Out of Time (37 page)

Blood trickling from his wounds, William tried to shield himself. He twisted this way and that, attempted to rise but he no longer had the strength. A guard stood over him, knife poised, his face twisted in vengeful fury. William prepared himself for death.

But death never came. The man’s knife dropped to the ground and he fell dead at William’s feet. William was seized by many hands, carried away. Weak and confused, he was unable to believe in his deliverance, unable to comprehend that the incredible had occurred. The town’s citizens had rebelled, falling in a vicious swell on the enemy.

Helmuth saw the tide turning, his men falling back, their weapons abandoned as they tried to escape. The townspeople ran after them, shouting and jeering. Helmuth followed, hoping to be lost in the crowd but Meredith, in a burst of energy born of hope, lunged towards him and pinioned his arms behind his back. The crowd roared their approval and propelled victor and vanquished into Weymouth Square, now broiling like a scene from The Inferno. Behind them black smoke poured into the sky, burning particles fell to the ground and the building crashed into itself in a roar of broken masonry and flaming timber. But no one took notice. They were on a spree of bloodlust, the tyranny and hate of countless years finding release in brutal savagery. Corpses sprouted from trees, one man not yet dead, ignited by a piece of burning wood, burst shrieking into flames, a woman sank her teeth into an officer’s neck until blood from his jugular spurted into her face and she screamed, ‘That’s for my son!’ Others dismembered men in uniform, not bothering to kill them first, ripping open and strewing innards on the ground. Blood spattered the paving stones, heads, limbs and torsos squelched underfoot.

Helmuth was seized out of Meredith’s grasp, savagely hacked with knives, coshes, axes. His testicles were torn away, his eyes gouged out. Within minutes his eyeless head was poised bleeding on a high pole. The crowd let out a wild cheer and Meredith found himself hoisted on a phalanx of shoulders and carried to the centre of the square. He looked round desperately for Joe.

*

In Fairfax Road the three children in the house heard the tumult and ran outside. People were streaming past. A pregnant woman stopped when she saw them and offered her protection. She lifted Issie onto her shoulders, and holding John and Rob by the hand, ran with the crowd.

‘Take me to my father,’ Issie shouted in her ear. It was the first time she had spoken.

‘Where?’

‘He’s in the square. He’s the leader. He did it all!’

She was hysterical with excitement.

*

From the height of a wall on which the jubilant crowd had placed him, Joe watched the savagery below, saw bodies in their last agony, mouths open in unheard screams; he saw women and children tearing at men half dead, pleading for mercy, he saw dismembered bodies cast aside like so much chaff. Out of this carnage a bunch of roses, red as blood, was thrust into his hands. Below, a woman smiled up at him, tears coursing down her cheeks.

Joe watched it all with both horror and a savage indifference towards the men who had killed Kathryn and perpetrated a reign of terror. This was what happened to tyrants. Rough justice. He scanned the crowd for Meredith, William and the children.

Meredith discovered him over the heads of the seething mass, Joe in an ecstasy of relief, smiling, bloodied, upright and alive, clutching an incongruous bunch of flowers. And at that moment, through a sequence of events Meredith could not begin to unravel, a woman carrying Issie was pushing through the crowd towards him. He grabbed the child and held her tight, and waved to the others, milling below. He signalled frantically at Joe who waved back.

Meredith thanked fate for its bounty.

‘We’ve done it, we’ve won. We’re free and they’re both safe, the two people I love most in the world.’

And he hugged Issie even tighter.

It was then that Joe heard Kathryn’s voice. He heard her calling, ‘Joe, Joe, I’m here, I’m here.’ He looked round frantically and with amazement saw her, in a moment of ineffable joy, standing on the erratic. She looked radiant, glorious, her face suffused with happiness. He did not question how or why she was there, vibrant and alive. He wanted to give her the flowers, put them in her arms.

He prepared to jump down. He heard Kathryn scream, his world turned black and he fell senseless to the ground.

*

The townspeople wanted to give Joe an honourable funeral. They searched for his body. They never found it and assumed it had been torn apart.

Meredith knew better. Joe had disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.

JOE heard traffic, the wail of an ambulance. Faces loomed above him, willing hands lifted him onto a stretcher, a red blanket covered him and he was travelling. He could not be certain but he thought he saw his mother’s anxious face. Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that he was back but he could not take it in.

They took him to what he recognised was the local hospital and people hurried past, some stopped and did things to him. They were kind. His mother’s face came into focus and he tried to smile. At some point he noted that he was in a cubicle with curtains round, eventually in a side ward. He did not care. His mind was in one place, his body in another.

He lay for days, half asleep, half awake. His senses told him that he was in the ordinary world, the one that used to be his home. This it had long ago ceased to be. The other world was his reality, but he had been expelled. He dreamed he was imprisoned in a huge hour glass, beating its sides to be let out before it was turned upside down by some unknown, giant hand. He woke to find his mother dabbing his sweating forehead. He felt tight bandages round his head.

He was unable to do more than take sips of water. Mum kept speaking to him, her voice echoing as though coming from a hollow chamber, calling his name but he could not respond, he was occupied, travelling the long distance between two worlds. Doctors, nurses talked at him as though he were an imbecile, calling ‘Joe, Joe, can you hear me?’ but still he would not answer. He wished they would leave him alone and turned his head away. Needles were stuck into his side, thermometers in his mouth, tight bands on his arm. He was pushed on a trolley down long corridors and the top half of his body stuck into a dark tunnel, then taken out again.

Mrs Harding was desperate.

‘There must be something wrong. Have you done all the tests?’

‘Everything. We can find nothing. He has a head wounds and a slight concussion. Leave him alone. He’s had some kind of a shock. He’ll get over it.’

She had no one to turn to and sat by Joe’s bed day after day watching the tubes of liquid gently releasing nutrients into his arm. She tried to persuade him to eat but he could not or would not swallow. Another set of tests followed. Negative. She did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

‘Get some friends in. See if that’ll bring him round,’ the doctor advised. She asked Martin and others to visit and in a desperate moment, Sally. It was a useless exercise. They sat, embarrassed when they failed to rouse Joe, and left. Eventually he started eating small amounts and the tubes were taken away. The hospital said he would have to recover at home. There was nothing more they could do.

‘Get your GP to see him. Keep in touch.’

He was talking by now, only the bare necessities and could walk. He dressed himself slowly and got in his mother’s cramped car. At home, for reasons she could not fathom, he asked to go into her bedroom. She watched anxiously as he walked round it, touching objects and staring out of the window. He spent a long time looking into her long mirror.

‘Do you want to sleep in here?’

He shook his head.

Over the next few days she found him exploring every corner of the house with an intensity that alarmed her. He spent a lot of time in the cellar. She thought he had gone mad and got an appointment at the outpatient’s psychiatric clinic. Joe tore up the appointment card when she was not looking but in order to keep her happy went all the same.

They waited a long while and eventually saw a young woman who asked him what seemed to Joe inane questions.

‘What’s the date?’

He wasn’t sure.

‘What’s’ the name of the Queen of England?’

He felt like saying ‘Sheba’ but desisted. They might lock him up.

‘Do you hear voices?’

‘Only yours.’

She looked up sharply.

‘When?’

‘Now. I can hear you talking to me.’

One question was not so inane.

‘Have you ever thought of taking your life?’

He looked at her strangely and said,

‘No. Never.’

She wrote out some notes and told him to come back in six months time.

He gradually regained a hold on life but refused utterly to finish his studies, go back to school or attend any other educational establishment. Mrs Harding cajoled, pleaded, threatened, pointed out drastic consequences, he’d just drift, never get a proper job etc. etc. He listened with patience but responded with obdurate stubbornness, reminding her of the time he had refused to be confirmed. She did not make the mistake of again suggesting her parents intercede but asked instead Joe’s form tutor to come and talk to him, see if he could succeed where she had failed. ‘If only....’ she thought desperately. But there was nothing for it. She was a single parent dealing alone with a teenage boy.

Joe liked Brian Standish, had always got on well with him, was glad to see him but his gentle harangue about a clever, promising student throwing all his chances away had no effect.

‘He’ll catch up eventually,’ the teacher told Mrs Harding, ‘don’t worry about it. It happens often. He’s bright and there’s plenty of time.’

He thought she was worrying unnecessarily.

Her parents came to see him, friends, neighbours. They were puzzled at the change in Joe, did not know what to say. He watched them with sardonic amusement and could not resist the temptation to play up so outrageously to his new image of mindlessness that they left, embarrassed. Mrs Harding did not invite them again but Joe heard her end of long conversations in which she repeated what Brian Standish had said.

‘After all,’ as her GP pointed out, ‘you’re not dealing with drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancy or STD, like most parents. Think yourself lucky.’

Joe had changed and Mrs Harding had too much common sense not to bow finally to the inevitable. He had regained his health, she had done all she could to set him along the conventional paths but in this she had failed. He was in any case eighteen next birthday, a virtual adult who could do what he liked. But there were still things worrying her, such as her neighbour somewhat maliciously reporting that she and others had often seen him hanging about Weymouth Square, much of it spent near the erratic; and he’d been found wandering in the Council Chambers. She wondered again whether she should try and persuade him to seek help. He forestalled her by telling her he was perfectly sane, not a pervert hanging about to pick up young boys or girls and needed no one to interfere.

‘What’s so interesting about the erratic?’ she enquired.

‘I’m studying it from a geological point of view,’ he lied.

She did not know that he was interested in geology but then she knew little about her son these days.

His constant presence in the house was in any case, turning into a surprising pleasure. Instead of the normal diet of TV and videos, which he ignored as though they had never been, Joe busied himself with tasks that formerly were hers. He cleaned the house, he looked after the garden, he did the shopping, he prepared meals, he even did his own washing. He became a model son which she found slightly worrying and sometimes wished he was the old, uncouth Joe who did nothing to help, went to gigs and stayed out late. In a neat reversal of roles she often urged him to have an evening out with friends but beyond a few desultory outings he clearly was not interested. His life had taken a different turn though she could not tell what it was.

He took to going out alone for the day on his bicycle. She had no idea where but he often came in late; once or twice he camped out. And he spent a lot of time in the garden shed, listening to his CD’s for she heard the familiar music beating across the garden, Beatles, Van Morrison, Bob Marley, Arethra Franklin, Tracy Chapman. She was too tactful to ask what else he did in there, for she heard sounds of energetic activity, hammering and sawing. She hoped he would eventually tell.

One Saturday morning when Joe was out her curiosity got the better of her and, finding the place where Joe kept the key to the shed, had a look. She was amazed to find it cleared, and an old hefty wooden workbench installed. Tools she had never seen before hung on the walls or were placed methodically on the bench.

Feeling guilty at her intrusion she asked Joe what he was doing.

‘I’m taking up wood carving,’ he said.

Life continued in its new pattern. She came home one evening to find on the kitchen table a fox carved in wood. It stood with its head raised, and down its back, instead of a sleek coat someone had worked an intricate configuration of patterns that were not mere decoration but enhanced in an abstract manner the essence of its foxy spirit, proud, predatory and fierce. She was afraid to pick it up.

‘Where did you find it?’ she asked Joe.

‘I didn’t. It’s mine, I made it. I’ve been picking up wood from skips. Surprising what people throw away. Anyway, it’s for you. A present.’

She was moved but puzzled. This was a new, extraordinary Joe.

The fox was the first of many. A wild world flowed from the garden shed, all carved with extraordinary striations that set them apart from any works she had ever seen. She surreptitiously went to the library and studied wood carving magazines to see if there were models from which he worked. There were none.

He got a job delivering papers in the early morning and worked at Woolworth’s at night. She saw less of him and did not know how he occupied himself during the day.

Neither did Joe. He spent his days in a timeless zone. The gap between where he had been and where he was now was too great to cover in one leap.