Broken. Daniel Clay

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ eat. She would nudge Mr Buckley awake.

      ‘David,’ she'd say. ‘David. Wake up. Quickly. He's down there. Listen. He's downstairs. He's moving about.’

      Mr Buckley wouldn't answer, though he hadn't been asleep. He had been listening too. And thinking. And trying not to cry. In the daytime, he tended dead bodies at the funeral parlour he managed. He sat and watched the bereaved deal with death. He held out tissues. He powdered dry cheeks. He lifted the limbs of virgins and put the corpses of babies in boxes. He applied make-up where coroners cut. And at nighttime, in the dark times, he lay on his back and he listened to the ghost of his son scrape around in the kitchen.

      His wife said, ‘We have to do something.’

      ‘I know. But what can we do?’

      ‘I don't know. But we have to do something.’

      ‘I know. But what can we do?’

      Mr Buckley knew what he had to do. He just didn't want to do it. He didn't want to go to the doctor. He didn't want to sit down before a man who was two years younger than he was, a man he remembered from school as a corn-sheaf of a child who would sit at the back of the assembly with a stupid blank expression all over his dim empty face. He didn't want to say, my one son is mad.

      My one son is mad.

      He never actually said this.

      What he said was:

      ‘It's Rick. He's having some problems.’

      Dr Carter sat back in his chair and looked at the undertaker with dry biscuit eyes through lashes of dust. He thought about his golf swing.

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      Mr Buckley nodded. ‘He's not acting himself.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’

      Mr Buckley did not say any more.

      Dr Carter stared at him. Finally, he relented. ‘In what way has he not been acting himself?’

      Mr Buckley cleared his throat. Then he shut his eyes. As he talked, he thought of Rick sitting on a swing on an autumn day that had never existed. On this autumn day that had never existed, Mr Buckley was pushing Rick – who was five – higher and higher and higher. Rick was clinging to the thin grey metal chains that held the swing to its rusty old frame. A sharp, dry breeze was blowing leaves into a sandpit and the rest of the playground was empty. Faster, Daddy, faster. The sound of laughter. The scrape of leaves. The glint of sunshine through a darkness that hadn't quite fallen. Mr Buckley said, ‘He won't leave his room. He won't eat any food that we cook him. He compulsively washes his body. He isn't acting himself’.

      Dr Carter shrugged. ‘Why don't you tell him to pop down? I'll have a chat.’

      ‘He won't leave his room, let alone the house.’

      ‘Is he being aggressive towards you?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then tell him to pop down. I'll have a chat.’

      ‘Doctor. He won't leave his room. Let alone the house.’

      Dr Carter shrugged. ‘If he's not being aggressive towards you, I can't come out to see him. He's a grown man, Mr Buckley. He has to come here of his own accord.’

      Mr Buckley sighed. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Doctor. We've asked him to come down and see you, but he won't listen to us. Can't you please come out and see him?’

      ‘Only if he's posing a danger to himself or the general public.’

      Mr Buckley rubbed his eyes. ‘Doctor. I'm not sure I'm making myself clear here. This is a situation I really struggle to talk about. But my son, Rick, who you've treated all his life, has been through a hard time lately. Ten months ago, he was beaten senseless by a total nutter and then falsely accused and arrested for rape. Since these events have happened, he's hardly left his bedroom, let alone the house. He's lost his job. He's lost contact with his friends. He's become moody and uncommunicative with his mother and myself. I'm worried about his mental health and his physical safety. I've asked him to come and see you, but, as I've already mentioned, he won't leave his room, let alone the house. So, clearly, he's suffering some form of mental illness. So, please, won't you come out and see him?’

      Dr Carter blinked. ‘I'm sorry, Mr Buckley, but I can't go out and see your son on your say-so unless he's being aggressive or posing a danger. Is he being aggressive or posing a danger?’

      Mr Buckley said, ‘No.’

      ‘Then I'm afraid I can't come out and see him. You'll have to get him to come here.’

      Mr Buckley said, ‘Christ.’

      Dr Carter blinked. ‘There's no need to be aggressive.’

      Mr Buckley left.

       Poor old Mr Buckley. He came in to the hospital to see me last night and stood with his head bowed and his hands clasped before him. He didn't speak, but I knew he was wishing me better.

       Mrs Buckley never came with him. Obviously. She's dead.

       Even after everything that's happened, I feel sorry for the Buckleys. All they ever did was love their son. And they used to buy me stuff for birthdays and Christmas. Mrs Buckley used to talk to me while she did the weeding in her front garden. In fact, before Jed got me too scared of axe-murderer-psycho-killers to go anywhere near their side of the square, I used to spend ages following her around and asking her questions. Unlike my father, she was never too busy to answer, and, unlike Cerys, she never shouted she was busy, Jesus, get out of my face. Sometimes, now, lying here, I wonder if I could have helped them: Broken Buckley only ever wanted someone to be kind to him, someone to make him feel better. I could have done that. I could have been his friend. Archie sees it differently. He sits and he holds my hands and I feel his thoughts flooding through me: Fucking Rick Buckley Bastard. Fucking bastard. I should have had him put away. But Archie could never have done that, because once Mr Buckley stopped talking about Broken, Archie never gave Broken a second thought. Once the novelty of his situation wore off, none of us did. We all just stopped thinking about him. We all just got on with our lives.

       Then, suddenly, he reappeared.

      It happened towards the end of the summer holidays fourteen months after Bob Oswald attacked him. Jed was thirteen and Skunk had just turned eleven. They had spent most of that summer holed up in Jed's bedroom playing Star Wars on Xbox, but, occasionally, they would venture out so Jed could smoke. As Drummond Square – with its four sides of houses facing in on each other – didn't have anywhere to hide his habit from Cerys (whose cigarettes he was stealing), the best place for Jed to smoke was down Shamblehurst Lane South, a long, winding overgrown path that ran from the One Stop to the train station via the Hedge End Household Waste Recycling Centre. Archie once told Skunk that the only reason the houses on the far side of the square were Housing Association and not privately owned like the rest of the square was because their gardens backed on to the Recycling Centre. Skunk hadn't known what Housing Association meant. She asked Archie to explain. He said Housing Association properties were rented dirt cheap to people who couldn't afford to buy their own houses, and the reason the planners had made these properties Housing Association was because no СКАЧАТЬ