6. Like Father, Like Son

THE SANDS OF TIME Part 6

Ex-detective Desmond Boniface shook his head, sadly maybe, or it could have been angrily, and turned to go. He’d get to the bottom of stuff before his time was up. Memories of that history class and its sadistic history master had put in too many appearances in his dreams and nightmares for all of his adult life for him to be anything but an avenging something. Angel? Was he one of those? Or an avenging devil? Either would do. But the sadist teacher had marked his life cruelly if only when he returned at night to remind him of evil.

“I’ll leave you to shut your door,” he said, and grinned. “Try to keep your wedding tackle out of sight and spend the evening thinking about poor Glenda and how you disposed of her. You can tell me whenever you like. Be as honest and forthright as your conscience lets you. I know how old you are and that you can’t last much longer, so wouldn’t it be a good thing to get it off your mind before you pop your clogs? To die with an easy mind, that’s what we all want I suppose, and what you could still get for yourself.”

Then he was gone. Gavin saw his shadow as it passed down the path and through his front gate, and in a kind of desperation he pulled himself out of his chair and slammed the door shut. Then he turned the key in its lock. He’d be safe behind a locked door. He knew he would because once, a long time ago, he’d been safe behind a locked door.

How old would he have been? Only young, maybe nine or ten, and his father was demonstrating the finest qualities of being a Victorian man born and bred by turning suddenly on him.

“You think your mother has all the time in the world to wash your filthy pants?” he had roared. The truth was he’d had an accident in his shorts, “look at them. Boy, smell them, go on, lick them! Then remember next time you want to piss them there’s a poor woman who’s job it to wash them afterwards or you’ll go around the town stinking of drains and sewerage and your own s**t!”

“It’s all right, Albert,” his mother had interjected, “the poor boy couldn’t help it, the apples weren’t ripe…”

“They were ripe enough for me so they’ll be ripe enough for our little swine!” roared the angry man, and he thumped Gavin in the stomach with as much violence as he could muster. The blow sent his son reeling, doubling him up and stealing just about all of his breath from him.

“That’ll larn you!” snapped his father, “now shift out of the way, strip your clothes off so that your ma can wash them and spend the rest of the day with the coal down in the cellar, and don’t forget who dug all that black filthy gold out o’ the pit!”

And that was how it had been, and the best sound in the world was the sound of the key turning in the lock and imprisoning him in the cellar where nobody could think of thumping him and where he curled up in a corner and cried quietly to himself.

He’d had time to think down in that cellar, time to invent an alter ego for himself in which other boys, evil boys, were punished but he never was because he was such a good boy. And good boys never wet themselves, did they? Even when the apple pudding had been sour and had made his stomach churn.

But his father had never needed much of an excuse to punish him.

It had happened before and it would happen again, he knew that much. But down here, in the cellar, he was safe from both fist and leather belt, his father’s preferred instrument of punishment. And the sickest part was usually the way the man swore that he loved him while he beat him. For your own good, son, he would say, and make it sound true.

Then his father would go to the pub and have a skinful. He did that a lot, filled his gross stomach with foul smelling ale before returning home half asleep and curling up on the bed, fully dressed and incapable of thought.

Only then would the key be turned in the lock and the cellar door opened by his mother.

“He’s a good man and he loves you,” was what his mother said, both then and every time something similar happened, “I don’t mind your pants being wet, I know it’s not your fault, you’re just a boy…”

The beer and a night’s sleep wiped memories of the previous evening from Albert’s mind and he was all pretended smiles when his head wasn’t thumping. Maybe he felt angry, maybe it crossed his mind that the boy had been punished, but he couldn’t remember why. Had he used his belt or his fist on him, and why? He didn’t know and wasn’t going to ask because whatever he’d done it was probably extreme. So instead he went to work, to the colliery where he didn’t know whether today would be his last day or not. You never knew for sure down the pit. Things could go haywire and often did, and that could be dangerous.

That was how Gavin remembered the nightmare that had been his childhood. Yet despite everything he’d been a clever boy, had done well and had displayed a fondness for the past, for when and why things happened and what the past had to do with the here and now, if anything. But if his father, the dour Albert Pottle suspected he might be getting, as he put it, too big for his boots, his fists or more often his leather belt were put to good use. One thing the old man had no respect for was know-it-alls, as he put it.

The war had come along, the second world war, that is, and it had taken Gavin away from his home at a time when he was desperate to make his escape. He had joined up towards the end of that conflict, and it was after peace was declared that he had been given a chance to become a teacher. Training was a brief affair and barely adequate because it was considered that time in the armed services turned a boy into a man and equipped him with a steady attitude to life, which was really the basis of good teachers.

It was at the college where he was trained that he had met David and fallen deeply in love with him. Not that he called it that, or even started to admit to himself that love was what it was. They were mates, chums, friends, but never lovers even though there was a forbidden intimacy in some of the games they played together.

He was never to see his parents again, both of them being blasted to kingdom come as the last gasp of the damned conflict sent a stray bomb onto their house. The Victorian disciplinarian never had a chance to say a fond farewell to a son he’d never understood but, in his own firm way, had loved. At least, he thought he must have loved him. It’s what parents did, wasn’t it? Love their kids?

Now Gavin was in his nineties and his own time must surely be getting short. And it was much too late for him to get the son he had always wanted, a boy he dreamed of nurturing by himself, to love like he should have been loved, a boy he really wanted to show the better side of life to. A son to treat as he would like to have been treated himself as he grew from babyhood to the war years.

A son to maybe introduce to David…

David wasn’t really dead like they said, was he? Hadn’t they been together on the beach only yesterday, running and skipping as trickling waves rolled towards them and teased their naked toes?

But David had never been near the beach, had he? He had lived in his church, had gazed out at the world from his pulpit where he had preached most fervently about love, and died because of it. A little stray light of truth slipped past his guard and illuminated, briefly, the truth.

Poor David.

© Peter Rogerson 12.03.22

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Reviews

[knighngale]

I think you need a little more flow. Then there's the violence against the boy from the father, it is not realistic. You need to take us to your world. Great read! :D

[Peter Rogerson]

Thanks for your comment. I'll bear it in mind as I carry on.

[knighngale]

most definately, I don't say it to be mean, loved it very much, :D