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‘Ssh … take a deep breath, son. Tell me what’s happened.’
‘I don’t know! You have to help me, Phil … please!’
‘All right, son. Take it easy now. You and me, we’ll go back together.’ He knew it must be something bad to have affected the boy like this, but now was not the time for questions.
As they hurried back to the house, Adam kept asking over and over, ‘He won’t come back, will he? I don’t want him to come back. Please, Phil, don’t let him come back.’
Quickening his steps as best he could, Phil drew him close, constantly reassuring him, though he had no idea of what might have happened.
In the deepening hours of a February afternoon, he took quiet stock of the boy. At first he suspected his father had given him a beating, but the boy appeared to carry no visible cuts or bloodstains. He was thankful for that much, at least.
As they neared the house, Phil tightened his hold on Adam, while continuing to reassure him.
Clinging to Phil, young Adam seemed not to be listening. Instead, he shivered uncontrollably, while constantly glancing back to the main road.
At the gate, Adam drew back, his whole body resisting as Phil tried to move him gently forward.
Then in a sudden burst that took Phil by surprise, he broke away to run up the drive.
Phil quickly followed, then at the porch he hesitated. It went against his principles to enter another man’s property without invitation, especially when that man was hostile. His concerns about the boy, however, urged him on.
A moment or so later, on entering the inner hallway, Phil was faced with a scene so shocking, he could never in a million years have prepared himself for it.
Adam was at the foot of the stairs screaming, ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ his school shirt covered in blood. He ran back to Phil. ‘Look what he’s done, oh, Phil … look what he’s done.’ The boy’s cries were heart-wrenching.
Deeply shaken, Phil crossed to the foot of the stairs and kneeled to examine the woman. He recognised her as Peggy Carter, Adam’s mother, and like the boy, he believed she was past all earthly help.
Lying in a pool of blood, she was covered in angry red bruises. Her eyes were closed and there seemed no immediate signs of life. Her body was grotesquely twisted, with both legs buckled. Her two arms looked as though they were wrenched out of their sockets. The right arm was loosely stretched out, while the other hung through the gap in the banister as though she had tried to use the banister railings to break her fall. Phil was of the opinion that she lost her footing as she tumbled down the stairs and had made a brave but unsuccessful attempt to save herself from serious injury.
‘Adam! Phone for an ambulance.’ There was no time to waste. ‘Go on, son! Hurry!’ He reminded him of the emergency number. ‘Tell them there’s been a terrible accident, and that your mother is unconscious. Tell them they must come at once!’
As the boy ran to do as he was bid, Phil called after him, ‘Don’t forget to give them the address. Hurry, Adam! Hurry!’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_7567acce-2b45-5891-9be2-b99a20b1d9ec)
WHILE ADAM RAN down the lane to the public phone box on the main road, Phil attended to the injured woman. Taking off his coat, he carefully draped it over her. He then leaned closer to detect signs of breathing, but all he could hear was a deep, rattling sound that sent a shiver of fear through him. He knew he had to keep her warm and talk to her. Feeling more helpless than at any other time in his life, he mumbled, ‘Oh, dear God, be merciful, for it’s Your help she needs now.’
Not knowing whether she could hear him, he leaned closer, his tone reassuring. ‘Mrs Carter, I want you to try and concentrate on my voice. I need you to keep listening to me.’ He tenderly laid his hand over hers. ‘My name is Phil. I’m the driver of the school bus. Adam’s all right, but he’s anxious about you. But don’t worry, I’ll look after him. He’ll be safe enough with me. You just keep listening to my voice. Try and concentrate on what I’m saying, if you can.’
When he felt her hand twitch beneath his, he took it as a sign that he was getting through to her. ‘Mrs Carter, listen to me … the ambulance has been called. They’re on their way. It seems you fell down the stairs. You’ve been hurt bad, but they’ll look after you. Don’t try to move; it’s best if you keep as still as possible.’ Though, in her sorry condition, he doubted whether she could move even if she tried.
At that moment, Adam came running back. ‘They’ll be here quick as they can. They said we’re to keep talking to her, and not to move her.’
Falling to his knees, he tenderly stroked his mother’s hair. ‘How did it happen, Mum? Can you hear me? Mum! Was it him who did this to you? Did he lose his temper again? Please, Mum, tell me what happened?’
Phil eased him away. ‘No, son. That’s not the way. For now, your mother needs gentle, encouraging words. I’m sure there’ll be time for questions later.’
Adam understood. ‘I’m sorry. She won’t tell, but I will. If they ask me, I’ll tell them how cruel he is.’
Crouching on the carpet, he kept his anxious gaze on his mother’s distorted face.
‘The ambulance should be here soon, Mum,’ he reassured her. ‘They said we had to keep talking to you. Me and Phil … we want you to listen, Mum. We want you to be all right, because if you aren’t all right I won’t know what to do. Please, Mum, try your very hardest. Just like you tell me to do, when I find my homework too difficult.’
Choking back his tears, he cast a forlorn look at Phil. ‘She will be all right, won’t she, Phil?’
‘We have to hope so, son.’ Realising that Peggy Carter’s life hung in the balance, Phil softly measured his words. ‘You can see for yourself. Your mother is badly hurt and there’s no use pretending otherwise, but she’s alive, and we need to be thankful for that. So, keep talking to her. If she can hear you, I’m sure she’ll do her utmost to stay with you.’
For the next few precious minutes, Adam continued to talk to his mother, about school, and how his day had been, but all the while his heart was heavy with fear for his mother and loathing of his father. He recalled the many times when he himself had been thrashed; for no other reason than he had missed a question in his homework, or his father demanded more of him than he could give, which was more often than not.
Other times, when he was in the study, struggling over the homework his father had set, he would hear his parents loudly arguing in the parlour. Often the arguments were followed by the swish of his father’s horse-whip, then his mother crying out in pain.
Minutes later his father, red-faced with anger, would storm out of the house. When Adam ran to his mother, she would quickly dry her eyes and reassure him that everything was all right, but it was not all right, and they both knew it.
In spite of her efforts to hide the bruises, Adam knew the truth. His father was a bully and a coward. This time, though, he had hurt her really badly, although she would not tell on him. She never did.
In that raw moment, Adam made himself a promise: that when he was old enough, and however long it took him, he would make his father pay.
Seeing her like this was all too much. ‘You won’t admit it, but I know he did this to you.’ His voice trembled. ‘One day, when I’m bigger, I’ll punish him, I will. You’ll see … I’ll make him pay for everything!’ He tried not to cry, but the sobs took hold of him and he couldn’t stop. ‘I hate him! I hate him!’
Deep inside, Peggy heard Adam’s angry words, and she feared for her child. Everything he said was true, but she could not let him be destroyed by the hatred he felt for his father.
With immense effort, and mustering every ounce of strength left in her, she whispered, ‘No …’ Her eyes flickered open to gaze on him lovingly. ‘Don’t … say that.’ Having made this huge effort she was now struggling to breathe.
Seeing this, Adam reluctantly gave his promise. ‘All right … ssh, Mum. Stay still. I won’t say it any more. I’m sorry, Mum.’ Ever so gently, he wrapped his arms round her neck and when she shivered, he backed away, sorry that he might have hurt her, and sorry he had worried her by the things he’d said.
Suddenly the high-pitched wailing of sirens filled the air.
‘They’re here!’ Phil scrambled to his feet to go to meet the ambulance crew. ‘Stay with her, son. Keep talking to her, but no questions. Just tell her the ambulance has arrived. Tell her she’ll be in good hands now.’
Adam tried his hardest to be brave. He was grateful that his mother would get help, yet he was terrified she might be crippled or made to stay a long time in hospital. She would be unhappy about that, because her greatest joy was walking the countryside, just the two of them together.
‘Move away, son,’ Phil urged him, as the ambulance men hurried in.
Adam backed away as they brought the stretcher forward. ‘I love you, Mum,’ he whispered. The tears made a bright trail down his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m truly sorry …’
But he was not sorry about the promise he had made, to make his father pay for what he had done. When he was big enough, he would go after him, and when he found him, he would make sure to punish him.
No, he was not sorry for any of that. The only thing he was sorry for just now was having made this vow out loud, and making his mother anxious.
From the back of the stairway, he watched as they treated his mother to ease her pain. He saw them cut into the rungs of the stairway and tenderly lift her clear, before securing her to the stretcher. Then they carried her to the ambulance where they raised the stretcher to slide her gently inside. In that moment, she made a feeble cry for her son.
He wanted to go to her, but he was too afraid. What if she was calling for him so she could tell him she would never see him again? What if she was in terrible pain and he couldn’t stop it? What if …? What if …? Hopelessly mixed up inside, and more frightened than he had ever been in his young life, he took to his heels and ran.
Panic-stricken, he hid behind the shrubbery, where he sobbed as though his heart would break. ‘Don’t die, Mum,’ he whispered brokenly. ‘Please, Mum … don’t leave me.’
Realising the boy’s fears, Phil found him and lovingly drew him away. ‘I know she called for you, son, but she’s delirious. There is nothing you nor I can do for her. She’s getting the best care. If you want to go in the ambulance with your mum, you’d best be quick.’
‘Will you come too?’
‘I’m surprised you feel the need to ask.’ Phil was already hurrying him to the ambulance, where the attendants had executed the necessary safety procedures and were about to leave.
Phil and Adam climbed inside, and then they were swiftly away; the ambulance tearing along the lane with the sirens at full scream.
These fine, experienced men had seen it all before. They had learned to deal with desperate situations in a professional manner.
This particular call-out, however, was deeply disturbing. As they were both family men with young children, they found the boy’s distress difficult to deal with. The disclosure that it was the child himself who had discovered his mother lying bloodied and broken on the stairway was shocking. Such a discovery could prove to be the stuff of nightmares for years to come.
Another concern was their shared suspicions with regard to the ‘accident’ itself. In their considered experience, the woman’s extensive injuries did not appear to coincide with a tumble down the stairs.
For now though, getting her to hospital was their main priority.
Inside the ambulance, Adam sat quietly beside Phil, his attention riveted on his mum, and his eyes red and raw from crying. Every few minutes he would whisper to Phil, ‘She will be all right, won’t she?’ And Phil would pacify him as best he could, though secretly, he had his own doubts as to whether Peggy Carter could survive.
He wondered about Adam’s father, and the way he’d fled from the house like a guilty man. His instincts told him there was far more to Mrs Carter’s so-called accident than met the eye.
Throughout the journey, the medic remained by Peggy’s side, softly reassuring and constantly tending her while she drifted in and out of consciousness. Not once did he glance across to the two anxious figures seated on the small bench at the back of the ambulance. He had a job to do, and if there was the slightest hope that this patient might survive, then time was of the essence.
To Phil and Adam, the journey to the hospital seemed to have taken for ever, when in fact they were there in under an hour.
On arrival, the ambulance doors were thrown open and Phil and Adam scampered down onto the tarmac. The driver ran from his cab and climbed into the back, where the two men set about securing Peggy to the stretcher again. Phil and the boy waited anxiously, but it was only the briefest of moments before the two medics manhandled Peggy out of the ambulance. With one of them at each end of the stretcher and Peggy now deeply unconscious, they went at a run towards the hospital emergency doors where, having been forewarned, the medical staff were there to collect the patient and rush her straight to theatre.
While Peggy was hurried away, Adam and Phil were taken aside; though Adam tearfully insisted that he wanted to go with his mum. ‘Where is she?’ he wanted to know. ‘What have they done with my mum?’ Traumatised by the fear that he might never see her again, he called for her over and over.
The nurse gently assured him, ‘The doctors are helping your mother now. Don’t worry, she’s in safe hands, and they’ll come and tell you when you’re able to see her. Meantime, there is nothing you can do. She truly is being taken care of, so please … I know how hard it is, but you must try to be patient.’
She knew the boy might have a very long wait; especially since the message relayed from the ambulance crew to the hospital as they drove there had described the patient as having suffered life-threatening injuries.
‘Look, I’ll tell you what …’ She pointed to the little tuck cabin down the corridor. ‘If you go and see Mavis, she might let you have a bottle of pop. Tell her Nurse Riley sent you, then she won’t charge you a single penny for it.’
Phil understood her kindly motive. ‘That’s a good idea, Adam,’ he encouraged the boy. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t mind a bottle of pop myself.’
With sorry eyes, Adam glanced at the green baize door through which they had taken his mother. ‘All right then.’ Reluctantly, he gave a little nod. ‘But you have to promise you’ll wait here, Phil. You won’t leave me, will you?’
Phil choked back a tear. ‘Me? Leave you?’ He cradled the boy’s face in his hands. ‘I would never leave you, never in a million years!’ Digging into his trouser pocket he withdrew a shiny coin, which he handed to the boy. ‘There! You run off and see Mavis … there’s a good fellow.’
‘Your grandfather is right,’ Nurse Riley said. ‘Mavis will be pleased to see you.’
Phil and the boy exchanged curious glances at her reference to Phil as ‘your grandfather’, but wisely, neither of them made mention of her remark.
A short time later, when they had drunk their pop and were seated in comfortable chairs in a small room off the main corridor, the silence between them was heavy.
All they could think of was Adam’s mother, who lay just a short distance away, fighting for her life.
Every few minutes either Adam or Phil would go into the corridor and look to see if there was anyone they could speak to about how the boy’s mother was doing, but there was no one about, except a man in a long white coat, in a great hurry, and a nurse rushing about with a trolley, piled high with newly laundered linen.
‘They all have jobs to do,’ Phil reassured Adam. ‘I know you’re worried, but we have to be thankful that the doctors are looking after her. No doubt someone will come out soon and tell us what’s happening. Until then we’ll have to be patient.’
Adam was desperately concerned for his mother. He was also concerned about what might happen to him. He reasoned that she would have to stay in hospital for at least a short while. His mother told him long ago that she had been adopted, and that when she met his father, her adoptive parents took an instant dislike to him, and forbade her to see him.
There was a huge row. Having just turned eighteen, she defied them and married his father without their blessing. Shortly after that, her parents emigrated to Australia, and she eventually lost all contact with them.
That was all Adam knew of his grandparents on his mother’s side.
The only mention of his father’s parents was during a heated argument between his own mother and father. He had learned that his father’s older sister and both his parents were devoutly religious, while Adam’s own father grew increasingly rebellious against their rigid and highly disciplined way of life. There were constant rows until, in his early twenties, he cut himself adrift from his family.
Now he had no idea where they were, nor did he want to know, because as far as he was concened, they did not exist.
During the many rows with his own wife, he claimed that she was much like his own mother; that she was domineering and saw no worth in him. He argued that instead of being grateful for the good life he provided for them both, she and Adam took him for granted. During his wild, unpredictable rants, he said they were like strangers to him; that they darkened his life and gave him nothing, yet they continued to feed off him like parasites.
He also threatened Adam’s mother that if she ever mentioned his parents and sister again, she would be made to regret it. So, knowing from experience that he was more than capable of hurting her, Peggy wisely never again spoke of them.
Once, when Adam was caught eavesdropping outside the parlour, he was punished with the bunched knuckles of his father’s fist across his head ‘for hiding behind the door and listening in on a private conversation’, he was told.
Now, with his father gone, hopefully for ever, he felt able to speak out.
‘Phil?’
‘Yes, son?’
‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘All right then.’ In a whisper, and with a wary eye on the door in case his father should suddenly burst in, Adam told Phil everything.
He described the awful rows and the things he had learned about his father’s family; that his father hated his sister and his parents, and had cut them out of his life. ‘He said they were wicked, spiteful people, and that they made his life a misery, and now I’m frightened they might come and take me away, to look after me until Mum’s better. But what if they never bring me back? I’m frightened, Phil. I don’t want them to come and get me.’
Phil took it all in and when Adam fell silent, looking up at him with fear in his eyes, he assured him, ‘If they’re as bad as all that, they’ll not be allowed to come for you.’
Adam then told Phil of his grandparents on his mother’s side. ‘Mum said her parents wanted her to go to Australia with them, but she didn’t want to, and so they fell out and she left home. Then a while ago, some old neighbour told Mum that they’d gone to Australia, but she didn’t know where, and Mum never heard from them again.’
‘I see.’ Phil nodded thoughtfully. ‘By! That’s a sorry situation and no mistake. So, it seems you’ve no close family other than your own parents, eh?’
Because Adam was already in pieces, Phil made no mention of his deep concern with regard to the boy’s care. In the light of what he had just learned, he feared there could be all manner of trouble ahead.
‘Phil?’ Adam grew concerned when the older man lapsed into deep thought. ‘Phil!’
Brought sharply out of his reverie, Phil put on a smile. ‘Sorry, son … I was just dwelling on what you said: no aunts nor uncles, nor family of any kind, except for your parents. By! It doesn’t bear thinking about.’ Fearing that Peggy Carter might not survive, he was deeply anxious for the boy’s welfare.
Adam voiced his own concerns. ‘If Mum has to stay in hospital for a long time, I don’t want to stay in the house all on my own, so will you please stay with me until Mum gets home?’
Taken aback by the request, Phil wisely avoided answering directly. ‘Aw, look, son. It’s not good to get ahead of yourself like that. Let’s just wait and see how things go, and then we’ll decide what’s best to do.’
Adam had another question: ‘If you don’t like to live in my house, can I come and stay with you then?’ Growing tearful, he finished lamely, ‘Please say yes, Phil, ’cause there’s nobody to look after me until Mum comes home.’
Phil glanced about nervously. ‘Ssh!’ He pressed his finger to his lips. ‘It’s best not to discuss these things just yet. Let’s leave it for now, son. Let’s wait and see what the doctor says, then you and me … we’ll sort summat out. Try not to worry, and the less you say just now, the better.’
‘All right, Phil, but if you stay with me at the house, I promise I’ll be good. I’ll do my homework, and if you want, you can fetch your little dog to stay with us.’
