For a passing moment Ron felt in control, back at the wheel. But how brief! It occurred to him almost simultaneously that he couldn’t possibly approach Shanks without letting the cat out of the bag. Shit. Although he was alone he crinkled up his eyes and wagged his forefinger for effect. There must be a way. Shit and double shit. There had to be a way. Sod you, Paul, I’d bet my bottom dollar you did it ‘cos of Dad. Why’d you have to swallow that shit? Images of his missing father, his dead mother, the sharp-tongued neighbours, threatened to come back if he dwelt too long on the subject, so he pushed it all as far down as he could and insisted on filling his thoughts with plans for future action. What’s done is done. Sod you, Paul, you mad bastard, but you’re not going to drag me down with you. No way! There must be a way to get to Shanks, to stop the rot. There must.
Paul lay awake, staring up at the polystyrene ceiling tiles framed in aluminium. There was a pattern of sorts in the porous surface, but it was difficult to pin down. He concentrated, trying to find an indefinite point somewhere beyond the tiles, as he had done before with 3D computer pictures, but the pattern eluded him again. He closed his eyes and tried to regroup his thoughts.
It was true, existence is just like that. There is a pattern, though it may not always be clear. Yes, Mr. Swan would agree with that. He saw again the immaculately clean face, perfectly hairless, polished almost, of his last great tutor, Mr. Swan. Mr. Swan would smile like a priest, stare into the distance like a guru, then slap you on the back like a basketball coach. His breath was warm and perfumed, his voice calm and even-toned. Mr. Swan nodded his head in wisdom – carry on, Paul. And Paul had seen it through. Despite his family, the pain, the fear of death, despite the whole world’s constant mockery. Why couldn’t they see it was true? How everything comes together, hangs together, is one? Beyond the daily appearances, always beyond. We spend our lives looking at our reflection in the glass without seeing through it, beyond it. There is a higher source, like radio waves, all around us, invisible, apparently inexistent, but if we just tune in, just tune in to the celestial radio... It does make sense, but we are blind, deaf. We refuse to see the pattern, to hear the music.
They’re letting me out tomorrow. To Ron I’m just an embarrassment, to Ken a poor little kid, a weirdo. No wonder they sent Jill along to keep watch, to keep guard. Who knows what I’m capable of doing! Ha. The blind have no need for artists, the deaf no need for musicians. I suppose they think I’m mad. He saw Mr. Swan smile his omniscient smile – easy, Paul, be safe in your higher knowledge.
Where does their cynicism lead them? To this world of war and selfishness, grubbing for grubs, grabbing for grabs (Mr. Swan again), killing each other for a bowl of rice or the right to decide for others. While all the time denying the spiritual, the creative, refusing to tune in.
Paul listened and thought that what he heard was silence. The silence of hatred. The immense hatred that could destroy lives, deprive children of their dreams, silence the birds at dawn. A silent hatred so overwhelming it could wipe out humanity and anything else that stood in its way. It was this dumb vehemence that had trapped his father and led him to do what he had undoubtedly done.
We cannot undo the sins of our fathers, we are obliged to pay for them, said Mr. Swan.
There is a liberating force, he had also said. Paul ran his hands over his bandaged groin. And now I have my sacred ground. Mr. Swan smiled his approval. Help us spread the word, Paul, let us teach the deaf to hear.
Ron was faced with a very delicate situation. Paul was due to leave hospital tomorrow and something had to be done. Apparently he wasn’t in the least bit repentant about chopping them off and was prepared to explain it away to just about anyone who was willing to listen, or, as Ken had so neatly put it, he seemed happy to talk his bollocks off. Stupid bloody nutter. There’d been a few journalists floating about looking for a scoop, but so far he’d managed to head them off with a little help from his friends. A crate of malt whisky for the department and a set of glasses for Ned should see to that. The press thought he was getting out the day after tomorrow, so everything should run smoothly enough on that score. Problem was, what to do with the mad bugger now? If only he could go back to that bunch of loony moony types in the New Forest, but word had it they’d been moved on by the local authorities for some reason or other. For being a bunch of weirdos, probably.
Fine, so he gets out tomorrow. We’ll pick him up and then.....? Exactly. What to do with him? He can’t come here, that would be the end of everything, not to mention Daphne. No. That’s ruled out, brotherly love or not. Ken’s a possibility, but it stinks a bit that Ken should put him up in his front room when we’ve got two spare guestrooms available here. Anyway, I don’t think Jill’s up to it, any little extra effort seems to knock her flat on her back, lazy bitch. Well, fair’s fair, she’s got a lot on her hands, but, for Christ’s sake, one bloody night and she’s had it.
Of course it’s important that Paul doesn’t think he’s not wanted. After all, he’s our kid brother, and Dad running off like that seems to have done him more harm than us. Then Mum and Auntie Beth popping off like that. That’s what sent him round the bend. That and all those bloody pills. Poor sod. No, we’ve got to come up with something for his own good. All right, and for ours, too. Mutual benefit. Symbiosis. Call it what you will, he’s got to be hidden away somewhere safe, somewhere the press gang won’t find him, somewhere he won’t be able to blab off to all and sundry why he’d want to go and slice them off.
I wonder what he did with them.
He decided that he couldn’t approach Ken with these ideas because he would rant and rave about blood ties and humanity and all that nonsense. He’d probably insist on sleeping on the bloody sofa himself so as Paul could have a bed! Christ, what a family. No, this was a job for Daphne if ever there was one. She’d come up with something.
At first Daphne tried to wash her hands of the whole affair. It wasn’t her family, it wasn’t, therefore, her problem. She was terribly sorry but Ronald was big enough to look after himself, as was his mad brother. But when Ron pointed out that as his wife she too ran the risk of public ridicule and loss of economic clout, she began to see the connection. In reality she had seen it all along and was, as always, simply making him sing for his supper.
Very well, she’d have a word with the chaplain. She’d see what she could do. No, a subtle threat should do it, something along the lines of ‘it would be such a shame to have to give up evening classes at this stage’. There was a dreadful lack of willing volunteers. He’d certainly be well out of the public eye there, don’t you think?
Daphne, you’re a dream come true, to which she could but agree.
Fat people don’t eat and the rich are not interested in money, just as the slanderer pulls you to one side and tells you in a whisper to beware of those who talk ill of others. It is the nature of the beast. Which perhaps helps us to understand why Dr. Flynch, the internationally famous campaigner for the Eradication of Sexual Abuse, should at all times be surrounded by photos of mutilated corpses and any number of instruments of sexual torture, from pliers to toilet brushes. Unlike the House of Horrors in a wax museum, where the Great Criminals of our time are immortalised for future generations to admire, there were no portraits of mass murderers or notorious sadists hanging on his office wall, for Dr. Flynch’s obsession was with the victims. Instead there were huge colour blow ups of sodomised children, impaled whores, wives hacked to pieces in a frenzy of perverse passion, all with that unmistakably slightly swollen aspect of cadavers.
Of the labelled items which lay on his desk it was unfortunately easy enough to imagine to what twisted end they had been put, although some of them (a pipette? A bicycle wheel?) required an explanation, explanation that Dr. Flynch was always ready to give. He would pick up the object, hold it before him and begin to tell its story without the faintest trace of emotion in his voice, while
the listener tried hard to tear his gaze from the doctor’s ill-fitting toupee and magnified, expressionless eyes, to concentrate on the bizarre tale, to make it somehow ‘real’ despite the surroundings, to pay attention as Dr Flynch calmly described the unbelievable brutalities behind these seemingly innocent artefacts. There was something disturbingly intimate, embarrassingly secret about these monologues, in spite of his matter of fact manner, something which not even his impressive command of cold statistics could dispel. He was like the mortuary assistant who pulls back the sheet covering the corpse to let us catch a glimpse of the usually deliberately hidden process of putrefaction. It was as if he shared his terrible knowledge with you, and by so doing implicated you, made you in some way an accomplice. In short, he was the sort of character Ron wouldn’t hesitate in calling a bloody weirdo.
Just before the glass doors automatically opened Daphne remarked automatically
‘It’s windy out.’
‘Cloudy with sunny intervals’
confirmed Ron, nodding resignedly.
In the hospital car park litter chased itself in fits and starts among the brightly painted lots as if playing its own particular version of hopscotch. Ron’s car, long and grey, was not amused. The nurse held her cardigan wrapped against her waist to stop it from flapping, for some reason reluctant to button it up, while Paul allowed himself to be fussed into the passenger seat without a word. He felt like an ageing relative, too old or infirm to be anything other than a burden. He watched Burton General hospital recede in the wing mirror as they drove off.
Daphne was explaining politely why the best thing for him ‘at this juncture’ was to be hidden away in the church rooms. He supposed she was using tact and charm, but he wasn’t listening. Instead he played his part and stared out of the side window in silence whilst his chaperones interchanged the neutral niceties well-bred people use so as not to offend; a pointless patter designed to please, or rather not displease, priests, bank managers or the elderly. And the like, Paul presumed.
He wasn’t surprised to be treated this way by Ron. His big brother had always seemed grown-up to him, had always worn a suit. Even his earliest memories of him were of a sensible, capable type, and his marrying Daphne had been a natural progression, as if their coming together had been planned from the start. And he remembered: there is no room for recrimination in this world, Paul – things just are, all we need to do is understand.
The church rooms were damp, prefabricated huts tacked on to the side of a back street brick and stonework church. Access to the tiny courtyard was gained through a wire mesh, barbed wire topped fence like those leading to factories. The main doors to the temple were kept well locked most of the time, for although this was the House of God, the local thieves were mostly Egalitarians and refused to make distinctions.
Daphne fiddled with the padlock, and after a determined struggle pushed open the door. The three of them filed in, Ron bringing up the rear like a warden. Once inside they said nothing, Daphne and Ron looking about the place as if they were inspecting a hotel room and deciding whether to take it or not. Paul sat down on the folding bed and stared at his shoes. Somebody had cleaned them and they shone like they hadn’t for months.
‘It’s new’
smiled Daphne, referring to the mattress.
‘Home sweet home, Paul’
added Ron affably, but it sounded daft and heavy and fell to the floor with a dull plop.
‘Water, light, even a small gas cooker, eh? Here’s the key to the gate, the square one, and the smaller round one’s the padlock. You can come and go as you please, and we’ll be in and out, too.’
How they wanted to get out! How he wanted them to go! They reached this agreement in silence, seeming to communicate better without the obstacle of speech, words being like ill-placed furniture into which they incessantly bumped. These silences were much more coherent, easier to navigate, like the orderly houses of the blind.
‘Thanks,’
dropped onto the floor with a deafening clatter.
‘That brother of mine makes me sick sometimes, he’s got all that fucking space up there, but no, oh no, not in my house, the kid’s a raving loony. Christ! He’s our fucking brother for God’s sake!’
Jill didn’t mind the swearing as long as the kids, or Daphne, weren’t around. She tried not to fall so low herself, but Ken had always expressed himself in short, blunt outbursts and she had become used to it. So she decided to let him have his little rant before calming him down. Anyway, she felt he had a right to be angry.
‘Ever since he married that stuck up bitch...... Huh, what a bastard. It’s not her fault, though she doesn’t help, stirring it all up and egging him on, no, he’s always been a stiff prick. The sodding church rooms! Bloody hell, he’s only just got out of hospital and they stuff him away in that....... pit! I’ll punch his bloody nose when I see him. God, what a shit!’
‘Ssh,’
and she looked up to where the children’s room was. To her surprise he took her advice and stopped talking abruptly. Having silenced him she felt obliged to make a comment.
‘I can’t see that punching him on the nose would help matters.’
‘It’d make me feel a lot better.’
‘Yes, well I want none of that. Please.’
She had used her best matronly tone for a reason: the brothers had come to blows before. Silly blows, weak ineffectual blows not designed to hurt, meant more as an exaggerated gesture, a ‘look what you’ve driven me to’ which had the effect of making the situation unbearable, ending, like most childish squabbles, in shouts and tears.
His heavy sigh she took as a promise.
‘It’s just a question of time,’
he was about to make a comment but she hushed him,
‘yes it is. Time heals.’
Clichés had always managed to calm him, as she had discovered over the years.
‘Just as Paul will eventually get better from... cure his wound, so all this will eventually die down and be forgotten. So Ronald and Daphne have given themselves away for what they are again? So what? That’s their problem. It certainly comes as no surprise to us, now does it?’
‘He’s a shit.’
‘And he’s proven it over and over again. So what’s new?’
Ken said nothing
‘Eh? What’s new?’
The answer was that Paul was involved this time, that he’d cut his balls off, that the whole situation was out of hand. But he’d had four large lagers by now and wasn’t thinking straight. He couldn’t find the answer.
‘So what’s new?’
She knew she had found his weak spot and had no intention of letting him go now. She almost asked what was new once more, just to drive it home, but she remembered that Ken had too often in the past accused her of being like a dog with a bone. “Grr” he’d say, and possibly even get aggressive if she went too far. Instead she handed him another can, with this condition:
‘I think it’s time we all got together for a chat, don’t you?’
It sounded conciliatory, well-balanced and grown up, the sort of phrase you'd expect from an adult. There was no way she could later be accused of yearning for the chance to get to the bottom of it all, to wallow in the details of this real life soap opera.
Ron was right. Paul K. lasted less than a week before he became Paul Kavanagh, younger brother of a certain Mr. Ronald Kavanagh, local councillor responsible for economic affairs being groomed for eventual mayordomship, and from there, who knows? A young reporter, reportress, Sharon something or other, had asked and bothered her way round town until she had unearthed poor Paul rotting away in his damp church room, still nursing his wounds. Poor Paul my arse, he was happy as pie to blurt it all out! Spare no details, my boy, shout it from the rooftops. Bastard. Cut your own balls off if it turns you on, but leave mine alone!
She had interviewed him, right there in his prefab. hut, photos and all, and he had been more than co-operative. It’s a
wonder she didn’t get a shot of his bandaged groin! Of course he’d come across as a complete nutter, urged on by a mixture of Sharon’s morbid sensationalism and the paper’s light-hearted, ‘readable’ approach. He had asked to be understood and respected, had only been ‘keeping a promise’. ‘From these seeds no tree shall grow’. Ron couldn’t bring himself to believe Paul had said that, it sounded so biblical; it had to be pure invention. Front page and middle page spread, names, dates, even a picture of a pair of sheepshears (Daphne too had been right) 'like those used by Paul Kavanagh in his ritual act of self-castration’. He’d then gone on to elaborate about ‘seeing beyond the pain, beyond the pane’ and some nonsense about tuning in to the ‘universal music’. In short, he’d made an utter prat of himself, thereby making a laughing stock of the entire damn family.