The Immaculate (11 page)

He paused to scoop a small forkful of food into his mouth. Gail said, “You mean he hurt himself intentionally? He attempted suicide?”

Jack shrugged. “I don't know. Sometimes maybe. He fell down a lot, broke bones, sprained things, stuff like that. Once I think he fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand and set fire to whatever he was sitting on. It wasn't that serious, but enough to put him in the hospital. I think most of the things he did were accidental. I mean, if he'd really wanted to kill himself he'd have taken pills or hung himself or something rather than throwing himself down stairs.”

“If he was in such a bad way, I'm amazed that you were sent back to live with him so often.”

Jack tore a piece of naan from the doughy mass, dipped it in his curry and popped it into his mouth. Chewing, he said, “Well, you've got to remember this was the mid-seventies. They weren't as socially aware back then as they are now, certainly not in Beckford. Aunty kept an eye on me, but I think she felt sorry for my father, and she desperately wanted the two of us—my father and I, that is—to make a go of it. Maybe she thought that in the long run I was the only thing that would pull him round. I was like the lifeline that kept the drowning man from going under for good.”

“That's terrible,” said Gail, “using you in that way.”

“Oh, I don't think she meant to use me,” Jack said hastily. “I don't think she saw it that way at all. I think she did everything out of love for me and my father, and maybe that made her a little blind to what was really going on. I think deep down she believed my father loved me, and by being persistent she thought that we would work our way through the bad times and become a real family again. Unfortunately, it never quite worked out that way. My father just kept on rolling further and further downhill. As time went on, the prospect of a reconciliation between us became less and less. As soon as I became aware of his hatred for me, I began to hate him in return—not openly, you understand, but secretly, with a deep, bright child's hatred that consisted of making myself as scarce as possible and discouraging any attempts at closeness, not that I remember there being any.”

He stumbled to a halt and stirred his fork around in the brown mush on his plate.

Gail said, “You spoke about pain earlier. Did you mean physical or mental pain?”

Jack frowned. “Both. More mental than physical, though, I think. I remember my father threatening me a lot, saying he was going to give me a good hiding. I have an image of him unbuckling his belt and me running away with him roaring for me to come back. I think usually I hid somewhere for a while, often until it was dark. When I went back he was usually pissed out of his brain, dead to the world, and he would forget he'd been going to beat me until the next time.

“I vividly remember that once he grabbed me by the arm—I don't think I'd done anything wrong—and he leaned right into my face and told me that one night he was going to creep up to my bedroom with a big axe and kill me. I must have been about seven at the time. His eyes looked so small and crazy and he was unshaven and his breath stank, all hot and sour. It was at the dinner table and he was eating something. I can't remember what it was but I remember his lips being all greasy and I remember seeing bits of chewed-up food in his mouth, and I thought I was going to fall into that mouth and be crunched up like the food in there. Anyway, because I was seven I believed him, and I spent a long time after that sleeping under my bed, freezing cold, terrified every time I heard the house creak, which it did a lot. I slept on bare floorboards with no blankets, the reason being that I used my pillows and blankets to make it look as if I was sleeping in the bed under the covers. God, I really, really hated him. I prayed constantly that he would drop down dead. Quite often at school I was called out of my lesson to be told that my father had had another accident and had been taken to the hospital again. The teachers were always sympathetic and I knew I was meant to pretend I was sad and shocked, which I did. Inside, though, I always felt a great surge of happiness, knowing that I would be staying with my aunt again for a while. At least there I was fed properly and my clothes were cleaned and I could sleep without fear.”

He paused to scoop a forkful of food into his mouth. He chewed unenthusiastically. When he swallowed, the spices seemed to churn hotly in his stomach.

“Oh, Jack,” Gail said sadly, “it must have been awful for you.”

He wanted to say something comforting, as if she was the one in need of it. He could think of nothing to say, though, and in the end he simply nodded.

Gail drained her glass. “Shall we have some more drinks?”

Jack looked at the bottle of Kingfisher by his right hand and was surprised to see it empty. “Yeah,” he said. “Lots more.”

They were ordered and brought to the table, the waiter eyeing their half-eaten food disapprovingly.

Though Jack had a glass he drank his beer straight from the bottle. He took a long swallow, grimaced, peered at the label as though to ensure the ingredients did not include paraquat, and then continued talking in a quiet, intense voice.

“I've made it sound as though I always escaped my father's beatings, but that wasn't the case. He hit me plenty—with his belt, with his hand, with the fire poker, once with a brick that had fallen down the chimney. There was always a reason for his beatings, I'd always been ‘naughty,' ” he said as he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “but often it was really trivial stuff: I wouldn't eat some vegetable that he'd under or overcooked, I'd left a book on the stairs, I'd left the top off the toothpaste tube. In those days people didn't really think anything of it if kids were hit by their parents, and it wasn't as though I went to school with black eyes and split lips. But I always ached somewhere due to his violence. My legs, my arse, my back, my arms; once he kicked me in the balls and I pissed blood for two days. I remember I occasionally went to Aunty's when my father hadn't been taken to the hospital, and I think that must have been when his violence got really bad, a cooling-down period, if you like. I'm not sure whether this is an actual memory or just a bunch of images that I've fixed in my own head as a kind of representation of what was going on at that time, but I remember sitting in a hot bath while Aunty bathed the bruises on my back, and then afterwards lying in bed and listening to her giving my father a real tongue-lashing.”

Gail said, “Didn't you have anyone neutral you could turn to? A friend? A teacher at school?”

Jack smiled grimly. “I'm afraid school was another horror story. Now you know where I get my warped imagination from.”

He took a sustained gulp of beer that emptied almost half the bottle, then wiped a hand across his face, groaning as if he were tired. He leaned back and then rocked forward in his chair, making it creak. The conversation from the other diners seemed distant, as though he and Gail were enclosed within a clear dome, shielded from the outside world.

“Because of my treatment by my father,” he continued, “I was one of those grubby, undernourished, withdrawn kids at school. I didn't trust people, so I found it very hard to make friends. I was no good at games, and so was ostracised for that. My clothes were never very clean and neither was I; I probably smelled, though wasn't aware of it except that every time I went to stay with my aunt the first thing I was always made to do was take a bath. I read a lot, which was another reason I was picked on. I don't think even the teachers liked me very much; I was one of those kids that people probably feel sorry for, but still can't bring themselves to actually make friends with.”

“How you've changed,” Gail said.

“Yeah,” said Jack heavily. “I've got it all now, haven't I? Success, adulation, wealth . . . a gorgeous chick.”

Gail said pertly, “I'll allow you to call me a chick just this once, considering the circumstances. But any other time . . .” She narrowed her eyes dangerously and drew a finger swiftly across her throat, making a hissing sound.

Jack smiled, though only faintly. “You know,” he mumbled, “I'm glad I'm telling you all this. It feels . . . cathartic.”

“Good,” said Gail. She reached across and squeezed his arm. “Do you want to tell me the rest of it?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. I want to tell you about Patty Bates.”

“Who was she? A girlfriend?”

Jack barked a sound that was a cold approximation of a laugh. “Patty,” he said, “short for Patrick. He was the one mainly responsible for making my school days so awful.”

He took a deep breath, as though bracing himself, and then said, “Everyone was scared of Patty Bates. He was big and mean and stupid. His grandfather, Joe, owned the garage where my father sometimes worked. Patty picked on a lot of people, but I was his favourite. He used to say the sight of me made him sick, and that was a good enough reason for beating me up. If he found me reading a book he would snatch it from me and tear it to pieces. Once he caught me on the way home from school and put a noose round my neck which he'd made from a length of rope and said he was going to hang me. He dragged me around for ages, looking for a suitable tree. I was terrified. Eventually an adult saw what he was doing and made him take the noose off. The worst time, though, was in the woods behind our house during the summer holidays.” Abruptly Jack pushed aside his plate of rapidly congealing curry and said, “I don't think I can eat this.”

“That's okay,” said Gail, as if he were a child. “Shall we go home, finish this there?”

Jack gave a swift shake of his head. Doggedly, he continued, “It was a hot, dry day. I decided to go into the woods and lie on a grassy bank under the shelter of some trees somewhere and read the book I'd just borrowed from the library. I even remember what book it was: it was called
The Year's Best Science-Fiction Novels
and on the cover was a picture of a spaceship landing in a farmer's field. The farmer was in the foreground, sitting on his tractor. He was staring at the spaceship with his back to the reader, but even though you couldn't see his face you got the impression he was absolutely rigid with shock.” Jack slowly clenched his right fist as though, just for a moment, he felt the weight of the book in his hand before it slipped away, a brief ephemeral happiness.

“Anyway, I found a place and started reading, but after a bit I began to get drowsy. So I put the book down and closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew there was an explosion of pain in my ribs. I woke up thinking a tree had fallen on me or something. But when I opened my eyes all I could see was this incredibly blue sky and one or two fluffy white clouds. I lay there wondering whether I'd dreamed the whole thing; you know how it is after you've been hurt—there's the initial pain, then nothing as all the endorphins or whatever rush to the area and douse it, then there's a dull throb which either fades off or gets worse depending on how badly you're hurt. Anyway, I was in the endorphin stage staring up at the sky when it's suddenly blotted out by this huge black moon of a head. I couldn't see any features at first, but then a voice said, ‘Wake up, shitface,' and I knew straight away it was Patty Bates. My immediate thought was to jump up and make a run for it, but I was still pretty groggy from sleep and as soon as I tried it he booted me in the side of the thigh and gave me a dead leg.

“It hurt so much I was trying hard not to cry, and failing, which really disgusted Bates, not that he had the slightest ounce of respect for me anyway. I suppose I must have been about eleven at the time and Patty was a couple of years older and about twice the size. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and lifted me up like a doll. ‘You're such a runt, shitface,' he said to me. ‘I think you need building up so that you can stand up to big boys who push you around.' He thought this was hilariously funny, which just shows you what an incredibly witty person he was. ‘Come on,' he said and started dragging me along through the woods. I got the feeling he had some sort of plan, which was terrifying because it implied I was in for more than just the usual kicking.

“That was an awful journey. I could hardly breathe because of his fist in my throat, and hardly walk because of the pain in my leg where he'd kicked it. I felt sick at the prospect of what lay ahead of me, and also I'd left my library book behind, which meant that if it was lost I'd have to ask my father for the money to replace it, which would automatically result in yet another hiding.

“Eventually Patty and I came to a clearing where there was a huge old oak tree. There were acorns scattered all over the ground and the roots of the oak snaked out of the earth in places and then plunged back in again like the tentacles of some creature which had died and ossified trying to break the surface of the soil. There were little spots of sunlight dappling the scene, and it smelt wonderful—verdant and tangy and alive. Normally in such places I would feel a flood of positive emotions. I would feel awestruck and peaceful and for a while at least my problems would seem insignificant. I would feel a sense of union with nature, I would pretend that I was the only human being alive in the world. I loved the woods because it was usually the only place where I didn't feel threatened, where I felt that nothing wanted to hurt me.

“But now Patty Bates had destroyed that. All I could think of as he dragged me towards the oak tree was how isolated we were. If he started to torture me, as I believed he might, it was unlikely that anyone would be near enough to hear my cries.

“When we got to the oak tree he banged me up against it and said, ‘I'm going to let you go now, shitface, but don't try to run away because if you do I'll catch you, and I'll make sure you never fucking run again. Understand?' I nodded and he let me go. Immediately, I fell to my knees gasping and panting for breath. I could feel his presence above me, could feel his disgust and hostility curling around me like some stench that was thick and rotten and poisonous. I wanted to plead, to beg for him not to hurt me, but I knew that would only make things worse. So I said nothing; I even tried to swallow the tears that kept brimming up inside me. ‘Get up, you fucking little poof,' he snarled, so I pushed myself up using the tree for support.