The Hanging Club- Max Wolfe 03

4

Just before three o’clock on a sun-soaked Monday afternoon, Stan and I waited for Scout outside the school gates, both of us struggling to contain our emotions.

Our small red Cavalier King Charles Spaniel was always excited at the school gates – all those kids, all that attention, all those compliments – but for me today was special because it was the last day of the school year.

And we had made it.

The children began to appear and the waiting crowd of parents surged forward.

I saw the long blonde hair of Miss Davies – my daughter Scout’s beloved teacher – and then there were little girls whose faces I recognised and finally Scout herself, carting a huge folder and wearing a school dress that was the smallest they had in stock but still came down well below her knees.

Miss Davies saw me and smiled, waved, and gave me a big thumb’s up.

I wanted to thank her – for everything – but too many parents were milling around her, giving her gifts, wanting a word before the long summer break, so Stan and I stood and waited at the school gates, his tail wagging wildly and his round black eyes bulging with excitement.

‘We watched a film because it was the last day,’ Scout said, by way of greeting. ‘It was about a Japanese fish called Ponyo.’ She spotted the face of a friend who she hadn’t seen for at least five minutes.

‘MIA! MIA! MIA-MIA-MIA-MIA-MIA!’

‘Bye, Scout!’

‘Bye, Mia!’

Scout gave me her folder stuffed full of the year’s work. Her name and class printed neatly on the front.

Scout Wolfe, 1D.

On top was one of her early works, a picture called ‘My Family’ that I remembered from last September. In the picture Scout’s family was just a little stick-figure man who didn’t even have a briefcase to call his own and a little girl with brown hair and a red dog. That picture had torn at my heart last year because the man and the girl and the dog had seemed lost among all that white space. But now it made me smile.

We made it!

We drifted away from the school gates, and all around us there were best wishes for the holidays, and plans being made to stay in touch, and I felt a sense of relief that was almost overwhelming.

All parents want the same things for their children. But the single parent wants something extra. The single parent wants to survive.

If Scout and I could get through the first year of school, then I knew we could get through anything.

She took Stan’s lead, wrapped it twice around her thin wrist, but the dog was still skittish, as if the thrills of the school gates had yet to wear off. He was sniffing a lamppost, wild-eyed and lost in his own world, that world of scent that dogs live in, when he suddenly looked up and spotted a well-groomed poodle on the far side of the road. Without warning, he tried to dive into the traffic and Scout had to hold him back with both hands.

I took the lead from her and we both stared at Stan, who only had eyes for the poodle on the far side of the road.

‘He’s reached sexual maturity,’ Scout said. ‘You’re going to have to face it, Daddy.’

The homeless man sat on the pavement in the shade of the great arched entrance to Smithfield meat market.

He wore an old green T-shirt, the sleeves far too long, threadbare camouflage trousers and combat boots with no laces. There was a baseball cap in front of him containing a few coins. Everything about him said ex-serviceman.

Without looking up, he spoke to us as we walked past.

‘Spare fifty grand?’

The line made me smile. It was a good line. Unexpected.

And then my smile froze because I knew that voice from years ago. Not the voice of this man but the boy he had once been. A time when I knew that voice as well as I knew my own.

I slowly turned and walked back to him, Scout and Stan following me. And he looked up – a light-skinned black man who had not shaved for a while, who had not slept in a bed last night, and who had not eaten properly for a long time.

But it was still him.

‘Jackson Rose,’ I said, and it wasn’t a question, because there was no doubt in my mind, and I saw the shock of recognition dawn on that familiar face.

‘Max?’

How long had it been? Thirteen years. Another last day of term in what was for us the last school year of them all. But for the five years before that, we had been closer than brothers.

One of those childhood friendships that you never find again.

I held out my hand and helped him to his feet and he grinned and I saw the gap-toothed smile I remembered, although one of his front teeth was chipped now, and we hugged, both laughing at the improbability of it all. Then we stood apart, shaking our heads. Time overwhelmed us.

I looked at his filthy army fatigues.

He looked at my daughter. And our dog.

And then we laughed again.

‘You’re a father?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘Yes.’

That gap-toothed grin. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’

He held out his hand to Scout and she solemnly shook it.

‘Jackson Rose,’ he said.

‘Scout Wolfe,’ she said, and she watched him as he crouched down to make a fuss of Stan. ‘Are you my daddy’s friend?’

‘That’s right, Scout. And do you know what they say?’

Scout shook her head.

‘I don’t know what they say,’ she confessed.

‘You can make new friends,’ Jackson Rose said, looking at me. ‘But you can’t make old friends.’ He gave me that gap-toothed grin. ‘Isn’t that right, Max?’

‘You’re coming home with us,’ I said.

Something passed across his face.

‘I can’t come home with you and Scout,’ he said, looking away, and I saw that he was ashamed.

‘Why not?’

He hesitated for a moment then gave a short, embarrassed laugh.

‘Because I really need a shower,’ he said.

‘We’ve got a shower,’ I said.

Then I looked at Scout, wondering if she would be worried by the presence of a stranger under our roof. But she reached out and took Jackson’s hand.

‘My friend’s called Mia,’ she told him.

We took him home.

My plan was to order a Thai takeaway, or pizza, or whatever he wanted, but as soon as I mentioned food he was at the fridge door, looking at what we had.

‘I was a cook in the army,’ he said. ‘You like curry, Scout? Everybody likes curry, right?’

Scout looked doubtful. She had never tried curry.

‘This is a special curry,’ Jackson said, pulling out onions, carrots, chicken. Mrs Murphy, our housekeeper, kept stuff in there. I was more of a scrambled omelette man. ‘A Japanese curry,’ Jackson said, and I saw the boy he had been, and how nothing could stop him once he had decided on a course of action. ‘Not too spicy,’ he said, with a reassuring wink to Scout. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’

And it was delicious. The three of us ate Jackson’s Japanese curry with the heat of the day wearing off outside, and Stan sleeping in his basket. When Scout had finished her first curry and gone off to her room, Jackson and I smiled at each other.

‘You’re sleeping rough, Jackson?’

He laughed.

‘Purely temporary. And what about you? Anybody else coming home?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s just us,’ I said. ‘Me and Scout. This is it.’

His big wide smile. Then it slowly faded. ‘What happened, Max?’

I wasn’t sure if I could explain it to him, or even to myself.

‘I met a girl, and we fell in love, and then we had a baby, and it was the most beautiful baby in the world. And then things were harder than we ever thought they would be. No money. Her career stalled. My job was all hours and maybe sometimes I was too wrapped up in it. And this girl, Jackson – she was a beauty.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Anne,’ I said, and I wondered if I would ever be able to say that one little name without a stab of pain. ‘And she met someone else. A good-looking guy with plenty of money.’

‘Nothing like you then?’

‘Nothing like me. She fell in love.’ I paused. This next bit was tough to talk about. ‘And got pregnant with his kid. Walked out on us. Now she’s got a new life, got a new family – and me and Scout, we had to get on with it, too. And we did.’

‘This Anne – she still see the kid?’

‘On and off. It’s patchy, to be honest. She’s busy with this new life. Happens all the time.’

‘Yes, it does. But it’s still hard.’

‘It’s actually not that hard because Scout is the best thing that ever happened to me, Jackson. And because it feels like everybody we know is rooting for us.’ I thought of Mrs Murphy. I thought of Miss Davies. And I thought of Edie Wren, who could talk to Scout more naturally than anyone in the world.

‘Lot of support,’ Jackson said.

‘We’re doing all right,’ I said.

The cardboard folder that Scout had brought home was on the dinner table. Jackson leafed through it.

‘What about you?’ I said. ‘Wife? Kids?’ I remembered how much girls had liked him. For his looks, and for his wildness, and for his lack of fear.

He shook his head.

‘Not me,’ he smiled, as if the thought had never even crossed his mind, and when he rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn, I saw how exhausted he was. ‘I’ve been too busy feeding the British Army.’

‘You’re worn out,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

I showed him the little spare room at the far end of the loft and he said that he might have a nap for a bit and I told him that was a good idea.

‘I’m glad to see you, Max,’ he said, and I knew that I would never have a friend like him again.

‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Do you need anything?’

He smiled shyly and I cursed my stupidity.

Jackson needed everything.

When I came back with clean clothes, towels and toothbrush, he was standing by the window, staring down at the meat market. He had pulled off his boots, socks and T-shirt, and I saw that his entire torso – his back, his chest, and his shoulders – was one mass of scar tissue. The skin looked as though it had been torn off and then carelessly pulled back together. It was livid, corrugated, discoloured, and it made my throat constrict with shock.

‘What happened?’ I said, echoing his question to me.

‘I served my country,’ smiled Jackson Rose.