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Chapter 1: Like Son
"Do you not see it, Danny? You think my eyes
have gone just because I'm 74 and I take my teeth out every
night?" Oma Schmidt cackled and rubbed at the damp corner
of her mouth  with
the cuff of her cardigan.
Danny Smith took the photo from her and stared at it, holding
it steady as the train juddered and rolled.
Each time they visited Danny's father, she had to do something
like this. Find something to bring. It might be a photo, or
an old magazine, or once even an item of clothing, an old
jumper. Something from the past, from when things had been
so much better. Something to comfort her, and maybe she thought
it would comfort her grandson, Danny, too.
"You tell me I'm wrong?" she demanded.
No, he saw it.
The photograph was creased, the corners curled and thickened
where the layers were coming apart. The colours were faded
as if they were being washed away.
A boy stared out of the picture. He sat on what was probably
a brand new bicycle. A large child on a bike that was too
small, but the boy was still grinning. Proud. His long, frizzy
hair was cut short at the front and on top, and he wore flared
trousers and a jumper with multi-coloured horizontal bars
down the front. The bike was an ugly-looking thing: small
wheels with thick tyres, long handlebars sticking up and then
bent down at each end, an extended saddle with a back-rest
thrust upwards at right-angles.
He saw it all right.
It was in the eyes. Eyes that stared back at him from the
bathroom mirror each morning when he washed.
The boy in the photo was about fourteen, the same age that
Danny was now. Like the boy in the photo, he was tall and
awkward, in a body that somehow seemed too big and angular
for him. The boy in the photo, sitting proudly on his new
Chopper bike, was Danny's father and, stupid 1970s haircut
and clothes aside, he looked just like Danny.
"You could be twins, eh?" said Oma, nudging Danny sharply
with a bony elbow. "You are so alike."
Danny looked away, out of the window. He stared at the graffiti
on the walls and buildings they were passing. He was not like
his father.
He was not like his father.
He still had the photo. He wanted to tear it up into little
pieces and throw them out of the window, watch the shower
of photograph-confetti spreading over the tracks, being left
safely far behind.
He was not like his father.
He had self-control.
He looked down and saw that his knuckles were white where
he gripped the photograph. He made himself relax, and handed
the snap back to his grandmother.
"They won't let you take it in," he told her. They weren't
allowed to take things into the visiting hall. "They'll make
you leave it in your bag in one of the lockers."
She smiled and tapped the side of her head. "I have it up
here," she said. "That is what matters."
#
Prison was the same as it ever was.
They arrived just behind a woman with three young children.
While the guard checked her papers at the gate, she stubbed
her cigarette out on the wall and then put the butt back in
her bag for later.
Danny handed over the Visiting Order and their IDs: his
birth certificate and Oma's pension book. He filled in a form
with their names and address and the guard gave them a ticket
with a number on. Danny was too young to visit on his own,
and had to be accompanied by an adult. In reality, though,
he could have coped easily enough. It was Oma who needed looking
after.
They were early, so they sat in the Visitors' Centre, which
as usual was full of women and rampaging children. Oma sat
humming one of her tunes to herself. She didn't seem aware
of the surroundings. She was going to see her son again. That
was all that mattered, and she was happy because of it.
Danny sat with her for a time, then went and looked at some
leaflets. Talking to Children about Imprisonment.
He recognised that one. He skimmed through it.
"It is important that they do not see them as a
bad person, even if they did do something wrong..."
Ha! That was his favourite line in that one. But what if
the prisoner really is a bad person?
He put the leaflet back and went to sit with Oma again.
He calmed his breathing, trying to remember some of the relaxation
techniques he had been taught.
"Seventy-three."
He looked at the ticket. That was their number. "That's
us, Oma," he said, interrupting her happy daydream.
They went through to the next room. Danny handed over his
wallet, his keys and his coat to be stored in a locker. All
he kept was some loose change for the drinks machine inside.
He kicked off his shoes for them to examine, and took off
his hooded sweatshirt so that one of the guards could pat
him down and check his pockets.
By his side, Oma had to go through the same routine, smiling
all the time at the rather uncomfortable-looking female prison
officer who was removing the old tissues and sweets from her
pockets. Shoes and sweatshirt back on, Danny led Oma through
the metal detector and past the sniffer dog and its handler.
They emerged in a hall with about thirty small tables arranged
with chairs to either side. About half of them were occupied
and most already had visitors. The prisoners who didn't all
turned expectantly to look at Danny and Oma, then looked away
again. Not the people they were expecting. Not their
visitors.
These men... they were murderers, rapists, drug-dealers,
men of violence and brutality and yet... the look of lost
hopes on their faces when they saw that the latest visitor
was not their own made them seem just like ordinary people.
One face didn't turn away.
One prisoner met Danny's eyes briefly, and then Oma's, a
smile breaking out nervously, uncertainly. The 1970s haircut
was gone, the hair short, and thin on top. The features were
rounder. Where he had been gangly and awkward in the photo,
Danny's father had long-since grown into his big frame.
He nodded and waved them towards the chairs at his little
table, as if they might head elsewhere if he didn't actually
invite them to join him.
"Mum," he said, taking Oma's hand across the table. "Daniel."
Smiling more comfortably now, nodding, excited. "It's been
a long time. I didn't know if you'd make it."
"My boy," said Oma. "It is hard since she moved us back
of the beyond. Is a long journey on the train and then the
bus. Is much for the boy."
Danny and his father exchanged a look, both smiling at Oma's
good-natured grumbling.
It was so easy to forget at times. Despite the guards, the
wailing babies and over-excited children, the ever-present
low buzz of urgent conversation. Just briefly, every so often,
Danny and his father could exchange a look, a few words, and
they were just father and son. All so natural.
And then: this was his father, sitting here in his badly-fitting
prison uniform. It sometimes seemed that there had been an
awful mistake.
But Danny knew there had been no mistake.
This place was where his father belonged.
"How is she?" said his father now. No need to explain the
"she" he referred to. It was Val -- his wife, Danny's mother,
the "she" who had moved Danny and Oma away from London when
the stresses of trying to live where everyone knew what had
happened had become too great. Danny's mother had moved them
out to the Hope Springs Trust, a centre for alternative living
that had grown up around an old school in the west country.
"She's fine," said Danny. "Teaching more classes at the
Trust. Helping them sort their accounts out after the last
audit. They don't know what's hit them."
That was the thing about visiting, Danny thought. You visit
so that you can talk and so that's what you do: you actually
talk. He couldn't remember talking to his father very much
... before. But now, when they only saw each
other so infrequently, they made good use of the time.
"How's your course going?" Danny asked. His father was studying
psychology with the Open University. They talked about the
course, about the monotony of the daily prison routine, about
some of the people his father was doing time with. They talked
about Danny, too. About school and the flat, about TV and
music and what it was like living in Wishbourne now that they
had settled in. The hands on the big wall clock seemed to
keep jumping forwards as they talked, time swallowing itself
up far too quickly.
"My boy," said Oma at one point. She hardly spoke on these
visits. She always seemed happy just to be in the presence
of her son. "Are they looking after you, heh? Are they feeding
you well?"
"Mother, their hospitality never fails. I think I will stay
on here for a while."
Oma looked down sharply at this, and then away, her eyes
following the movements of a little boy who was playing with
a squeaky hammer in a corner of the hall which was set up
as a toddlers' play area.
"Dad, we found something a few days ago."
His father raised an eyebrow, waiting for Danny to continue.
"A journal. A black-covered, hardback book. The dates in
it start in December 2000 and run out in ... a few months
later. It was in a box from the move. There's still loads
of stuff we haven't unpacked from then, even now."
His father shrugged. "What is it? Have you read it?"
"I ... only a little. It's yours. Your writing. It says
about what happened. About what you were thinking."
It was his father's turn to look down now. After a long
silence he said, "What I was thinking? That's not somewhere
I want to go. Not ever again. My writing, you say? I don't
remember writing a diary."
He didn't remember much of anything, though. Not that he
would tell them at his trial. Not that he would ever tell
anyone since.
"I just thought you should know that we'd found it," said
Danny softly.
"If you think it's important you could send it to Justin
Peters."
Peters had defended Danny's father at the trial. Danny nodded.
It was reassuring to have something to do with the thing.
"Oma had a photo of you on a Chopper," said Danny, forcing
brightness into his voice. On the train the picture had been
something to torment him, but now it suddenly seemed different.
A treasure from the past, something to make them think, and
talk, of better times.
Oma reached into the folds of her skirt and moments later
she produced the battered old photograph. "The lady let me
bring it in," she said, beaming.
"Oh boy, that bike!" His father picked up the photo, his
hand shaking.
This was one of those moments. Those brief instants when
the surroundings melted away and they could have been anywhere,
just grandmother, father and son together. Danny squeezed
his eyes shut. He knew it couldn't last.
...end of extract
see also: more info about the
book
and
Incubus can be ordered through Amazon.
It's also available at BOL,
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