The Immaculate (13 page)

“Well, if it wasn't really him,” Jack said, scowling, “who do you think it was then? Do you think I was hallucinating?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was just an old man peering in at the window, a tramp, something like that.”

“Don't be stupid. Do you think I don't know my own father?”

“When did you last see him?” Gail asked.

“What's that got to do with it?”

“Just answer the question, Jack,” she repeated calmly. “When did you last see him?”

“Fifteen years ago,” he admitted glumly, as if it were a confession.

“Fifteen years,” Gail repeated. She leaned across the table and took his hand again. “Fifteen years is a long time, Jack. People change, memories become muddled. Can you honestly remember what your father really looks like? I mean, you probably haven't even seen a photograph of him in all that time, have you?”

He stared at the table and said nothing.

“And besides, Jack, he's dead. You're talking about seeing a
ghost,
for God's sake.”

Jack started to nod reluctantly, then looked up at her, startled by a new notion. “Maybe he isn't dead.”

“What?”

“Maybe Aunt Georgina was lying. Maybe my father isn't dead. Maybe he's here in London.”

“But . . . but why should she lie?”

“Because she's always wanted my father and I to be friends, to be a proper family. Perhaps he's decided to come and find me, to make amends.”

Gail looked bewildered, lost for words. Finally, however, she shook her head. “No, I can't believe that. It doesn't make sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because what possible reason would she have to ring you up and tell you he's dead?”

“She wanted to catch me off guard.”

“But why bother? If your father had suddenly shown up out of the blue you would have been caught off guard anyway. If anything, your aunt has probably made you think about him more than you have in years.”

Jack sighed and folded his arms grumpily. He did not offer any further argument.

Gail squeezed his shoulder and said, “Come on, let's go home.”

Jack's Mini Cooper rocked a little as a black Porsche whipped past. He stared after it, muttering, “Arsehole. Driving like that on a country road. What's he trying to prove anyway?” If Gail were here he knew what she'd do. She'd cock her little finger like Julie Walters in Personal Services and say, “BCSD—big car, small dick.”

He smiled. Thinking of the little things she said and did always made him smile. He wished she was here with him, that they could have seen this Beckford thing through together. But she hadn't had any work for a couple of weeks and now there was the opportunity of a month's teaching in Lewisham that she couldn't afford to pass up. She had promised to come to Beckford at the weekend if Jack was still there by then. He, however, hoped he wouldn't be. The funeral was on Thursday afternoon at 12:15
P.M.
, and his aim was to sort out his father's affairs quickly and head back to London either immediately after the funeral or first thing Friday morning.

He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the half-open window without thinking. It landed in a muddy puddle and sizzled out. Feeling guilty, Jack opened the car door and retrieved the sodden butt, which he squashed into the ashtray. Sweet wrappers unraveled and spilled over the rim like a feeble party popper. Jack sighed, crushing them all back in. Cleaning out the ashtray was just one of the little jobs he never got around to doing—like getting a new stylus for his turntable so he could play his old vinyl, taking the pile of clothes in his airing cupboard to the Oxfam shop, sticking down the edge of peeling wallpaper in the bathroom, writing to Aunt Georgina . . .

He smiled again, this time a little bitterly. Well, that was one thing he wouldn't have to worry about for a while after this visit. He had nothing against Aunt Georgina herself—in fact, quite the contrary: she had been the only person to inject his childhood with a little light, a little hope, a little love. He still associated her with Beckford, however, and for that reason could quite happily have shut her out completely from his life. He remembered the rare moments of security and contentment in his childhood so acutely, with such intensity and desperation, that it served only to exacerbate the pain.

He wound up the car window, shivering at the Northern cold. He had left London at nine that morning. It was now twelve-fifteen. He had turned off the M1 some five or six miles back and stopped in a layby for lunch, right after seeing the first sign for Beckford, which informed him he had sixteen miles to go. Actually seeing the name of the place written there, black on white, made him feel very strange indeed. He stared at the sign hard, as if unable to believe it was real, as if he had thought Beckford did not really exist except in his memories, which were themselves merely bad dreams. Christ, he was actually going back! Seeing the sign confirmed it, brought it home to him. He stopped the car, his stomach hollow, his mouth dry. He told himself he was being ridiculous even as he wiped his palm across his forehead and it came away shiny with sweat.

The sandwiches he'd prepared that morning—cheese and sweet pickle in slabs of wholewheat bread—tasted like cardboard, but Jack doggedly munched his way through them. He swilled it all down with semi-skimmed milk, a carton of which he'd bought at the last service station. Whenever he thought of Beckford, he thought of a dingy place, and once or twice he actually caught himself peering through the windshield into the distance, trying to discern some dark pall of smoke or fog that he felt sure would be hovering over the village. However, after undertaking most of his journey in the rain, the brooding clouds which he'd felt so appropriate had now all but dispersed. It seemed likely that sunshine and blue skies might actually accompany his homecoming.

He considered smoking a second cigarette before resuming his journey, but then decided against it. No, he was only putting off the inevitable. As he started the car he assured himself for the umpteenth time that day that there was nothing to be worried about. The horror of his childhood was long past; Beckford was only an empty stage, bare boards layered with thick dust. Even his father's house was no threat now that the ogre was dead.

He set off again, tapping his hands on the steering wheel in time to the Rolling Stones (the Strolling Bones, Gail called them), a gesture of defiant levity. As he drew nearer to Beckford the memory of his father grew larger, more solid, as though transmitted from the place itself. Despite his best efforts, the events of that last day were coming back to him, pushing themselves to the forefront of his mind. Jack tried to defy them, but they forced themselves on him, an inexorable violation.

He remembered the date with ease: August 2
^nd
, 1989, a Wednesday. The week had been hot and that day was no exception. By nine in the morning the sun was beating down remorselessly, bleaching the colour from the land. Daisy Lane was baked hard, cracked in places; stones jutted from its uneven surface like knobs of vertebrae. The surrounding fields looked parched. Cattle chewed their cud with glum indolence, indifferent even to the flies that swarmed around them, alighting on the rims of their eye sockets to drink. The air was muggy, slow and thick as molasses. Jack remembered it pressing down on him, on his eyelids and shoulders and the top of his head, licking him with its heat and leaving dampness behind.

He was eighteen years old and today was the most important day he could ever remember. For today he received his A level results, the outcome of which may well provide him with a key to unlock the trap of his life. Predictably, his father had been opposed to his taking the exams from the start. He had described Jack as a scrounger, had threatened on numerous occasions to throw him out unless he got a decent job and brought a bit of money into the house. Jack, however, had resisted the pressure from his father. Since he had turned sixteen the conflict and hostility between the two of them, whilst still present, had somehow become more distant. They were like a couple of belligerent hermit crabs, occasionally snapping their claws at each other, but on the whole keeping to their own territory. Certainly the physical violence had ceased; Jack was not sure whether this was because his father respected him now as an adult or simply because Jack was now big enough to hit back.

Much to his father's disgust, Jack wanted to go to University, somewhere far away like Kent or East Anglia, and to do so he needed at least two B's and a C on his exams. That morning, immediately after breakfast, whilst his father was still sleeping off last night's binge, Jack went outside and sat with his back against the gate, heels scuffing the dust of Daisy Lane, eyes straining for the glint of the postman's bicycle.

By his side, his tinny old tape recorder was belting out the first album by the Stone Roses, which Jack had been listening to almost constantly for the past few months. Two days before, he had been playing it in his bedroom when his father had burst in. “That's a fucking cacophony, that is,” Terry had slurred, swaying from side to side like an undersea plant. “You turn that shit off. I'm not having it in my house.”

Jack had propped himself up on his elbows, the familiar queasiness clamping his stomach. Though he defied his father more and more frequently these days, he was still scared of him. Indeed the only reason Jack
did
defy his father was because acquiescence didn't work; it simply made his father bolder, more querulous, more demanding. When he had spoken to Aunt Georgina about this she had said, “Your dad, Jack, is like a little boy with a stick. He'll tease and tease a dog until it bites him and only then will he leave it alone for a while.”

Jack tried to remember this, tried to act on it, and for the most part it seemed to work. But still he was afraid. He couldn't help remembering the threat his father had made about the axe when he was little; for the more his father was forced to back down, the more infuriated he would become. What was to stop him snatching up the axe (or some equally lethal implement) in a drunken fit of pique, creeping up the stairs when Jack was asleep, and beating him to death with it?

For this reason Jack's throat felt thick, his voice fluttery, as he replied, “This is my room. I'll do what I like in here.”

“This is my room,” his father mimicked and took a lurching step forward. “Bollocks to your room. This is my fucking house and don't you forget it, you scrounging little git. What I say goes. And I say turn that fucking racket off now.”

Jack swallowed. His temples were pounding. He felt vulnerable lying back on the bed so he swung his legs to the floor and sat up.

“No,” he said, trying to make his voice sound cold and hard, stiffening the muscles in his face. “I'm listening to it. You mind your own business.”

“Cheeky little bastard,” Terry Stone snarled. Spittle flew from his mouth and drifted down through a shaft of sunlight in a fine spray. He took another step forward, and now Jack could smell him. It was a hateful smell, stale clothes ingrained with old tobacco, halitosis laced with alcohol.

Jack stood up as his father advanced. Terry Stone halted, rocking back and forth as though on the deck of a storm-lashed ship. He pointed a finger at the tape recorder where Ian Brown was proclaiming that he wanted to be adored. His lips and tongue writhed for a moment as though trying to fit around the shapes of the words in there.

“Either you switch that off,” he said firmly, “or I'll throw the fucking thing out of the window.”

“Just you try it,” Jack said; his throat was so tight it hurt to speak. “If that goes out the window, you'll bloody well go after it.”

Jack's father glared at him, eyes glazed and pink, teeth clenched like an animal. His bottom lip was wet and gleaming, his hair tousled. His skin was grey and slack except for his cheeks and nose, which were red flares of broken capillaries. His hands were like paws, stubby and grime-encrusted, powerful-looking.

Jack thought if it came down to it, if his father got crazy or mad enough, he could still take Jack apart. He himself was no Adonis; he was as tall as his father but scrawny. He had been trying to remedy this with pushups, but the results were not too impressive—not yet, at least. Jack, though, endeavoured to conceal his uncertainties behind the unyielding mask of his face. It must have worked, for his father suddenly swung around and stamped to the door.

He did not leave, however, without delivering a parting shot. His hand on the handle, as though to slam the door shut should Jack lunge for him, he sneered, “You think you're such a clever little bugger, don't you? You think you know it all? Well let me tell you something, shall I? It doesn't matter how many bloody exams you get 'cause you'll never get away from this place. Never.” As soon as he pulled the door shut Jack began to tremble; for the rest of the day he brooded on what his father had meant by that last statement.

Staring at the same bend in the path, the vanishing point where all lines converged, had set Jack's mind wandering. Now, however, the lines were broken, snapping his mind back to the present, by a blue clad figure wavering precariously towards him, sunlight glinting and flashing from the spinning spokes of his bicycle.

Jack stood up. Suddenly he felt breathless. His heart began to thud, sweat broke out on his body. “Come on, come on,” he urged. The postman seemed to be making interminably slow progress. “Pedal faster,” Jack muttered, “pedal faster.” The bike was crawling along at little more than walking pace. The postman glanced up and sunlight flashed on his spectacles as if his eyes were on fire.

When he came to within fifty yards of the house, Jack ran to meet him. He was a portly, laconic man, with hair like grey straw and squinty eyes that floated behind the thick lenses of his spectacles like small, dark fish. According to Aunt Georgina, he was always in the hospital for one operation or another. When Jack was little he used to be terrified of him, imagining his body all stitched up like Frankenstein's monster beneath his navy blue uniform. “Morning, Mr. Phillips,” he shouted now, pounding to a halt.