Mum stood up. “Roger,” she greeted the farm manager. “I was expecting Griff.”
“He’s stuck in the brook. I came to tell you he’ll be late, not to wait.”
“Alright,” she said agreeably. “I was just going in. I’ll put in a few more plants, then.”
“Where’s the imp?”
“I sent him in for tea and to wash up. Sally’s after him.”
“Sally went to town for Mrs. C,” he said.
‘I’d better go after him, then,” she sighed.
“Oh, you stay. I’ll go find him.”
I saw him walk off and leaned closer, trying to keep him in sight, and realized if I didn’t want to be caught, I’d better sneak back inside. I turned, stood up and Mum looked up at that moment. Her gasp of terror made me jump.
“Aidan!”
I swallowed. “Hi, Mum.”
“Aidan, what are you doing? Get down this instant!”
My feet slipped just as Mr. P stuck his head over the railing and shouted at me. I slid towards the edge of the roof unable to stop my knees and palms skating on the mossy slates, hit the eaves, and somersaulted over. I heard the horrified shouts of Mr. P and my mum and something huge and crushing hit my back. The sky whirled, darkened; I opened my eyes wide on the blue sky above me. A crushing sensation filled my chest and I couldn’t breathe. Strange metal spikes grew out of my chest and belly. I held onto them.
Mum’s face was pale, stark white next to mine. “Aidan, oh my God! Baby! Griffin!” she screamed and hovered.
Blood filled my mouth. “Mum,” I managed to say. “Can’t breathe. Feel like…crushed.”
Her hands wept like startled birds. “Oh baby, Griffin! Roger! Help! Somebody help!”
Something heavy dropped to the ground near me and I saw Mr. P’s agonized face. “Moira, go inside and call the ambulance. Go get Griffin,” he ordered. “Aidan, don’t move. Look at me.” He supported my head.
“Mummy,” I breathed, tears coming now. “It hurts. What is it?”
“Moira, go. Now,” he said urgently and she ran, screaming my dad’s name.
“You fell on the fence spikes, Aidan. Don’t move. We have to get the ambulance people to get you off safely.”
“Can’t breathe, Mr. P.” My mouth filled with blood again and I couldn’t swallow it. I felt strange. As if I was moving through mud, darkness filled the corners of my eyes; I was cold, sweaty, felt like everything was oozing out of me.
Mum came back with Dad and all the household staff. Together, he and dad lifted me carefully off the posts. I screamed in pain but they ignored me as they set me down on the ground midst the newly turned soil. Blood bubbled out of the holes and mum held me tightly as Dad wadded up his shirt and tucked it against the holes in my front. “Ambulance is coming, baby,” he said, his voice thick. “It’ll be here as soon as it can.”
“Mum, I can’t breathe,” I whispered and opened my eyes wide, strained to see them. Their faces were growing blurry, their voices receding. ‘Feels like the bull sat on my tummy,” I mumbled. “Crushing me. Mummy, where are you? Can’t see you, Mummy. Mum---”
“Aidan. Baby, please don’t die. Oh God, Griffin! Do something, please. Oh God, don’t take my baby!” My mother’s wails faded as the blackness over took everything.
I flew down a narrow tunnel and Ned was at my side, his face wore a look of intense sorrow. He told me I had died like him and that both of us could now move on. We held each others hands as the light beckoned us. Warm, glowing full of welcoming voices, we embraced it. I had a moment’s sadness that my parents would suffer and then I was falling into the brilliance
Part 2
Chapter 7
Voices mumbled over my head and it seemed like days, months before any of it made any sense. Heat filled my skin, then cold. Water dripping, rolling one way and then another. Sunshine and night sky where moonlight bathed me in silver.
Smells of food. Blandness in my mouth. Harsh scrubs against my skin, bodies leaning over me. Women’s voices. Here a word that made sense. Some left me puzzled.
Disposable. Delayed development. Severely retarded. No comprehension.
Found wandering the streets of London. Cheapside.
No more than…six, maybe seven.
Been here nearly five years. No significant change in neurological status.
Sweet natured child. Never….tantrums.
Always smiling. But sad. Beautiful lavender eyes, pretty boy.
Sunshine on my face. I opened my eyes in a big room with other children, staring, sitting, rocking on the floor on mats with adults dressed in green pants and tops who moved amongst us in a harried fashion.
Giant windows over heat registers let in a multitude of sunlit rays, big puffy marshmallow clouds adrift in it. I yawned; I was fair knackered, rubbed my eyes and that brought my arm into view. I was wearing what the adults wore only mine were faded as if they had seen many types of washing.
I was seated on the floor with my knees tucked under me, my hands at my side and there was a plastic band on my right wrist. I played with it, rolling it around until the little scratches on it made sense. Aidan. Smyth. Age 10. Cauc. Blood type AB+. DOB UNK. Rel. UNK. DX. Severe mental delayed development.
Some of it I understood and the rest I puzzled over. I knew my name was Aidan but not much else. I remembered a boy named Ned and dying, the light and then nothing but fragments of thoughts.
I stood up and wobbled. My balance was off, as if I had forgotten how to stand or even walk. I cleared my throat, said hullo a few times to make sure my voice was working and approached one of the busy adults. I tugged on his pants leg until he swiveled around, exasperated. His name was Peter Lithgow, R.N.; I saw it on his name-tag.
“Where am I?” I asked and his eyes grew wide and astonished. He grabbed my arms and held me with a grip hard enough to bruise.
“Oww,” I complained. “You’re hurting me!”
He rolled my wrist and read the tag on it. “You’re Aidan Smyth.”
“My name is Aidan. I don’t remember my last name.” I was astonished that my words came out making sense; they had a strange slur to them as if I hadn’t spoken in some time.
“Holy bloody King George,” he said and dragged me towards a door with a window in it. Unlocking the knob, we went through to emerge in a long corridor with overhead lights and other doors heading towards the end where there was an office of glass so that whoever was inside could see from four directions into all the rooms. Inside were four people, dressed in white and green scrubs. They saw us coming and met him before we reached their door. A man and a woman stepped forward. “Pete, what’s wrong?” both of them studied me and frowned.
“He looks different, somehow. That’s Aidan Smyth. The boy found abandoned in Cheapside?”
“He is different, Doctor Phillipson,” Peter agreed. I stared. Now, I was frightened and my body trembled with it. I pressed closer to his side, felt his heat.
Said, “I’m scared.” My words created a furor. Both of them dropped to their knees and crowded me, asking a million questions that piled up on me and made me retreat into a dark little room in my mind.
When I finally came back to awareness, I was seated in a chair in an office. It had framed diplomas on the wall and a small fireplace roaring merrily along. The doctor I had seen in the observation room was sitting behind the fancy desk writing notes on a yellow legal pad and the scratchy pen irritated my ears.
His name was on his desk and on the framed certificates, Michael Aaron Phillipson, MD, Doctorate of Psychiatry, Surgeon and a whole host of alphabets after his name. His voice was melodious with an upper crust accent. He greeted me with a smile. “Hullo, young Aidan. I see by your eyes that you are alive again. How do you feel?”
“Can you tell me where I am?”
“In Holbrooke. An orphanage, state home for the developmentally disabled. You’ve lived here for five years. Can you tell me what you remember?”
“I remem
ber my name. Aidan. A boy named Ned who was my friend. We both died. When I was five.”
“Died? Do you remember Ned’s last name? How you died?” He leaned forward and touched my forehead, came around and picked up my wrist. Felt the throb in my arm. “Your pulse is good,” he mused. “Eyes clear. Speech clearly not aphasic. How old are you, Aidan? Do you know your surname?”
“I’m five. No. I don’t know. Where is home? Can I go home?”
“We don’t know where you lived before, Aidan. A police officer found you lying in a rubbish heap in the slums of East London. With two scars on your body. Looks like you fell on something that pierced your chest, lungs and belly. Do you remember that?
“You’ve obviously suffered some severe trauma and come out of it. We’re going to run some tests on you, place you in another centre as you are definitely not mentally impaired.”
“Do I have a mummy and a dad?”
“I don’t know, Aidan. We advertised for you and the police looked to see if a child like you was missing. We found nothing.
“The matron will set you up to meet some specialists at Bethlehem Hospital. And you look like you’re about ten, Aidan, not five.”
“Will it hurt?” I was filled with trepidation.
“No, Aidan. The tests don’t hurt.” He studied me and said something under his breath and I automatically translated and answered him the same.
“You understand me?” he asked and I nodded. “You speak German?”
“I do?”
He rattled off a few other phrases and I understood all of them. “Spanish, French, Italian,” he said and opened the door to call in several of the other staff who spoke to me in their tongues and I knew them all.
“What year is this?” I questioned, suddenly tired to the point of exhaustion as if using my brain was more exercise than ditch digging.
“1973,” the doctor answered. “Are you tired?”
“I want to sleep,” I admitted and he took my hand. Led me to his couch and settled me onto it. He covered me with a hand crocheted throw and sat with me until my eyes closed in sleep.
Chapter 8
The new place that accepted me was a group home with six other boys; all around the same age or a few years older but tougher and they decided to make life rough on the new kids. I was one of them; four sets of eyes stared me down and made comments under their breath that the housemother ignored. All of them spoke in the broad accent of London and I had trouble understanding them. They mocked my own soft accent calling me a country git with pretensions of royalty.
I was put in with the other new boy, a small overweight redhead with sallow skin, and a twitch. He jumped at everything and smelled as if he’d pissed his pants.
The room they showed us was barely big enough for one bed and two had been crammed into it. On the foot was a stack of clothes, two pairs of jeans, two t-shirts, and four pairs of briefs, socks, trainers, and a belt. The bed had a thin stubbly coverlet and a flat pillow with not much stuffing. The walls were striped paper in a mustard yellow, one window and it was nailed shut and looked out over a small, postage stamp sized yard of trampled grass and weeds. Kids toys lay scattered about, a few bikes and a sad swing set.
The nurse I’d met first had brought me here and I saw the doubt in his eyes as he inspected the place.
“It’s just for a little while, Aidan. Till we find you a permanent home. Too many people have heard about your miraculous recovery. Someone will adopt you. You be good. I’ll come by; check on your next Friday.”
I told him goodbye and sat on the bed watching him drive off through the window.
The four other boys crowded into the room and went through my meager things; complaining that it was the same as their own, no posh clothes or toys like they expected from my accent.
“Got any cash?” the biggest boy sneered. “Costs to live here. You got to pay me for protection.”
“Protection? From what?” I asked innocently and he punched me in the stomach. I lost my breath, fell backward wheezing. Whacked my head on the wall and dented the plaster. Saw stars and my eyes filled with tears. I thought I was dying, remembered it happening before and relaxed in acceptance.
My breathing came back and I was able to lift my ribs. Opened my eyes as five faces stared worriedly down at me.
“Blimey,” the big bully said shakily. “I thought you were a deader, you didn’t breathe for 5 minutes. Turned blue, you did. And smiled. What’s so bloody amusing about dying?”
“Already did it once,” I shrugged and bought their attention.
“Naw? Really? Tell us about it,” he plunked himself down on the opposite bed and I told them what I remembered about dying; and proved it by lifting my shirt and showing them the holes through my chest and belly.
“Me name is Tom Watson,” he said, his fingers lingering on the raised welts of scar tissue the size of a large marble. “This be Harry, Marc and Schnee.” the three looked enough alike to be brothers, thin, whippy with narrow dark eyes, watchful mouths and brown hair.
“Schnee?” I asked.
“Schneider. Bloody tart mum named him for the truck his dad drove. Them three are brothers but got each a different dad. Mum was a tart, did heroin. Born addicted they were. Crack babies. Suzy keeps a tight rein on ‘em, don’t let ‘em go wandering the streets looking for dope.”
“Suzy?”
“She’s the woman runs this house. Fair if you don’t piss her off. One of the good ones. I was in one house where the fucking man raped me every night until I bit his pecker off. Won’t be dicking no little kids no more. Don’t let no gents catch you alone---no matter how nice they act.”
“Rape you? What’s that?” I asked naively.
“Some men like to stick their prick in kids arse holes. Hurts like bloody hell, makes you bleed at first. Some of the boys like it after awhile. They’ll pay you to keep quiet.”
I shuddered. “No thanks.” I still hadn’t found any use for mine except to pee through.
“What’s your name?” the oldest brother named Harry asked.
“Aidan. Aidan Smyth. That’s not my real name, they gave it to me. Said they found me in Cheapside, London. Where are we now?”
“Binghamton. Coal producing city not far from the outskirts of London. Suzy takes us to school on weekdays, Saturday and Sunday we do chores and play soccer at the Civic centre downtown. You play?”
“Don’t know. I’ve been kind of gone the last five years,” I admitted.
“Five years! Where?”
“I just woke up seven days ago. They said I was in like a coma or something; they did all kinds of tests on my head to see if I was normal. Told me it was some kind of miracle. I was like, retarded or something.”
“Where did you live before?”
“Place called Swansea Group Home,” I answered and he nodded slowly.
“That’s where they send all the mental defectives. Them that don’t know nothing. Cor, you lived there?”
“For five years, they said. I just woke up one day, looked around and asked where I was? Freaked the nurse out. That’s when they bought me to the shrink.”
“Tell us about your friend, Ned,” He encouraged and I strained my memory trying to remember everything I could about him.
So I embroidered it and had them lapping it up eager for more until the lady’s voice hollered up to tell us dinner was ready. Tom hesitated, stuck his hand out and said, “Sorry, guvnor that I hit you. Won’t do it again. Come on down, Suzy cooks a treat and there’s always plenty to eat.”
All of us trooped down to the kitchen and took our seats at the picnic table where I met the house matron, a stern faced blonde with blue eyes and hoop earrings; a cockney accent and a wooden spoon in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
“I see you’ve introduced yourselves,” she rasped in a smoker’s growl. “I’m Suzy. Eat and then we’ll clean up. Are you unpacked? Good. You’re in bed by 9 pm. We watch telly until 8 and then you wash up; brush your
teeth and change. No lights on, no reading in bed, no smoking and no unnecessary noise. You got to pee, get up. I don’t allow no accidents on my sheets. Them’s the rules. Oh and no cussing, spitting or fighting. You’re all too young for tarts in your rooms. Got it?”
I nodded and dug into the casserole of meat, potatoes, and veggies filling my belly until it was happy. I fell asleep long before the curfew and woke up in bed, rolled over and pulled the covers over my head.
Chapter 9
Seasons came and went. I forgot the doctor’s promise that I would be adopted out. Seems like no one wanted an older child who had trouble with everyday ordinary tasks. I tried explaining that I was just learning those skills; I had only been born the day I’d wakened in the day room of the institution and at five years of age.
Tom Watson and his friends kept me from most of the bullies at school and those few that made it past him didn’t follow me when I escaped by climbing above them.
I climbed the ropes in the gym to the rafters, on top of the book shelves, onto the roofs, windows and ledges to retreat into a private world of my own.
I never saw Ned again. My need for an imaginary playmate or ghostly friend was pushed away in the need for simple survival. I was an orphan without a past or most memories, had discovered that to be safe, I needed to be invisible.
Suzy got older and moved into London proper, an apartment in government subsidized housing on the edge of the Moors. Traveling by the tube was beginning to become dangerous, kids were disappearing only to be found murdered in abandoned buildings, railroad crossings and lonely cut-offs to the Moors.
Tom and the three brothers had grown old enough to go out on their own and gone into a trade school, two of them had turned into hooligans and ran with the drug trade. Sometimes, I saw them cruising the street on their motor bikes and sporting thick gold chains, wearing sharp clothes and flashing big bankrolls.
They nodded to me but we kept our distance. The red headed boy who’d been my roommate had died that first year from some obscure disease; the doctors had called it leukemia. He’d wasted away to nothing, pale, white, and bruised easily. I stayed alone after that, especially after Suzy moved to the city.
I slept okay, never more than a few hours at a time. Most of my time left was spent in classes or roaming the rooftops of London like a ghost. I made it to the top of the Tower and Big Ben, unseen and untouched.