CHAPTER 37
written by I love music
ideas and suggestions by Skykat
SHOWDOWN
"Kim." Barry's voice cracked even as he said his name. He rose like a man condemned and if he hadn't at that moment felt Irene clasp her fingers in his he would surely have broken down.
Oh, God, son, please don't hate me. Please understand how much I've always loved you...
"Tell me what, Dad?" Kim Hyde repeated. He came further into the darkened candle-lit room, slowly, uncertainly, his blue eyes bewildered, unwittingly bringing rushing back to his father's mind a tender memory of a long gone day.
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"Hey, there, Kim! We're going to have heaps of fun at kindy while Daddy's at work, aren't we?"
A petite, pretty young Asian girl, her long dark hair struggling out of its pony tail and a splodge of green paint on the large waterproof apron she wore over jeans and a white T-shirt with the rainbow-coloured logo KindyKids emblazoned across, greeted them as pre-arranged while Barry stood talking to Debbie Rudd, the nursery school manager. Father and son had been given a tour of KindyKids the week before and while Kim had been to shy to join in with the other kids, he had taken a shine to Bonita and been fine if she stayed close by.
"Go say hi to Bonita, Kim," Barry prompted gently, his heart snapping in two as he deliberately let go of the tiny hand clinging desperately to his own.
Alarmed to feel his hand being dropped, the little boy looked up at his father, bewilderment in his big blue eyes. His lower lip trembled and a fat tear rolled slowly done one chubby cheek. They had never been separated before and at barely two years old, he was way younger than many Australian kids were when starting pre-school. But KindyKids, the brand new premises that had opened within a short driving distance, had an excellent reputation and Barry needed to get back to teaching, both to keep up with the latest teaching methods and to keep his sanity. And although he tried to tell himself that he needed to return to work too in order to pay the bills that were threatening to engulf them, the truth was very different. No bill had ever yet been left unpaid. For several years, Barry Hyde had been using his sharp brain to successfully play the stock market and as a result was quite comfortably off - if he hadn't been, he never would have been able to afford such exclusive childcare.
He watched as Bonita stooped down to Kim's height and said something that made him look up with a timid smile at a picture of Scooby Doo, one of several large cartoon and fairytale characters that had been painted on the walls. And as she rose again Kim willingly stretched up to reach her proffered hand and gave another small smile as, reassured by Bonita's presence and obviously in response to her whispered suggestion, he turned to wave a farewell to his father. But for a moment a shadow crossed his young face again, bewilderment returning briefly to those questioning blue eyes, and nothing could or ever would stop Barry's guilt.
Because his child should have still had a mother.
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"Why would I hate you?"
"What?"
He was drinking in every detail of his face. Savouring what might prove to be the very last moments he would ever spend with his son. That he resembled his mother Kerry so much twisted his heart with guilt at what he'd done just as it twisted with knife-like guilt every second of every day.
I can never forgive myself but if you can never forgive me, then I crumble and I die...
"Dad, you said "if I hate you". I heard you." He had reached him now. No longer a child, he stood taller, broader and stronger than his father and yet still with that same childlike trust in his eyes. "Why would I hate you?"
"I know I've been a huge disappointment to you," Kim continued brokenly, the yellow candlelight glowing on his soaking blond hair and catching the shine of raindrops on his face. "But I always wanted..."
"A disappointment?" Barry gulped back a sob and he wiped the pads of finger and thumb over his eyelids as tears threatened to blur his vision. "How can you even begin to think that?"
The answer when it came broke his heart.
The son he loved, was so proud of, only shrugged matter-of-factly. "I know you've never thought much of me much, Dad, and I don't blame you," he said, devoid of self pity. "It's tough on you, you being so clever and me being so dumb."
"Kim, you're not dumb, as you call it, and I've only ever loved you!" Barry cried, yearning to clasp him in his arms as he might have done when he was a small child, but so many years had passed since then and he'd hidden his emotion for so long that he held back even now. Yet there was a chink in his armour. Irene. Irene, standing by his side, the scent of her hair, the warmth of her breath, the strength of her love. Hesitantly, feeling unmanly and uneasy at the gesture, he reached out and briefly touched Kim's arm and was rewarded with the flicker of an uncertain smile. And then, as always, both backed away from the other and became as strangers again.
"Kim, dahl, sit down. You too, Barry." Irene's calm voice came like a shaft of sunlight streaming in through the hubbub of steadily falling rain and silent storm of father and son's conflicting emotions.
"Your father has something to tell you," she added gravely. "Promise me something. Promise me you'll hear him out before you judge?"
"Sure, Irene."
Kim frowned, puzzled, as he obediently sank down. He had always liked Irene Roberts. Dad had been a different person during the brief spell they'd dated, open and relaxed, as if some great weight had been lifted from his mind. They had seemed the perfect match and Kim never did get to the bottom of why they broke up - though he knew it had something to do with Irene talking of having her recently-separated grown-up daughter and two small grandchildren come to live with her to help the daughter out financially. Nothing ever did come of the idea because the daughter and husband got back together but the damage was done. Dad was an enigma at times. For someone who'd devoted his whole life to teaching, he was never easy in the company of very young kids and when he did have to spend time with any he would have the poor child jumping at their own shadow with his over-protectiveness, always terrified they might hurt themselves or eat something that made them crook or come down with heatstroke or measles or tonsilitis or a thousand and one other ailments. Irene would have calmed him down for sure, Kim thought, his brow clearing as a brand new thought suddenly struck him.
"Wait! Are you two hooking up?" He asked, grinning. "Getting hitched and moving away? Jeez, Dad, I wouldn't hate you for that, I'd be stoked, not about the moving away bit, the mar..."
"For pity's sake, Kim, will you listen? This has nothing to do with marriage!" Barry spoke more curtly than he intended, keen now to unburden himself of his terrible confession.
"Told you I was a thicko." Kim sighed, his gaze falling as his father realised it had so often fallen in dejection before. When he told him his schoolwork wasn't good enough or he hadn't improved on his swimming time or he needed to study night and day to stand a chance of passing even a single exam.
"Oh, God, son," he said, burning with guilt and shame. "What have I done to you?"
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When he held his newborn son in his arms for the very first time, he felt a rush of love so powerful the force of it took his breath away. It caught him totally unprepared. Two years ago, after the tragic death of their infant son Jonathan tore out his soul, he had never thought he could ever be happy again. With this pregnancy, they had deliberately kept everything low key, almost afraid that if they announced it with the same razzmatazz as they had welcomed Jonathan into the world then Fate would seek them out and exact revenge. Family and friends were of course informed, but this time there was no half page advertisement in the local newspaper, no lavish party thrown to celebrate the news, no round of applause and bottle of champagne popped open in the school staff room, no specially-recorded jokey telephone answer-phone message left for delighted callers to piece together the cryptic clues.
But he hadn't bargained on his newborn son stealing his heart.
Ironically, just as with Jonathan, it was Barry who gave baby Kim his first bath when they brought him home. He had tried to persuade Kerry to share in the precious moment of bonding but she said she was exhausted since the birth and spent most of her time sleeping. It was natural, he thought, ignoring the niggling doubts that surfaced again at how Jonathan had died. How could he even think like that about his wife? Jonathan's death had been a terrible, terrible accident and nothing more.
He carefully tested the water's temperature and then very, very gently lowered his precious child into the blue baby bath, and all the while talking soft, soothing baby words. He began tenderly sponging his son's soft, slippery body, a flood of emotion overwhelming him as Kim's mouth opened, his button nose wrinkled and he stared up at his father in wide-eyed surprise.
And afterwards the new father sat, almost motionless, a drained bottle of milk beside him, his sleeping child, washed, wrapped and warm, cradled in his arms, silently thanking the God he had cursed when his firstborn died. Outside a wild night gathered hellbent on destruction, a banshee wind wailed and suicidal raindrops dashed themselves against the glass, but inside, safe inside, where the little lamps glowed golden and classical music lightly played, the curtains closed out all harm.
He could hear Kerry moving about in the bedroom above, not the busy footfalls of someone with purpose but a desperate, frantic pacing. Just as she'd often paced too after the birth of Jonathan. Tiny alarm bells rang at the back of his mind but he left them to ring unanswered. Because how could he tear himself away from this perfect human being? All that concerned him was the child, the child who stirred now, snuffling and whimpering, the splash of a silver tear rolling slowly down one plump, pink baby cheek.
"Ssh, shh," he whispered, rocking him against his chest. "It's only Mummy."
His baby son's eyes immediately flew open on hearing the familiar voice and snatched his father's heart all over again.
"I would kill to protect you," Barry Hyde promised.
Why he felt the need to say it, he didn't know.
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"I'm sorry," Barry said hoarsely.
Kim shrugged. "No worries. It's all okay."
"No, it's not. It never has been. Kim, I'm...I'm sorry I never told you all this before. I was too much of a coward, the time was never right..." His choked voice fell to a whisper. "I was so afraid of losing you..." And then even the whisper trailed away and became so faint it was barely audible. "And I'm so afraid of losing you now..."
"Aw, c'mon, Dad, whatever it is, we'll be right!"
Finding himself suddenly in the strange new role of trying to console his father, Kim was at a loss how to even begin. He made to punch him on the arm like he might have done with a mate like Will or Jack, but their relationship had never been a physical one, never involved bear hugs or slaps on the back, and his clenched fist dropped helplessly back down to his side. They had only ever used words before.
But sometimes words were never enough.
A little while back, when the final whistle blew ten minutes after Davey Molyneaux had scored the goal that clinched the game and won Summer Bay High the school league championship, Davey's Dad had run on to the pitch, cupped his son's face in his hands and planted a long, wet smacker on his forehead. The guys ribbed Davey mercilessly about it for ages afterwards but Davey himself simply laughed. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last that his Dad demonstrated his emotion so openly.
And, though he never told anyone, Kim had been secretly envious of their easygoing father/son mateyness, remembering the time he had broken through some new swimming record and his own Dad had simply punched the air and said "Well done!" before resuming the coaching. Ah, wait, he had told one person. She had understood. She always did. Funny how they were always drawn to each other.
Irene's arm slipped around Barry's shoulders and he held her close. "Irene, help me please. I can't do this on my own..."
She kissed his cheek. Oh, so tenderly, oh, so lightly, brushing his tears with her lips.
"Before you were born, Kim" she said gently, turning to him, her warm brown eyes full of sympathy. "Your parents lost a child."
"I know." Kim nodded solemnly. "Jonathan. Dad told me about it."
"What you don't know," Irene said emotionally and after waiting a while for Barry to speak, but his sobs were too heavy and he could only nod his assent for her to go on; "is exactly how Jonathan died."
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His wife stood motionless at the top of the stairs, like a ghost in the thin grey light, and he raced up them, called from a late night at the school making preparations for tomorrow's annual parent/teacher day by her increasingly frantic phone calls.
"Kerry! Kerry, what's wrong?"
She was carrying something across her outstretched arms. Jonathan's christening gown. Her eyes were glassy and a thin smile played on her lips though small tears rained down off her chin.
"It's too late, Barry. Jonathan's gone to Heaven. I left him for just a moment and the angels came. I knew they would come tonight. We have to prepare him now."
He pushed past her into the bathroom, in a room still permeated by baby smells of oils and talc and creams, and saw to his horror the small, lifeless body floating face down on top of the bathwater. He scooped up his son and lay him tenderly in his lap, pressed his mouth over the tiny mouth and nose. He gave two slow, desperate breaths and searched in vain for a pulse. Nothing.
He placed two fingers on the baby's chest and pressed five times, so terrified of accidentally crushing those tiny ribs. And still nothing. Again he sealed his lips over the tiny mouth and nose. All to no avail. He heard an unearthly, wolf-like howl and realised it came from himself.
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At last Kim spoke, breaking the long, stunned silence when the very air seemed to crackle with electric and the very night seemed to have lifted him body and soul and plunged him into somebody else's life. He absently rubbed the throbbing bruise on his cheekbone from when he'd had the fight with Jack over Gypsy. Barely a few hours ago and yet so long ago now that if it hadn't been for the physical evidence he couldn't have been sure if it happened at all.
"But you always said it was an accident..." His words spun into the harrowing emptiness and fell down into the loneliness of the night.
Barry Hyde, weeping openly now, his fingers locked in Irene's, drew a deep breath before he could answer. "It was what I wanted you to believe. It was what I wanted to believe myself."
Kim wiped a hand across his tear-moistened face, swept back his soaking hair. "Dad, why in hell are you doing this?" He asked with quiet sorrow. "Why are you making up these terrible stories about Mum?"
"Because it's true," Barry replied simply.
Kim stared at him, still unwilling to believe. "Jonathan's death was an accident. You always told me it was!"
Barry swallowed. "I lied."
"I don't understand." He looked wildly from his father to Irene. "Why would you lie? Why would you need to?"
"Because I didn't mean to do what I did," Barry said heavily. "All I thought about was protecting you. She would have...she would have..."
He looked at his son. The son he loved so much he would kill for. He gripped Irene's hand tighter.
Oh, God, Kim, please don't hate me...
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The night would haunt him forever. The night and the moon.
A cold wind rose from the sea the night he dug his wife's grave and through the cold wind came the mewing cries of his newborn son and the clank of metal on cold, hard ground sealing the evil inside him. The silhouettes of his sister Lorraine cradling her nephew and standing a little away from him, on the tiny mound of ground created by the newly discarded soil, suddenly seem as though they are on a distant hill, so far removed are they from he in their innocence.
Panting heavily, he pauses to wipe the beads of sweat from his brow and look up at the accusing moon.
"Hurry!" Lorraine urges above the faraway sound of the roaring sea. Her voice grows more urgent. "For God's sake, Barry, hurry!"
Yet for him there is no God. There is no hope.
The wind whips strands of hair across her face. The baby whimpers and she soothes and whispers. She is still in mourning for her husband. Her brother and a heavily pregnant Kerry attended the funeral just a few weeks ago, consoling her by the side of the grave, supporting her when she was overcome by grief. Their own marriage had been childless.
Yet what would David have done, he wonders, if they had been blessed or cursed with a son or daughter and David had found Lorraine trying to drown their tiny, helpless child as Kerry had tried to drown Kim and drowned their firstborn before him? Would he too have been evil enough to wrap his hands around his wife's neck and push her down into the tepid bath water? Would he too have watched so unforgiving as her eyes bulged and her face reddened and bloated? Would only the child's screams of hunger have woken him from what he was doing when it was all too late and her body was limp?
The night would haunt him forever. The night and the moon.
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"You killed my mother?" Kim sprang to his feet, breathless and trembling, a myriad of emotions churning around inside him. "You killed her, you hushed it up, you buried her body?"
Barry spread his palms in a gesture of bleak despair. "I didn't mean to do what I did," he whispered. "I only wanted to stop her hurting you. I loved you so much. I couldn't bear you to be hurt."
"You said she was ill." Kim's voice wavered. "You said it was post-natal depression. Then why didn't you get help? For Crissakes, couldn't you at least have done that for her?"
"It wasn't that easy," Barry said throatily. "Don't you think I tried? Kerry wouldn't go to see any doctors. She said there was nothing wrong with her. And I...I tried to convince myself it was all in my imagination. There were days, weeks even, when she seemed fine."
"Please, dahl, try and understand the dilemma your father was in," Irene pleaded. "With some folk, mental illness isn't that obvious. And when we love too much we see only what we want to see."
"All I understand is he murdered my mother!" Kim was towering over him now, bristling with a raging fury that was alien to his placid nature. "Where was your compassion, Dad? Where was your conscience? If it was an accident like you say, why didn't you go to the cops?"
"If I had," Barry said sadly, "what would have happened to you? The only family was your Aunt Lorraine and she'd just lost her husband and been diagnosed with cancer and only weeks to live herself. There was no one else to turn to. I was terrified that they'd take you away from me and I'd never see you again."
"No, Dad." Kim shook his head emphatically. He had always had a simple childlike honesty unsullied by the intricacies of the world and to his way of thinking things were either black or white with no room for any grey. "Don't use me as an excuse." His looked down on his father with uncharacteristic scorn. "So now I know why we moved from pillar to post, why I was uprooted from home after home, school after school! It wasn't to do with your career, it was to do with you running from justice. And you know something? Maybe...just maybe..." For a brief moment the mask of scorn slipped as a wave of pity washed over his face and a sob caught in his throat; "I could've understood if you'd turned yourself in, if you'd had an ounce of remorse. Because you know what really galls me?" His voice turned harsh again. "How you dug her grave and left her there. How in all those years you never tried to put anything right. You're a murderer and a coward. Isn't that the truth, Dad?"
The icy words pierced Barry's heart like a shard of glass and he fell against Irene sobbing helplessly.
The night was a friend. A cold, lonely friend, as much in need of solace as himself, and Kim staggered towards where it waited for him at the open door with its blessed cloak of darkness.
Why? I picture her all alone. Was she cold? Did she feel anything in that harsh grave? Did you, Dad, did you? Unmourned, Unmarked unloved and I...
Gathering all his strength, Barry raced desperately after him.
"Kim! Kim, please..." He reached for him, pulled him into his arms, but his son broke free, dusted the sleeve of his shirt as though his touch were poison.
"Don't you get it, Dad? I want nothing more to do with you!"
"Kim!" He tried again, a broken man, but Kim shoved him roughly aside and he fell unceremoniously to the ground.
"I have to go after him, Irene." With her help, he scrambled to his feet, and ran into the thick blackness.
"Kim! Kim, where are you?" He screamed, blinded by tears, but his solitary voice only echoed mockingly back at him.
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After a while Kim stopped to catch his breath on the very same hill where a little while ago Noah and Kit and before them Jack and Gypsy had looked down to admire its panoramic views of the moonlit sea and Summer Bay. But Kim had no calm to quell his racing heart, no stars or moon to capture some brief light amid the terrible darkness. Far below a black sea rolled towards the shore and in the distance the Baystormer's flashes of lightning danced wildly through a tormented sky and here and alone he flung himself on the quiet, sodden earth and broke down sobbing heartbrokenly for the mother he never knew.
I'm not very bright, Dad, but I do know how to love. You throw out unwanted shoes, broken crockery, crushed empty cartons. Was she unwanted, broken, crushed, Dad? There MUST have been a time when you could have stopped. She was weaker than you. I've seen pictures, all I have of my mother, a slim, frail woman, a breath of wind could have blown her over. I don't know all the clever things other people know. My schoolbooks are full of dog-eared pages and corrections. But I do know how to love. You didn't save me, you destroyed me.
He closed his eyes and tried to think of what it must have been like for her to die on a windswept night and dumped in a grave by the person who was meant to have loved you most of all. Illogically, he felt tainted just by knowing he'd been there, guilt that he was the reason she died.
He clenched his fists and hurried on. To where? And the answer came almost immediately and the answer was stranger than all that happened this night.
She'd always been there. They'd often chatted, both of them on the fringes of all that was cool at Summer Bay High yet knowing that they never quite belonged. She'd smile in sympathy if his Dad found fault over some piece of work that he'd sweated buckets over, they'd exchange frowns when Hayley was bagging someone out, she'd walked through the crowded classroom just to squeeze his shoulder when she noticed him blanch, retch and wipe away tears the day they were shown the documentary about Canadian seals being killed for their skins, she never got the guys she hoped for and so at the school dances he would dance with her. Lost souls thrown together. Looking for someone they would never find when the person they had been looking for had been beside them all along.
She would understand.
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Long after the Baystormer had rolled away along the distant coast, the heavy rain pooled in the broken guttering still sought refuge and so slowly slithered along its diverted course on to the roof until it came to the tiniest gap where it dripped steadily down through on to the old wooden beams.
Irene looked up at the leak above the Diner entrance without the problem really registering. Barry and Kim could be anywhere. The night was dark as ink and it was probably wiser to stay in the Diner until morning brought its welcome rays of sunlight. She sighed heavily as from her shelter she vainly searched the immediate vicinity of the night with a solitary candle like an inn-keeper of old greeting tired, dusty travellers. The irony was not lost on Irene.
"You look like Wee Willie Winkie, matey!" She muttered. Then she sighed again. "Oh, Barry! I only wish..." She swallowed back tears.
"I love you," she whispered.
And, soundlessly, the first beam, softened and weakened by the hours of rain, began to splinter...