Joe Peters (4 page)

‘Can you smell petrol, William?’ Derek asked. ‘I’ve looked all over but I can’t find where it’s coming from.’

‘You get back in the car,’ Dad said to me. ‘This’ll only take a minute.’

I would rather have helped him with his job, but I didn’t bother to ask because I knew he would say no, and I knew he would come back for me as soon as he had sorted out the problem. He’d explained to me lots of times how car engines were dangerous things and he couldn’t risk having me messing around with them unless he was able to watch me all the time. There
weren’t many things Dad insisted on when he was with me, but that was one of them.

He turned the key in the lock of the Ford Capri and I watched through the windscreen as he went over with Derek to examine the damaged engine. I didn’t mind waiting. I loved being at the garage with Dad, even though he had told me this might be the last time we could do it for a while because of all the trouble Mum had been causing for him.

I sat behind the steering wheel in his driving seat and rattled the gear stick around, imitating the movements I’d seen him make when he was driving. I idolized him and wanted to be like him in every way possible. I wasn’t worried about the locked car doors because I knew perfectly well how to open them if I wanted to. Dad had explained it to me very carefully after that time I let the handbrake off. But I wouldn’t have disobeyed him because I respected him completely. If he said I was to stay there then that was what I would do. He had never had to raise his hand to me in my whole life because I never gave him cause to. I would have followed him to the ends of the earth and never questioned a single thing he told me to do.

Through the windscreen I watched Dad lying down on the greasy garage floor in his overalls like I’d seen him do a hundred times before and sliding under the car to see if he could spot where the petrol was leaking from.

It was just another normal day at work for all of them. I heard the phone in the office ringing, the giant bell in the workshop going off like a fire alarm to make sure that it could always be heard above the revving of engines and the clanking of tools. Derek went into the office to answer it.

‘Dad,’ I shouted out through the crack in the window, knowing exactly what his answer would be even before I asked the question, ‘can I come under the car with you?’

‘No,’ he shouted back, as I knew he would. ‘You stay there. I won’t be a minute.’

As I went back to playing with the gear stick and steering wheel I saw a customer coming out of the waiting room with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He had the collar of his jacket turned up against the cold. I didn’t really know what petrol was; it had always looked just like water to me whenever I’d seen it – water with a funny smell. So I didn’t think anything of it as I watched the man casually flick his fag end towards the main door of the garage, where the wind picked it up and bounced it back across the floor, making the still-burning tip glow fiercely.

One minute there was nothing happening, everything continuing as normal, and the next there were huge orange-red flames roaring up around the car that Dad was lying under. I could see his silhouette in the middle of the inferno wriggling its way out and rising through
the flames and I started to scream for him, my little boy’s voice trapped inside the car just yards away while the fire roared around him outside.

‘Dad! Dad!’

An explosion lifted the car he had been under into the air and flipped it onto its side, like a special effect from some action film or television programme, making the Ford Capri rock from the blast and knocking me over onto the seat. Dad had managed to get to his feet but his whole body was on fire as he ran around the garage, screaming with a mixture of pain and terror, unable to escape the flames that clung to him, his movement making them burn fiercer. The other men, including Derek, all came running out of the office and stared in horror. It was as though time had frozen as they all stood there in shock, watching Dad. Every second seemed like an hour as the flames grew more ferocious, fanned by the wind, which returned through the doors once the blast had died away and took a firmer hold on their victim. As I struggled with the locks of the Capri door, desperate to get to him, all I could see was him running around and his screams filled my ears. I thought no one was doing anything to help him but I found out later that Derek had been struggling with a fire extinguisher, unable to get it to work.

A neighbour from across the road, who had heard the explosion, came running in through the entrance,
grabbed Dad and threw him onto the floor, trying to beat the flames out. I finally managed to get out of the Capri and ran across to where Dad was lying. By the time I got there the flames were out and everything was black and charred. His whole body was shaking and convulsing and going into shock. Derek grabbed me and covered my eyes with his hand before I could see Dad’s incinerated face close up. I remember the smell, though – a sickly smell of burned flesh and choking smoke. I could hear the sound of sirens coming closer and people running around as I struggled to get free, kicking and biting, frantic to get to my dad. Derek kept holding me tight so that I didn’t get in the way of the rescuers, protecting me from the full impact of the sight.

The ambulance men lifted Dad onto a stretcher and loaded him into the back of the ambulance.

‘Let me come with you. Dad, tell them to let me come!’ I cried, tears streaming down my face, but the ambulance men said no, they couldn’t have a child on board.

Derek phoned my Aunt Melissa and she rushed over within a few minutes. She tried to comfort me as best she could but she was too worried about her brother to think clearly about anything. To me at that moment it felt like the whole world had ended in that explosion of horror. I was just five years old. I wanted my dad back.

T
he ambulance carried Dad off at full speed, all sirens blaring. I watched it go and then Aunt Melissa led me up the road to her house and phoned Marie to let her know what had happened. When Marie arrived, I remember lots of hushed whispers and glances that I wasn’t meant to see. Melissa’s husband Amani, a big Nigerian guy, kept staring at me and I remember I felt uncomfortable and didn’t want him there.

‘When can I go to the hospital to see my dad?’ I kept asking. I knew his burns must be hurting a lot. I could remember clearly how much it had hurt when Mum had pressed my hand against the flat of the iron, so I thought I could imagine what agonies my dad must be going through after being completely engulfed in flames and I wanted to go and try to comfort him. I couldn’t get the image of him running around the garage on fire out
of my head. I didn’t like being parted from him when I was so worried about what was going on. I felt exposed and vulnerable. All the bad things that had ever happened to me had always happened when he wasn’t there to protect me and I didn’t know how long it would be before he was able to come out of hospital and be there for me again. I kept asking the adults questions but none of them had any answers for me. Everyone was crying.

Marie took me home a few hours later. Being with her always felt more like being at home than when I was in the house where my mother lived. I was in a state of complete shock, unable to take in what I had witnessed and the pictures that kept going round and round in my head, having no idea what it was all going to mean to me. It didn’t occur to me for a moment that my dad might actually die; I didn’t know what death was at that age. I was worried for him and horrified to have heard him screaming so terribly, but I assumed the doctors would make him better and he would be back to look after me soon with nothing more than a few scars to remind us of that terrible day – just as they had made Thomas and me better when we had been burned.

Marie tried to talk to me and prepare me for what might happen. ‘Sometimes, when people are very badly hurt,’ she said, ‘they die and they go to Heaven to be with God. It’s a beautiful place, and they can look down on
everyone they love and watch out for them from up there.’

I listened, but as if she was telling me a fairy story. I didn’t for one moment think that she was saying this might happen to my dad. I was just waiting until I could see him again, convinced that he would make everything all right once the doctors had fixed his burns.

I wasn’t allowed to go in to visit him until three days later. I don’t know if the hospital had been permitting visitors before that, but Marie must have known Mum would be there and perhaps she didn’t want to take me in and risk her snatching me away. Or maybe she had thought it would be too traumatic for me to see Dad in that state but I just nagged until she gave in. She must have been as shocked by the accident as I was, even though she was a grown-up. All her instincts must have been to run to be by the bedside of the man she loved, but I suppose she was nervous about Mum starting a fight on the ward. By the time she did take me in to see him they knew that he was going to die and she must have decided I should be given a chance to say goodbye. He was already brain dead but I had no idea about that as I walked in holding tightly to her hand.

I clung to Marie as we passed through the seemingly endless corridors of the hospital, constantly on the watch for Mum, expecting her to jump out round every corner we turned. When we finally reached the intensive care
ward it was all quiet, each bed surrounded by equipment that buzzed and blinked as it supported the lives of the patients it was attached to. We stopped beside a bed and I tried to work out what I was looking at. The bandaged figure lying unconscious on the mattress with tubes coming in and out of him didn’t look like my dad. At first I didn’t believe it was him. I thought they’d made a mistake and brought me to the wrong bed.

‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked Marie. ‘What have they done with him?’

‘This is your dad, Joe,’ Marie said gently and I could see there were tears glinting in her eyes.

It must have been just as upsetting for her to see him like that as it was for me but she had to stay brave and not break down in front of me. A nurse was standing by the head of the bed checking something on a monitor, and she gave me a sympathetic look.

I turned again to the bandaged figure on the bed. Parts of him were covered in clear bags of fluid, which seemed to me at the time to be dripping and seeping with blood and raw flesh but it was probably just that I could see through them to the terrible burns underneath. The machines made a heavy sighing sound, and Dad’s chest was moving up and down but his face was so heavily bandaged that I couldn’t see his eyes or his mouth.

‘Dad?’ I said tentatively, but the word came out funny, as if it was catching in my throat.

‘He can’t talk,’ Marie explained, stroking my hair.

I started to back away from the bed, overcome with horror at the sight before my eyes. Marie must have realized that she had made a mistake in giving in to my nagging and bringing me to the hospital, but it was too late by then. Suddenly Mum appeared on the other side of the bed, making me jump and shiver with fright, certain she was going to launch herself at us as she always did on her visits to the garage. But she was behaving differently this time, playing the traumatized young wife for the benefit of the watching nurse. It didn’t last long. Her grief changed to anger as soon as we were left alone round the bed. I could see from her furious face that she certainly wasn’t pleased to see Marie.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ she snarled as soon as the nurse was out of earshot. ‘He’s my fucking husband, not yours.’

There was nothing Marie could say in her defence. Because they were still officially married Mum was Dad’s next of kin and the nurses and doctors had to deal with her when it came to talking about Dad’s condition and asking for decisions. It didn’t make any difference to them that he had been about to divorce her. Marie was cut out completely from all the medical information and from all the arrangements, which obviously pleased Mum. As long as Dad was unconscious she had complete power over all of us.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Dad was only alive because of the life support machine.

‘Anyway, the doctors have told me there’s no way he’s going to pull through,’ Mum said. ‘They think it’s time to turn the machine off, but the final decision is up to me.’

Marie gave a gasp and put her hand to her mouth. ‘No, Lesley. Please don’t. Don’t give up hope. There might still be a chance.’

I clung to Marie’s arm, trying to make sense of what they were saying, but I knew from the look on Mum’s face that she had made up her mind about something. Something important.

‘He was no good as a husband before and he’s certainly no good to me now.’ Mum was revelling in her ability to make such a life and death decision about the man who she believed had betrayed her so badly, enjoying the ultimate revenge, no longer bothering to keep up any pretence at being the grieving widow.

‘He was divorcing you,’ Marie protested. ‘He was living with me. I’m his next of kin, not you. I should make the decision.’

‘I’m his legal wife,’ Mum screamed, making heads turn and bringing the nurses running to calm things down. ‘You’re just his whore!’

Marie tried to explain the situation to the nurses and one of them ran off to find a doctor, but it was no good.
If Dad had been able to speak he would have said that he wanted Marie to handle everything and Mum to be nowhere near the place, but there was no way he was ever going to speak again. Marie realized there was nothing she could do, that Mum had the law on her side, but still she tried to plead with the staff.

‘It’s my decision,’ Mum insisted to the doctor, ‘and I say turn him off!’

Overcome with grief Marie kept fighting back even though she probably knew she didn’t have a chance of changing Mum’s mind, begging her to think again, but Mum was becoming angrier and angrier that Marie was daring to challenge her decision. The argument escalated into more and more noise until hospital security had to be called to stop them resorting to blows and Marie was told she would have to leave the premises.