Broken. Daniel Clay
Or, any news? But, finally, Archie stopped asking, and I can't really blame him. It's not like he ever got a straight answer. Mr Buckley would shrug and say something like, oh, you know, or, no change, or, same as ever, really The last time I ever heard Archie ask him, Mr Buckley said nothing. He put his hands over his face and shook his head. When Mr Buckley's shoulders started to shake, Archie gave me and Jed a tenner to go and buy chips for our tea. As far as I can tell, neither of them mentioned Mr Buckley's son after that. It was as if he no longer existed. He did though, in his bedroom, and one day he would come out.
It wouldn't be for more than a year, though.
This year was long and hard for the Buckleys. Although all charges had been dropped, and although everyone outside of the Oswalds’ accepted Susan had been lying, her accusations somehow stuck. This was mostly due to the other Oswald girls, who would scream rapist across the street every time they saw a Buckley moving about in broad daylight. Once in a while, minor acts of vandalism occurred – Broken's car had its tyres slashed, and some eggs were thrown at the house that Halloween. Rubbish was tossed into their garden, and cigarettes were stubbed out on their UPVC window frames. Nothing to call the police for. Just enough to make life unpleasant.
If Bob Oswald ever saw Mr Buckley in the street, he would always shout something, but Mr Buckley would never respond. One time, Archie Cunningham intervened on Mr Buckley's behalf. He had just taken Jed and Skunk to see Revenge of the Sith at the Odeon in Port Solent, and Mr Buckley was carrying some shopping into his house. Bob Oswald was standing on his doorstep with his huge hands cupped around his huge mouth. ‘How's your prick of a son doing, Buckley? Still touching up the kiddies?’ Mr Buckley hurried into his house and slammed the door behind him.
Archie said, ‘Stay in the car,’ then got out and walked to the edge of the drive. Jed and Skunk wound down the windows so they could hear what the adults were saying.
‘Hey, Bob,’ Archie shouted. ‘You up to speed on your libel laws?’
Bob Oswald turned his gaze from the Buckley house to Archie Cunningham.
‘What the fuck's it gotta do with you?’
‘Well, if Dave or his son wanted me to represent them, I'd be happy to do it for free. Open-and-shut case, considering the police dropped all charges. Like taking candy off a kid, taking money off you.’
Bob Oswald stared at Archie Cunningham. ‘Answer me one question, Cunningham. You let your kids go over the Buckleys'?’
‘More often than I let them go over yours.’
Bob Oswald said nothing.
Archie took a steady step forward. ‘You watch your big mouth in future. And if you ever want legal aid again don't come running to my firm. Get me?’ He stared at Bob Oswald, then turned and ordered Skunk and Jed inside. ‘I don't want you playing with the Oswalds any more,’ he said as they took their coats off. Skunk and Jed raised their eyebrows: like they ever played with the Oswalds. All of the Oswalds were mental. But so, too, was Broken Buckley: he crouched down by his bedroom window and watched his father scurry away from Bob Oswald, then watched Archie Cunningham shout Bob Oswald down in the street. Fearing Bob Oswald might look up and see him, Broken moved away from the curtains and sat down on the edge of his bed. Hunching his shoulders forwards, he tormented himself with memories of the day Bob Oswald attacked him. Then he remembered the policemen coming to get him after Susan Oswald accused him of rape. These memories were nothing compared to the day Saskia Oswald came on to him and then laughed at the size of his penis. Why did she have to go and do that? Why did she do that to him? Broken didn't know. He couldn't understand. Still, though, he went through it over and over, hidden away in his box room, curled on his side on his bed. Sometimes, he stared through a gap in the curtains. If he ever saw Bob Oswald, he relived the day of his beating. If he ever saw Saskia Oswald, he stepped quickly away from the window and paced up and down his small room. Outside of his bedroom, the world continued without him. Time passed without him emerging: days and weeks and months. He didn't just refuse to come out – he refused to open the windows or the curtains or even the bedroom door. He went to the toilet in a bucket and brought it out when Mr Buckley was at work and Mrs Buckley was out shopping. For the rest of the time he lived in a strange world of curtains, shadows and dread. His parents were despairing. Mrs Buckley, on the landing:
‘Rick. Rick. Are you in there, Rick? Can you hear me? Can I come in? Love? Please? Love? Please?’
Silence. A chair wedged under the handle. If Mrs Buckley listened, she could hear him, breathing. If she came home unexpectedly, she could hear his footsteps, scurrying, up the stairs. Late at night or in the small hours of the morning, she could hear him moving about in the kitchen, making himself something to 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.