A Background Noise

A background noise

Part 1 – The boy

He knew it was coming. The seed had been sown a few hours ago. It was still a shock when it did. Two burley men came into the room and said his name. He didn't have to speak. They just looked. 'Come with us. Now'.

All around they stare. Some cover their faces to hide the smirks. You could hear a pin drop. No one wants to hear their name called out. It was him alone they wanted. Now they had found him — like he found them. He had hoped no one had seen him. They deserved it. Especially Malc. Johnno was his friend, Malc shouldn’t have been there. It was his place.

Outside he is guided into the back of a large black saloon. The men have said nothing since saying 'Come with us. Now'. Mr Jones the headmaster mumbled something as he was taken away. It was the 'Now' which frightened him. The word had a finality about it. It was like standing on the gallows and hearing the beginning of a word, then oblivion. A hand touches his shoulder and he is ushered from the car into the back of a large building. He knows where and what it is. Put in a room, on his own, he is left for what seems an age.

When will they come? He will tell them what happened. But not them. 'Come with me'. The second time he has heard those words today. This time just one man. Softer than the others. He smiles and holds out a hand. He stays on the chair. His hands gripping the edge of the seat. He knows it is useless to resist. He doesn't want to look scared, but he knows his eyes give him away. 

He gets up and follows the man, through the door, across a passage and into another room. This time a table with five chairs and two doors. The floor is covered in brown lino and the room echoes to every sound. The walls are green with a band of darker green, just like a Green Line bus, and there is one long window along one side, at ceiling height, through which the light is fractured by panes of frosted glass and columns of iron. He can hear the High Road traffic on the other side, the whirr of the trolleybuses and  the soothing chugs of RT buses, but he doesn’t know if they are 18s or 92s. He’s no good with lorries or cars.

The door slams behind him and the man with the smile. The other door opens and in comes a tall, thin man, with a long face and lips like Christopher Plummer. His eyes are close together. He notices that first. The man is followed by a dark lady. She is sort of short and round, with big bosoms. He notices them first. The smiling man then leaves the room without saying a word. The man with eyes close together waits for the big bosomed lady to sit down, then he sits down as well. 

'Well, sit down… We have some questions to ask you and you must give us honest answers' says the man. 'Do you understand?' He hears the 'must', but his eyes are on those bosoms, now resting on top of the table. 'Why aren't they here'. He's sure they should be.

The dark lady leans towards the man and whispers in her ear. She nods, then says, very softly, 'Do you know what you did today?'  He grips the side of the chair. 'They should be here too' he thinks to himself. He looks away from her face, with its button nose and lovely brown eyes, past her bosoms, across the table and onto the floor, where his eyes stay fixed.

'Would you like some lemonade and a biscuit?' the man says. He nods and says to the lady 'We'll take ten and start again'. Four custard creams and a bottle of lemonade with a straw are placed before him. He has never gone so long in his life before without saying anything.

There is a knock on the door behind him. It's the man with a smile again. 'They're here and they want to see him, sir'.

'Who told them?'

'The Headmaster sargeant, he had little choice’, then a pause before adding ‘He had to'.

Then they were in. Bursting through the door. He stood there. A seeming colossus. 'We want to speak to him alone'. Then that word again. 'Now'. This time it filled him with relief.

The Christopher Plummer lips of the man with the close eyes moved as if to say something, but the lady with the lovely dark eyes rested a hand on his jacket sleeve and he turned away instead, then they walked out through the other door. He realises that he can now relax his grip on the chair and finds that his fingers are aching. Painful in fact. Unsure of what to do next, he sits and waits. He is about to be rescued or punished?

They are as good as they have ever been. He has never seen them panic. When he has done wrong, he has endured the quiet, knowing that there is no arguing. On reflection, always fair, although it rarely seemed that way at the time. Thankfully, it didn't happen often. He knew the boundaries and it was their game he was having to play. And now?

'What you did was wrong' he hears his nanna say. 'But I may have done the same' says his grandad. 'Malc told his mum everything and I mean everything. She came with us and she is telling them now. Then we can go'.

He never saw Malc or Johnno again. He was too relieved to wonder what had happened to them and soon life returned to much as it was before that day. Only years later did it become important again and, this time, he was in charge.

Part 2 – The man

The moment he saw him the years melted away. He would have known him anywhere. A man now, but still Malc. The second coincidence in two days. What would be the third?

The day before he had met Grace's parents for the first time. Her mum had been with the police and he recognised the eyes straight away. He then remembered her bosoms and felt guilty for doing so. Involuntarily, he thought Grace must take after her dad. Then he came into the room and he knew she didn't. He had the physical build of a miner. He saw enough men in his job as an occupational health worker to know. Square, stocky, muscular and on the short side. During lunch he found out that he came from a family of miners, but after  starting work on a colliery railway, he had joined the LMS and ended up in London, where they'd met. She used to wave to him when his engine pulled into the station and after a few months he called out and asked if she would like to go to the pictures.

The made an unlikely couple. A black policewoman, albeit retired, and a train driver. Inter-city diesel electrics now. Promotion had taken them north – just like his own search for a job had taken him to a northern town. And like him, they liked it. He made friends quickly, then met Grace. It was fairly instant and their lives seamlessly merged without them really noticing. Within a few months they had settled into a routine and decided it was time to tell their parents.

Grace was in the habit of going home on bank holiday weekends when she was not at work. This time she told them she was coming just for the Saturday and bringing 'someone special' – which is how he came to be confronted with those eyes again. Nothing was said.

In truth, he could not remember much about the day. He told Grace as they drove away and headed south to meet his family. They spent the night in a Best Western hotel on the edge of London. They knew he wasn't coming alone. He told his step-father that her name was Grace and that they had been living together for a couple of months.

Had they not decided to go into town on the train and parked the car at Potters Bar Station, he would not have seen Malc. With twenty minutes to wait, they went into station coffee shop, got their drinks and sat down – which is how he came to see Malc. He was alone and dishevelled, like a man recovering from the night before. He was rotating a mug and looking into it as if it were an abyss. Then he noticed his feet. It was if he was treading water. He looked up and their eyes met. Had he looked away, nothing would have come of it, but he didn't. He looked at Malc and waited for a reaction.

'Do I know you?'. It was the voice of a man – not the Malc he had known. He said nothing. The silence was broken by 'The train now arriving at platform two is the 11.09 to Barnet, Woodside Park, West Finchley…' by which time they were on their feet and opening the door onto the platform. On the train he told Grace about the coincidence and that that had been the Malc he told her about the day before.

They were waiting at the window and had the front door open to greet them as they walked up the garden path. It was if Grace had been one of the family for years. His sister and her tribe were coming to tea. At lunch there would be just them, no distractions. All eyes were on Grace. Nothing was said. Now they all knew. He didn't mention Malc. Before Johnno there had been Leo the lodger, but they never knew that, they weren’t around.. Nor did Grace until years later.

A few months later they married. It was the only occasion their parents met and they seemed to get on well enough. They rotated birthdays and Christmases and when the children came along they decided to work part-time and to share the responsibilities. From time to time he thought about the third coincidence that never was and Malc the man. Perhaps he had expected to see Johnno. Grace described them as part of 'life's background noise' which his brain, most of the time, was able to 'tune out' – as a psychiatric nurse she knew about these things. 

He saw it in The Guardian, 4 June 1984. Four column inches. He measured them. 'Sex offender dies in explosion' read the headline. 'John Masters, recently released from prison after serving thirty years of a life sentence was killed when an explosion ripped his caravan home apart. In 1953 he was found guilty of sexual attacks on four boys whilst working as a park-keeper in Harrow and Wembley. After his conviction, many more victims were identified. Surrey Police and the county fire service believe his death to have been an accident caused by Masters failing to correctly connect a gas cylinder in the caravan. Masters was caught in 1952 after being locked in his park hut with a young boy.

He showed it to Grace. It was closure of sorts. At some point he would add his own footnote to history. He was not in the records. He was not officially interviewed. Grace's mum and dad went first, followed soon after by his mother. Last year his step-father died, a good man. They had told the children years ago over tea when they had asked why they had no more brothers or sisters. He explained why he always wanted them to have their own rooms and that their mum loved him enough to understand why. Nothing had been said since. Perhaps now was the time. And that was it really. He had survived. Life had been more than kind. He had Grace and they both had modest NHS pensions. They read a lot, played bowls and did community things. The kids came to visit, families in tow. Never alone, even though that would be nice. Occasionally, still, the 'background noise' comes to the fore and he wonders about Malc.

He has never seen The Eastbourne Gazette dated 11 June 1984  and its small headline 'Beachy Head count now 20'. The report went onto say: 'The 20th body this year was recovered from the foot of Beachy Head on June 9th. It is thought to have been there for several days. The body of a man aged about 40 has yet to be identified'. Six months later he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave with no one to mourn his passing.

Robert Howard

10 May 2011.

2149 words.