Always the Sun (12 page)

Sam got to his feet, using the washstand to steady himself. His jaw felt broken. He examined it with tender fingertips. Then he looked at himself in the mirror.

Abruptly, he turned to face the far wall. He saw that the only window was heavily barred. The bars were thick with old coats of white gloss paint and they hardly budged when he reached up to tug on them.

He didn’t believe he could walk out of this lavatory and go past Dave and Liam Hooper. Not with his arse and back still sopping wet, and blood on his face. But the longer he delayed his exit, the worse he knew it would be.

With resigned anger, he slammed his way through the swinging door. Dave Hooper and what Sam now supposed was his family were waiting for him. They made a silent half-moon of Ben Shermans. Sam tried to keep his head up, but it was not possible. Scorn radiated from them like heat and he passed them with his gaze lowered. The boy, Liam, moved into his path, specifically to shoulder-nudge him.

Sam didn’t pause. The Hoopers watched him make his way across the pub, back to the table. It seemed infinitely familiar. He sat down. Alison and Anna were gone. Mel was alone.

She looked at him.

‘What happened to you?’

He tried to speak.

‘Christ,’ said Mel. ‘Did he hit you? Did Dave hit you?’

Before he could restrain her, Mel stood. The Hoopers were still watching.

Mel caught Dave Hooper’s eye.

Across the now quiet pub, Dave called, ‘All right, Mel?’

Mel gripped the edge of the table. She bellowed, ‘You fucking animal, Dave Hooper. You fucking
coward
.’

The assembled Hoopers raised their glasses and cheered. Dave Hooper cheered the loudest. Then he muttered something to Liam, who laughed.

Everybody else looked at their tables, out the windows, into their glasses, at the coal of a cigarette.

Mel took Sam’s elbow.

‘We’re not scared of you,’ she said. ‘You’re just fucking animals. All of you.’

The Hoopers beat out a tribal rhythm on the surface of the bar as Mel ushered Sam from the Cat and Fiddle. When the heavy doors swung closed, the jeering seemed to stop. But behind the door, Sam knew it continued.

They stood on a bright, painty smear of sunshine that fell on the concrete. Mel fumbled with a cigarette. She inhaled five or six angry, pecking puffs.

She said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Sam. His brow was furrowed. He was thinking about something else.

He said, ‘Mel. You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Fuck them,’ she said. ‘I’m not scared of them. What happened?’

He told her. He described being punched and she pursed her lips. She looked old and pale and furious. She stamped off down the street, slightly unsteady on her heels. He followed, shambling, ashamed, like a scolded Old English sheepdog. Already he needed to piss again.

On the corner by the Dolphin Centre, Mel’s mobile rang. It was Janet. She’d been in the toilets chatting to Anna and had missed everything. Already she’d heard several versions of what had happened. In the worst of them, Sam had been glassed and had run from the pub, one eye dangling free of its socket.

Curtly, Mel let Janet know what had happened. Then she told her to stop worrying and stay in the pub. She’d see her later.

Sam stopped off at Mel’s house, to clean himself up. Mel applied a sticking plaster to his cut, bruised cheekbone. Sam drank several mugs of coffee. He didn’t want to sleep. He dreaded the waking moment, when today’s events would charge at him and shame would rush through him like sunlight.

When he left, Mel was still withdrawn. She seemed to be furious with him, as much as Dave Hooper.

‘Mel,’ he said. ‘There was nothing I could do. It happened so fast. And there were so many of them.’

‘I know,’ she said, and turned on the TV.

He stood there, fussing with the blood on his shirt. Then he said goodbye and walked home.

He arrived to discover that Stuart hadn’t left yet. So he called hello from the hallway and went straight upstairs to bed.

The house, new wood on an old frame, remained indifferent to his presence.

10

The next morning, he stood at the bathroom mirror, applying a borrowed cover-up stick to the ripening bruise on his cheekbone. It left a pale, disfiguring smudge.

He patted his pale, solid, hairy belly.

Whenever he thought about the Cat and Fiddle, he endured a debilitating thrill of shame. It distracted him from his work. He was inattentive to patients and brusque to colleagues.

Eventually, Barbara summoned him to her office. He sat like a schoolboy on a beige Ikea chair while she took her place behind the desk. She glanced at some notes spread before her. Then she looked up and told Sam that she was concerned about him. She knew he was a talented, dedicated nurse—after all, Isabel Beaumont wouldn’t have recommended him so highly if that were not the case.

She told him she knew he had a lot on his plate. But during this, his trial period, he had never seemed quite happy and it was beginning to affect his work—which she knew (she reminded him) could be excellent even in situations that were far more demanding than they enjoyed at Agartha Barrow. As his line manager (and, she hoped, his friend), she had a responsibility to him. But she also had a responsibility to his colleagues—and their collective responsibility lay with the patients in their care. She could under no circumstances allow the quality of that care to be compromised by the problems of an individual member of staff.

She asked if there was anything he’d like to say. He told her no, and held her gaze for a difficult second. She dismissed him.

All he wanted was to sleep.

Variously during the distracted day, he’d thought about taking Jamie on a long holiday, moving him to a private school, finding a job on the continent, or perhaps America. He thought how Jamie would enjoy America. As fantasy segued into fantasy, he felt more deflated and trapped.

He finished his shift without speaking to anybody, and without anybody speaking to him, and he caught the bus home. Stepping into the hallway, he barely had the strength to remove his coat. He hung it on the banister like a soldier returned from the trenches and dropped his bag in the very place he reprimanded Jamie for leaving his.

Jamie was on the sofa, watching TV in the dark. Blue, flickering cathode flickered and lashed at his face. Sam said hello and dumped himself in the armchair. Jamie didn’t respond. Sam said hello again.

Then he caught himself and sat forward. Jamie’s face was smeared and wet. In the cold blue light he looked brutalized.

Sam said, ‘Jamie? Mate? What’s wrong?’

Angrily, Jamie wiped his nose on his hairless wrist. He tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat and all that emerged was a hound-like whimper.

Sam knelt before him and held out his arms. But Jamie pressed himself further back into the sofa and Sam let his arms fall to his side. He stayed there, wondering what to do.

Jamie said, ‘How could you?’

‘How could I what?’

Jamie stood. He looked down on his kneeling father. His upper lip was smeared with snot and his eyes looked swollen and tender.

His voice broke.

‘You let him
hit
you.’

For a few moments, they were frozen like that, cold blue in the cathode rays.

Then, wearily, Sam got to his feet.

‘Jamie,’ he said, ‘you don’t understand.’

He reached out to put a hand on Jamie’s shoulder.

Jamie shied from his touch.

‘You fucking wimp,’ he said.

He went upstairs.

That night, Sam dreamt the cabin crew of a 747 en route to California were urgently insisting that he was the aircraft’s missing pilot. Despite the fact that he wore sandals, a Hawaiian shirt and, inexplicably, no trousers, he was required in the cabin. Then the soft, spongy chair from which he could not rise to go and fly the plane became a bed, and he lay awake.

He felt welded to the mattress. He forced himself to rise only because he needed to speak to Jamie. He moved in weary, befuddled circles, searching out his discarded clothes. Downstairs, he made a pot of coffee and sat at the breakfast bar, where he found a pack of eleven cigarettes. Only two were left when Jamie walked into the kitchen, showered and dressed for school. He registered his father’s presence, then went to the fridge and poured himself a long glass of orange juice.

Sam stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Jamie,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Let me explain.’

Jamie held the glass to his chest.

‘Explain what?’

This the delighted, pink, warm, happy child whose nappy he had changed so many hundreds of times.

‘Explain what happened.’

Jamie wiped his eyes.

‘I told you not to
do
anything,’ he said. ‘I told you.’

‘I know,’ said Sam. ‘Look—’

‘Dad, you’ve made it worse. All right? You stuck your nose in, and you made it worse.’

‘I didn’t stick my nose in,’ Sam said. ‘I’m your
dad
.’

‘And now everyone’s
laughing
at you,’ said Jamie. ‘All right? Everyone at school knows you’re a wimp. Lying on the floor and crying.’

Sam jerked as if prodded.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

Jamie shook his head.

‘You fucking wimp,’ he said.

‘Hang
on
a minute,’ said Sam.

‘And you’re a liar,’ said Jamie, more quietly yet. He stood there, dependent and repelled.

Sam could find no words. He looked at the crushed cigarettes in the ashtray.

Jamie slammed the front door hard enough to shake the teetering pile of junk mail from the telephone table. It lay scattered like playing cards across the stripped wood of the hallway.

Sam stayed in the kitchen for a long time. The house hissed with emptiness, like a seashell put to the ear.

Sometimes when he was alone, he heard somebody creeping around upstairs and wondered if it might be Kenneth.

Kenneth was the imaginary friend of his early childhood. Sam had been so at ease in Kenneth’s company that his parents became disturbed and took him to a child psychologist, who pronounced him in every way normal. But, normal or not, nobody was keen to be alone with Sam when Kenneth was around. Even now, mention of Kenneth’s name was enough to bring Mel out in goosebumps.

Perhaps Kenneth had sensed his renewed need. Perhaps he’d come back.

Would he still be a child?

Sam phoned in sick. Barbara sounded neither angry nor surprised. Nor was she moved by Sam’s entreating, repeated apologies. He was irritated that she patronized his insincerity. When he had safely replaced the receiver, he swore at the phone.

He knew his colleagues had anxieties of their own. Marriages were fracturing. Flirtations flickered at the edge of infidelity. There was blood in the stools, a lump in the breast, a loose knot of gristle where once there’d been a proud erection. There were elderly parents who refused to be rehomed. He was aware that his absence would only add to the sum of that anxiety.

But he didn’t care.

He went upstairs, to see if Kenneth were there. But he wasn’t, and Sam laughed at his folly. The obscure series of clicks and creaking stopped the moment his foot touched the stairs. Whoever was there, they left when they heard him. Perhaps it was Justine, trying to make herself known.

With sudden, tearful fury, he hoped not.

He ran the bath and enjoyed the rumble of the taps, the unfolding bloom of steam. All at once, he noticed the bath was full. Several minutes had passed without his knowledge. He knew that such episodes, like leaving one’s car keys in the fridge or forgetting why one had entered a room, came at the minor end of the scale of epilepsy. Temporarily, his mind had been voided by a little fit. He was frustrated by the phenomenon’s elusiveness. He wanted it to happen again.

The bath was too hot and burnt his assessing foot. He ran the cold tap, then forced himself in. Water spilled over the
edge. His testicles withdrew from the damaging heat.

Gradually, as the water cooled, he lay back and soaked his hair. Floating, it tickled his shoulders like weeds. He washed and shaved and walked naked and dripping to his bedroom. It smelt of new pine, new carpet and sour old bedding. Other than two lonely socks dropped several feet apart and rolled into strange shapes, the room was empty. Still wet, he lay on the bed. He could smell the sweat of his troubled sleep. He rolled over and turned on the radio. It was 11 a.m. He lay back with a pillow over his eyes and kept the radio’s volume low, so it was little more than a companionable hum.

But there was no possibility of sleep. Shortly before midday, he went naked downstairs and got the whisky. He poured a glass and turned on the TV. He was on the third glass when something occurred to him, an idea. He thought it over for a while, then went to find his mobile phone. He called Ashford’s private number.

Ashford was on lunchtime playground duty, patrolling the gates and fields in an attempt to thwart truancy. He sounded tired. He confirmed that Jamie was not at school today. Then he asked, with lowered voice, how Sam was feeling.

Sam went cold. It seemed that Jamie was not exaggerating. The story of the bitch-slap in the Cat and Fiddle lavatory had spread and grown. He wondered how superb his humiliation had become in the local mythology. He imagined Liam Hooper’s extravagant school-corridor swagger. Dave Hooper, pausing to smile privately before installing a bolt through the shrieking head of a pig.

Sam told Ashford he was absolutely fine, thank you, and hung up.

He’d smoked the last cigarette. He poured himself another drink. When only an inch remained in the bottle, he went upstairs and dressed. Then He cleaned his teeth and rinsed with mouthwash.

He drove with overstated, drunken caution (losing concentration only once, on a zebra crossing) and was outside the school gates by 3.30 p.m. At 3.40 he heard the bell ring. It was the same bell. Its familiarity made him grimace, and he gripped the steering wheel, hard. Within a few seconds, the first pupils had appeared at the exit gates. Soon they had become a surge, an inundation of shapes and sizes and ethnicities, similarly dressed. Navy-blue with yellow shirts for the girls. Black blazers and white shirts for the boys. A great variety of training shoes. As he watched, several of the kids piled into waiting parental cars. Most did not. The school run had not yet been fully established in this part of town.

Sam had not supposed the sudden horde would be so overwhelming. He despaired of sighting Liam Hooper. He got out of the car. Standing on the pavement, waiting, he felt furtive and strange. He suspected that certain of the waiting parents, grim at the wheel of their Renault Espaces, had already marked him out as a potential paedophile.

He wished he had a single friend among them and knew he never would.

When the tide had diminished to a sporadic trickle, he spotted Liam Hooper. He looked much younger. Hardly more than a boy. He strutted alone through the gates, bag slung over one shoulder.

Sam lit a cigarette and leant against the car. Liam came scuffing down the street, chewing gum. Sam stepped out in front of him.

At first, Liam didn’t recognize him. His passing confusion, edged with fear, was disarming. Sam saw how much bigger he was than the boy, and how much stronger. He felt he could reach out and rip Liam’s head from his shoulders and rend the limbs from their sockets.

He said, ‘Get in the car.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. Get in the car.’

‘No fucking
way
.’

‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Too fucking
right
you’re not.’

Liam tried to barge past. Sam blocked his way.

‘Look, Liam. I just want to talk.’

‘You heard what Dad said. Talk to him.’

Sam set his mouth.

‘Right,’ he said.

He opened the boot, and threw in the car keys. Then he slammed the boot closed.

‘There you are. Proof. We’re not going anywhere. So, please. Just get in the car and hear what I have to say.’

Liam looked at the boot.

He said, ‘You’re fucking mad in the head, mate.’

‘Probably,’ said Sam.

Assorted pedestrians—parents, slow-moving pensioners, and straggling schoolkids—were beginning to pay attention to them.

‘Come on,’ said Sam. ‘For God’s sake. Just get in the car. Leave the
door
open if it makes you feel better. Sit in the back with the door open. I just want to talk.’

Liam responded to a challenge, not an invitation: he met Sam’s eyes for too long and walked round the car with an air of defiance, an insolent swagger. He sat on the front passenger seat (leaving the door very slightly ajar) and removed a cigarette from a ten-pack of Benson & Hedges kept in the breast-pocket of his blazer. He lit it, exhaled at the ceiling.

Sam took his place in the driver’s seat. He made himself small and hunched, nervous about making the kind of physical contact that might be misread.

Liam said, ‘What?’

Sam took time to light his own cigarette, fresh from the stub of the first.

He said, ‘What would it take to make you leave my son alone?’

Liam turned in his seat until he was facing Sam.

‘I haven’t
touched
your precious son. I haven’t fucking
touched
him.’

There was a silence.

Sam could hear Liam’s breathing, shallow and outraged. Sam looked dead ahead, as if the car was in motion.

‘All right,’ he said, at length. ‘Fair enough. What would it take to make you stop whatever it is you’re doing?’

Liam drew twice on his cigarette.

‘I don’t even know!’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done. It’s not my fault if Jamie’s a—’

‘If Jamie’s a what?’

‘A mummy’s boy.’

Sam looked at his hands, tight on the wheel of the stationary car.

‘Jamie lost his mother,’ he said. ‘She died.’

Liam shrugged.

‘So?’

Sam didn’t risk looking at him. He thought Liam’s defiance had a belligerent, wounded quality—perhaps the aggressive self-justification of one who knows himself to be in the wrong.

‘So,’ Sam said, ‘it doesn’t help if you go on about it all the time. Jamie’s much younger than you, and he’s new here. Give him a break. Just, you know. Find another target.’