A Moment Of Madness

Nineteen

Kelly woke up in a hospital bed again. It was beginning to become a habit.

He ached all over. He didn’t think he could move, and, in any case, he didn’t dare. His left arm appeared to be in a sling. He had no idea whether it was broken or not. His ribs hurt even more than they had first time round. His stomach felt empty, yet it was all he could do not to retch. He was afraid that if he did his ribcage would just fall apart. There was an acrid taste of bile at the back of his throat. His whole face was sore. His mouth hurt particularly badly and there was a throbbing pain behind his eyes which felt as if they were glued together.

He couldn’t remember, of course, exactly what had happened to him or how he came to be in hospital again in such a state. But he knew he’d been on a terrific drinking bout. He had a vague memory of a succession of pubs and clubs, and of kipping on some itinerant drinking companion’s sofa at some stage, and then he recalled being very cold, and aware that he was lying on the ground somewhere outdoors after dark. There had been a road. No, a roundabout. Or had there? It was all so hazy. After that all he could remember was pain. He winced. Yes, somebody, more than one somebody he thought, had used him as a punch bag. He had no idea whether or not it had been somebody he knew. No idea at all.

Very slowly and carefully Kelly attempted to open his eyes, or at least to do so as best he could. There was someone sitting on a chair by the bedside again. At first he couldn’t even make out who it was, then his vision began to clear a little. Moira? No. It wasn’t Moira. Not this time. No. It was Nick. And the expression on his son’s face said it all. One of Kelly’s eyes wouldn’t open at all and the other wasn’t focusing properly. But he could see Nick quite well enough. Nick’s eyes were red-rimmed and full of reproach. Kelly could think of nothing to say. Then Nick lowered his head, and cast his gaze down at the ground as if he did not really want to see his father at all. Kelly didn’t blame him.

For two or three minutes there was total silence in the room. Nick made no attempt to speak at all.

‘Hello, son,’ Kelly managed eventually. It was a big effort to move his lips, which were obviously quite badly bruised and swollen. His tongue found a broken tooth. He could taste blood.

Nick didn’t reply, but he raised his eyes again and looked his father full in the face. Kelly could feel his son’s disappointment and he was ashamed. But the only way he knew of coping with his shame was to hide it as best he could.

‘I didn’t know you were about,’ he remarked, struggling for normality, trying to pretend that it was perfectly normal for a middle-aged professional man to go on a three-day bender and be found half unconscious in the middle of a roundabout, having been punched silly and probably robbed, if his memory was even partly working, Kelly thought.

‘Moira called me,’ said Nick flatly.

‘Ah.’ Kelly slumped back on the pillows. He didn’t know what else to say. He knew what he needed — a very large drink. His throat was parched. The old familiar craving for alcohol nagged at the core of him. He could hardly believe he had reached that stage so quickly, but he knew that he had.

Suddenly Nick stood up, eyes blazing. ‘You’re a fucking disgrace, Dad, you know that, don’t you?’ he shouted.

‘I guess,’ said Kelly.

‘It’s that bloody Silver woman, isn’t it?’ Nick continued, still shouting. ‘You’re under her spell, aren’t you, you stupid bastard? And I didn’t need Moira to tell me that. I could work it out for myself.’

Kelly didn’t reply. He had nothing to say.

‘I was just a kid when you did this before, when you just walked out on Mum and me, and I’ve spent the rest of my life fucking well making excuses for you,’ Nick went on.

‘Sorry,’ said Kelly lamely.

‘I’ve heard that before, Dad, and all I’m here for today is to tell you that I never want to do that again. Not as long as I live. There are no excuses for you any more, there really aren’t. I just don’t want to see you again, do you understand that?’

‘I understand,’ muttered Kelly, trying desperately to clear his fuddled brain. ‘But I want to see you, you know that.’

‘Do you?’ stormed Nick. ‘Well, tough shit. I don’t think you give a fuck, in any case. You might kid yourself that you do, but you don’t. You never did in my opinion. Not about me or Mum, not ever, and now I don’t think you do about Moira. She doesn’t fucking well deserve you, in fact nobody fucking deserves you. The only person you ever seem to have cared about is that flash bitch Angel Silver, and she’s probably the only one who treats you the way you should be treated. Like the scum that you are.’

Kelly recoiled on to the pillows, almost as if Nick had punched him. He had never heard his son swear like that before, never seen him lose his temper, rarely heard him raise his voice. He had often congratulated himself on the well-adjusted, even-tempered son he had somehow managed to produce, a young man so very different from his father, Kelly had thought.

But this was a new kind of Nick. Neither had realised that Kelly’s behaviour could give rise to that level of emotion in Nick.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Kelly began again, not sure at all where he was going from there.

He didn’t need to worry. His son appeared to have no intention of letting him go anywhere. Nick’s eyes narrowed. There was a steeliness in them which Kelly had never noticed before.

‘Save it,’ he said in an icy-cold voice that somehow indicated the depth of his anger far more than when he had shouted earlier. ‘You’re on your own now as far as I’m concerned. The biggest pity is that you didn’t manage to get yourself killed last night.’

Again Kelly felt he couldn’t argue. He did not attempt to reply. Nick got up from his chair and stood by his father’s bedside for a minute or two just looking through those narrowed eyes. Then he shook his head dismissively, turned on his heel and left, disappearing through the curtain screen into the main ward.

Outside the ward in the corridor Nick paused for a moment, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and struggled to regain control. Nick didn’t like losing control. Unlike his father he was naturally a very controlled man. And his army training had made him even more so.

He realised that his fists were tightly closed and it was only with some difficulty that he managed to prise them open. He really had wanted to punch some sense into his father.

The problem was that he didn’t know what to do, how to help, if indeed there was a way of helping.

He had blamed Angel Silver, and he still blamed Angel. But his father had displayed that tragically weak side of his nature yet again.

Perhaps Nick had only been kidding himself that Kelly had ever really changed. It seemed that Kelly had once more displayed a complete lack of strength of character.

Kelly was relieved to see the back of Nick. Confrontation was beyond him at that moment. He sank deeper into the pillows. Nick was probably right. He certainly couldn’t argue with him. It might well be better if he had got himself killed. His son had accepted so much that his father had done. Kelly had been forgiven and loved by a young man who had every reason to bear a grudge. But somehow or other Nick never had — not previously, anyway, or not as far as Kelly knew. Now Kelly had gone and done it again, and this time he’d well and truly blown it.

He closed his eyes, hoping for oblivion, but it never came. And when eventually he did manage to drift into fitful sleep an unwelcome dream enveloped him in such a way that he felt that he was still awake. Angel stood in front of him. She was wearing black leather — not motorbike gear, more the sort that’s sold in Soho sex shops. Knee-high stiletto-heeled boots, a micro-skirt and a tight bodice, laced down the front, exposing the tantalising swell of her breasts. She had a mocking smile on her face, yet at the same time she was beckoning him towards her.

Kelly stepped forward and hit some kind of invisible barrier; maybe it was glass. He leaned into it, pushed against it. Nothing made any difference. He could not reach her. But he could hear her voice, husky, slightly slurred, the way it all too often was.

‘What’s the matter, John? Don’t you want me any more?’ She kept on beckoning him. ‘Come to me, John, come to me. I need you. I want you...’

He lurched towards her, reaching out to her, trying to speak. The words wouldn’t come, but he stretched out his arms to her. Only when he sought to grasp hold of her there was nothing there. He felt himself crashing to the ground. His head hit something sharp. He couldn’t even see her any more. There was only blackness in front of his eyes again.

He could hear other, new voices.

‘Should we get help, Moira?’

‘I am the bloody help. I’m a nurse, remember.’

Moira’s voice was hard, but then Kelly felt a soft hand round his wrist. Fingertips gently lifted an eyelid.

‘No, I think he’s all right. Maybe he had a dream. He’s waking up, look. Let’s just help him back into bed.’

Moira was right. Kelly was waking up. His dream had been so vivid that he glanced over towards the window to see if Angel was still there. She wasn’t. It was only then that he realised that he must have been dreaming and, although Kelly knew it was madness, with that realisation came a quite terrible disappointment.

He forced himself to concentrate on what passed for reality. But the struggle to get his faculties working again was a tough one. Moira was there. He’d heard her name used, and in any case he knew her voice well enough — as indeed he did the male voice, but none the less it took him a little while to put it together with a face he could see only hazily. His vision still wasn’t good but recognition came to him suddenly. Joe Robertson. Joe and Moira. It was Moira who still had one hand round his wrist, checking his pulse rate, and he could see that she looked concerned. He was just about together enough to wonder that she could still feel any concern for him.

Joe Robertson did not look concerned. Instead he looked plain furious. Kelly had only very rarely seen Joe angry, but his normally genial face was now as black as thunder. And the big man seemed to be looming over him.

It was then that Kelly realised that he was on the floor. So that was what they meant about helping him back to bed. He struggled to raise himself, tucking one leg under his body, reaching out a hand. Vicious stabs of pain immediately shot though his battered torso. He felt himself falling again. He grabbed something and tried to hold on. It was the bedside cabinet which, it seemed, was on wheels. A very dangerous piece of furniture to a man in his condition. It swung towards him as he pulled on it. Moira, still crouched next to him, just managed to get out of the way but the cabinet hit Kelly full in the chest. His leg gave way beneath him and he slumped full length on to the floor once more.

‘For God’s sake,’ boomed Joe.

Then Kelly felt hands tuck under his armpits and strong arms raise him and hoist him none too gently on to the bed.

‘Th-thanks,’ he murmured.

‘Don’t thank me yet, you waste of space,’ stormed Joe. ‘I’m here to give you the bollocking of your life.’

Kelly glanced weakly at Moira, then at the clock on the wall. It was just gone noon. He knew that Moira always came off duty by 7.30, but she was still in uniform. He could only assume that, in spite of her justifiably acerbic manner towards him, she had stayed on at the hospital because of him. And he knew that he didn’t deserve that.

‘You needn’t look to me for support,’ she told him sharply. ‘I’m telling you now, you’ve got one chance left to sort yourself out, and you can think yourself bloody lucky you’re being given that. The alternative is the gutter again. Even you must be able to grasp that. You’ve been there before, after all.’

‘W-what?’ stumbled Kelly.

‘It’s quite simple,’ said Joe. ‘You go into rehab now. As soon as they let you out of here. You get yourself sorted out. If you don’t you lose your job. I would have no compunction whatsoever about sacking you. In fact it’s only because of how far we go back, you raving lunatic, that I’m not sacking you now. And along with your job you’d lose your home and everything else. You’ve already lost your son, from what I hear, and what Moira is doing here, God knows...’

‘Habit, I think,’ said Moira grimly. Obliquely Kelly remembered when she had told him that before, the last time they had made love. ‘I’m not hanging about, I can tell you now, John,’ she went on. ‘Enough’s enough.’

‘Right,’ said Joe Robertson. ‘If you are going to have any chance at all of rebuilding your life, for the umpteenth fucking time, John Kelly, you do as I tell you. You go into rehab. I will help you get all the help there is and I’m even prepared to get the Argus to finance it, though God knows why. We still have a management with a certain limited tolerance of talented boozers. But it is limited, John. And even as things are, I don’t know how I’m going to square it when your court case comes up. The management don’t know about the coke yet, and it’ll be public knowledge after you go to court. You’re firmly in last chance saloon. Mess this is up, and it’s all over. The choice is yours, but I want your answer now.’

Kelly really didn’t care, but neither did he have the strength to argue. ‘Whatever you say,’ he responded lamely.

‘And I suppose that’s your way of saying thank you, is it?’

Kelly gritted his teeth. Which hurt a lot. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said weakly. ‘I feel too bloody awful to make a speech.’

Joe glowered at him. ‘If you let me down I’ll kill you,’ he said.

Kelly groaned.

‘You won’t need to,’ said Moira. ‘He’ll kill himself.’

Kelly groaned again.

‘We’ll be back,’ said Joe, making it sound like a threat, as he and Moira headed for the curtain screen.

Joe pulled the curtain to one side and then turned once more to study Kelly in silence for just a moment or two. When he eventually spoke his voice was much quieter, resigned, almost sad.

‘It’s true, John,’ he said. ‘Anybody but you I’d have sacked already. Thing is, I remember the man you almost were.’

Suddenly Kelly felt tears pricking.

‘I am sorry, Joe,’ he said, meaning it at that moment at least. ‘And I will try not to let you down.’

Joe Robertson’s features softened, just a bit. Moira, standing to one side of the editor, still looked betrayed. However, Joe gave a small smile. His usual good humour had yet to be restored but at least his fury seemed to have abated, thought Kelly.

‘It’s for your own sake, John,’ Joe said.

They booked him into a rehab centre on the outskirts of Newton Abbot. And four days later, early in the morning, Joe Robertson came to pick him up from hospital and drove him there.

Kelly was contrite, so much so that he was almost surprised at himself. But then he, more than anyone, knew the path along which he was travelling and where it would lead. He was also physically weak and battered, which made him all the more compliant. He could walk unaided, in spite of his cracked ribs, which had indeed been further damaged when he was beaten up, and his arm had not been broken in the fracas, rather his wrist had been badly strained. But everything hurt, particularly, still, his face and head.

Joe carried Kelly’s small bag into the hall of the big Victorian villa known as Plumpton House, and rather pointedly did not leave until Kelly was safely handed into the care of a senior helper.

‘Right then,’ said Joe in what sounded like a deliberate attempt to be brusque and businesslike. ‘You’re in the hands of the experts now. Just do what you’re told and they’ll get you sorted, I’m sure of it.’

Kelly hoped so. But only he knew the mess his head was in. However, he resolved to do his best. He recognised the faces of the other people at the rehab centre as he was led through the public rooms on the ground floor and then upstairs to his bedroom. He didn’t know any of them, but, by God, he knew the look in their eyes.

It was fear.

Kelly was afraid too — more afraid than he had been for a long time. He hadn’t really needed Joe to tell him he was in last chance saloon. He been aware of that, even before he was mugged and left to rot in the middle of Castle Circus, which he now understood to be where he had been found in such a sorry state. He had known that he was en route to self-destruction. He just hadn’t been prepared even to think about it. He’d been on a roller coaster ride and he hadn’t known how to get off.

Kelly’s bags were searched thoroughly when he got to his room. The clothes he was wearing were checked and he was asked to turn out his pockets. It was a bit like arriving for your first term at a particularly strict boarding school, he thought obliquely, but he understood perfectly what was going on. The staff were looking for concealed alcohol. When so many of the inmates were only there because their employers or relatives persuaded them or even bullied them into it, smuggling in supplies of booze was common. The sheer terror of not being able to get a drink could never quite be understood by anyone who was not an alcoholic. Kelly understood.

Kelly, however, was clean. It was not his intention either deliberately to waste the Argus’ money, or to slide any further down the slippery slope he knew he was on.

He felt close to despair as he sat on the narrow bed he had been allocated in a room which also contained three other beds and very little else. He had yet even to meet the men he would be sleeping alongside, and Kelly couldn’t remember when he had last shared a room with anyone other than a woman.

He was not given long to dwell on his misery. Plumpton House operated a strict and relentless regime. It was only just before 10 a.m. when he was taken to his first therapy session, but he was told that had begun at 8.30. All day he attended lectures and therapy of one kind or another. And in the evening he and the other residents were bussed to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting nearby. Kelly had no time to himself at all until after 10.30, when he half threw himself, exhausted, face down on his bed.

Plumpton kept the same routine going from 8.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m. every day, seven days a week. And Kelly, like most of the others, had agreed to complete a four-week course.

At first, perhaps because of his weak physical condition, Kelly really did find the regime gruelling. But he continued to do his best. He arrived punctually for his lectures and therapy sessions, and really tried to immerse himself into the Plumpton House programme. At least he was accepting help, he told himself, and it was always said that was the first step to recovery. Kelly vowed to others and to himself that he would stay off the booze, and he meant it. He also made a promise to himself that this time, even after coming out of rehab, he would persevere with the AA meetings, by which Plumpton House, like most rehabilitation centres, put so much store.

Joe visited and so did Moira, which Kelly knew was more than he deserved.

Then, after he had been at Plumpton for two weeks, on a glorious spring afternoon, Nick turned up. Kelly was overcome. He had believed his son when he’d told him he wanted no more of him. He had believed it because he had come near to destroying the boy’s life once many years previously, and he more than understood that Nick was not prepared even to give him the chance of doing it again.

But Nick’s visit proved to be a pleasant surprise. He was standing looking out over the garden with his back to the room when Kelly walked into the big old conservatory where the residents habitually received their visitors.

Hearing his footsteps perhaps, Nick turned round at once to face his father. The sun glinted on his sandy hair and his face looked tanned. Nick almost always looked tanned. And very handsome, Kelly thought. And Nick was smiling at him. Hope rose inside Kelly like the dawning of a new day. Perhaps he had not lost his son after all. Nick was definitely smiling, albeit a little tentatively.

‘I didn’t mean what I said, Dad,’ he told his father.

‘You had every right to,’ replied Kelly.

‘Yeah.’ Nick stopped smiling and his voice was serious when he spoke again. ‘That’s not what it’s about, though, is it?’

‘Isn’t it?’ responded Kelly. ‘All I’ve ever done is let you down, Nick. You told me that yourself, and you were right.’

Nick nodded. ‘Yes, that’s true too. But you’re my father and I love you. I can’t change that. I wish I could sometimes, but there it is.’

‘I bet you wish you could,’ said Kelly. And he had felt quite swelled with love and pride.

‘Just don’t mess up, Dad, will you? Not this time. Not again.’

‘I won’t,’ Kelly promised him.

‘I’ve got to go abroad, just for a few days, and then I’ll come down again as soon as I can.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked Kelly, pleased to be able to concentrate on somebody else’s life for a moment instead of the mess his own was in.

‘Munich,’ responded Nick shortly.

‘Anything interesting?’ Kelly enquired without a lot of hope of much reply. Nick had never given a lot away about his work and Kelly still didn’t fully understand exactly what his business had been since he left the army.

‘Deeply boring,’ replied Nick. ‘Like everything about computers, unless you’re a geek like me.’

Kelly smiled at that. Anyone less like a geek than this fit and handsome son of his, who still looked every inch the soldier he had once been, was difficult to imagine.

A few days later, while he was still living at Plumpton House, Kelly’s case came up at Torquay Magistrates’ Court. Kelly had spent plenty of time in courts at all levels, but he had never stood in the dock before. He found that he did not like it at all.

He was, however, lucky. Joe spoke up for him. The chairman of the magistrates did not seem so vehement about drink driving offences as most of his ilk, and in fact must have been a particularly tolerant man, as even the revelation that drugs had been involved didn’t send him totally apoplectic. Kelly was given a six-month jail sentence suspended for two years. He was extremely lucky. He could easily have gone to jail, and he knew it.

Because of his narrow escape, because of Nick, because of Joe, and yes, because of Moira, Kelly became even more determined to keep his promise to himself, to finish his course at Plumpton, and totally to clean up his act. He was also determined that he would walk away from Angel, and make it up with Moira, if she’d let him. After all, Angel had been the cause of most of what had gone wrong. But Kelly knew that wasn’t entirely fair. It was his own obsession that had contributed so much to landing him in this mess. He had had choices. And he’d known with devastating clarity at every step what he was getting into. With his background he had known more than most. To get involved again with drinking and doing drugs had been the ultimate stupidity. But, once he had started, and with Angel to share those various seductive mind-altering substances with him in such exciting ways, he hadn’t been able to stop. Which, of course, had been more or less the story of his life.

He was going to stop now, though, he really was.

And yet, and yet, Kelly wasn’t able to stop himself calling Angel. From the very day he arrived at Plumpton House, he kept trying her repeatedly, at the same time swearing to himself that he would let go of her. That he wanted just to speak to her one more time.

He called her mobile without any success. He kept phoning Maythorpe Manor, getting only the answering machine as usual. Eventually one night, at around midnight, she answered. She sounded high and he thought he could hear a male voice in the background.

‘I can’t talk to you, John,’ she said. ‘I’m knackered and you’ve just woken me up. Call again in the morning, will you?’

He was quite sure that she was lying, and also that if he called in the morning he would get only a recorded message again. He proved to be right, but kept trying. He told himself that he was in any case only calling to end it.

It was early evening, already dark after a damp, grey day, when Kelly was eventually discharged from Plumpton House, physically more or less mended and very, very sober. But emotionally he was not nearly as together as he had hoped. And so, instead of calling Moira or even Joe to collect him, he did exactly what he had told himself he wouldn’t do. A taxi had been booked to take him first to an AA meeting near his St Marychurch home. But as soon as he climbed aboard Kelly redirected the driver. He asked to be taken straight out to Maidencombe, to Maythorpe Manor.

As the taxi approached the big old house he could see a light on in the bedroom. He could also see shapes behind the curtains. More than one shape? He got out of the taxi outside the gates of Maythorpe and asked the driver to wait for him there in Rock Lane. As if bent on torturing himself, he decided to try to enter the house surreptitiously. Feeling quite nervous he walked to the gates and pumped the security code into the gizmo to one side. The gates swung silently open.

Kelly made his way carefully across the gravelled courtyard, trying to make as little noise as he could as his feet crunched on the little stones, and wondered if his key would still work. But he did not even have to use it. When he tried the front door he found that it was unlocked. Typical, he thought, as he opened it and slipped inside. Angel’s idea of security remained as erratic as ever, it seemed.

He closed the door as quietly as he could behind him and climbed the stairs cautiously. The bedroom door was ajar. He stopped in the doorway, looking in at a scene which he had somehow half expected, but that made no difference. It was still a shock.

Angel was in bed with two young men. She was sitting astride one of them, while the other had entered her from behind. Kelly’s first bizarre thought was that she looked like the filling in a rather outlandish sandwich. He watched in a kind of morbid fascination for a few moments. The bedroom he had spent so much time in smelled like a cross between a brothel and an opium den. There was little doubt that all three people on the bed were doped to the eyeballs. Kelly had no idea who they were, and suspected Angel probably didn’t know them very well either. She had often teased him with stories about having sex with strangers. But she was so high profile Kelly was still surprised that she would stage a mini orgy like this in her own home.

Kelly’s feet felt as if they were nailed to the floorboards. He didn’t want to watch, but neither could he move. Eventually Angel glanced over her shoulder and saw him. She was moving in rhythm with the two young men and she didn’t pause for an instant. Her eyes were glazed and puffy. Her mouth hung open. She pulled her lips into the familiar mocking smile.

‘Why don’t you come and join us, John?’ she invited him, her voice deep and husky.

For once he didn’t think she looked beautiful. In fact he thought she looked quite ugly. And her words somehow brought the life back into his legs. He did not reply. He had no reply. Instead he just turned round and fled. He took the stairs in leaps and bounds, hurried out of the house and half ran across the courtyard. There he had to pause because the big gates had automatically closed behind him earlier. With trembling fingers he punched in the security number to open them again, getting it right only at the third attempt. He could not stop himself looking back at the bedroom window. The shapes were still moving behind the curtains. He didn’t want to think about what she was doing, what was being done to her, but he couldn’t help it.

The window was almost hypnotic to him. It took a huge effort of will for him to look away and walk out through the gates to his waiting taxi. In the back of the car he felt the tears begin to roll down his face. He tried to wipe them away with the side of his hand. They wouldn’t stop. He hoped the driver wouldn’t notice, but he was beyond caring all that much.

A car Kelly would have recognised had he seen it was parked in the entrance to another big house just a short distance up Rock Lane from Maythorpe. Its lights were switched off, but in any case Kelly was in far too much of a state to notice anything.

He was still crying when he arrived home in St Marychurch. He wanted a drink, but he kept that resolve at least. He did not have one even though he thought there might still be booze in the kitchen cupboard. Instead he found some sleeping pills and took three.

He sought oblivion and he found it after a fashion. But when he woke suddenly several hours later with a headache and a fuzzy mouth, his cheeks were still wet with tears.