The Immaculate (15 page)

Terry Stone glanced at his son, and immediately Jack saw there was no reasoning with him. He made a bolt for the door, but just as his fingers touched the handle the golf club appeared beside him and smashed into the door, slamming it shut and denting it in the process. Jack went cold—that could have been his skull. He made a grab for the club but it was snatched away, the blunt head catching the ends of his fingers and making them sting. Jack was only grateful that the weapon was so cumbersome in the small room. He looked around frantically for a weapon of his own. All he could see was the big book of fairy tales lying open beside the door. He snatched it up.

He turned and flung up the book as a shield just in time. The head of the club slammed into it; a split-second later and it would have been his face. “Dad!” Jack screamed. “Dad, please stop!” As his father drew the club back and raised it to swing again, Jack ran at him, wailing in terror and desperation, and smashed the book as hard as he could into his face.

There was an awful crunching sound, and Jack thought he heard the air rushing from his father's body. Then Terry toppled backwards, his hands above his head, the golf club slipping from his grasp. There was blood on the back of the book; the centre of Terry's face was a crimson explosion. Because he had been kneeling, Terry's legs swung out from his collapsing body, slamming into Jack's legs and knocking him sideways. Jack fell into his bookcase, which rocked but remained upright. Books fell from the shelves, bouncing off his shoulders, slithering across the floor. For a moment after his fall, and after the books had stopped tumbling, there was complete silence in the room. Jack thought,
My father's dead! I've killed him!
Then his ears seemed to unblock and he heard the reedy sound of his breathing.

Jack got to his feet, trembling, nauseous. His body felt full of freezing air, making every organ shiver. His father was lying on his back, arms above his head, legs straight down, like a sacrifice. This is it, Jack thought. There's no way back from here. He didn't know what to do. He pushed himself back against the wall, looked down at his father's prone body and gnawed the fingernails on his right hand. His father gave a small groan and moved his head a little. Jack felt suddenly frantic. I can't be here when he wakes up, he thought. He'll kill me.

Moving slowly, gingerly, as though in a den of sleeping lions, Jack stepped over his father's body and picked up the golf club, which lay on the floor above the limp tobacco-stained hands. He looked around for a suitable hiding place, then, unable to find one, threw the club out of the window and watched it bounce and come to rest on the cobblestones below. Next, he dragged a black Adidas bag from beneath his bed and began to stuff things into it—clothes, wallet, cheque book and card, tape recorder, camera, the letter he'd received that morning. He worked quickly, urgently, terrified his father was going to wake up.

When he had all he wanted from his bedroom, he ran down the hall and skidded into the bathroom. He stuffed a towel into his bag, a toilet roll, his toothbrush. Soap and shampoo followed, deodorant, a comb. What else, what else? He thought he heard his father groan. He ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, grabbed a packet of biscuits from the cupboard, milk from the fridge. He ran back to the foot of the stairs. “Dad?” he shouted. “Dad, are you okay?” Silence. Was his father pretending or was he really still unconscious? Keeping his eye on the stairs, in case his father should appear, all bloody and snarling like a psycho in a film, Jack picked up the phone and dialed 999.

“Ambulance, please,” he said when asked which service he required. He gave the address, then said, “The man you want will be upstairs,” and replaced the receiver to stem any further questions.

Despite the heat, he took down his jacket from the row of hooks behind the front door and put it on. He took down his cagoul too, rolled it up into a tight ball and stuffed it into his bag. He glanced up the stairs again, then opened the front door, wincing at the creak it made, and stepped outside. Sweat was rolling off him; his skin was shining as if smothered in oil. He looked around, saw a slab of stone lying in the grass of the overgrown lawn, and used it to prop open the front door. Then he walked down the garden path and turned left outside the gate, heading up Daisy Lane in the direction of the Butterworths' farm.

He was almost at the top of the lane, where it joined the main road into Beckford, when he heard the wail of a siren. He tossed his bag over a dry-stone wall and vaulted after it, hoping a cowpat was not awaiting him on the other side. He crouched behind the wall until the ambulance had swept into the turning and begun its bumpy descent towards the house. At this rate his father would be in Beckford before him. He climbed over the wall, retrieved his bag, made his way to the top of Daisy Lane, then began to jog down the hill towards the village.

Ten minutes later he was at his Aunt Georgina's house. He rang the bell, hoping she was not shopping or at one of her WI meetings. He crossed from the front door to the small leaded window on the right and peered into the front room. He noticed a tea tray balanced on the pouffe before the floral-patterned settee; the pot was encased within a green hand-knitted tea cosy but its spout was exposed and steam was rising from it. At the back of the room, beside a small dining alcove, was another door, which led into the kitchen. This door now opened and his aunt appeared, wiping her hands on the apron round her waist. Jack waved but she didn't see him. As she crossed to the door the flawed glass seemed to tug at her, ballooning her head, swiping her features into a blur, fragmenting the outline of her hips.

When she opened the door she didn't look surprised to see him and immediately Jack thought, She knows what's happened. My father's told her. Or the hospital.

“Well,” she said, “is it good news or bad?”

“What?” replied Jack.

“Your exam results. Wasn't it today you were getting them? Did you get the grades you wanted?”

“Oh,” said Jack. He shrugged and shook his head. “No, I . . . I didn't.” He saw her doughy face soften in sympathy and blurted, “Can I come in please, Aunty? I've got something to tell you.”

“Of course.” She stood aside to let him in. “What's the bag for? Going somewhere?”

He looked down at the bag in his hand and only now realised how much it was making his arm ache. He put it down at the foot of the stairs and flexed his hand. “Me and Dad have had a fight,” he told her.

Aunt Georgina rolled her eyes. “Not another one. What was it about this time?”

Jack shrugged. He realised that when he had said “fight” his Aunt had automatically thought he meant argument.

“And I suppose you want to stay here for a while until things cool down,” she said. “Am I right?”

Jack couldn't bring himself to look at her. He stared at the banister rail, ran his fingers across the smooth polished wood.

“Whatever happened to your hand?” Georgina asked.

The middle knuckle on Jack's right hand was now bruised and swollen. He tried to straighten the finger and immediately it felt as though broken glass were being forced into the joint and along the bone.

“You could do with a cold compress on that. Follow me into the kitchen and I'll fix you up.”

She began to turn away. Jack held up a hand—his injured one—and said firmly, “Aunty.”

She turned back, surprised. “Yes?”

“I . . .” His gaze skittered away from hers again. He had to force his words past an obstruction in his throat. He picked up his bag, took a deep breath. “I'm going away,” he said.

She looked momentarily bemused, then Jack saw the familiar imperiousness begin to assert itself. She folded her arms, straightened her back and set her mouth in a terse line. Her eyes narrowed, and even appeared to harden, to change colour from azure-blue to a dull steel-grey. “Away?” she repeated, as if defying him to elaborate.

Jack swallowed. “Yes. Dad and I, we . . . it was . . . it was really serious this time. We came to blows. I can't stay here any more. . . .” He shrugged, grimaced. “So I'm going away. I'm leaving Beckford for good.”

“I see,” she said curtly, “and where do you think you'll go?”

An image immediately formed in Jack's mind of an opulent city, the streets paved in gold. “London,” he said.

“London? Really? And what will you do when you get there?”

“I'll find work,” he said defiantly.

“It'll be as easy as that, will it?”

Jack shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. “I don't know. But I'll be okay, don't worry.”

“Where will you stay?”

“I'll find somewhere. I've got money.”

“How much?”

“I don't know,” Jack said irritably. “Enough.”

In point of fact, he did know—approximately anyway—but he wasn't about to reveal that to his aunt. He had around thirty pounds in his wallet and perhaps two hundred in his bank account.

“Don't you think this is all rather silly?” his aunt said, smiling indulgently, belittling him with a twitch of the lips.

“No,” Jack said, bridling, taking two steps towards the door. “I'm going and you can't stop me. Anything's better than being near him. I need to get away, Aunty, can't you see?”

She simply looked at him, her expression unchanging; she had a knack for intimidating people without actually doing or saying anything.

“I'm old enough to make my own decisions. I'm eighteen.” Jack became aware that he was babbling simply to fill the silence and made himself clam up.

Eventually his aunt sighed and nodded her head sagely, as if she'd always known that one day it would come to this.

“You're right,” she said, “you're an adult now.” Her voice was so neutral that Jack did not know whether she was making fun of him or not.

“I . . . I just came to say good-bye,” he muttered. “And . . . and thanks. For all you've done for me, I mean.”

Again she nodded, as if this was expected of him. “Will you at least have a cup of tea and a slice of cake before you go?”

The offer was tempting but Jack shook his head. If he paused to think about what he was doing his resolve might evaporate. Also, he didn't want to give his aunt the chance to dissuade him from leaving.

“No,” he said, looking at the floor, “I'd better go.”

She did not immediately respond, and Jack thought she was never going to. He did not feel he could make the break until she said something; perhaps this was her way of keeping him here, prolonging this moment forever. He was relieved when she finally sighed. It seemed like a signal that time was no longer suspended, that it had been allowed to move on. She said, “All right. But wait here a moment. I want you to have something.” She turned and huffed her way upstairs. It would have been easy to have fled while her back was turned, but he loved and respected her too much for that.

She returned a few minutes later clutching an envelope. “This is for you,” she said. Jack took the envelope. It was unmarked and unsealed, the flap simply folded inside. Jack looked at his Aunt quizzically, but her expression gave nothing away.

“Can I open it now?” Jack asked.

“If you like.”

He did so. Inside were two slips of paper. When he extracted and unfolded them he saw that one was a cheque for £500 made out to him and the other was a name—Molly Haynes—and an address in Wimbledon.

“What's this?” he said.

“Isn't it obvious?”

“Yes, but . . . ,” Jack waved the cheque in the air, “I can't accept this.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can't. You can't afford to give me this sort of money.”

“Who says?”

“I just . . . It's too much, Aunty. I don't want handouts. I'm not a charity case.”

Georgina rolled her eyes. “Oh, stop being so pious,” she said. “I'm giving you that for my own peace of mind. I'd never sleep if I knew you were down there with no money and nowhere to live. If you don't like it you can pay me back when you've earned something.”

“But . . . five hundred pounds,” said Jack. He shook his head. “I have got my own money, you know.”

“Not very much, though.”

“How do you know?” he said indignantly.

“I'm not daft, Jack. Your father never gives you any, and working weekends at the co-op hasn't made you a millionaire, has it?”

Jack shrugged, knowing he was conceding defeat. He brandished the other piece of paper. “What's this then?”

“What does it look like?”

“An address,” he said, annoyed at how stupid she made him feel sometimes.

She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “It's the address of an old friend of mine,” she said. “Molly was born in Bradford but moved to London just after the war. She's a theatre designer. You'll like her. I'll ring her and let her know you're coming.”

Jack felt his stomach tightening; even in this, his breaking away, his ultimate statement, his independence was being taken from him. He braced himself to protest, but his pride could not quite supersede the relief he felt at knowing he had a solid base to aim for. He put the two slips of paper back into the envelope, folded it and placed it carefully in the inside pocket of his jacket. On impulse he stepped forward and kissed his aunt; she smelled of fresh bread. There were tears in his eyes when he stepped back. “Thanks, Aunty,” he said in a stuffy voice, trying to conceal them.

“Come here, you great daft thing,” she said gently, and held out her plump arms. Jack moved forward into her embrace. It was tight and warm and comforting. “You look after yourself now,” she said as she released him.

Were there tears in her eyes, too? Jack could not tell for his own were still swimming. He nodded and said, “I will. Bye. Thanks again.” He picked up his bag and walked quickly to the door.