindling rain for it had hidden the tears that still coursed unbidden down my face.

  Mr. Freeman did not utter a w
ord. At the top of the seawall, our eyes met properly for perhaps the first time that day because this time I did not withdraw my gaze. I felt nothing for this old man who looked so diminished now but who had wreaked such havoc in my life. I felt no anger, no hatred, nothing. Just a vast blankness. A void. He looked…confused. Not bitter and vengeful, not even triumphant as he had been at Gary’s bedside or coldly determined as he had been all that afternoon but, as he looked at me on the seawall as the wind chilled our bones and neither of us felt it, he looked confused.

  But that was his problem. I turned away and stumbled down the steps leaving him to follow if he must. I didn’t know where I was going, and I did not care. I staggered down the steep incline, falling to my knees at the bottom, then I picked myself wearily back up and, spotting one of those small shelters that British seaside towns erect here and there along the seafronts, presumably as shelter from the rain as they perform no other discernible function, I dragged myself there on shaking legs that would carry me no further. I felt nausea rising on a wave of giddiness once more. I hunched onto one of the low wooden benches that were pock-marked with graffiti, lifted my weary legs up, looped my arms around my knees, lay my forehead on them and fought for…well, I don’t know what. Calm I suppose. Oblivion would have been much more welcome, but both eluded me and instead, I was wracked with tearing sobs that drove the only two other occupants of the shelter, two male teenagers of an age to be massively embarrassed by any exhibition of such raw emotion, scuttling from my sanctuary. It is impossible, even now, to judge just how long I remained there lost in my own little world of torment. It could have been anything from ten minutes to more than an hour. No one approached me, and nothing happened, and, after the first storm of sobs, I did not move at all.

  Eventually, the wail of a siren approaching once more roused me reluctantly and I saw the police car draw up to the kerb just a hundred yards or so away up. Two uniformed policemen got out and looked helplessly up and down.

  “They’ll never find anyone like that,” I remember thinking with dull scorn but then their attention was arrested (if nothing else was likely to be) by a shout from the seawall.

  “Hey, hey!” The shout was sharp and hard on the cold air, even though distant, and was followed by something incomprehensible but that sounded a little like ‘no kiddin’. I pulled my filthy shirt sleeve across my eyes, unfolded my sore body and peered around the wooden frame of the shelter.

  It was Bones, he was several hundred yards away and was running towards us along the rise of the seawall, his skinny legs moving so fast that they were almost a blur. He was pointing out to sea with one arm and gesticulating wildly with the other. I watched the little comedy that didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. The policemen understood more than I did of the meaning of the strange pantomime and were galvanised into action by it. They started running too.

  Mr. Freeman was where I had left him, standing on the iron steps, his grey coat flapping open in the breeze and staring out into the estuary. I crept out from the shelter, trying to drag my dulled wits out of the dreary well of feeling they had been pitched into. The coppers had crossed the grass and reached the bottom of the seawall just as Bones arrived above them to deliver a torrential explanation of which I heard only the words ‘no kiddin’. Of course. One policeman reacted by continuing up to the top whilst the other began running back to the car. Bones grasped the climbing policeman’s arm and pulled him towards the same steps that Mr. Freeman stood on. They both stopped momentarily on the crest and the old man lifted a long arm to point at something far out in the estuary. Bones and the copper dropped down the other side and Mr. Freeman was left alone silhouetted like a black crow against the lowering sky.

  Then I knew.

  It was like walking through treacle. In days gone by I had run carefree and light-footed so many times across the green carpet that led up to the steep levee that led to the gravel path. I had scaled the massive cold grey slabs that defended the island from storm and flood without effort and I had delighted in the beach and salt marshes beyond. But now every pace was a struggle and my legs were dead weights. The faster I tried to move the further away my goal appeared to be. There was something in my chest that was swollen and obstructive and I fought to suck air into my labouring lungs as I staggered up the steep grassed incline.

  I reached the iron steps at long, long last and grasped the cold metal handrail to haul myself upwards with weakened arms. My legs were shaking, my stomach sick and my eyes blurred. One, two, three, four, five… I staggered up the last step and stumbled onto my knees at feet of the towering form of Mr. Freeman.

  Rubbing the mist from my eyes I forced myself to see what I did not want to see.

  Bones was picking his way expertly across the salt flats. He was far ahead of the policeman who was tackling the slippery mud jigsaw with more caution and much less heart.

  Some way in the distance, way, way in the distance where the last vestiges of dry land were lapped by the receding tide was a small red dot that grew ever duller against the grey of the sea, then brightened briefly under a stray ray of the sinking sun, then darkened again and disappeared.

  That was the last time I saw my mother.

  24

  He that dies pays all debts.

  William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

  “You just watched her go,” I said to Mr. Freeman as we stood side by side, knowing that, as we did, she was being swallowed up by the outgoing tide and there was not a single thing anyone could do about it. “You just stood ‘ere and watched her walk into the sea.” It wasn’t even an accusation, it was just a statement.

  He looked down at me without compassion and I knew that I looked at him with the same bland lack of emotion. We were equals in spent suffering.

  “It had to happen,” he said. “Maybe it was better this way.”

  “You should ‘ave stopped her,” I repeated, knowing that he wouldn’t have even if he could have, and knowing in my heart that he was right. It was better for her this way.

  I slid from my knees at his feet and into a sitting position. I grasped the cold metal of the railings against my chin and turned my eyes to the darkness creeping over the estuary. Bones reached the point where the water still ran in rivulets through the muddy channels and, valiant boy, was still leaping from scrubby island to scrubby island but he could see nothing before him because there was nothing to see and had not been for some five minutes. The copper, wheezing and muddy was calling him back. Still, he hesitated but Bones was nothing if not pragmatic. He turned reluctantly and started on his difficult way landwards.

  They called out the RNLI lifeboat of course. It came over from Southend and searched exhaustively in the heaving grey waters. There was even a helicopter later, piercing the dull night with its powerful searchlights. I watched them for a long, long time.

  Bones had not known who he was chasing across the salt flats. He had not known her until he saw my grief-ravaged face and then he came and sat with me. He didn’t say anything, or if he did I never heard him. I don’t know when Mr. Freeman went. He just melted away and I only saw him once more before he died. At some stage, the presence of Bones was replaced with the presence of my father and he didn’t say anything either. He just put something warm on my freezing shoulders and stood beside me.

  The police hung around in the background and I know that they wanted to move me, take me somewhere else, it didn’t matter where. As far as they were concerned I was just a loose end after a long shift. But someone kept them away and when Dad came they thankfully relinquished responsibility for the unmoving, frozen boy who clung to the iron railings as if they were the only sure and certain things in the whole wide world, to the man who claimed to be his father.

  At some time in that long, lonely evening whilst the wind freshened, and fresh squalls threw rain landwards, others came to the same conclusion that I and Mr. Freeman had come to hours ago
when the red dot had blurred into greyness.

  “Take the boy home, sir.” The voice that broke into my numbness was familiar. “There is nothing else to be done.”

  It was the Peppermint Copper. He was below us on the walkway and was looking up at me. Of course, he would come when he heard our name. Well, his case was closed now. I wondered if he had known or guessed before. Our eyes met briefly, and I got the impression that whatever he had previously known or not known he had not been particularly surprised by the events of the day.

  “Son,” said my father, crouching down beside me. “She’s gone. There is no... hope.”

  No hope, no future, no past, no nothing. It was all a blank. For both of us. I slumped into his arms.

  25

  To forgive is to set a prisoner

  free and to discover

  that the prisoner was you.

  Lewis B. Smedes

  They found her the next day when the tide came in. My father and I buried her a week later.

  Gary wasn’t there. He was still too ill or said he was. Sarah sent an ostentatious display of flowers. It was fair enough, she was not their mother. None of her friends turned up. The story was out, and no-one cared to claim close acquaintance with any of us. Mr. Barker was there but whether as a solicitor or because of some finer feeling I don’t know. More surprising than anything that week was that Mrs. Barker stood with him.

  “Never thought I’d see it,” marveled Vera as she fed me cakes that I didn’t want back at the Barkers house afterward. “Never. First time she has set foot outside the house since…well, never mind about that now, for a long, long time. Marvelous to see it was, just appearing, all dressed in black and brushing past ‘im at the door as if it were the most natural thing in the world. His jaw dropped to the ground I can tell you. I think he’d given up hope, I do really.”

  I knew why Mrs. Barker had broken from her self-imposed prison though. Guilt. I did not blame her. She could not have quessed at the tawdry passions that swirled around my mother when she lobbied for me to see her and she could not have known that my mother would have found her way to catastrophe with or without me at her side. Still, it was…comforting, yes, I think that is the word, comforting, to see that Mrs. Barker led my father into her conservatory and with no hint of pity or condescension talked with him about flowers and dogs and London and even politics for nearly an hour whilst Mrs. Godber plied me with food and Mr. Barker rocked on his heels.