Forests of the Night

 

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One: London 1940

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Copyright

 

This book is dedicated to two wonderful women: in memory of my dear mother, Alice, who introduced me to the world of books, and to Kathryn, my rock, my inspiration and my love.

 

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

 

William Blake (1757–1827)

prologue

My career in the army was very short but far from sweet. As a young policeman with ‘considerable prospects', or so my sergeant told me, I was reluctant to leave the force and join up, but I was idealistic and patriotic and, if I'm honest, in search of adventure. ‘Thank God, you're going,' Sergeant Brannigan said with a friendly pat on my back, the day I told him that I had enlisted. ‘I'm too old myself and with you out of the way I can be sure I can hang on to my stripes. You give the Hun what for, eh?'

I didn't give the Hun what for. Not in the way Brannigan intended at least. I got no further than Aldershot. Something cropped up that changed the course of my whole life. It was December 1939, two days before Christmas, when it happened. I was on the rifle range learning the intricacies of how to fire a rifle with a modicum of accuracy. The officer in charge, Sergeant-Major Stock, was not one given to careful instruction. When patience and coherence were being handed out, he was lagging behind being fitted with an enlarged voice box. No doubt as he emerged from the womb he had given the midwife an ear bashing about her sloppy performance. Such was the nature of the red-faced incompetent in charge of firearms training. As a result, the young novices under his command may as well have been looking down the wrong end of the barrel for all the clear instruction that was given. But to be fair to the large-gutted bully, he really had nothing to do with what happened to me. It could have been any one of our company. It just turned out that I was the unlucky one.

We queued up and Sergeant-Major Stock, like a rifle monitor, doled out the weapons from a large wooden box. They all looked the same but unfortunately, there was some obstruction lodged in the barrel of the one I was given. I didn't know this until I fired the gun and it exploded in my face.

It was as simple as that.

There was a dull explosion and for a moment the world turned a brilliant white like a fierce polar landscape. It was dazzling in its intensity. A sudden, stabbing, violent pain shot up my arms and across my chest and I felt a blast of searing heat on my face as a vivid flash filled my vision. I thought my head would explode. Then I lost consciousness.

When I woke the world was in darkness. A velvet black inkiness pressed down upon my eyes. My throat was dry and my head throbbed like a road drill. I could tell that I was lying in a bed but that was all. It took me quite a time to recollect anything. Gradually I managed to piece fragments of my recent memory together. I heard the explosion and saw the sheet of yellow flame and remembered the pain.

I called out for help. And within seconds I felt the cool touch of a woman's fingers on my arm and a sweet voice saying, ‘Welcome back to the land of the living.'

I half smiled, but it soon disappeared from my lips. Strangely, it took me a few moments to realize that I couldn't see her, this woman who had come to my aid. And yet my eyes were open. What had happened? I felt my body grow tense with panic. Once again I recalled the explosion and the bright searing heat. My God, I thought, I am blind.

‘I can't see!' I cried, struggling to sit up.

Those cool hands held me back.

‘It's the bandages,' she said. ‘You have bandages on your eyes. You have been badly burned, Johnny.'

Johnny. She knew my name.

‘Who are you? Where am I? What's wrong with me?'

She chuckled gently. ‘Questions, questions. You are in Aldershot General and I'm Nurse Watkins, Jenny to you.'

‘And what's wrong with me?'

There was a pause before she replied. ‘There was a nasty firearms incident. On the shooting range. Remember?'

I paused a moment to reassemble the memories. ‘I remember – but what's the matter with me?' I had gained more power in my voice and my question was brusque and urgent.

I felt her palm smoothing my brow. ‘You need rest now,' she said, avoiding the issue. ‘The doctor will explain everything in the morning.'

‘Can't you take the bandages off? I want to see.'

‘Not yet, Johnny. We must wait for the doctor. You really should get some rest.'

She squeezed my hand and then I heard her leaving the room.

How could I rest with so much uncertainty hanging over my head? I wanted to know the extent of my injuries. Why was the lovely Nurse Watkins – and to me her voice pronounced that she was lovely – so circumspect about my condition? Despite my worries, fatigue rolled in like a large breaker and swamped me. Soon I was carried away on the sea of sleep. As I drifted into unconsciousness, I was aware of voices singing. A Christmas carol. A radio maybe, or a choir of angels.…

*   *   *

The next day I was roused briskly and breakfasted on a weak porridge mixture – it was spooned into my mouth – by another nurse, who was businesslike and impersonal, before I was visited by the doctor – Doctor Moorhouse. He was far from circumspect.

‘You're a lucky man, Hawke,' he announced, as though he were addressing a class of medical students. ‘You could have had your head blown off – a rifle exploding in your face like that. Count yourself fortunate that you're still here to tell the tale.'

‘What tale can I tell?' I asked, not wishing to discuss with him his rather twisted definition of ‘fortunate'. ‘What's the matter with me? Tell me straight, Doctor, am I blind?'

He gave a gentle laugh. It was unnatural, forced. An embarrassed laugh. He'd told me why I should be thankful to be alive before he dropped the bombshell. That was his bedside manner.

‘Well?' I prompted, pulling myself up in bed as best I could, angry now at all his prevarications.

I felt the doctor sit down on the edge of the bed. He sighed. ‘You're not blind, Mr Hawke. You will see again. But I'm afraid that you have lost your left eye. The heat of the explosion.…'

I can't remember any more of what he said. My mind just blanked it off. The shock and pain of his revelation shook me physically. My body shuddered and I started to sweat. Instinctively my hand went to the accursed bandages. I wanted to rip them off and prove this damned quack wrong.

I didn't, of course, because deep down I knew that he must be speaking the truth. Why would he lie? I had lost an eye! I was a cripple. A disfigured cripple. I was only twenty-five. Young. Not yet had a serious girlfriend. And now I never would. I was a leper. A disabled freak. Johnny One Eye. At that moment, I wanted to die.

LONDON

1940

one

He pulled the thin, single sheet over his head and curled his body up into a tight, foetal position. It was as though he wanted to squeeze himself into nothingness. He shivered not because he was cold but because he was frightened. Frightened of so many things. He prayed that he wouldn't wet the bed again.

The light was on in the other room; yellowness seeped in through the crack along the bottom of the door. And there were voices: his mother and a man. Another man. It was never the same man. It was the usual nightly performance. He had no watch but he knew from experience that it must be somewhere around half-past eleven. The pubs had closed and they'd come back. Despite his youth, he knew what they had come back for. He'd glimpsed it one night when his mother had been moaning so much that he'd thought she was in pain. He'd walked in and found them on the rug by the fire. There was this large black man lying on top of his mother. They were both naked. He was panting and sweating and she was moaning as if she had tummy ache.

That night he learned that it was true, the stories he'd heard in the playground about men and women.

Sometimes the men were violent. More than once his mother had a black eye in the morning and on one occasion she had a cut lip. She always shrugged off her injuries as ‘the risk of the job' and assured him as she ruffled his hair, if she was in a good mood, that the odd bruise often brought in some extra cash.

Every night he lay awake waiting, praying for it to be over. In fact, the silences were the worst: lying in the dark, wondering if it was finished for this night, or whether it was merely an interval before it started again. Sometimes the men stayed all night, but as soon as they saw him in the morning, they scuttled off pretty sharpish, carrying an air of guilt with them. Some of them wore uniforms but they behaved no differently from the rest. In Peter's eyes they were all animals. And so was his mother. He knew that God expected him to love his mother and he had tried to – but he couldn't. He knew that mothers smacked their children when they were naughty but he was never deliberately naughty and yet she beat him. Especially when he wet the bed. ‘You can't love someone who doesn't love you back,' he explained to his pillow, his eyes moist with frustration.

Then he heard his mother's raised voice. ‘You'll bloody pay me anyway. It's not my fault you can't get it up. You'll bloody pay me for my time.' Her words were slurred and delivered in a hysterical tirade.

‘Like hell I will,' the man rasped back at her. ‘How d'you expect me to get aroused with an old tart like you? I'd rather shag a keyhole.'

‘You bastard,' she screamed, and there was the sound of a scuffle. ‘Give me my bloody money.'

‘Don't get clever with me, lady.'

There was the noise of something crashing to the floor.

Peter leapt out of bed, tiptoed across the cold linoleum and opened his door slightly so that he could see into the room.

The body of his mother, dressed only in her underclothes, lay on the rug before the fire. Her eyes were closed and she was not moving. Standing over her was a tall, dark-haired man who was pulling on a sweater over his head. His movements were awkward and slow. The man picked up his jacket from the settee and then turned once more to the boy's mother. ‘You fucking old tart,' he said, kicking her in the ribs. She did not respond but lay very still.