Nicholas Royle - First Novel

They had more face-to-face meetings, completed further interviews with assessors and psychiatrists and all manner of folk and finally the handover took place.

‘It’s like Checkpoint Charlie,’ Nicholas whispered. ‘Or North Korea.’

Finally, in May 1994, they were a family. They were living, the three of them, in the flat in Camden Town. They didn’t expect it to be straightforward.

And it wasn’t.

Birthdays were difficult. Jonny’s fifth birthday came around in May 1995. Nicholas and Liz felt caught. They wanted to listen to others and take advice, but at the same time they didn’t want to. They emphatically didn’t want to. They didn’t want to do things the way they had been done before, because clearly that hadn’t worked, so they wanted to do their own thing, but it had to be right. They couldn’t afford to make mistakes. By 1995, children’s birthday celebrations had already started to become much more elaborate affairs than during Nicholas’ childhood, which admittedly had been far from typical.

They organised a party at the flat inviting children from school. It soon got out of hand as Jonny refused to accept the result of any game in which he was not declared the outright winner. When the candles were lit on the cake he refused to blow them out, or to let anyone else do so. When one child did manage to blow them out, Jonny started screaming until Nicholas relit them and asked the other children to let Jonny blow them out himself. But again he refused. In the end, frustrated and embarrassed, Nicholas blew them out and Jonny focused on the dark coils of smoke rising from the blue and white candles, his face set like a mask.

The party went downhill rapidly. Jonny bit and scratched other kids and ended the afternoon wearing a dress he had somehow physically removed from one of the girls. Unusually for a little boy’s party, most of the guests had been girls. Jonny had not asked for any boys to be invited, but Nicholas and Liz had tried to do what they thought was the right thing by insisting on a more balanced guest list. Parents who stuck around, hovering uneasily at the edge of the party to wipe food off chins or to check that little Sammy or darling Annabel was not given too many fizzy drinks, were quietly outraged at Jonny’s behaviour, exchanging shocked expressions and openly glaring at the young offender while offering strained and patently false smiles to Nicholas and Liz.

Both parents thought it a good idea to try to involve grandparents as much as possible. There was a vague plan for Liz’s mother and her new partner to come over from Perth at some point, but it really was very vague. Nicholas encouraged his grandparents to increase the frequency of their visits to London, but his grandad disliked leaving the front room, never mind Manchester.

‘What about you, Nana?’ Nicholas asked. ‘We could meet you at Euston and then it’s just a couple of stops on the Tube.’

‘I don’t know, love. It’s a long way and the GP says with my heart I shouldn’t be going on long journeys.’

‘Well, we’ll just have to come up and visit you and Grandad.’

They went up on the train on a Friday. It was a tight squeeze in Nicholas’ grandparents’ house, Nicholas and Liz in the spare room and Jonny having a bed made up on the floor of the same room out of the cushions from the settee downstairs. They took these up at the end of the night, and transferred Jonny from their bed to the floor while he was asleep.

‘Your grandad’s getting quite frail, isn’t he?’ Liz whispered as they lay in the darkness listening to the night sounds — the pipes, the floorboards and general settlement.

‘Is he?’

It hadn’t occurred to Nicholas that this might be the case, but as he thought about it while listening to his son’s regular breathing he realised it was probably true. The unwillingness to move very far from the front room was not just inertia or laziness; he moved slowly and unsteadily and even the shortest walk seemed to leave him out of breath. He was nearly eighty, after all.

‘I wonder if, while we’re here, we should offer to do some shopping for them or something?’ Liz suggested.

‘You’re right. Good idea. I’ll offer in the morning.’

At the breakfast table Nicholas watched Jonny eating. He seemed to concentrate intently on his bowl of cereal. Nana had been out and bought a selection pack of miniature cereal boxes, by some distance the most expensive way to buy cereals, but what child can resist those miniatures? His features seemed to sharpen when he was engaged in a task, as if absolutely everything in the world at that point was focused on his successful consumption of breakfast. His cheekbones seem to angle forwards, his lips reach out and actively seek the spoonful of cereal. There had been a question mark at one point over whether he might be on the spectrum for autism, according to the Adoption Agency, but this had been ruled out. There was nothing wrong with him that hadn’t been directly caused by the trauma he had witnessed and experienced.

‘Is that nice, love?’ Nana asked.

She was sitting, arms folded on the table in front of her, across from Jonny.

‘Yes, Nana.’

‘Yes, thank you, Nana,’ Nicholas corrected him.

‘Yes, thank you, Nana,’ said Jonny through a mouthful of Coco Pops.

Nicholas had suggested that Jonny call his adoptive great-grandparents Nana and Grandad, just like he did.

‘What’s all this about not going on long journeys, Nana?’ Nicholas asked.

‘It’s my heart, love. I’ve got this heart-valve problem. You know about it.’

‘Mitral stenosis,’ Grandad’s voice announced as he appeared in the kitchen doorway.

‘Aye, well. It means I’m at high risk of blood clots.’

‘Arterial thrombosis,’ added Grandad.

‘I know,’ said Nicholas.

‘And I used to take warfarin for it, but the GP says that can interact with my arthritis tablets, so he took me off it. Off the warfarin, you know. So I’m at high risk of blood clots.’

‘To the brain, causing a stroke,’ elaborated Grandad.

‘Hmm.’ Nicholas studied Jonny’s empty cereal packet. ‘You should have a chat with Liz, you know, Nana. Get a second opinion.’

‘Can I have some orange juice?’ Jonny asked.

‘Can I have some orange juice, please ?’ Nicholas reminded him. ‘I’ll get it,’ he added, addressing Nana.

He squeezed past Grandad in the doorway and took the orange juice from the fridge. When he had returned and poured Jonny a glass, he spoke again.

‘Fridge is looking a bit bare, Nana. Why don’t you let us do a bit of shopping for you while we’re here?’

‘All right, love. You can take the car. It needs a run out. I don’t know when it last had one, to be honest.’

‘Great. I’ll just get His Lordship dressed. Come on, sunshine. Let’s get cracking.’

Liz stirred while Nicholas was getting clothes for Jonny, who was in the bathroom.

‘You have a lie-in,’ Nicholas said, lying down next to her for a minute. ‘Give us a kiss.’

‘Mmm,’ Liz said, pulling up the blanket and sheet, and adding sleepily, ‘I wonder if we should buy your grandparents a duvet for Christmas.’

Nicholas got Jonny ready and they headed downstairs. Nana had produced the car key. It was sitting on the kitchen table.

‘It ought to start all right,’ said Grandad. ‘There should be petrol in it.’

‘Don’t worry, Grandad.’

Nicholas took Jonny outside.

He unlocked the car and it was only at that point that he realised he didn’t have any kind of child seat. He wondered if it would be OK to go ahead without one. But very soon it became clear that this was a side issue.

The moment he opened the back door of the car and encouraged Jonny to get in, the boy refused.