I had never heard Dad scream before. What a strange sound. I opened my mouth but, like in a nightmare, no sound came out. Blood filled my vision and I could hear the loud twisting of metal and the cracking of bones as we fell until we stopped. The car was upside down. I wiped the blood from my eyes with my shaking hands. My door had been torn off. Dad’s door was wedged against the earth, mud tumbling through the shattered windscreen on top of us. I unbuckled the seat belt that was tangled around my knees and fell on to the ceiling of the car before hauling myself out. When I tried to stand up and orientate myself, I felt a searing pain through my right ankle. I looked back at Dad. He was still screaming. His shirt was stained with blood. The car had crumpled around him and it looked like he was crushed against the door. The way he was positioned, he couldn’t reach it. His right arm was mangled and broken. The smell of petrol filled my nostrils and I noticed a plume of flame in the undergrowth at the rear of the car.
‘It’s on fire,’ I said, my voice trembling.
Dad lunged towards me. ‘Get me out!’ His head was pinned sideways to the roof of the car. It would have been easy for me to release him from the seat belt. I’m sure there would have been time. I could have pulled him out. But, instead, I scrambled up the incline with my elbows, dragging my useless foot, grunting with pain. Dad was screaming again, begging, ‘Don’t leave me here! Peter! Please!’ and then in fury, ‘I am your father. Get me out!’ I heard the flames taking hold as I edged my way up the embankment. I heard my father’s screams. I didn’t look back.
I woke up on a stretcher at the side of the road in the dark as the ambulanceman lifted my right foot. Another one held my head with his bare hands. The shock was intense, but I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that he was touching me or the pain in my ankle. My shirt and jacket lay in ribbons on the grass verge. My trousers had been cut open. I didn’t dare to look down at my foot. The ambulancemen talked to me in soft and sorrowful voices. ‘What’s your name, kiddo?’
What was my name? I felt exhausted, too tired to talk. One of the men said, ‘I think he’ll be okay. Not coughing blood or clutching his stomach, so probably no internals. You think that was his dad?’
I raised my head long enough to say, ‘Yeah, that was my dad.’
Everyone touched me in hospital, the nurses, the doctors, the police, the social worker, the chaplain. In my haze of medication in the first two days, each touch was joyous. I shook hands with everyone, cried tears, laughed aloud at the craziness of everything that happened. My foot was operated on straight away. I had broken my ankle. They said it was a clean break. Six weeks in a plaster cast and using crutches and I’d be as good as new.
Every time a nurse or a lady doctor touched me below the neck, I got an erection. Most of them noticed and ignored it, but some kindly told me that it was nothing to be embarrassed about and that it was a totally normal reaction, especially at my age. I felt less like a freak by the day.
I had a laceration across my hairline where my head had hit the rear-view mirror. Nine stitches across my head made me look a little bit like Frankenstein’s monster. The food was regular and about as wholesome as whatever Dad and I had cooked. I shared a ward with four other men, all much older than me. I had never shared a room with anyone before, not since those two nights when I was seven years old. These men spoke to me sympathetically. A nurse told me she had turned away a local journalist who wanted to ask me about my father’s last moments. They were all disturbed when I explained that I had no living relatives. They referred to me as the orphan.
Everyone in the hospital felt sorry for me. I got anything I asked for, including a haircut and new clothing.
The police ruled that my dad’s death was accidental. I said I had swerved to avoid a dog. It wasn’t unusual to see dogs everywhere around Rotorua, so it was entirely believable. The police were kind. They handed me a bag of what they were able to recover from the car and from my dad’s burnt corpse: his broken watch with its melted strap, his fake wedding ring, his large set of keys and a briefcase containing some tax forms and that day’s newspaper that had been thrown from the car.
The Rotorua Daily Post did a fundraiser for me. The people of Rotorua were exceptionally generous. I allowed Jill Nicholas, the local reporter, to interview me. The social worker told me that while technically I was old enough to live on my own, she strongly recommended that I stay with friends for a while. I refused the offer, insisting that I had been living independently for years, that I cooked and shopped and earned my own money with my vegetables. She was surprised that I hadn’t been to school, and that I wasn’t registered with a local doctor. She arranged for a solicitor to telephone me in the hospital to discuss my dad’s estate. When I was well enough, I could visit him in his office, but in the meantime, the generous donations from Rotorua’s finest would keep me going. I could buy a replacement car, which was what I needed most urgently.
Ten days after the accident, I was discharged on two crutches with a recommendation to rest as much as possible. A district nurse would visit every day at 11 a.m. The social worker drove me back home from the hospital, stopping off to pick up groceries on the way.
She took a tour of the house, satisfied that there were no steps. Everything was conveniently laid out. She had no interest in investigating the barn, but she did take a walk around my vegetable plot. She asked me again if there was anybody I wanted to call. I asked for her help to install a phone and she registered surprise and dismay that we didn’t already have one. She said that she would look into it ‘as a matter of urgency’。 She reluctantly left me on my own. The nurse would be there in the morning. The social worker patted me on the arm and told me I was a brave boy. I glowed under her touch.
I had missed Lindy, but I knew she had access to water. Her food might have run out but I was home now. She’d be okay. And she’d never have to face my dad again. He was the reason she wanted to leave. It was just going to be the two of us. She would be happy to stay with me.
As soon as the social worker was gone, I took the key off the latch on the back door and stumbled my way out to the barn, dangling the bag of groceries off one crutch.
43
Sally
I moved into the cottage the following week, the last week of September. All of the structural work was done. I had a working bathroom and kitchen, but no carpets or curtains. The walls were plastered but not painted. The patio area wasn’t finished, and the floor tiles in the hallway had yet to be laid. Most of the furniture hadn’t been delivered, but I hung sheets for curtains and took the old sofa and the kitchen table and chairs from the house. None of my friends had wanted them anyway. I bought some cheap rugs to scatter on the floor as a temporary fix.
Nadine introduced me to all the tradesmen and women who were coming to finish their various jobs. It was uncomfortable with people coming and going at all times of the day. I spent as much time as possible out and about.
I missed my piano dreadfully, but I couldn’t install it in the cottage while the builders were still working because of the dust, so for one whole week, I went to stay with Aunt Christine in Dublin and played hers every day.
She was shocked to hear all about Mark Butler/Norton. But she had a vague recollection of Mum telling her that Denise had a brother. ‘Jean was much more in touch with Denise’s family than Tom was. I recall her saying something about the brother being too old, that Denise wouldn’t have recognized him as the four-year-old she had last seen.’