White Goods (45 page)

Once we were inside the
Castle – using keys they must have stolen - they insisted we
returned to the ballroom, insisted I returned to my position on the
stage.

‘
We missed it
earlier, see.’

‘
We were busy
at your caravan. Setting things up.’

‘
Turned up too
late. You’d finished.’

‘
So, we
thought you could do it again.’

‘
Just for
us.’

‘
Sing a little
song did we?’

‘
You gone
quiet, Buckley. Jim asked you a question. Be rude not to
answer.’

I went to answer, but they
both just laughed, and made to join me on the stage.

‘
Don’t worry,
we don’t want to hear your little ditty. We’ve got a different show
in mind.’

‘
Yeah,
something a little more adult.’

‘
Something for
the ladies.’

They were laughing again
and I felt cold. I was caught between two poles: having no idea
what would happen next; fearing I knew exactly where this was
heading.

‘
Take it all
off, Ian,’ Rory instructed, his laughter abruptly gone, staring at
me hard.

Jim pulled at the dog’s
lead, making it cry in pain.

‘
What-?’ I
uttered, barely audible.

‘
We’re gonna
do a strip search. Just to check,’ Rory explained, matter of
fact.

‘
Check what?’
I asked, my voice thick with a rising sick.
Where was this going,
a terrified
voice asked inside.
What the fuck were
they going to do to me?

‘
For the
money. One of you must have it. Jackie’s buggered off, but we’re
not convinced he didn’t leave it with one of you.’

‘
So, we just
need a bit of proof. You say you ain’t got the money, so what’s the
harm in proving it.’

Flick-flick-flick.
A tug on a cruel
lead. Two sets of cold eyes on me. I looked around. We were alone;
the castle was dead for the night. In the vast, empty shadow that
was the ballroom, it was just the four of us: two boys and a
snarling, tortured dog against one. Once inside, we had gone
through several doors and corridors before reaching the ballroom;
there was no quick and easy escape. I had left that opportunity
back at the caravan, asleep, undisturbed.
Flick-flick-flick.

‘
What the fuck
you waiting for?’

I took everything off,
apart from my socks and pants. Rory took my pile of clothes and
went through it quickly, shaking his head at Jim when he had
finished.

‘
Nothing in
there,’ he said aloud, dropping my clothes at his feet. ‘Best get
the rest off, Ian’

‘
You can see
I’ve not got-,’ I began, but he cut me short.

‘
Can’t see a
thing, Ian,’ Rory stated. ‘Not for certain.’

Flick-flick-flick.

I removed my underwear
quickly, wanting this over, trembling with fear and cold as I fully
exposed myself. Rory indicated I should throw it on the floor with
the rest. Cupping myself, churning with apprehension, I waited for
their next instalment. I didn’t have to wait long. Rory unzipped
himself and within seconds was splattering my clothes with an arc
of hot piss. Jim had taken something from the pile, but I didn’t
see what; I was too distracted by Rory’s vile act to pay proper
attention. Once he had finished, he zipped himself up and invited
me to pick up my stuff.

‘
Sorry about
that, when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go,’ he said,
matter-of-fact. ‘You can get dressed now.’

I did nothing at first.
Caught again; a catch-22.

‘
Did you not
hear me, Buckley? You have my permission to get dressed. You’ll
catch a cold out there naked, this time of night. You’re not
thinking of walking back starkers, are you?’

As I slowly pulled on my
heavy, urine-slick items, I felt bitter with resentment and
furiously weak. My pants and the crotch of my trousers were
sopping, touching my private areas as I drew them over my flesh.
The soaked fabric stuck to my clammy skin as I hauled them on,
dragging out the agony of redressing. It was hard not to cry, but I
managed to hold back, despite the fact that Rory was laughing
throughout my struggle. I couldn’t fight these guys, but I couldn’t
let them win with every blow.

As I pulled on the last
item in the pile, I realised what Jim had taken from it: one of my
socks.

‘
You want it
back?’ Jim asked me, and I was about to reply, when he hit me with
it full in the face. It was wet, heavy and thick inside with dog
shit; this smeared across my face and I was instantly
sick.

Whilst Rory had distracted
me with one nasty trick, Jim had been getting his long-suffering
animal to do another.

They left me like that:
wet with piss, stinking of shit, standing in a pool of my own
puke.

It was the
worst of their attacks. It was also the last for a while. Mum knew
something had happened to me. Whilst I washed myself as well as I
could at the shower block before sneaking back into the caravan,
there was no getting my clothes clean and dry. And when Scotty woke
everyone up after the incident with Della, I watched her checking
me out, instinctively knowing something was wrong. Later, I
suspected that she had made contact with Jackie. Maybe she had
assumed a connection between him and the attack on me. In any case,
that was the only incident for a long time. The boys even stopped
hassling me about where Jackie was. Until he died, and then it
started up again.
Where was he? And where
was the rest of the money he owed them?

One of the worst things
about the attack at the caravan holiday was knowing Scotty had seen
it happen. I don’t know how much he saw, as we never really talked
about it. But I knew he’d been trying to wake Della to tell her
what he’d seen; I sneaked back inside as the fuss erupted,
unnoticed by everyone bar him.

‘
You don’t say
a word,’ I warned him later, once everyone was back to sleep,
smothering his innocent face with a washed yet stinky hand.
‘OK?’

All down to Shirley White,
as far as I was concerned. Every action; every
consequence.

It wasn’t until I started
following her home that I found out about the boy. He’d been kept a
secret from us all until then. Even though I’d been following her,
working out where she lived, it wasn’t until I plucked up the nerve
to knock on her door that I finally got to see him.

‘I’m glad you came,
please come in,’ she had said, inviting me in, offering me a
coffee. A little too eager to please me, to ingratiate herself; the
effect of so many years of feeling guilty, I guess. ‘I want to say
so much to you,’ she continued, once we were settled in the lounge
of her small flat. ‘I’ve finally sorted myself out – I’ve had to,
what with this little one’ – she indicated the boy – ‘and Jackie
leaving us again. Been having therapy at that hospital you saw me
at. Trying to get sorted. And I’m sorry. For what happened. I’m
really sorry.’

And that was how it
started: an invitation, an apology and an introduction. I guess
Shirley had only herself to blame for what would follow. I began to
visit them regularly, asking Shirley to talk more about her
treatment, about how sorry she was, telling her it was good for me
to hear, like a therapy of my very own. She said she had seen me
about, saw Rory and Jim attacking me that day at the crematorium.
Had wanted to help, to make up for what she had done, but had been
too afraid to intervene, to approach me.

‘
I’m so glad
that you came to me, that you’ve given me a second
chance.’

The visits
allowed me to get to know the boy as well – my
nephew,
as she referred to him, but
I had a different thought in my head. He was my
vengeance.
He was her offering to
balance the scales; words were not enough. But I let her think they
were. It secured me further invitations to the flat, where she
provided me with coffee, information and time to calculate my next
move.

There were two vital
pieces of information that led me to the opportunity I needed: her
appointments were occurring fortnightly on a Wednesday afternoon at
the hospital; she left the boy at the flat on his own during these
occasions.

‘I know he’s only four,’
she excused, ‘but he’s very sensible. I’ve no one to leave him
with. Unless…’

I declined, politely. ‘He
hardly knows me. I don’t feel comfortable.’

‘No, no,’ she replied, a
little deflated, as if our relationship hadn’t quite developed in
the way she had hoped.

‘Maybe when I get to know
him a little better?’

Several weeks later,
after watching her leave the flat for her latest session, I
approached 5 Chelsea Gardens and knocked on the door. Tiny feet
padded up the hallway and then the letterbox was slowly opened by
little fingers. Seeing it was me, a huge grin split open his chubby
infant face and seconds later, I was inside.

‘Where are we going?’
Uncle Ian, he asked, as I marched him along the road, in the
direction of the crematorium.

Several police cars
sirened past, followed by an ambulance, and I wondered for a second
if they were meant for us. Had she discovered him missing and made
the obvious conclusion; fearing the very worst, had she demanded
the full attention of the emergency services? Yet, the convoy of
urgent vehicles sped ahead of us and turned off right. We turned
left: cutting through the crematorium, taking the short cut to the
hospital where both our mothers were seeking recovery and, no
doubt, a sense of forgiveness and peace.

‘What is in there?’ he
asked, looking up at me, his questioning eyes huge with
innocence.

Death,
I wanted to say.
Death
is in there, and any minute now, you’ll stare it in the
face.

Within five minutes, we
were signed in, the nurse had left us and I was doing the one thing
that I knew would kill Shirley White. I had introduced little
Jackie to his living-dead grandmother; the living-dead grandmother
who would smother him with love, who would offer him a sense of
familial adoration Shirley White wouldn’t be able to compete with.
I was also certain she would – one day – tell him everything that
had happened. How his mother had ruined Jackie’s life, my life,
everyone’s, how she was bad through and through, how she had done
this to his grandmother, who had done nothing but love, love,
love.

There was a certain
thrill, coming here when Shirley White was also resident. Knowing
that I could bump into her, that she could bring it all to an end.
But the biggest thrill was the knowledge that she thought the place
was doing her good; that it was a place full of help. That it was
the making of her. In fact, if all went to plan - as she completed
her therapy session in another part of the hospital - it would be
the very breaking of her.

‘And who is this little
charmer?’ Mum said, grinning, more alive than dead on this
particular day.

‘This is little Jackie,’
I told her, sitting in her guest chair, the boy jumping up on my
trusted lap. ‘This is your grandson.’

I saw a glimpse of cloud
grey her already pallid complexion; a moment of dark thought that
passed quickly.

‘Did you know, I’m
allowed out again,’ she said, suddenly sparky; her eyes shone and
colour flushed in her cheeks. ‘We could go for a walk. Would you
like that, Jackie? A nice little walk in the gardens with your
nan?’

He shrugged, a little
shy, a little in fear of this zombie relative who had abruptly
entered his life.

‘You just have to ask
permission,’ she said directly to me. ‘Could you ask the nurse,
whilst I find my jumper, fix my hair?’

‘You okay here with Nan?’
I asked him. He shrugged again. When I stood up, he simply took my
place on the chair. ‘I’ll just be one minute.’

I was nearly
ten minutes. I had to walk all the way back to reception to find
someone who was able to help me with Mum’s request. The nurse who
escorted me – unlocking and re-locking doors as we went – knew
nothing about such requests. After checking through Mum’s file and
making a telephone call to a more senior member of staff, the truth
was revealed: Mum remained a securely held patient; there would be
no
nice-little-walk-in-the-gardens.

By the time I was back in
her room, Mum and Jackie were gone.

24.

I couldn’t just do
nothing. Not forever. It was bad enough that I had stood back and
watched my best friend and his siblings demolish two lives. They
weren’t innocent lives, but they were still lives. I couldn’t just
pretend that it hadn’t happened. There were witnesses, living
witnesses. Witnesses the now-rabid Tankard trio might have gone
after. And I was one of those witnesses.

Seeing Ian and the little
boy up ahead of me had been a distraction. But when I lost them,
turning into St James Road, there was nothing left to divert me
from what was necessary. I was left with questions, yes – but that
wasn’t sufficient; that wasn’t excuse enough.