Guardian (4 page)

Mother knew but said nothing. Anxious as ever, she had been standing not far from where my last conversation had taken place and her heart had gone out to the vulnerable young girl racing blindly past her shadowed niche, fists clenched and eyes screwed half shut in the pain of her hasty, bewildered retreat. For several long minutes Mum had waited, heart in mouth, half expecting an outburst of anguish from me, but one that never came. Eventually, she had seen me straighten and, with weariness brought on by yet another betrayal, reach for my crutches before stumping off to the back of the house, heading for the only retreat I could call my own. My bedroom. Our paths hadn't crossed for the rest of the day, both of us preferring to let things lie and both afraid that anything said would only spark more distress.

I confess that since the night Matt died, I had effectively withdrawn from her, my lone advocate. For the first time in my life, I had ducked every question, avoided every gesture of intimacy and manoeuvred to ensure we were seldom alone together. And my father wasn't helping either. She dreaded his homecoming even more in those days. Especially Fridays. Friday nights were bad because, whether he had work or not, Friday for Dad was the day to hit town, to chug down innumerable draughts of beer and get paralysed with his mates. Men like himself who could never quite face up to life's demands, who found it easier to avoid the spectre of disappointment by obliterating everything in cheap local booze. The only difference between most of them being the presence or absence of a cowed woman at home, someone to terrorise in their drunken inadequacy. Which, in Dad's case, meant a raucous, shambling arrival long after we had eaten and an angry demand to produce something more than “the bloody useless pap you usually serve up.” Always demanding, never satisfied, he would insist on simple fare, the sort “I can get my teeth into.” Washed down with a never-ending flow of the local Tusker beer. And some time before he passed out would come the inevitable
pièce de résistance
; a comprehensive and destructive assault on me and my fledgling intellectual achievements, my sporting prowess (or lack of it) and even the looks inherited directly from my mother. Everything I counted success and everything the failure that was my father so bitterly resented. Majoring on every mistake I had ever made, real or imagined, selecting evidence in the way only someone with an intimate knowledge of the subject could ever achieve, my father would condemn me with ruthless efficiency. A barbed demolition as comprehensive as it was unwarranted, but the injustice of the attacks never occurred to him, drunk or sober. And Mum, whose courage ebbed and flowed with the moment, was always waiting for his fury and resentment towards me to finally spill over onto her.

The danger signals had been there for days and the sound of the old van rattling up the drive and sliding to a halt just outside drained any resistance she might have contemplated. Mesmerised, she had watched through the open kitchen door, her sense of foreboding sharpened to a razor's edge as Father slammed his way across the veranda shouting for me, before marching unsteadily towards my firmly shut and carefully locked bedroom door.

“Get out here, you gutless wonder. What are you hiding from, you little yellow bastard? So help me, if I have to come in there, I'll take my belt to you so you'll never bloody well forget.”

A stream of crude invective underscored the threat and with her hands over her ears, Mother had frantically tried to shut out the sound, totally unable to defend me in the face of such concentrated, alcohol-fuelled venom. But in his inebriated state, even my father couldn't keep hammering incessantly and eventually, with a final, petulant kick, he had stepped back, momentarily nonplussed. And in that moment, with a click that only emphasised the sudden quiet, I had turned the key and stepped white-faced into the bedroom doorway. Why, I don't know, but wracked with guilt and with a very real fear of my physically powerful father, I confronted him in much the same way as a rabbit prepares for the imminent arrival of a stoat.

Supremely confident in his alcoholic judgement, he needed no one to tell him I was gutless. It was the one thing of which he was totally sure. The problem was, I now knew he was right and, deeply afraid, uncertain of what to do, fearful of how to act towards this man whom I despised, I remained half in and half out of my refuge. A well-developed instinct told me to keep quiet, to remain still. But it made no difference. With heartless and chilling precision, the old man had proceeded to tell me exactly what he and thus the world thought of me. Sparing no detail that would wound, no speculation that might tighten the destructive screw of self-loathing, he had ridiculed me, his only son, describing in graphic detail the sheer force of his contempt. So, once again, piece by piece, he had dismantled me until the job was complete. Colourfully. Comprehensively. Conclusively. Before turning away without a thought for the consequences. Simply pleased, as only a bully can be, to have scored so heavily. Shambling towards his chair and already bellowing for his wife, I doubt he even heard the quiet click of the closing door. And wouldn't have cared less.

Slowly and carefully, hands numbed into exaggerated precision by physical shock, I had picked up the pen lying discarded on top of my cluttered desk and begun to write a last note. I could feel nothing, not even towards Mum, the beneficiary of this last letter. I was beyond that. My movements had reduced to the automatic, my mind finally made up, and my body ready to accept what only the truly desperate or uncaring ever contemplate. Those last few minutes had drained me to the point where I simply wanted to get things over. As quickly and cleanly as possible. My heart was devastated and battered and now it was telling me what my head had been saying for weeks. I was useless; no good to anyone, least of all myself. The blackness of the night matched the blackness in my soul and my activities were reduced to little more than the mechanical as I moved about the room. There was little to do, little to prepare. Only the method produced any uncertainty. Not the fact of my decision. With an ego so battered, so appalled at itself, little was needed to tip the balance. Just a word or a gesture. No more. And certainly not the monstrous tirade still ringing in my ears from a father who, despite everything, I had still loved, deep down, as only a child could. Until now. Now hate and despair hovered at my shoulder, goading me on, whispering to me of revulsion and self-loathing, misery and heartache. Articulating the malicious lie so easy to believe – that it would serve my father right to know he had been the cause of his own son's death. How much had changed in so short a time. Just one ill-fated, chance encounter and my whole future, whatever it might have been, was over. Gone forever. I was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Mum,” the terse note began, penned in what was to her a familiar, barely mature hand that was nevertheless beginning to display the strong curls and loops of a natural extrovert. “By the time you read this it will all be over. Don't come looking for me. Dad's right. I've let you both down. There's no excuse for what I've done or what I've become, so it's better for everyone that I end it. I've nothing to live for. Please don't blame yourself. Please tell Roz I'm sorry, but to forget me. I can't get away from Matt, so I've decided to join him. Forgive me. I love you, Paul.”

And so began the real story. The soft blackness of the African night cocooned me in its comforting embrace as the last engine note stuttered off the surrounding trees and died swiftly away. A subdued wind sighed out of the east, stirring just the tops of the yellow-barked fever trees in the grove ahead. There was no menace for me in the dark shadows, no fear in the open spaces, and no dread of the wild. I was a young man who had grown to love its solitude, learned to respect its unforgiving yet strangely predictable nature. The incessant croaking of bullfrogs in the nearby pools stopped momentarily as they sensed my presence. Woodenly, and feeling as if I was moving in a deep sleep, I stepped away from the shelter of the old van my father had so recently raced into the driveway and to which, with the passing of midnight, I had slipped out, knowing the keys would still be in the ignition.

The house had been quiet. I knew Mother would be lying rigid beside her snoring husband, careful even in sleep not to arouse or antagonise him. Too terrified even to defend her son. So I had let the van roll quietly down the hill away from the house before firing the ignition.

“
Oh, Mum, why do you have to be so afraid of him?
” I had tilted my head back as so often before, letting my eyes drink in the incredible beauty of the Milky Way, spread out in its familiar swathe across the star-lit tropical sky. The pale silky light of a million stars almost, but not quite, sufficient to read the sighting calibrations on my rifle. I had always loved the night, navigating so often by the Southern Cross, familiar with the starry clusters from Orion's Belt to Sagittarius A and now, at the end, I wanted to hold them in mind as a last conscious picture. A part of my world that never accused me. For several minutes I stood staring, oblivious to the tears streaming down my upturned face. Then with a last shake of my head, I turned once more towards the dark grove. This was where I wanted to die. A favourite place. One to which Matt and I had come so often. A place where together, in silent admiration, we had learned so much about the hidden world of nature that surrounded us. A world of freewheeling birds and wild, graceful animals. The place to which we had often slipped away since first being allowed to wander alone, revelling in the heady absence of parental discipline. A secret place. Off the beaten track, shunned by everything except the restless animals warily looking for water in the shallow pools and scrapes of the thorny copse. I had known perfectly well there could be an ambush waiting. Most likely a shy leopard, one of several I knew roamed their immense ranges between here and the Nandi Hills, far to the south. Possibly even then two pin-sharp and alert eyes were watching me from the branches of a nearby tree, body utterly still. Only the head ducking left and right in quick, intense movements and the tip of a tail consenting to the smallest twitch as the cat followed my every step, anxious not to miss a single nuance of the intruder's progress. “
How fitting
,” I thought, “
if I'm right
.”

“I'm coming, Matt, I'm coming.” The sound of my voice startled not only me, but something large up ahead in the dense bush, which fled in a sudden cascade of sound as it crashed towards open ground and safety, away from the deadly trap inherent in every waterhole. Only the sway of the low-lying foliage marked where it had passed. But by now my nerves were too numbed to react with any speed and I stumbled on, oblivious to the thorns that reached out to rake my bare arms and legs. And the thunder in my head was growing too intense for any other input to gain attention. Waves of guilt and anguish swept over me, threatening to drown me in their intensity. My breath came in great gasping sobs and my pounding heart raced as I staggered against the thorns, their lance-like spikes stabbing cruelly through the thin cotton of my shirt, great drops of blood smearing swiftly across the khaki material, each one simply an exchange for a drop of the throbbing poison waiting on each sharp tip. What little strength I had left ebbed swiftly as I dropped to my knees in the small clearing that opened up in front of me, the rifle butt punching cruelly upwards into my belly as the muzzle caught in the loamy soil.

Tears blurred my sight, but long familiarity helped. Jerking the bolt back, I managed to lever a round into the chamber, forcing the bolt forward and down until it snapped sharply into the locked position, leaving the mechanism cocked and ready. Feverishly, I groped around in the blackness for a stick long enough to strike the trigger because, with the muzzle in my mouth, I knew that reaching past the trigger guard would prove awkward. But awkward or not, it was time. I would have to shoot myself now, or what little courage I had left would desert me.

Of their own accord, my fingers danced frantically as they looked for and closed upon a stick that felt as though it should be strong enough, leaving me to swing the rifle round. Quickly now, every movement a desperate race to get the unspeakable act over. The butt grounded in the angle between the rough earth and the base of a small tree and with one last despairing look above me, I opened my mouth, forced the business end of the rifle against my chattering teeth and closed my lips over the cold metal. It tasted foul. The harsh, urine-sprayed earth smeared over the muzzle, the product of so many watering animals, splattered across my tongue. My left hand, jabbing for the trigger with the end of the stick, was momentarily blocked as it caught against the guard and I remember scrabbling frantically to get past it and end my life.

But there was something else going on in the clearing. Something I would never have guessed at or given any credence to, even if I had been told. An unseen world which, had I been able to sense it, might have brought the vile flavour of putrefaction and the stench of utter decay to my nostrils. But invisible, unknown, a shadow darker than the blackest night flickered suddenly backwards, away from me, the better to observe this final act of destruction. Now it watched in drooling expectation, revelling in the only genuine satisfaction left to it – the violent annihilation of a human being. Any human.

For weeks, the demonic outcast from its own spiritual realm had ridden me, preternatural claws hooked into the flesh of my back, their pulsing grip goading me, an unsuspecting victim, whilst the slavering mouth whispered despair, self-loathing and selfish revenge directly into my fevered mind, well below the conscious level. Repulsive in its ugliness, rejected even by its own kind, the repellent, almost rat-like creature had been looking for a host in the right frame of mind. Preferably depressed or, better still, already despairing. And it had found me, helpless and hurting at the base of Cat Hill, a perfect target upon which to begin feeding like some loathsome parasite. Yet its eerie concentration, leaning forward in bloody expectation of the final downward plunge onto the trigger and the upward smashing of the bullet, caused it to miss the only warning of looming destruction it would ever get from its own universe.

Even as the stick slid clear of the trigger guard, a shaft of pure, brilliant white light struck downwards, unseen by the natural world but spread in a great cone around me, and the tip of a dazzling sword arrested the stick's forward thrust. And at the very edge of this lightning bolt, the solid blackness exploded in a ball of screaming fire, leathery limbs juddering suddenly outwards in writhing agony for a fraction of time, before dissolving to a rapidly thinning smear of oily smoke that drifted into nothingness.

With a grim sense of satisfaction, the majestic angel who had simultaneously materialised at my side sheathed his long, glittering sword in a single, smooth movement. Totally unconcerned as to whether or not he was observed. For as with humanity, even more so in this spiritual world, inhabited by angels and prying demons, there was always a witness. And so it was, not far away, hidden deep in one of the shallow pools, something else watched intently. A low-ranking excrescence with the unlikely name of Altoid was trembling with the very real fear that close proximity to any angel tended to induce. But not so much fear that it prevented him from calculating how he might present this information so as to curry favour with his superiors. And it might have saved the underworld a deal of trouble if they had bothered to consider a word of his report.

“Stop!” As though from a great distance, I remember the clear command ringing in my head, but I sensed nothing, saw nothing. Dazed, I let the stick fall from near-lifeless fingers. And in that very act, with an awful clarity, the full force of what I was doing hit home. Death was looking me straight in the face and for a moment I stared right back before cringing away, the instance forever stamped into my soul. And with that confrontation, the driving, headlong rush to destruction leached away as swiftly as it had begun, no longer fed by my now obliterated and unseen adversary. And hard on the heels of reprieve came a mixture of utter, heartfelt relief, mixed with a heady dose of fright over what had so nearly been done. And in the moment of discovering I didn't really want to die, I was overwhelmed by a great sorrow. Scalding grief over my actions, and deep remorse over the hurt that Roz, my Mother, my friends would undoubtedly have felt. And with the recognition came a deep craving to get away, to put distance between myself and my world. To lick my wounds in the calm of anonymity.

Parking at the back of the station, I made my way furtively through the early morning shadows towards the far end of the long freight train. If I was going to make it all the way to Mombasa, I needed cover as well as transport and was looking for a wagon with an unlocked door. I was just beginning to think such things didn't exist, when right at the end of the train I found what I was looking for and when I stopped to listen, the desultory sounds still reaching me from the distant platform were reassuring. Clearly, I hadn't been seen. So, keeping out of sight as best I could, I pulled at the protesting door until it was wide enough to toss my rifle through and wriggle in after it. Once inside, although I could barely see, I rushed to stand up and get the door shut, with the result that my shoulder cracked against one of a pile of long wooden boxes stacked around the interior. It went over with a crash that reverberated loud enough to wake the dead, let alone summon the nearby night watchmen. Aghast, I swung round to see what I had done and found myself looking at the blurred image of a matched pair of glimmering white elephant tusks sticking out of the splintered box. The problem was, I was looking at them over the business end of a very much in focus pistol, the silencer held directly and firmly between my eyes.