Estrangement

By Gary Heath

Christmas at Keswick Avenue is subdued following the death of Robert Healy's mother. Before the teenager has time to adapt to the new situation domestic life is further disrupted when his father Craig remarries and a new family moves in. The strain is too much for everyone and it is only a matter of time before a crisis leads to a trau

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caoshan Press
• Release date: Apr 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781838157777

Book preview

Part One

The Bungalow

Bright baubles dropped on the worn carpet at random. Robert picked up the shiny globes carefully, wrapped them in tissue, and placed them in a box. The colours in the room were flat and washed out under the fluorescent light. Craig remained calm and once everything had been packed away, he went into the hallway where he opened the airing cupboard’s door. Standing on a chair and holding the frame of a hatch above, he deftly launched himself into the mysterious attic. He was a big man, and this manoeuvre required that he not place his full weight on the cupboard’s shelves lest they give way. Robert hoisted the boxes of decorations up to his father and then joined him. In the dimly lit attic pyramid father and son gingerly stepped from one thin rafter to another placing boxes in their appointed spaces like high priests preparing a funeral chamber. Having completed the tidying away, the two crouched by the trap door and rested a moment. A fancy coat Craig had bought his wife for Christmas lay unwrapped at the side of the trap door. ‘Do you think she’ll like it?’ Craig had asked his son three weeks before in the same spot; Robert hadn’t had the heart to say it didn’t matter because his mother would never get to wear it.

After an awkward silence, the two slipped back into the contingent world. In the living room, Robert sat down on the sofa to gather his thoughts. His life had changed completely in less than a month but the house around him was almost the same: the same fireplace, the same mantelpiece, the same ornaments featuring the Virgin Mary and family photos, and the same alcoves. The television in the corner, such an important part of his childhood, lay dormant and sullen. It was in front of this screen that Robert had sat on his father’s knee and watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. But something imperceptible was missing. Life had changed and the immediate surroundings looked diminished and dull. Strange and uncomfortable feelings were emerging. Asked to wash the family car, Robert eagerly left to get away from his discomfiture.

There was no one about as the youth hauled a hose pipe down the driveway and onto the far side of his father’s car in the avenue. It was cold outside and his hands froze on the green tube. But Robert didn’t mind the job at hand and soon warmed up as he washed and waxed the car in the manner taught by his father, which required careful attention to the hub caps, bumpers, and windows. He lost himself in the manual task. Fanciful thoughts came into his head as he cleaned, such as going off to live in Berlin. This idea was inspired by the film Cabaret, which he had recently watched on television. Robert saw himself as the dashing Michael York, up for an experience in a foreign land, one of many such fantasies thrown up by his lively imagination. He was distracted out of his reverie by a young seagull that was struggling in vertical lift over the front garden. The bird suddenly dropped down dead. Astonished, Robert had the presence of mind to get a plastic carrier bag, pick the bird up, and drop it into the bungalow’s rubbish bin. He then buffed the car to make the metallic green paintwork glimmer but no sooner was the whole job done than a very much alive seagull crapped on the car’s mirror-like bonnet.

There were other jobs pending. A bit of light weeding was quickly achieved. The garden shed to the rear of the house was Robert’s Wolf’s Lair and here the teenager surveyed the back garden, where many a toy soldier battle had been fought during his military-obsessed childhood. This fascination with soldiering expressed itself now as a keen interest in history, specifically twentieth-century dictatorships. Robert had just read Alan Bullocks’ biography of the loon of the century. What he couldn’t quite figure out was why so many German people had taken Hitler seriously. Trying to remember what he was doing in the garden shed, Robert then noticed spanners scattered all over the worktop. He had wanted to tune up his bicycle for an upcoming Sunday run. Skilfully he proceeded to change a tubeless tyre and then tidied his shoulder bag for the ride before going back indoors.

In his small bedroom, the schoolboy studied a while with his feet up against the radiator. He read Isaac Deutscher’s work on the terrible modern Russian tyrant, his next subject. Stalin was more complex than Hitler and harder to pin down. On the day of his mother’s funeral in early December, Robert had come straight to this desk and worked on a school assignment concerning the Russian Revolution, ignoring all the mourners in the house. The desk soon became his study, a refuge from the increasing boredom and constriction he felt within his diminishing family. Intellectual pursuits gave him a lifeline to a new world, one beyond the brick wall facing his bedroom window. Russia was huge and formidable, another world.

‘Dinnertime.’ The family had always eaten their evening meal in the kitchen. ‘We’re having steak and kidney stew. Get used to it because we’ll be eating a lot of it from now on: it’s easy to make.’ The self-appointed family cook was not really in his element though the authoritative manner of a chef was not lacking. Putting on a pair of protective gloves, Craig opened the oven and took out a Pyrex-brand dish. The stew looked like it had been burnt. So he couldn’t even get a stew right, Robert thought. He kept quiet as his father ladled some cubes of meat and gravy onto his plate.

‘Thanks for doing the car, Robert.’

‘Sure, Dad. It’s easy.’

‘I’ll give you some pocket money later. How are you getting on with your schoolwork?’

The attention was almost overwhelming. Previously, Robert’s father had never enquired about school studies but relied solely on the annual written school report for information.

‘Okay. I like most of my subjects. Mr. King is an interesting teacher; he always brings posters of modern art to school and starts his classes by introducing a painting and the artist who did it. He showed us The Scream today.’

‘What has Edward Munch got to do with history?’ Craig said, not quite understanding the connection between art, history, and education.

‘He only spends about ten minutes on artists, Dad. Munch is pronounced monk, by the way.

Craig bridled at his son’s correction, ‘Well I don’t have your education, Son. I didn’t get the chance.’

This was a well-rehearsed sob story. Evacuated during the war, Craig had not received a formal education. He had the habit of passing guilt about this on to his son as if it were his offspring’s fault that he had not got a proper schooling. Ignoring his father’s pique, Robert assured him that Mr. King had the best intentions, even though he was a homosexual with violent tendencies. At least the history teacher was not boring; most of the boys liked him. Robert was actually outgrowing school. He was thinking ahead, contemplating a trip abroad maybe to live for a spell in the glamorous German capital. The second hand of the clock on the wall above the two inmates spun silently. Meals now lacked numbers, the glory days of extended family feasts in the conservatory during the summer long gone. Gravy was mopped up with sliced bread. Craig then shared some news.

‘I’m going down to Cornwall next week so you’ll be on your own again. You can always make yourself some stew. I’ll leave plenty of steak in the freezer and there are bags of frozen veg…’

‘Okay, I’ll manage.’ Robert was quickly becoming a better cook than his father. He had prepared meals for his mother when she had been unwell, an effort largely made in vain as Sylvia had struggled to eat anything in the final stages of her illness.

The kitchen was small but neat. It had fitted cabinets and a car radio hung from one of the cupboards. Robert listened, rather than whistled, while he worked. The pop tune on the radio was catchy, ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, senses working overtime…Trying to taste the difference ‘tween a lemon and a lime...’ He squeezed some more lemon washing up liquid onto the Pyrex dish in a bid to loosen encrusted food as the music bounced around the joyless kitchen. Plates dried and put away, Robert switched the radio off and went back to his bedroom to listen to his own discs. He was just about to flip one on when his father entered and for the first time affected an interest in his son’s music collection.

‘You must have quite a lot of records by now.’

‘Forty albums and a lot of singles, not sure how many’, Robert said, startled by his father’s sudden entrance.

‘Well, you are just starting to waste your money’, Craig said hurtfully. Robert absorbed this put-down like a sponge but inwardly resented it. What came next was new.

‘What kind of cartridge do you need for the turntable?’ Craig asked this knowing his son had been thinking about a hi-fi upgrade. Robert told his father what he needed for his player.

‘Well, if you behave yourself I’ll buy you a new one when I get back from Cornwall.’

Unwisely, Robert did not take this offer graciously. ‘I don’t need a bribe from you’, he said.

‘A bribe! Right, sod you then. You won’t be getting a new cartridge’, his father puffed and that was the end of the conversation. Robert closed the bedroom door, laid on his bed, and stared at the worn wallpaper. Finally, he put on a record, plugged in a pair of headphones, and immersed himself in highly produced rock music.

Elsewhere in the bungalow, the great third eye flickered into life and all the world came into view. As usual the news was as dreary as the night outside: unemployment, more layoffs, and a wet and windy day tomorrow. Craig, who had given up smoking, flipped the channel and settled down to watch snooker heroes potting red, black, pink, and blue with a variety of deft touches. His mind wandered and he sank into deep thought about how he would organise his future life; and in that regard he was clearer about the way forward than his confused teenage son.

Dictators

The lads met at the top of Keswick Avenue and then bundled along the alleyway next to the chalk pit. The daily walk to school was a mini adventure that Robert enjoyed mainly on account of the opportunity to forge friendships outside of school. As the two figures walked up the alley the sky brightened a little and Windermere’s burnt sienna tiled roofs made the estate look like a painting of Tuscany. They crossed the railway bridge side by side.

Adam and Robert had known each other since childhood. They now attended separate senior schools. Adam’s father, an insurance salesman, had always been sniffy about the working-class background of his son’s friend. The problem was that Robert had a reputation for swearing, something both his neighbours and teachers had pulled him up on many times. Robert could never understand the problem with using this word or that word. What the fuck was a ‘bad word’? It was an imposed, class-ridden value judgement. Adam liked to hear swear words but never used them himself. The two friends talked for a while about their respective holidays. Then Adam asked after Robert’s mother.

‘She died.’ Adam was surprised as much by Robert’s lack of emotion as by the fact of Sylvia’s non-existence.

‘Really? I’m sorry to hear that. When did this happen?’ Robert briefly explained the circumstances of his mother’s illness and death shortly before Christmas. She was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier in the year and given six months to live. Chemotherapy failed. She died within the predicted timeframe at home surrounded by her family. Adam would be the only person to ever express any kind of sympathy to Robert.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, concerned.

The two companions walked on quietly, no one swearing. Going back to school was on their minds. January was the cruellest month and the school term stretched before them like an ocean to be crossed. It was Robert who broke the silence.

‘Did you hear the news? Three million unemployed. It’s incredible.’ The teenagers were absorbing the political discourse around them and starting to form views of their own. Jolly Adam was morphing into a Disraelian Tory. Born in London, he was an outsider locally and had a slight contempt for the provincials around him.

‘It’s because of the high interest rates. It’s a stupid policy. It will bring down inflation but ruin manufacturing.’ Robert, a Keynesian in the making was fervently anti-monetarist. Monetarism was, he felt, a kind of terror weapon to be used against the working class. Adam didn’t see it that way. He had the whole rationale down pat: make borrowing expensive, weed out weak and inefficient industry, get inflation under control, and discipline unruly workers. It seemed convincing to many people, although it was surprising how many middle-class conservatives opposed smashing the post-war economic consensus. Adam laughed it all off like a thief who knew he would get away with the loot.

‘Nah. High interest rates are good. Come on, Robert, we have to deal with inflation.’

The two boys, who would never agree, walked on down London Road past the church and across the recreational area by the railway station. At Approach Road they parted company. They had played in the streets as kids. Would they become political enemies in the future? Adam had a good nature but then again, many people who followed bad ideologies did, too. Robert felt his friend was susceptible to brainwashing; it was easy to go along with the newly fashionable mainstream ideology, much harder to resist it.

Concrete gargoyles scowled at the lone entrant as the lone student walked into Simon Proctor Grammar School under red-brick arches; Robert remembered his first day at the school and how intimidating it had been to enter the hallowed grounds of the all-boys school. Before long he had made friends with other working-class boys though, all of whom were united in teasing their middle-class classmates. Anyone with any money sent their children to private schools to protect them from this working-class contamination.

Hurrying to his form classroom, Robert passed Mr. King in the corridor. The history master was held in awe and commanded respect. In a good mood he could be quite cheerful, even charming. ‘Good morning, Hippo’, he said to the sixth former in greeting — the nickname was inspired by his student’s watchful and self-contained nature. With other boys, Mr. King was often brusque but he liked young Healy because his pupil was good at history and perhaps for other reasons. After the encounter with Mr. King, the schoolboy cum-adult arrived at his form classroom and sat down relieved not to have been on the receiving end of the history master’s short temper.

The form teacher marked the last arrival late and then the class got ready for the first lesson, a double period of geography. Robert was studying history, geography, and economics for his A-levels. He liked geography, and history was appealing because historical fact was often more compelling than fiction. Economics was for Robert the serious subject because it was about money, or ‘who gets what, how, and when’ as the economics teacher put it. The morning’s geography lesson passed uneventfully, a pleasant enough two hours spent drawing landforms.

The school came alive when the bell rang. The boys rushed out of classes and filled the narrow Victorian corridors like shoals of fish. Robert walked up the stairs to the library, a former chapel, on the fourth floor. He liked the library; the stained-glass windows and ornamental stonework provided a calm non-official space to lose himself in.

‘Hello, mate.’ Michael Papadopoulos was another regular at the library. Older than Robert by two years, he was a maverick natural leader. Michael was far more confident and mature than his insecure younger schoolmate, and Robert, an only child, looked up to him.

‘What you been up to?’

‘Geography. I’ve got a free period now. What’s news?’ Paps was one of the few boys who kept himself well informed of what was known as ‘world affairs.’ He referred to the news he had just read.

‘11.5% unemployment. It’s a joke. The government doesn’t care. Just letting companies go to the wall. And now the fat cats are lining up for privatisation. They want to shovel money into their back pockets at public expense.’ Paps knew what was going on. Robert, unusually, wasn’t paying attention.

‘What’s up, mate? Got a problem?’ From a single-parent family, Paps could be empathetic when he wasn’t indignant or being irreverent.

‘I don’t know. Just wanted to talk to someone.’

‘That’s all-right mate. Take it easy.’ Paps twisted one of his Greek curls. Robert got back onto politics, a safe outlet for his emotion.

‘If the interest rate doesn’t come down, everyone is going to be out of a job. The Tories don’t care. They are going after the miners, revenge for bringing down the Heath government. They’re talking about closing the pits in Kent.’ Robert’s father was a collier who had worked in all four of the East Kent mines. The ‘Garden of England’ was hardly known for industry but its small coalfield had provided a significant number of jobs for years and its good quality coal still fuelled power stations and homes across the south of England. If the pits were not highly profitable from an accounting point of view they were very important socially. And the miners had finally got a proper pay deal after the strike that forced the election that Heath lost. Robert wore his National Union of Mineworkers donkey jacket with pride. ‘Dad hates the Tories.’

Paps flicked the newspaper in front of him and glanced at some of the other headlines. ‘The government is a bloody dictatorship. An elected dictatorship. They got in by pretending they were the middle ground. The real goal though is to shift power far from the political centre and into the hands of unelected business interests. It was quite a clever strategy, wolves in sheep’s clothing’. Robert knew the Tories were busy ripping up the political middle ground and preparing the nation for a massive wave of privatisation and it was clear they were going to trammel on anyone who objected despite their underwhelming majority in Parliament. The country had reached a crossroads and was being firmly wheeled to the right.

The two schoolboys unable to solve the problems of the world moved on to gossip and discussed the merits of various masters and schoolmates. Michael was honest rather than disrespectful when he described Mr. King as a ‘fruitcake’ and the prefects, the school’s police force, as pigs. Briefly promoted to sub-prefect, Robert had been promptly demoted for swearing at passers-by in the street from a window above the arches. The school itself was a benevolent dictatorship led by the withdrawn and mysterious Head, who waltzed around in a gown like a Nazi Gauleiter. Robert always kept his distance from the leader as did everyone else. The Head was not evil but he was not nice either; like all those who lacked character, he valued obedience. Michael had once knocked a cricket ball through the Head’s office window, a stupendous six launched from the lower field and was never forgiven for this.

‘Did you see what happened in assembly this morning?’ Robert had missed the daily ritual.

‘No, what happened?’

‘Royal Navy came round. A smart officer in a natty uniform.’

‘Navy? What did they want?’

‘He was selling Trident. Got to have it. Soviets threatening us. Usual Cold War hard sell.’ Robert had always been sceptical about unilateral nuclear disarmament and on this point, he differed with the political left; in fact, he never considered himself ‘left-wing’ at all but rather a part of the rapidly disappearing political centre.

After returning a nod from a master who had just come in the library, he said, ‘Yeah, well you can’t uninvent them, can you?’ repeating an argument used by the dashing Royal Navy officer that morning.

‘Well, true,’ Michael conceded, ‘but do we really need Trident? Look at the cost. The money’s got to come from somewhere. Maybe talking to people and making a disarmament deal would cost a lot less and reduce tensions. We’ve got to have defence, of course. One of the best ways to defend yourself is to make friends with your enemies. An arms race is neither inevitable nor desirable.’ Unlike one or two of the middle-class rebels at school, who wore their hair long and sported Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament badges, Michael did not support CND but he was sceptical about Trident.

‘Look, mate, it’s all about money. Contractors are looking for ways to line their pockets. Same in the US. What we should be doing is talking about disarmament instead of making more weapons.’

‘So did you tell the Royal Navy officer all that?’

‘The CND crowd said something, yeah. The Navy people showed us a little film featuring them heroically coming to a distressed vessel’s aid. Thompson asked why the navy was represented as saviours and didn’t the Soviets ever help people out?’ Robert liked Christopher Thompson, an upper sixth-form boy, a member of the thinking middle class.

‘That was a clever question.’

‘Yeah, everybody laughed. The Navy guy didn’t have an answer to that. Put him right on the spot. So he says, No one ever asked that question before… CND one, Navy nil’. Michael smiled at the memory of the navy officer’s discomposure. Robert himself felt uncomfortable. He thought the Navy were feistier than that. Fancy not having an answer ready to knock Thompson out. ‘Listen, sonny, if you worship the Soviet navy why not go join them and then come back and tell us how many non-Soviet vessels they help