21. Contrasting Twins

We are approaching the end and it's clear that the two eleven year-old boys will never turn out like Mr White, a macabre combination of a living boy and his dead twin.

For some time Jonny was inconsolable. He sat on the edge of his bed in his room sobbing, and in the end it was Jack who was allowed in to see how he was.

“He was my dad,” Jonny told Jack, “just like your dad is your dad. He looked after me. Took me to the park and kicked a ball round with me even though I knew he didn’t really like football. I knew he was my granddad because I knew our dad was our dad with you. But our dad wasn’t there where I was and granddad was. That ‘s all.”

“He was always kind to me when I saw him too,” said Jack gently, “I always thought he was a gentleman and my mum’s dad.”

“And we’ll never see him again,” half-sobbed Jonny.

Jack nodded. “That’s the hard bit,” he muttered.

“He hated Mr White when he saw him at school,” confided Jonny, “I know that he did, though he never said as much. And I believe he would want me to face that teacher now and show him that being twins is alright, because we’re alright, aren’’t we, Jack? Tell him that we don’t have to be crazy because we share our genes with a, what’s the word? A sibling…”

“Okay,” agreed Jack, “we’ll do that if they let us. Though I reckon dad’s a bit uncertain. He reckons that if Mr White ends up in court for thumping you and leaving you lying like a dead person on the ground like you were when I saw you, anything that happens or gets said between us and him might get in the way of him being properly blamed.”

“That doesn’t maker sense to me, Jack.”

Jack thought for a while, then “Nor me,” he agreed, “come on, twin brother, let’s go and tell them!”

And so it was that an hour or so later the two boys were in the police station with the DI, and DC Beverley Anderson was there in order to use her undoubted physical skills should the prisoner suddenly lose control of himself. A gentle enough young woman by appearance, she’d excelled at police college when it came to self defence and other skills when it came to restraining others.

It was the same interview room, and the White man, which ever persona he was in, was sitting quietly at the interview table with a glum expression on his face.

“Mr White,” said the DI indicating the two eleven year old boys who, dressed almost identically, looked what they were: identical twins, “I’d like you to take note of Jack and Jonny Newby, one of which you assaulted in the woods near his home.”

“Huh,” growled the prisoner, “how long am I going to be kept in here? I haven’t done anything wrong and you must know that! I am, after all, a school teacher and as such hold a responsible position in life. Ask that boy there,” and he pointed directly at Jonny. “Though what he’s doing so far from his school I’ll never understand.”

“I’m staying with my dad and brother,” put in Jonny, and he went on to add, “he’s my twin brother.”

“Call me sir when you talk to me, boy!” snapped White, “I, after all, am one of your teachers and as such deserve a modicum of respect, though in this day and age very few nippers like you understand what respect is!”

“You’re also a prisoner in a police station because you knocked me out!” replied Jonny daringly, “and ot many teachers do that to children they’re supposed to be caring for.”

“Haha. Maybe I am or maybe I’m being stitched up,” replied White, “just you look at me boy. At me and not the police Inspector, though how a woman cn ever be so important I’ll never understand,”

“Mr White, I suggest you don’t make any more suggestions like that because you are revealing a deep rooted fault in your thought processes,” snapped the DI.

“So you think women are lesser beings, do you?” asked the young DC, smiling at him in such a way that when he even glanced at her he had to squirm, an effect that her smile, which she knew full well had a powerful effect on men she used it at.

“Men do things properly,” he sniffled, “they know how, whilst, well, you’re a woman so you know your weakness.”

“Well, we’re not men, are we, for which I will be eternally grateful?” responded the constable.

“My mum was a woman and she died as a result of me being born, with my brother here,” said Jack, “and to my mind that makes her better than any man and certainly better than you because when it comes to everything that’s important, mothers are women and sometimes give everything yp in order for their sons to be born.”

Mr White glared at him. He didn’t particularly like children which was often evidenced by the way he occasionally treated those under his power at school.

“You ignorant little urchin!” he snapped.

Jerry was there and he reacted to the word urchin as many a parent would.

“That’s enough name-calling!” he snapped, “these boys wanted to help, which is why they’re here.”

‘What do they know?” snarled White, “toddlers without a wit between them?” And as he uttered those words something about his voice seemed to change whilst his posture slouched more and he dribbled, his eyes flashing between the various people in the interview room. And his voice, obviously from the same mouth, assumed an altered cadence.

“I’ll take the wretch by his throat and shake him till he can squeal no longer, Percival,” he grated out, and then the subtle changes to his voice reverted to what they had been until that moment

“While I take the other snot-nose,” he spat out, and before anyone coul ddo anything to stop it he leapt to his feet, the table he was sitting at being shaken by the suddenness of his movement.

“That’s enough!” snapped the DI, and Jerry grabbed hold of Jonny as White lunged to get him. What the man would have done and with what violence was anyone’s guess, but the Detective Constable was there and in the twinkling of an eyelid she had grabbed him and forced him to the floor. Jack, who was best placed to see the acrobatic move, was so impressed that a description of it would persist as one of his favourite stories for many years to come.

Jerry grabbed both boys by their hands and directed them out of the room. Things had not gone well and he didn’t want them to witness any more of what gave every promise of becoming the insane ramblings of a mad man.

And unseen by the three Newbies, back in the Interview room Mr White slumped wearily into his chair and looked around him as if he had no comprehension of what had gone on.

“You stay in that chair or I’ll have a bit more fun,” promised Detective Constable Anderson.

“Okay Beverley,” murmured her DI, Florence Winthorpe, and she turned to he prisoner.

“Let me explain,” she said bitingly, “we were trying to help you. We wanted you to meet a pair of twins who, although still children, behave rationally even though you assaulted one of them and they had cause to be irrational. But all you could do was throw the attempt back in our faces as if you intend to spend the rest of your days in an institution for the criminally insane.”

Mr White looked sheepishly at her.

“I’m not mad, you know,” he whispered, “but the rest of the world is. Ask the Gloopies. They know who I am.”

© Peter Rogerson 25.07.24