The Flight

The two Scumbag brothers, separately

32. The Flight

Nurse Amy Jones, for no better reason than she thought it might be good manners on her part, decided to bid young and very cheeky Jed Scumbag a friendly goodbye. His brother had been taken to a special place for him to recover from the incident with the posh car, but there was nothing wrong with Jed himself. He was just a normal, rather cheeky and occasionally offensive, teenage boy.

“I thought I’d say goodbye, young Jed,” she said with what she knew from experience was a winning smile.

He grinned back at her, but the usual cheeky component of his smile was just about missing.

“I’ll miss you, nurse,” he said, “’cause in my book you’re a good ‘un.”

That was flattery indeed. “I wanted to let you know I don’t fancy seeing you in hospital again, so no more horse-play with that brother of yours when he gets back home, all cured and fit as a fiddle,” she said.

“I’ll do me best,” he grinned, “my mum’s breakfast’s better than ‘ospital grub!”

“We do our best, but the budget isn’t huge,” she explained, “have you got everything? All your personal stuff, that is? And look: here’s your mum and dad.”

And bang on the dot of her words Denise and Matthew Scumbag made their way behind nurse Jones into the ward.

“So our lad’s ready?” asked Matthew.

“And ready to get back to his own bed,” confirmed Ann Jones.

“I hope he were no trouble,” said Denise, always aware that her sons attracted at least as much comment as any other lively lads of their age.

“He’s not an angel, but ot wouldn’t seem right if he was,” replied the nurse, “lads of his age should have some spirit, don’t you think?”

“He’s not too old to feet the palm of my hand on the back of his head,” almost growled Matthew who, truth to tell, was rather attracted to the obvious bosom displayed by a very attractive nurse.

“Nothing like that,” Amy told him, “if he was my lad I’d almost be proud of him!”

“Well, we’ll take him away, then,” sniffed Denise.

“I’ll just say goodbye to Mr Cockswain,” smiled Jed, and he went to the side of the elderly man’s bed opposite his own. “I’m off now, Mr Cockswain,” he said, “but I’ll be thinking all about some of the things you told me when nobody was listening!”

The closed eyes of the elderly patient, flickered and opened. “You’re a good lad,” he said, “and you be careful what you get up to with them wenches you were telling me all about.”

“That I will, Mr Cockswain, “ and I’ll try to remember some of the tricks you taught me about.”

“Not too loud, laddie,” spluttered the old man, and he allowed his eyes to shut again, giving every impression that he was deeply in the land of nod.

“What was that all about, our Jed?” asked Matthew Scumbag.

“”Aw, nothin’ dad?” replied Jed, winking in the direction of the sleeping Mr Cockswain. “Right, dad, I’ve got everything. Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!”

At that the three Scumbags made their way out of the war and through the hospital while norse Jones thanked the Heavens above that the wretched boy was gone.

And meanwhile, quite coincidentally, the boy’s brother Gozza sensed in a mushy sort of way that he was nowhere and everywhere, and that the silence all around him was too silent for any silence to be in the real world that he knew. And there was the lady doctor, staring at him as if he’s grown a second head, one that didn’t ache as much as his original head did.

Then, as if obeying a silent command from nowhere he became aware that he was no longer in the motionless on a hospital bed or, indeed, touching any part of the old familiar world with any part of himself. He was, in fact, flying, though not in the sort of thing you might expect to be in if you’re flying. Not in an aeroplane, not in a helicopter and daft as the thought was, not with wings like an eagle.

Yet he was flying. Or drifting, Or floating. He could sense the movement though, contradictorily, he couldn’t actually feel it. No breeze on his face, no ruffling winds blowing through his clothes, nothing but a kind of intangible awareness that he was moving.

Yet there was nothing other than a vague awareness. No sound, no sight, no touch, no taste of anything until…

… Until he saw the light.

It was a single point of light, but it was there, straight in front of him. And it was bright. Bright enough to give that throbbing head of his something to scare him. It was white, then it wasn’t white, off-white in one way and then off-white in another, and in a moment of unbelievable insight he knew what it was when it turned a flickering red.

“It’s Hell.”

The place that the daft vicar told me about when I was a kid at his Sunday School and he was trying to scare the lights out of me!

Me and Jed had been sent to Sunday School every Sunday afternoon because dad and mum liked to go upstairs to bed and do their thing on Sunday afternoons… and we were in our best school shorts, grey and creased down both legs, so smart you could have cut your finger on them, and he taught us all about sin and hellfire. It was real, he taught us, as we’d find out one day if we sinned…

But he never told them what he meant by a sin or sinning. Unless he meant the things they did in the loo when they went for a wee, which he mentioned a time or two.

But how could pissing be evil, sinful, everything he said it was? If it was, wouldn’t every single person end up in hell, so many people there wouldn’t be room for any more?

“I think I’ll be a robin redbreast,” he said aloud, at least he thought it was aloud, scared of all the silence, and pulling every ounce of strength out of the void, he raised both wings and started flapping them, gently, so very gently, wings are precious yet fragile and easily broken…

And he allowed them to fly him down through the nothing of nowhere to the Retreat where he had been taken by the doctor, to the very place where he’d been resting beautifully in a beautiful dream yet with a throbbing, painful headache, and then, with hardly a jolt at all, he landed on the exact spot where he’d been, lying on that same comfy bed and with a puzzled Reverend Barney Pickle looking at him, and shaking that silly head of his.

And that same doctor, was saying that he seemed to be dead!

He opened his eyes slowly. It had to be slowly because they almost seemed to be glued shut.

He tried to smile, and it quite a strain moving lips that seemed to be frozen shut. ““I was my fault, The bank, I know it upset you and I’m truly sorry,” he said, “will you ever forgive me?” and then,”I’ve had a sight of hell,” he whispered, “and I ain’t going there!”

© Peter Rogerson 07.05.24