Pat Barker - Border Crossing

Hatred? No, wrong word. Something more painful than that. Betrayed trust. A sense of something good gone disastrously wrong. Whatever it was, she’d been left in no doubt that Tom was the last person Ian would go to for help. And yet, less than a month later, he’d become the only person. And she didn’t know why.

Tom arrived at the probation office ten minutes early, to find that Martha had had to dash out to see another client. He spent the time till Danny arrived pacing up and down the small waiting room. It turned out that Martha shared her office, and both interview rooms were occupied, so he was going to have to see Danny here.

The room reeked of sweat: the accumulated total of the perspiring and anxious humanity that had squeezed into it. Polystyrene cups with grey coffee dregs, and holes burnt in the sides where illicit cigarettes had been stubbed out. A ‘No Smoking’ sign hung on the wall above the blocked-up fireplace, but the regular visitors to this room were not known for abiding by the rules.

He heard footsteps in the corridor. A young woman’s voice — the receptionist’s — and then a murmur, without distinguishable words: Danny. He came into the room quickly, smiling and holding out his hand.

Tom waited until he was settled in his chair. ‘Well, I’ve spoken to Martha, and we thought it would be a good idea if you and I met and had another chat, and then you could decide if you wanted to go ahead, or not.’

‘I’ve decided. I thought this was to help you.’

Tom let that pass. ‘I’ve been thinking back to when I was ten, trying to work out what I remember. And the thing that strikes me is that I probably don’t remember… You know, the important things, the kind of things my parents would remember. The memories are quite vivid, I was surprised at how much I remembered, but they’re… memories of a child’s world. And I’ve been wondering how much you remember.’

Danny cleared his throat. ‘Quite a bit.’

‘For instance, the time I came to see you in the remand centre. What do you remember about that?’

‘You wanted me to play with dolls. I thought, Christ, if this gets out, I’m dead.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘I remember you. And of course one or two things I said were quoted in court.’

A slight edge to his voice. ‘Did that surprise you?’

‘Yes. Because I thought it was confidential.’

‘But an assessment can’t be confidential. It’s designed to be produced in court.’

‘I know. But I was ten, and nobody told me that.’

‘So you felt —’

Danny was groping for his cigarettes, but then he saw the notice over the fireplace and put the packet back.

‘What did you feel, Danny? Betrayed?’

A deep breath, caught and held. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Danny spread his hands.

‘Did you know why I was there?’

‘I knew you were meant to find out whether I was… mental? I don’t know. Round the twist? Bonkers? Crazy? I don’t know what word I’d have used. But, yeah, I knew why you were there, only of course in my mind it was a pretty pointless exercise because I hadn’t done it anyway.’

‘Are you saying you didn’t do it?’

‘No, I’m saying I believed I hadn’t. I believed my own story. I had to.’

‘And at the trial?’

‘I still believed it. I went to the house to see a litter of kittens, I found Lizzie dead on the floor, and there was a man walking about upstairs. I ran like hell, and didn’t tell anybody because I was too frightened. That was it. That was what happened.’

‘What else do you remember? About the trial.’

‘Just being bored. I was so bored my mind ached. I used to look at the clock, and the minute-hand jerked, you know, it didn’t move smoothly, and I used to wait for the next jerk. I wasn’t allowed to play with anything, because, I think, if they’d given me toys to play with, they’d have been admitting a whole lot of things. I was always being told to sit up straight, listen, look at the person who’s speaking, and half the time I didn’t understand a word.’

‘So what do you remember?’

He took a moment to think. ‘The judge, because of his robes and his wig. Do you know, I still… if there’s something in a room that’s bright red, I sit with my back to it, or put it somewhere I can’t see it? And that comes from the trial.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Playing squiggles with one of the warders. This was in the lunch hour. You know, one person draws a squiggle, and the other has to try to turn it into something. I took the paper into court with me, and the social worker scrumpled it up and threw it away. What else? I remember my father sneaking out for a fag, because his shoes squeaked, and he sort of tiptoed out, and the more he tiptoed the more they squeaked. I used to hate that.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I remember you. I used to look at you. And I remember you saying all that about the chicken. If you wring a chicken’s neck, you don’t expect to see it running round the yard next day, do you? And everybody went…’ A sudden, audible intake of breath. ‘That was the moment. They didn’t believe I’d done it till then.’

‘And you really think they convicted you on that?’

‘Yes.’

Tom smiled, patiently. ‘I don’t think it was as simple as that, Danny. There was a lot of forensic evidence.’

‘Yes, but they didn’t believe it. They believed me.’

The defence had put Danny into the witness box. God knows how they’d summoned up the courage to do it, but they had. He was superb. He began well, by being good-looking, but he also stood up straight, spoke clearly, didn’t fidget, made eye contact, appeared confident (but never cocky), and remembered to address the judge as ‘My Lord’ and counsel as ‘Sir’. He gave the impression he was telling the truth, and indeed he was — 98 per cent of the time: Altogether, he came over as the sort of boy you’d be proud to introduce as your nephew.

Tom had looked at him across the courtroom, and thought, How can so many things be right?

The jury had been impressed. But to say that they’d believed his story was ridiculous. Of course they hadn’t. There’d been too much hard evidence to contradict it. ‘No, you’re not remembering it accurately, Danny. It wasn’t like that.’

Danny shrugged. ‘It was, you know. But don’t let’s argue about it. I’m not blaming you. You did the best you could in the circumstances.’

Tom remembered the courtroom, the stillness as he stepped into the box. ‘I think by that time I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to get you out of there and into treatment.’

‘Yeah, well, that didn’t happen.’

‘I wrote to the Home Office, but I got the standard brush-off.’

A pause. Tom was massaging the skin of his forehead, as he always did when he was stressed. ‘You know the English teacher you mentioned? Tell me a little bit more about him.’

‘Angus MacDonald,’ Danny said, in a broad Scottish accent. ‘He was… a very, very good teacher, and I started writing little bits and pieces for him. Extra stuff, not just in the classroom. About animals on the farm, that sort of thing. Then it got on to my parents, and…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Various things that happened.’

‘But not the murder?’

‘No.’ Danny paused to wipe sweat off his upper lip. ‘Look, after the trial I spent one night in prison, proper grown-up prison, there was nowhere else for me to go, and it absolutely stank — piss and cabbage. And I thought — nobody told me anything — I thought, This is it. And then next day the Greenes turned up and took me to Long Garth. And after I was settled in, Mr Greene came and sat on the bed, and he said — I can’t remember the exact words obviously, but it was all to do with putting the past behind me. Just forget it. And that was that, and because I admired him — and because I was shocked out of my skull — I tried to do it. I lived for four years in this sort of eggshell, until Angus came along and smashed it. And he was right. Even then, I knew he was right, but, at the same time, I was scared out of my wits by it’