The child was trying to count. But because of his deformed mouth he couldn’t manage to round the ‘O’ to say one and the lack of lips prevented him pronouncing four. So he went no further than two three.
This was what I was thinking as I watched him, my throat constricted by a lump, my stomach tying itself in knots. Anything to occupy the mind while I beheld the atrocity. It turned out I was wrong. As I backed away I saw the clipboard hooked on the end of the bed. The chart was headed with the patient’s number: 2323.
The boy was proclaiming his identity. He wanted people to know who he was. I wondered what kind of awareness he had of what he was.
The other beds held little boys — and two girls — all in different stages of development. Some appeared to have more dog in them than others. 2323 was one of the most human-looking. None of the others spoke their number like 2323. Some uttered gibberish, a few could only manage certain vowel sounds. Others barked and yelped.
I stood over the first boy’s bed. His head whipped from side to side like a metronome. With shaking fingers I reached forward and drew the sheet back an inch or two. There were straps under the covers as well. One chafed at his neck. It was red and sore. I couldn’t bear it any longer. When I looked into his eyes it was like meeting the stare of the bed-ridden man in the flashlit, blood-stained house — the man who looked like me.
‘Two three, two three.’
The Thin Controller had always spoken a call-sign twice. I was always Two Three, Two Three, never just Two Three.
The head beat hard against the pillow. A thread of saliva flew out of his mouth. And he kept on repeating his number, his name. I reached under the covers and undid the buckle on his leather neck restraint. His head shot upwards, checked again by straps lower down, and it jerked violently from side to side.
I heard a noise and whirled around. The ward behind me had become as dark as a forest in the thick of night, impenetrable. I turned back to the poor twisting creature in the bed but he’d gone too. Where his bed had been there was just blackness. Vivid colours flashed in my head and formed into tiny fish swimming in the night’s endless sea. They darted one way then shimmied back on themselves in a vast shoal and vanished. In turn I felt giddy, sick, weightless and afraid. Helpless and very small. Alone, completely alone in the night.
I went with my mother and father to visit relatives on the coast. I called them Uncle Billy and Auntie Nan but in actual fact they weren’t family. Uncle Billy had worked with my father’s uncle on the fishing boats and Billy and Nan had become such close family friends that they were always Aunt and Uncle to me.
They kept a dog.
We were sitting in the front room having a cup of tea and some fruit shortcake biscuits, my mother and father talking animatedly with Uncle Billy and Auntie Nan while I sat back on the settee eyeing the white Staffordshire bull terrier. I wouldn’t have stared, only it was looking right at me and I was scared to look away. I imagined it coming for me, snapping and biting, and the four of them just carrying on their conversation. Or they’d turn and laugh, thinking the dog was playing with me. Uncle Billy wouldn’t call the dog off until it had drawn my blood.
I could hear my heart beating and the dog, no doubt able to smell my fear, beat its tail on the hearth rug.
My mother looked at me and smiled. ‘Are you all right, pet?’ she said, then turned away because Auntie Nan had asked her something.
They won’t help you, the dog seemed to be saying with its sinister, too-small brown eyes.
Later, they were all outside admiring the clematis that climbed over the shed at the bottom of the garden. The dog was with them, basking on the lawn. I was bored and wandered from room to room, ending up in my Aunt and Uncle’s bedroom upstairs. I looked out of the window, saw the four grown-ups in a small group by a flower bed. The dog looked up and met my stare. I dropped down out of sight, sweat pricking the back of my neck. With no real awareness of what I was doing I began to open and close the drawers in my Aunt’s dressing table, not really seeing anything, just handling things and putting them back and closing the drawer.
I heard a noise behind me and I stiffened. In the dressing table mirror I saw the white dog standing erect, ears sticking up, in the doorway. I jumped when it barked. Too frightened to turn around and face it, I watched in the mirror as it padded into the bedroom. Only when it barked again and broke into a run did I react, scrambling up to stand on the stool. But I was still within easy reach of the dog. It barked and barked, terrifyingly loud in the enclosed space, and I clambered onto the dressing table itself, my feet slipping on my Auntie’s clothes, things I’d unconsciously removed from the drawers. The dog leaped at my feet, saliva spraying from its hot snapping mouth. I skipped sideways, screaming, backing onto the window ledge. But my left leg caught the edge of the mirror and I fell, knocking my shin against the edge of the dressing table and landing on the floor at the dog’s feet.
It was on me in a second, fixing its jaws around my upper arm and pulling at me, as if to goad me into a fight. The foul stink of the animal made me retch, its hot breath curled up my nose like a poison and its teeth sank deeper into my arm. I screamed and yelled. In desperation I fought back, no longer caring that to do so would enrage the beast. I kicked and beat the dog with my free hand, but its jaws were clamped tightly around my arm.
I felt a wave of black giddiness wash over me, saw sparks dance in front of my eyes. I wet myself and my limbs went momentarily slack. The dog pressed one of its sharp-nailed feet on my chest, slipping to my throat. Just when I had completely given up the fight and thought I was about to faint my father appeared in the doorway, howling like a warrior as he threw himself at the dog. His sheer weight knocked the animal off me and he rolled with it on the floor. My Auntie Nan gathered me into her arms. I yelled, screaming and crying. Then my father was standing up, holding the dog’s two front legs. He’d forced the legs apart and looked about ready to tear the dog right open down its seam. He was panting, bleeding from a cut on his cheek, looking at us and at my Mother and Uncle Billy who had just made it upstairs. My mother screamed when she saw my father. I wriggled out of Auntie Nan’s embrace and crashed into my mother’s legs. She hugged me fiercely, saying ‘It’s all right, Carl. It’s all right, love,’ over and over again.
Uncle Billy snapped the dog’s lead onto its collar and took it from my father, who collapsed on the edge of the bed. I watched him, my chest still heaving. For a few minutes everyone maintained the same positions and no one spoke. I knew how weak the treatment had made my father, yet he had fought with the dog as if it were the sickness itself. And won.
Two days later I came home from the recreation ground. I’d been kicking a ball around with some friends. After the visit to Maine Road I now imagined myself as Francis Lee or Colin Bell as I took pot shots at Dave Enty who stood like some gloved statue between the two piles of coats we used as posts.
I walked past the garage and entered the house by the side door. I called out but no answer came. On the dining table there was a note from my mother. She’d gone shopping and would be back about five. I looked at my watch. It was half past three. I wondered why the side door had been unlocked. My father had gone to Christie’s around twelve and I’d gone out to play football before he’d come back.