His bond with Iveson is the only flesh-and-blood relationship that has ever truly mattered to Cox. He thinks upon it, for a time, wondering at the strange, cold, quiet feeling at the edge of his consciousness. Could it be sorrow? A sadness at the nearness of the old man’s departure: the inevitable loneliness of true isolation. He ponders upon it, laying back upon wet grey stone, naked and streaked with filth. Thinks upon psychiatrists and counsellors. Smiles, as he recalls his more grandiose fabrications, half wishing he could risk writing some down and sending them to Rufus Orton – show him how creative his imagination can be.
Cox can see himself now, sitting in the padded chair in the peaceful little office, letting tears pour down his face as he told his latest counsellor about the man who hurt him at an abandoned train station in Derbyshire when he was eight years old, or being forced by bigger, stronger boys to hold a litter of feral kittens beneath the water in the lily pond, sobbing as he felt the fight go out of their fragile, helpless bodies. Such revelations were always warmly received by the psychotherapist. They would nod, understandingly, and make sympathetic noises as their pen moved over the pages of their notes and their eyes gleamed with excitement at the notion of being responsible for opening closed doors in their patient’s subconscious. Cox has never shared his earliest memory with any of his doctors, for fear that they would read meaning into it, when none exists. He sees nothing of importance, no symbolism or emotional catalyst. In his memory, he is a little under three years old. He is sitting on a dusty wooden floor in a room with a high ceiling. There are flickering candles and a smell that is not exactly pleasant, but which makes his mouth water. His mother is nearby. The light in the room does not permit him to see her features, but the shadow in the corner of the room contains her vague likeness, and he can see the glowing tip of the nasty-smelling thing she holds between her lips. He is cold, and sticky, and his skin feels odd: tight and uncomfortable; the feeling he gets when she forgets to change his nappy, but all over him. And he is scared. He doesn’t look right. When he raises his hands he is the wrong colour: the jolly pink of his flesh transformed into an ugly off-white. He keeps shivering, and every time he does, he watches his skin disintegrate: tiny fissures opening up in the surface of his flesh; his skin cracking like the shell of a hard-boiled egg. And he is trying not to cry, because his mother has told him not to. So too did the voice: the voice that smelled of Mother, and which clambered hotly into his ear even as the strange cold goo coated his skin. Don’t cry, he’d said. Don’t cry or you’ll spoil it …
Half a century later, Cox has long since filled in the blanks. His mother had instructed one of her gentlemen to make her son look angelic. And he, eager to please, had painted Griffin with a thick, chalky paint. He’d told him not to cry so he didn’t spoil the effect. His mother wanted to see angels, and it was Griffin’s job to become a moon-white cherub. He cannot remember whether he satisfied his mother. That part of the recollection is curiously absent. But he knows enough about Mother’s whims to presume that he fell short of her expectations. She wanted her son to be a Hercules; a Theseus capable of negotiating the labyrinth and slaying the minotaur. She told him daily that he was descended from the ancient gods, that his absent father came to her as a bull; as a swan; a shower of rain or a vision of explosive ecstasy. She told him that the men and women who lounged and laboured and touched one another in every corner of the house and gardens were servants, ready to lay down their lives in service to a boy with the blood of the deities in his veins. He grew up believing himself Almighty. His descent from Mount Olympus was brutal and merciless. When reality intruded into their bohemian idyll, when he was plucked from their Eden and deposited at a boarding school, he discovered himself to be anything but godly. He was weak. Fragile. Feeble. He was not beautiful, as he had believed. He did not have loyal retainers upon whom he could call. He was a small, delicate boy with wet eyes and a weak chest and he would spend the next years of his life being dissected; broken apart and badly remade, by boys who preyed upon him for sport.
Cox looks away from the memory. He has spent too many years undoing the damage of his childhood to linger upon the memories now. He is in an ebullient mood. Has been for days. He’s free.
He smiles as he says the word, slowly, inside his mind.
Free!
It has been several
