Perry Scrimshaw's Rite of Passage (11 page)

Fairbanks gave Perry a curious
look. ‘But you. A Survivor. Miraculous no?’

Perry could have cried had Eva
not been next to him. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but he had
suspected. He would surely have seen them around. The loss was
enormous. He felt a hand on his wrist, squeezing him softly.

‘
It’s going to
be alright Perry,’ Eva whispered.

‘
Their graves,’
he asked, ‘where are they buried?’

‘
I’m sorry.
Either rowed out to sea and sunk with stones or more likely
cremated.’

Fairbanks
brought the bottle and a strip of gauze over to the bed. ‘It is
awful news I know, but time now I think to see to our lady,’ there
was something about the way he said
lady
that Perry didn’t
like.

‘
Yes,’ Perry
realised how selfish he’d been and rubbed Eva on the back, ‘of
course, I’m sorry,’ he said to Eva.

‘
Don’t be,’ she
said gently.

Fairbanks unscrewed the bottle
and upended it onto the strip of gauze, ‘Where shall we start?’

Eva held up her arm, revealing
a grazed elbow. Perry leaned closer to get a better look and sucked
air through his teeth. The wound oozed a dark purple grape
colour.

Perry thought of Donnegan’s
boys. Their cuts and scrapes he’d tended to over the years. There
was a lump in his throat. Grief sat heavy on him. Fairbanks turned
to him and said something he didn’t quite catch.

Then came a flash of white. A
vinegary smell.

He kicked his feet. Head
gripped in a firm vice. He wriggled. His strength waned.

A blur of yellow.

Then all went black.

11

He gagged. Was that cat piss he
could smell? His nostrils burned and bile tunnelled up his throat.
His head rolled to the side and a sting warmed his cheeks.

‘
- me! Come
on!’

Confused and groggy, his
eyelids parted. Where the hell was he? A purple tube was being
wafted under his nose; smelling salts, he realised.

‘
Urgh,’ he
batted it away with a feeble hand.

‘
Thank Lord!
Get up Perry! Get up!’ The panic in Eva’s voice stirred him. He sat
up and rubbed his stinging eyes. Eva ran to the window and pushed
it up but it didn’t budge.

Dr Fairbanks was lying in an
awkward bundle on the floor. What on earth had happened?

‘
God Eva. Is he
alive?’

There was a knock on the
door.

‘
Doctor?’ I
heard a commotion, is all well?’

‘
Uh, all fine
in here!’ Eva yelled and she tried again to push up at the window.
The doorknob rattled, it was locked.

‘
The windows
are locked, find the keys!’ Eva hissed.

‘
Doctor?’ Cecil
banged again, louder this time.

‘
What
happened?’ Perry got uneasily to his feet.

‘
He attacked
you Perry! We’ve got to get out of here, come on, now!’

He couldn’t remember anything,
just the smell. It was almost too much for his fuzzy head to take
in but even in his state, he knew an unconscious doctor found with
two street kids would land them in a workhouse or jail.

‘
Check his
pockets,’ Perry scampered round to the desk and tried the drawers.
The bottom one was filled with bottles stacked in neat rows, the
next was full of files. When he looked up to check on Eva she was
slipping Fairbank’s wallet into the pocket of her dress.

On the desktop, he looked under
the stack of folders and checked an elaborate paperweight for a
secret door. There was paper underneath; he skimmed the top sheet.
Eva was saying something.

‘
Huh?’

‘
I’ve got
them!’ she said.

‘
Right.’

Eva limped over to the window
and after a couple of attempts, unlocked it and pulled it up. He
folded the paper and stuffed it inside his pocket. Cecil’s low
tones came on the other side of the door. He was talking to
someone. A metal sound fumbled in the lock.

‘
Come
on!’

He darted across the room and
followed Eva out the window.

The drop stung his Achilles.
Eva huddled into him, walking fast, their arms interlocked. It was
only when they joined the busy twist of alleys that Perry felt
safe.

‘
They’ll be
after us.’

‘
We should
hide.’

‘
Eva, what
happened in there?

‘
When he put
that cloth to your mouth, you struggled and twisted and both of you
went tumbling to the ground,’ she tucked her hair behind her ear. A
smile spread uncontrollably across her face. ‘Oh Perry, I was
brilliant. See, when the doctor fell, I saw my chance. I think he
must’ve knocked his head on the floor ‘cos he was blinking and
groaning. I pounced on him, ripped the rag from his hands and
stuffed it over his mouth.’

‘
Blimey,’ he
gave her arm a squeeze, ‘you saved me.’

Eva couldn’t hide her delight
and bunched a little closer to him.

‘
But why did he
attack you?’

It was the question on his own
mind, ‘I’m not sure yet,’ but he had an idea. ‘You need to get off
the main streets. Do you know Blue Anchor Lane?’

‘
Of course,’
she rolled her eyes.

He gave her directions and told
to knock and ask for Joel and crossed his fingers that Ma wouldn’t
answer.

She nodded, chewing her swollen
lip. ‘What about you?’

‘
There’s
somewhere I need to go.’

A fog had crept in from the sea
during the morning. Ravens squawked atop brick pillars, dots of
black in the chalky air. The guard took his foot from the desk and
dropped the penny dreadful he was reading. He left the booth and
crunched through the gravel, stopped and listened. Breakers smashed
and foamed on rocks, barely visible under the blanket of white.

‘
Who goes
there?’

Perry cleared his throat. ‘I’m
here to see a prisoner. I can make it worth your while.’

He was shown to a room without
windows and rested his hands on a dented table, then on his lap.
The door opened with a clang and the guard showed the prisoner in.
Samuel Scrimshaw shuffled in, his chains jangling so loudly that
Perry wondered if a man could ever get used to it.

‘
You’ve got ten
minutes,’ the guard left them alone, the bang of the lock, echoed
in the cold between father and son.

Perry wasn’t sure how to
start.

‘
The other day
you were with the note boy. I couldn’t say if it was you or not at
the time. This place,’ his wild eyes searched the ceiling, ‘it can
play tricks on you. But here you are,’ he rested his chains on his
lap. ‘Did you know it was me?’

Perry nodded. It was like
sitting with a stranger, but one whose features he sensed and knew,
as if he had dreamt of this person night after night and then met
them in a crowd. His voice was deeper than he remembered, but still
with its gravelly quality.

‘
I always hoped
you’d come.’

Perry shuffled on his chair. ‘I
spose it’s about time.’

‘
There’s so
much I want to-’

‘
- I was seven.
How could you do something so stupid and risk everything? You were
supposed to look after me.’

Samuel Scrimshaw pursed his
lips. ‘I know. It was for you I did it.’

Excuses were worthless to him.
‘You killed someone, how-’

‘
-it was an
accident.’

‘
I don’t want
to hear your lies,’ Perry was surprised at the strength of his own
feelings. ‘
You
abandoned
me
- I’ll never forgive that.’

Samuel nodded. His chains
rustled as he wiped his nose.

‘
So that’s why
you came. To tell me I’ve been a hopeless father. Perry, being in
lock up is one thing, but my real sentence has been knowing I let
you down. Every single day I regret it. I know I’ve been a terrible
father. Saying sorry alone isn’t enough I know, but it’s all I
have.’

Perry tried not to show how
much this admission meant to him. They were but a few sweet words,
but they were a start, something that they could both build on. He
decided to open up.

‘
I came, not
just to see you, but to tell you something. I was attacked
today.’

His father looked surprised.
‘By who?’

‘
By a
doctor.’

He grimaced. ‘Fairbanks?’

Perry nodded. ‘Last time I was
here, I saw the old goat coming into the prison. And then there’s
this. I nicked it from his office earlier.’

Perry took the paper he had
stolen from Fairbank’s office and unfolded it on the table in front
of his father, who stared blankly at it.

‘
You know I
can’t read.’

‘
Oh,’ Perry was
embarrassed, he really had forgotten, ‘It’s a list of names. I
recognise a few of them on there. Every one of them is someone
taken by The Sick. Each with a line crossed through it. Except
one.’

‘
Me.’

‘
Exactly,’
Perry confirmed. ‘So, what does it mean? What’s Fairbanks doing
here, coming to the prison? Why’s your name down here?’

His father scratched his
stubble. ‘I had The Sick. Beat it I did, but barely.’

Perry’s mind flooded with
realisation. ‘I had it too,’

His father leaned in. ‘By God
Perry. That’s why he attacked you!’

It didn’t make any sense, ‘But
why?’

Samuel Scrimshaw was shaking
his head, almost talking to himself. ‘Of course, it’s the blood he
said, the answer’s in the blood.’

‘
Dad!’ Perry
interrupted him. The word had come out naturally, without
check.

His father’s features softened.
‘Now that, I haven’t heard in a long time.’

Perry didn’t want him to feel
like he was forgiven and couldn’t hide the sharpness in his voice.
‘Tell me what’s going on.’

‘
It all started
a while back. Years. Me and a few of others due for the noose were
called in one by one to see the Warden. The man offers us all the
same deal. There’s this doctor he says, needs some subjects to try
his remedies on. As we’re all dead men anyway, the deal was, we let
Fairbanks test things on us - pills, injections and the like and in
return the Warden delays the date.’

Perry felt sickened. ‘He was
experimenting on you?’

Samuel bowed his head. ‘I
wanted more time, wanted to see my boy again. Only you never
came.’

Perry shook the guilt off
before it could cloak him. ‘Don’t you dare pin that on me.’

Samuel scratched his head and
looked under his nails. ‘It’s my fault Perry. I’m not looking to
blame you for not coming to see me. It was just hope - no more than
what I deserve.’

Perry decided not to press
it.

‘
So Fairbanks
was trying to find a cure for The Sick by testing it on
prisoners?’

‘
No son. Not at
first anyway. The Sick
started
in here,’ he pointed to the floor as if it were
the exact spot where the disease was born. ‘Fairbanks
invented
it by accident!
It’s his bloody fault!’

‘
What?’ Perry
stammered. ‘Why would anyone do such a thing?’

Samuel shook his head. ‘He’s
still coming here a day or two a week, giving me some pill to take,
testing me, scribbling things in his notebook, weighing me, taking
my blood.’

‘
But
why?’

‘
Look Perry,
I’ve never been the cleverest bloke in the world, Lord knows that.
But I think Fairbanks
is
trying to find a cure. He’s testing me because I
was the only person to survive it.’

Perry levelled his gaze. ‘Until
me.’

The quiet was broken by the
clang of the lock sliding back. His father leant forward.

‘
It must be in
our blood. He’s got me Perry, nothing we can do about that. But you
need to stay clear of him, stay clear of here and all. Skip
town!’

‘
Time’s up,’
said the guard.

Perry slowly got to his feet,
his head spinning and tried to find something of himself in his
father’s features. Eyes, brown as bark stared back, amber flecked
and hopeful.

‘
Perry?’ Samuel
motioned down to his hand, outstretched for his son to
shake.

‘
Hurry up,’
said the guard.

Perry didn’t shake it. ‘Next
time.’

He paced back
to town, the sea frothy and unsettled in the distance. As he neared
the outskirts, he was struck, as if finally seeing the place in its
truest form, how much he hated Southampton. Not its buildings, its
streets, its people or its strange ways, but what the poisonous
combination of them all had wrought onto his life. Mrs D and the
boys were all dead, his home gone. His Pa was in lockup, The Sick
had nearly claimed his own wretched life. The only things he was
truly grateful for were his two new friends. It was clear to him
now what he must do…what
they
must do.

At Ma’s, he found Eva in the
kitchen. Joel had a bowl of hot water at her side and was carefully
dabbing Eva’s cuts and grazes with a sponge.

‘
I think we
should leave,’ Perry announced.

‘
What?’ Joel
looked around the kitchen, ‘Now?’