CHAPTER 19: LITTLE MAN
East London, 1973
The baby came early—underdeveloped lungs, a case of anaemia, and a broken heart. Or rather, a hole in the septum of the upper chambers.
Atrial septic defect, Charles Watson was told, but he didn't have the brain for big words or anatomical descriptions. All he could retain of the exact condition were the letters ASD. He repeated them on the phone to his mother, who asked over and over again What does it mean? What does it mean? A hole in the heart, he said. A sort of flaw, weakness, congenital mis-fortune cookie. And because he knew nothing of chambers or arteries or ventricles, he imagined a wound, like a bullet hole, bleeding out of a heart the size of a small strawberry.
He looked down at his newborn son from behind glass. The sterile, transparent box seemed such a cold place to leave an infant, despite the heat from the harsh incubator lights. Inside, the little body flexed fingers and toes but did not cry. He didn't have the lungs to cry. But the tiny chest rose and fell, rose and fell, containing a tiny life behind a fragile ribcage.
'Be a fighter, little man,' he whispered.
It was the only prayer he could think to utter.
They named him John because it was as ordinary a name as a name could be, which brought an end to their argument. And it would look respectable on a headstone, if it came to it.
As for the middle name: It too invited marital strain. Charles hated it, but Louisa wanted to honour her father, who had died when she was only ten. Because he had no warm feelings toward his own dead father—drunkards were difficult to admire—he had no suitable counteroffer and therefore conceded. So Hamish it was.
'It's horrid,' he said. The argument may have been lost, but he could still voice his displeasure.
His wife shot him a glare from the rocking chair behind a hospital curtain that offered little privacy in the NICU, but her grey-blue eyes quickly returned to the tiny bundle in her arms. She smiled at their sleeping John, first time out of the incubator. She ghosted a light finger down his brow and traced the shape of his nose.
'The kids will all call him Ham or Hamstrings or worse.'
'It's a good name.' And thus she dismissed his argument entirely.
In his arms, their two-year-old daughter fidgeted, wanting to get down and play. The baby wasn't doing anything, and her interest was wearing thin.
'Take her home. Come back in the morning. We'll still be here.'
He hefted the wriggly toddler with a groan. 'Say night-night to Mummy, Harriet.' Bending her closer, he helped Harriet gave her mother a peck on the lips. 'And for John?'
Harriet blew a raspberry over her baby brother's head. Her parents laughed.
'Close enough,' said Louisa. She inclined her head and touched her lips lightly to her new son's perfect little nose. Charles smiled at the scene, then exited with Harriet.
The doctors assured the Watsons that the hole in John's heart would heal on its own. It was a common enough condition. For the first little while, a couple of times a year, as needed, they would check in on him, make sure there were no lingering complications. But often enough, ASD took care of itself with little to no treatment. John would run and play and grow as all little boys do, and live to a ripe old age. There was no reason his quality of life would be in any way affected by the condition of his once broken heart.
Newham, 1978
Before she agreed to marry him, back in the summer of 1969, the future Mrs Watson made Charles take a preliminary vow: that he would never drink in the house. Alcoholism had killed Louisa's father, had turned Charles' father into a right bastard, and she wouldn't have a man drinking around her or her children. Intoxicated with love, he didn't think twice before pledging to respect her rule. No drinking in the house.
Weekends found him down at the corner pub, but weekends only. Though his bachelor life had been one of unfettered imbibing (alone or with the lads), as a newly married man, he was determined to be a moderate drinker. Pints of bitter, lager, pilsner at the pub, two, three glasses at most, enough to get buzzed, never sloshed, and he'd sober up with a plateful of chips and plenty of water before returning home to an understanding wife sporting a tolerant smile. She wouldn't let him kiss her if he smelt of alcohol, but after strong soap, an active toothbrush, and a splash of Brut, she let him nibble her neck and snuggle close to sleep.
It was the final round of the season—West Ham United against Liverpool FC—and it was a miserable fair. Two-nil, Liverpool, and the pub groaned and quaked with despair at the final score.
Charles had money riding on this game. Hell. He'd had money riding on the last eight, and had made out all right: six wins to two losses. Maybe he'd grown a tad cocky; maybe he'd engaged in a bit too much willy-waving; maybe he was just desperate, what with two growing kids and his hours at the power station being cut back under new management. The wife, she made a decent wage as a senior caregiver, working primarily nights and weekends, but it wasn't enough to keep them afloat. Money had always been tight, and now it was tighter. This game had been his chance to get ahead, to sleep easy for a few nights. Now, the rent money was gone.
As a consolation prize, he allowed himself just one more beer, then just one more, then another, until he didn't remember how many he'd downed because he could barely remember his own name. Once he'd had a skinful, he wobbled down the street and around the corner to the door of his flat. It took him five tries to get the key in the lock.
He wouldn't remember much of that night, but his son would: the way he toppled through the door and knocked over the coat rack, the way his old lady shot off the sofa where she sat watching the telly, stroking the fine, towheaded hair of little John's head. John, who should have been asleep in his own room, was wearing only a tiny vest and underwear under a quilted blanket. Must have been the nightmares again, the overactive imagination of a tiny child only a mother could calm.
Louisa took one look at her husband and pointed to the door, saying in a low but stern voice, 'Oh no, you don't. Not here, not like that. Out.'
'I'm fffine,' he murmured, making a valiant effort to keep upright.
'You come back when you're good and sober.'
'I says I'm fine, 'm fine.' He dropped his hands to his thighs and looked blearily at his son, who sat on his knees on the sofa, the blanket clutched around him like a protective shell. 'Hey there, John. Bedtime, eh, kiddo? Wanna me that I read you a ssstory?'
John looked at him with wide, uncertain eyes, sensing something amiss in the room, but he began to nod. The boy loved stories, and he loved his father. But Louisa marched over, grabbed Charles at the elbow, and twisted him back to the door. 'You promised me,' she hissed. 'Not in the house, and never in front of the children.'
He pulled out of her grip so wildly he unbalanced her and sent himself crashing into the wall, upsetting the family photos and then inadvertently stomping on the glass. 'Ah, shit, Lou, I'm sorry,' he said. He bent to pick up the shattered pieces, but she seized his arm and jerked him upright again.
'Be sorry in the morning.'
She pulled open the door, pointed severely out into the dark, and waited. Charles' mouth was too dry to argue, his stomach too queasy to protest, and his head too heavy to think of doing anything but obey.
'Sleep it off at your mother's. Any man who gets as pissed as you deserves a good walloping from his mum.'
Just before she threw the door back in his face, he caught sight of his boy, still wide-eyed and perplexed. It occurred to Charles, even through the fog that filled his head, that he had just taught his five-year-old son what it was to be a drunk.
John was a thoughtful and sensitive child, balancing out his sister's more reactive and brash tendencies. When told to make his bed or put away his toys or finish his peas, John complied, in good time and with little fuss. Harriet, on the other hand, threw fits, played deaf, procrastinated, and back-talked. That, or roped her baby brother into doing her chores. That was what baby brothers were for.
From their earliest years, almost as soon as John began walking and talking, he went from trailing after Harriet to looking after her, serving as her conscience and compatriot. Initially, he was none the wiser. There was the time she shoved a sack of liquorice allsorts down his trousers to sneak out of the shop, only later to discover that she didn't even like liquorice allsorts. Or the time she convinced him to give her his collection of half-pennies in pocket money on the promise to buy him an Action Man, instead to return with a copy of Jackie Magazine. When he finally did get his Action Man for his sixth birthday, he enjoyed playing with it for only two weeks before she popped off its head and flushed it down the toilet, explaining that she was 'dismantling the patriarchy', big words she had heard on the telly and enjoyed, but didn't entirely understand. Mum made her apologise. John frankly forgave.
John may have been Harriet's favourite scapegoat and lackey, but she loved him. She loved dragging him to the park to play war (she and John as soldiers in a battle against the pigeons). She loved keeping him awake at night in their shared bedroom, coaxing him under the covers with her to swap football cards or pretend they were on a secret mission escaping a POW camp. She loved re-enacting Blue Peter experiments in the kitchen, sending John on hunts for empty toilet paper rolls and plastic bottles. She loved pretending that she and John had been poisoned by ice cream, or that she was Batman and he Robin, or that an earthquake had trapped them under a pile of rubble (blankets and pillows, mostly).
They were mates; they looked out for one another. Which was a good thing, given that Mum and Dad were out most of the day, working three jobs between them. Besides, when they were home, they were tired, too tired to play or do much more than pop a pre-made dinner into the oven or fall asleep on the sofa. It wasn't that they were inattentive, per se. If Harriet's marks in school slipped too far, they met with the headmistress. When the bigger kids had a go at John on the street, they had a word with the other parents. But troubles in the Watson household were mostly financial, and the children, independent and sensible enough, were often left to their own devices, aided by their parents' philosophy that things just tended to work out well enough in the end.
Until, that is, they didn't.
Newham, 1982
John's ninth birthday was three days away. In later years, he wouldn't remember it, not even to say whether there'd been cake or presents. Instead, he remembered that drizzly, grey afternoon when he had been called home from a day playing in the rain with the neighbourhood boys and sat on the sofa beside his sister. Gran was there, holding Mum's hand, and Dad was standing just behind her, arms kneading her shoulders. John remembered that especially, the way his meaty fingers squeezed the skin across the bones, so hard it must have hurt, and it was a wonder to John why she didn't insist he stop.
'How do I say this?' Dad murmured, and John was unsure whether he was talking to himself. But it was Gran who answered.
'There now, Charles,' she said, relieving him of the burden of speech. Turning her attention to the children, she raised her chin and cleared her throat. 'Harriet, John. I'm afraid we have some rather unpleasant news.'
John looked to Harriet first, for guidance in how to react or feel. But Harriet's lips had pinched. She hugged herself elbow to elbow and was shaking her head in minute degrees, side to side.
'You know how your mummy's been so tired lately? You know how she's not been very hungry?'
Slowly, John nodded. He did know it. But he had believed his mother when she said she'd not slept well the night before and so needed a nap, that she'd already eaten and so didn't sit with them at dinner, that she was right as rain and so no need to worry. Outside, the wind pushed the falling rain into the cracked pane, and John felt the chill sweep across the back of his neck.
'Well. She's been to see someone about it, and they ran some tests just to make sure everything was in good nick. Yesterday, we had word from the doctor,' Gran continued. Mum placed a hand over one of Dad's to stop his kneading. 'As it is, your mum's got sick.'
For all Gran's stiff upper lip, her voice broke on the final word. She dropped her head and covered her eyes, trying to recover.
'Sick?' John repeated anxiously, looking from his father's wet eyes to his grandmother's hanging head.
His mother's gentle smile defied his growing sense of unease. 'I have cancer, John.'
'I knew it,' said Harriet angrily, throwing herself back into the sofa cushions and pulling her knees up under her chin.
'It's treatable,' Mum said without so much as a quaver in her voice. 'They caught it early, and they are very optimistic that I'm going to be fine. Just fine.'
'What do they know?' Harriet was crying now, and furious with herself because of it. When she caught John staring at her, she punched him in the arm.
'They're doctors, love,' said Dad, having found his voice. 'They cure people. It's what they do.'
'Of course it is.' Gran smiled bravely, but John noticed the tears in her eyes, too. He had never seen his gran cry before, and it frightened him. 'But as it goes with these things, it's going to take time, and we're going to need to pull together to help her, okay? You're going to be seeing lots more of me, so get ready for more teacakes and chocolate biscuits than you can handle.'
'Mum,' said John's father, chiding without conviction.
'And I'll be needing your help, too, to keep this place running like a well-oiled machine. You two and me, we're going to keep on top of the cleaning, the gardening, the cooking, everything so your mum can rest up and get better. What do you say, Harriet?'
Unfolding herself from the sofa, Harriet rose to her feet and screamed, 'I say this is all a load of shit!' Leaving her family in stunned silence, she stomped from the room and down the short hallway to her bedroom, where she slammed the door.
At last, Mum started crying. She made to go after her daughter, but Dad held her in place at the shoulders, then stepped around and pulled her head close to his body to hold her as she sobbed.
Gran caught John's eye, held it, and nodded sharply. Her stern demeanour had returned.
'Well, kid. Looks like it's just you and me, then. What do you say to that?'
The first time Mum went to hospital for extended treatment, John found beer at the back of the fridge, hidden behind the milk jug and a week-old casserole from a good-intentioned neighbour who sadly lacked skills in the kitchen. John knew his mother's sanctions against drinking in the house, and a well of guilt rose up inside of him on behalf of his father. He closed the fridge door and walked away, pretending he hadn't seen what he had seen.
It was mid-afternoon. Dad was at work, and Gran was visiting her daughter before running to the shop and coming back to make dinner, as was part of her daily routine. John sat at the kitchen table with his maths book open in front of him, but he was doodling in the margins, unable to focus on his long division.
'Psst. John.'
Coming out of his daze, he looked over his shoulder to where Harriet stood at the open fridge, a bottle of Mackeson in her hand and a mischievous smirk on her lips.
She was expecting a reaction, and he didn't know which to give, so he just sat there, looking like a mute idiot, until she rolled her eyes and said, 'C'mon. Let's try it.'
'What?'
She pulled open a drawer and went straight for the bottle opener, like she used it all the time. 'We'll share.'
'Harriet!'
Mocking his tiny voice by imitation, she returned, 'John!'
'We're not allowed!'
'Neither's Dad. But that's not stopping him, is it? Besides, it won't hurt you.' She flipped the cap, and a small head of foam burbled from the mouth of the bottle. Quickly, she slurped it up, keeping her eyes on her scandalised little brother, who was on the verge of tipping out of his chair. 'Mmm.' Then she held it out to him. 'Go on then. You get first swig.'
'I don't want to.'
She huffed, rolled her eyes again, and drank from the bottle herself, three big gulps, without a wince or shudder.
'Oh look. I'm still standing. Shocker.'
John cast his eyes downward, embarrassed, though not sure why.
Harriet walked around to the kitchen table. With a resounding clunk, the bottom of the bottle landed right beside John's left hand. He almost dropped his pencil.
For what felt like interminable seconds, John stared at the bottle, contemplating. What would Dad do when he came home and found one of his bottles missing? What would Mum say when she heard her children had been drinking beer? What would Gran think of him, knowing he had flagrantly disobeyed?
'Don't be a pussy. Try it.'
It was Harriet's opinion—the immediacy of it, her looming presence—that decided him. He picked up the bottle by its neck, and before he could second-guess himself, he put his lips to the rim and tipped the dark, pungent liquid into his mouth. Harriet lifted the bottom of the bottle to help it along, and the beer gushed to the back of his throat.
John spluttered and choked, beer dripping down his chin and onto his shirt. Harriet laughed and laughed.
As the year wore on and Louisa Watson underwent a barrage of treatments to combat the disease inhabiting her body, John came to know the inside of a hospital as well as the halls of his own school. He learnt new words, like carcinoma and oncology and metastasise. The doctors and nurses became his schoolmasters, the charts on the walls his textbooks, and his self-assigned homework was to find a way to make his mother feel better, and maybe even crack this problem called cancer.
He placed the bouquet of dandelions in the half-filled water glass that now permanently graced his mum's bedside. He picked them from the stretch of summer grasses in the park on his way to the hospital, every day after school. He had to pick them every day, he explained, because they wilted so quickly, no matter how much he gave them to drink. The nurses had come to expect the wildflower bouquet and made him a ready vase of the water glass. Mum said she liked to fall asleep looking at them so her dreams were filled with gardens.
'Did you finish your homework?' she asked.
She sounded more tired today than she had yesterday.
'Yes,' he lied.
'Don't lie, John. Lies only hurt people.'
'Sorry, Mum. I'll finish before dinner, I promise.'
'You're my good boy. My best, beautiful boy.'
She was already fading, her sleepiness overpowering her today. John watched her eyes grow heavy and then her head roll back and to the side, settling deeply in the pillow. When he was certain that she was asleep, he stood and kissed her on the forehead. Then he reached for the backpack at his feet, pulled out his homework, and—balancing it on his knees—began to work. If she woke, he reasoned, it would please her to see him being so diligent in his schoolwork.
After, he took the same path home—not the direct route, but the one that curved the long way round toward St Luke's. There, he lit his daily candle and dropped the newly minted twenty-pence coin in the collection box from his own piggy bank. He spoke a prayer for his mum, asking God to take the cancer away. He didn't tell anyone. Harriet would laugh at him, Dad would scold him for throwing his pocket money into a box, as good as down a wishing well, and Mum would be upset that he didn't go straight home, like he had promised. But this was important. It was so important, in fact, that when he ran out of pocket money, he went looking for it in the gutters, or ran errands for anyone who would give him 50p for an hour's work, or sell his football cards, which, he supposed, weren't all that important anyway. He was confident that if he did all this, God would send his mother home.
It was summer when Mum returned to the flat, and she slept a lot, sometimes all day. But she was getting better. Her colour was right again, she smiled more, she ate more, she laughed like she used to laugh. And as the days and weeks passed, she only got stronger until the day came, at last, when the doctors declared her in remission.
The family celebrated with cake and flowers, and Mum even let Dad drink a glass of wine with her at the dinner table. Later that night, John spied them kissing by the kitchen sink where they did the washing up together, hands mingled in soapy water. He pulled a face, because kissing was gross, but he was secretly pleased inside and tiptoed away before he could be spotted.
Life returned to normal, as 'normal' as existed for the Watsons. Gran moved out and returned to her own one-bedroom flat, Harriet joined a girls' football league for under-sixteen girls, Dad took to renovating the bathroom, and Mum returned to work, part time at first, then full. For his part, John made the most of his dwindling summer days to play with his friends, with all the free-spiritedness of a boy without a care in the world.
His was a simple, untroubled life. He was neither popular nor friendless, neither brilliant nor a dunderhead, neither dull nor the centre of everyone's attention. His most notable feature was his size, which, he had begun to notice, was not catching up to his peers the way he had hoped. He was among the smallest in the class, measured against both boys and girls, and some of the older lads had taken to lifting him off the ground and calling him a fairy as a joke.
To combat these unfavourable impressions, he joined junior league rugby and was a pretty good player, if he did say so himself. Mum and Dad were so proud, and even Harriet came to his games, though she ribbed him afterwards to keep him humble. Through rugby, he made a small coterie of loyal friends and was a favourite of the coach.
The years passed. John did well in school and was liked by his teachers and peers alike. He got into a few scrapes, but nothing out of the ordinary for a boy his age, and though his mother censured him, his father's only advice was, 'Don't let the other kids pick on you. You stand tall. Be a fighter, little man.' He listened to the lectures and advice, even as Harriet rolled her eyes in the background and berated him herself, in private. 'You're soft, John. That's just who you are. I'm more of a man than you.' And she laughed and laughed, but it wasn't really a joke, John supposed, because that very weekend, she came home with her head buzzed into a square. She ruffled John's comparatively shaggy head in passing and called him pretty.
He had an affinity toward writing. Stories, mostly, about soldiers and superheroes and sometimes astronauts and aliens. It started out as schoolwork, but some nights he found himself writing pages and pages of stories in a spiral notebook just for the fun of it. Writing was a pleasure, a hobby, and one of his teachers even told him that he had a penchant for writing and should keep at it.
But he hid it away, and he never owned up to his interest in storytelling, lest Harriet should tease him. Instead, he worked harder in science and maths. He was good at that, too. And he had other motivations: he didn't want to be like his parents. He wanted to be a professional, educated and skilled, and make a better living so that one day, if he had a family (and he supposed he would), he could provide for them more comfortably. None of this nonsense of working two or three jobs just to keep the house warm. That was no way to live.
He was a happy child, and though he didn't know it at the time, it was the happiest he would ever be. His future would be laced with loss, hurt, and misfortune, and even though he would survive time and time again, it would not be without scars. But for now, he was whole. His body, though small, was strong and unmarred by the tribulations to come. Nevertheless, the sun was setting, and as John neared his fifteenth birthday, it melted against the horizon and ushered in the night.
Newham, 1988
The cancer was back.
At first, the family was optimistic. Mum had conquered her illness once, she could do it again. But things were different this time. She got sicker faster, and before the month was out, she had stopped eating. There was nothing for it. She took leave from her job and returned to hospital.
Gran was sick, too. Not with anything specific, but as a consequence of age. She tired easily, complained of breathing problems, and what with the new oxygen tank and walker, she could no longer come around the house to help. They would not have wanted to trouble her anyway. John and Harriet were older now, better able to care for themselves, especially with Dad picking up extra work, and when he wasn't working, he was with Mum.
That was the story anyway: Dad worked, and he worked hard. So it made little sense to John, at first, when he arrived home from school one day only to discover a section 21 eviction notice on the front door, citing failure to pay rent for three months and giving them thirty days to move out.
In a panic, John let himself inside the house and called his father at work only to be told he hadn't come in that day. He called the hospital, but the nursing staff said they hadn't seen him with Mum, either. Harriet was nowhere around. She was in sixth form now, but there was no talk of college, not with Mum in hospital. These days she spent all her after-class hours with friends doing who-knows-what. John didn't want to trouble Gran; he was fairly sure Dad wasn't at hers.
He found him at the Coalminers Well, a pub not far from the Watsons' flat, sitting alone at the bar. For a few seconds, John debated. Pretend he'd never come, go home, and wait for Dad to see the notice himself? Or pull him away from another glass so they could sort this out. In the end, John decided that he didn't want to be the kind of person to pussyfoot around an issue. A strong man faced his challenges square on, he thought, so he squared his own small shoulders and strode him to the bar.
'Hey,' he said, taking a seat.
The barman pointed at John with an empty glass. 'How old you gonna tell me you are, kid?'
'I'm not here to drink,' said John. 'Just taking my dad home.'
His dad, who was in the act of lifting his half-drunk bottle of scrumpy, let if fall back to the bar with a thunk and slush. 'The hell, son, what you doin' here?' His words slurred together.
John dropped his voice and inclined his head closer. 'We got a notice on the door, Dad.'
'Eh?'
'Eviction. Mr Graeff wants us out. Says we owe three months' rent!'
'Aw shit. Sorry, shite. Sorry.'
'Sorry! Dad, that's our home! Why haven't we been paying the rent? What's Mum going say when she doesn't have a flat to come back to!'
Charles Watson swivelled in his stool toward his son and planted a finger in the centre of his chest. 'Nothin'. We don't say nothin', hear me?'
'She's going to find out sooner or later!'
Mr Watson sighed, his wet throat spraying droplets of cider on his son's face. 'She won't be here for any o' that, John. Tha's what the doc told me yes'erday. Stage four, mestastistising or some shit, can't stop it.' He lifted the bottle to his lips again. 'Can't stop it.' And he drank.
Mum was dying. The doctors gave her days, maybe weeks. They did not give her months. The cancer had spread too quickly, from pancreas to lungs, and the prognosis wasn't good. In fact, it was deadly.
Prognosis, John wrote in the margin of his biology textbook, somewhere in Chapter 16: Genes and Heredity. Then he made two dots of a colon and wrote: terminal.
'John.'
He lifted his head, seeing that his mother was awake. He put aside the textbook and scooted closer.
'Where's your sister?' Mum asked. She wheezed when she talked. It was only getting worse.
'With friends, I guess. Can I get you something?'
'She never comes anymore. She hurts. Come here where I can see you.'
She was so exhausted these days that she couldn't turn her head on the pillow, let alone lift it. John stood so that he was in her eyeline and took her hand. It was a like an old woman's hand, thin and frail, unable to grip with much power at all. He squeezed it gently, afraid it might break.
'Feeling better today?' he asked hopefully.
As though she hadn't heard the question, she asked one of her own. 'Tell me again, love. When I'm gone, what great things will you do?'
She had asked this question a lot, almost every time he visited. He came up with answers to please her, something new each time. I'll take care of Dad, he said the first time, to comfort her, and to make her laugh, I'm going to learn trapeze. He had told her that he would become a millionaire by twenty-five, that he would travel the world in a hot air balloon, that he would have nine kids all starting with M. Today, he answered with all seriousness.
'I'm going to be a doctor, Mum.'
He had it all planned out, from biology, maths, and chemistry A levels to applying to getting into a top-tier medical school, and one day, he would be an oncologist like the ones who treated Mum, only, he'd do it better. He'd save lives. He told Mum so.
'That's my boy,' she said, lifting a hand to reach his face. He bent to make it easier for her, but she had already retracted the hand, and once again, she was sound asleep.
She died on a Thursday.
The funeral had already been planned, after a fashion. The Watsons bought a £100 coffin for the viewing, but they couldn't afford to bury her. Instead, they opted for a little plaque at St Luke's bearing her name, not a gravestone. No sense in a gravestone, really. Her body was going to be reduced to ashes.
Gran hosted the wake in her tiny home. Women from church brought nibbles and wines, and the guests stood in small huddles and spoke in hushed voices, each taking it in turn to place a hand on Charles' shoulder and convey their condolences. He said little, only murmured thank yous and refilled his glass.
Harriet, too, kept returning to the bottle.
She found John in a solitary chair by the fireplace in his white shirt and black tie, part of his school uniform because they were too poor to buy him a suit. He had spoken very little to anyone, and not much at all since her passing, as if keeping his own silence was a way to keep his mother with him, locked up inside, and if he spoke, she would be released and float away from him, and that would be that. Gone forever.
'What, you're crying?'
Through wet eyes, John raised his head to see Harriet standing over him, a half-filled wine glass sloshing in her hand.
'God, you are, you baby. What the hell you crying for?' She took a drink. 'You knew this was coming. I got all my crying out weeks ago. That's thinking ahead.' She took another drink. She spoke loudly. 'Think I'm wrong? She's been dying for ages. Was as good as dead for ages, bruv. God, who knew death was so slow?'
John stared in aghast. How could knowing stave off the pain? How could knowing be any kind of defence against this kind of hurting?
A woman approached Charles. John read her lips as she gestured toward Harriet: she's drunk.
'She's grieving,' Charles replied, and he poured himself yet another round.
They were evicted the next week.
They had nowhere to go, except for Gran's, whose flat was too small to host a family of four. They left the furniture behind, along with all kitchen stuffs, books on the shelves, wardrobes full of clothes, and all the rest of what had once been their lives. At least Mum hadn't known it would all come to an end, and so quickly. John packed a single suitcase and backpack. He also grabbed the photo albums after a despondent Mr Watson told him to leave them behind.
He got quieter at school, and everyone let him. Teachers, friends, everyone knew he had lost his mother. What they didn't know was that his mother was just the first domino to fall. No one knew he was virtually homeless, or that his father was slipping away and that his sister was putting more and more distance between herself and the family. It was fine, he didn't want them to know. It was embarrassing, really. Gran was too ill and too tired to cook these days, and Mr Watson was not much of a creative in the kitchen, so it was beans on toast most nights—the nights he chose to come home, at least—and mornings were much the same, but with tea. Mr Watson slept on the sofa, Harriet on a Li-lo, and John on the floor beside her, except on the nights that it was Harriet who didn't come home. Then he sneaked onto the Li-lo to give his bony shoulders and knees a night of relief. He never claimed the sofa, in hopes that Dad would stumble in and need a place to sleep.
As the days and weeks drew on, Harriet shaved her head on either side and spiked the hair on top. Her eyeliner got thicker. She pierced her nose, and if she wore any colour other than black, it was grey. John couldn't figure out how she was paying for her new look—the jackets, the boots, the silver jewellery. She wasn't working anymore, as far as John knew, or she would have been contributing to the household, to get them back on their feet and back in their own place and paying rent. That was what John was doing. Stocking shelves at the local grocer's and cleaning back kitchens at the Indian restaurant on Saturdays was far from glamorous, but he was bringing in almost a fifty pounds a week, and that was with school. Once summer arrived, and once Dad started working again, it would be no time at all before they could find a place of their own. But Harriet? With no work, no school? What did she do all day?
John would never be able to remember how it had begun, that terrible night at Gran's. Had he walked in on it, or had he been there at the start, watching telly and not paying attention until Harriet started shouting? He didn't remember whether Gran had been there or not, and for many years after, he was convinced that the row had gone down after she had died. But no, that didn't make sense. It had happened in Gran's kitchen, that much he knew for sure, so surely she was still ticking. The rest of the tattered memory came in the form of scraps and torn edges.
Harry. She wanted to be called Harry now, said she wouldn't answer to Harriet anymore, and Dad, he had said . . . What was it he had said? Go ahead. Spit on the grave of the woman who named you. Something like that. He spoke without passion, all passions having drained from him weeks ago, and only the spirits from a bottle could replace them. He drank. Yes, John remembered that, too. There had been a bottle in his hand. He didn't even bother with a glass anymore. Harriet called him a tosspot, a sodding drunk, a lush, and wouldn't Mum be proud of him now?
They were using Mum as a weapon with which to strike one another, to cut one another to the quick and wound as deeply as they could. John could do nothing but watch and listen, and he felt as if each blow was cutting him down instead. He was afraid to intervene, terrified of what would happen if he did not.
'Drinking won't bring her back, Dad!' Harriet cried.
'Drinking's all I got, Harry,' he returned. 'It's the only thing that keeps me from bleeding, don't you get it? Of course not. You won't get it until you get it, until it's you whose left behind, and your husband in the ground.'
She threw up her hands. 'Then I guess I never will get it, will I? I'm never going to marry. I'm gay, Dad.'
There was a long and terrible silence. John remembered that well. Sometimes, he could still hear it, when he lay in bed unable to sleep. Like a ghost, that silence haunted him.
Dad sank into a kitchen chair. He grabbed the bottle, turned his back to her. 'I can't . . .' he began. Then, in a soft voice, he delivered his final blow. 'I can't deal with another tragedy right now.'
It was the last he ever said to her. Harriet walked out the door. In many ways, she never returned.
London, 1989
It was bound to happen eventually. Charles came home so drunk one night that he never made it to his bed but woke up on the kitchen floor in a puddle of his own sick. Gran had had it. He was her son and she loved him, but he was no longer allowed in the home. John could stay, but Charles had to go.
He was homeless for over two weeks before he applied for council housing and ended up in a studio apartment in Lewisham south of the Thames. He wanted John to come live with him; Gran wanted him to stay. John was torn. On the one hand, he wanted to be with Gran. She needed him, someone to help with the cooking and cleaning, someone to be there if she fell or if something awful happened and she couldn't get to a phone. What then? But then, what about Dad? Didn't he need someone, too? Someone to help with the cooking and cleaning, someone to be there if he came home drunk or if something awful happened . . . To save one felt like leaving the other to the wolves, and what did that make him?
Feeling like a traitor, like the worst person in all of London, John said goodbye to his Gran with the promise to visit every Sunday. She didn't say she was disappointed, or hurt, or angry, or anything of the sort. But he saw fear in her eyes. He was wrong in believing the fear was for herself.
Time marched on, and so did John. Though his life was virtually unrecognisable from what it had been only two months before, he clung to what was familiar, and that was his education. He quit rugby, spending more time alone with his biology books to prepare for exams and keep the promise he had made to his mother, to become a doctor. He was single-minded in that respect.
Meanwhile, Mr Watson, still unemployed, was doing little to find work again. When John came home from school most days, it was only to find Mr Watson passed out on the sofa, four or five empty beers on the floor in front of him, which John tossed in the bin. Twice he mopped up sick that hadn't made it into the toilet, all the while convincing himself that the hangovers, depressions, and mood swings would pass, once Dad had grieved well enough. This was just his way.
Until one evening, while John was cleaning up the kitchen, Mr Watson awoke from the sofa to see him pouring something down the sink. Bleary-eyed and sour-mouthed, he stumbled forward, grabbed John's shoulder, and threw him backward into the fridge.
'The hell you doin'!' he cried.
John rubbed his elbow, which had struck the handle hard. 'Cleaning!'
'Dumping-my-bottles cleaning? You git!'
'The milk's turned!' John shouted back, still stunned at the unprecedented physicality from his father. 'It's just milk! See?'
He pointed to the sink, where he had dropped the milk jug.
Mr Holmes didn't say anything. He seemed to be thinking hard, and struggling at it. Then he walked away, leaving John's heart racing.
Things did not get better.
John was sixteen, and for the first time since Mum passed, he was beginning to feel normal, a new kind of normal. He was sleeping through the night, for starters. Sometimes, he awoke in a cool sweat, the last tendrils of a nightmare still sliding off his brain and retreating until the next night. And if he didn't keep himself and his mind busy with school and work, he was liable to start crying out of the blue. But he was okay. Normal. Ordinary. What he supposed he should be.
He even started having a social life. Her name was Amber, and they shared double chemistry together. She wasn't terribly bright, but that was where it started, really, with her needing help balancing chemical equations, which turned into her needing help with her English essay, which turned into needing help walking her dog in the afternoon. He liked helping. He felt needed, useful, important. And when she held the chow-chow's lead with one hand and his hand with the other, he felt special.
It was a Saturday, six o'clock, and John was holed up in the bathroom, getting ready for his first date. He wanted to look nice, but not like he was trying too hard, but also not that he was as poor as he was. So he chose his most faded blue jeans and a white t-shirt, which he would overlay with an oversized brown suede jacket, sleeves pushed to the elbows. Both the shirt and jacket were folded and draping the closed toilet seat while he gave his new, fine whiskers a shave, whistling as he worked.
He was reaching for the aftershave when he heard the front door open and slam shut. The walls shook. His father was crashing toward the kitchen, and John knew he was already plastered. Softly, John eased the bathroom door open and peeked out. He hadn't told his father he was going on a date tonight. If he had, he doubted the old man would be able to remember anyway.
His father had gone straight for the fridge. Skunk drunk, and he still wanted more. John's heart sank. He needed to get out of there, before Mr Watson discovered that John had vindictively replaced all of his beer with bottles of coke. He threw on his t-shirt, shoved his arms into the sleeves of his jacket, and sneaked into the hallway. As he silently tucked in his shirt, he heard the rattle-clink of bottles as his father searched. He reached the front door.
'John!'
He threw open the door and ran out of the building.
He was distracted all night. He held Amber's hand without interest in the cinema, and even a month later he wouldn't be able to name the film he had paid to see. Instead, he worried about what would happen when he went home. Best case scenario, his father was passed out on the bed, and they wouldn't see each other until morning, when the hangover-induced regret made him weepy and apologetic, rather than rage-filled and dangerous. That was the best case.
He knew his father was a drunk, but that didn't make him a bad man. He never meant to say hurtful things, or act cruelly, or lash out violently. That was the alcohol, not the man, not Charles Watson. Charles Watson loved his family. He wanted them to be happy. It was just that, well, some of his choices . . . They didn't always lead to the happiest John had ever been. But he was sick. Hurting. It wasn't his fault. He needed help, and what he had was John, so John needed to help him. That's what you did for family, for people you loved, and John loved his father very much.
'Earth to John, Earth to John!'
He started with a jerk. The movie was over, the lights were back on, and the theatre was empty. Amber was laughing.
It was Christmas Eve of 1989, and John and Dad had plans to attend Midnight Mass, which had been a tradition in the Watson family for as long as John could remember. Last year had been the first year without Mum, and also without Harry, but John, Dad, and Gran had still attended. This year, Gran was in hospice. But John and Dad could still go.
Nearly midnight, and John was still at home, alone, dressed in a tie and suit coat, waiting for his father to come home. He sat on the sunken sofa that also served as his bed, one leg was bouncing, eyes darting from the door to the digital clock on the edge of the counter of their miserable little kitchen. He waited, and waited. Midnight came and went.
He went out into the cold, walked three streets, turned left, and walked three more to the Bullhorn, a pub he knew his dad frequented. One of many, really, but tonight, he just had a feeling that he'd be at the Bullhorn. Most places closed up on Christmas Eve, but not here. John had spotted the notice on the door the last time he'd come looking for his father: Open Xmas Eve 'til 02.00!
John was right. He'd barely set two feet across the threshold when he spotted Mr Watson at the other end of the room. Though the pub was surprisingly patronised for Christmas Eve, Dad was sitting alone at a table with a single glass of lager. The server must have cleared away the others.
'Hey kid.' John turned to see the barman point at him with a beer tap at the end of a hose. 'How old you gonna tell me you are?'
He knew he didn't look his sixteen years, but his age was beside the point. 'Just came for my dad.'
'That's Watson's boy,' one of the other patrons volunteered, and the barman gestured him in with his head.
His arrival and naming did nothing to rouse Mr Watson's attention. John sighed and crossed the pub, aware of at least a half dozen eyes following him, probably wondering why he was dressed like he was going to interview at a bank. He stopped in front of the table but said nothing, just waited to be noticed. After what felt like an eternity, Mr Watson's red-lined eyes lifted. He saw his son and said, 'Shit.'
'We missed the Midnight Mass tonight,' said John. 'Did you forget? Or was it deliberate?'
Half-dropping his half-drained glass to the table, Mr Watson pointed a finger at him. 'Don't start.'
John just shook his head and withheld a frustrated sigh. 'Come on, Dad. Let's go home.'
Mr Watson didn't move from his seat. Instead, he signalled to the barman to send him another round.
A little fire deep in the pit of John's stomach flared. He walked around the table, grabbed his father under the arm, and tried to lift him. Mr Watson came to life. He pushed to his feet and smacked John hard across the face.
John fell back, stunned. The pub hushed.
'Oi,' someone called, 'that's your boy there.'
'It's nothing,' John said. His face was hot, and not only because of the stinging cheek. His heart was racing, but he was among men, and he couldn't let them know how hurt and embarrassed he was, not only for himself, but for his father.
'It's nothing, is it?' said Mr Watson, his speech slurring. 'Tryna be the bigger man, is it? Bigger'n your old man? Eh?'
'Let's just go, yeah?' said John softly, not wanting to escalate things or draw more attention.
'Big man, man of the house, ain't that right? Ain't ya, John. My John, my Johnny boy John, John Hamish, god, I always hated that name. Your mother's idea, you know. Sounds like a prat. A loser. Little man, stepping into the big-boy shoes now. Go on then, John. Prove it. Prove me you're a big man now. Hit me back.'
John laughed nervously despite his burning eyes, treating the command like the joke he hoped it was, and what he hoped everyone in the Bullhorn believed it was, too. They were all watching now, all of them. He rubbed the back of his neck and tried to stand tall, but he was unable to lift his head completely. 'Come on, Dad,' he said again, a plea in his tone, 'we'll talk at home, yeah?'
'No, we'll talk now. We'll have it out. Be a fighter, little man, an' fuckin' hit me.'
'I'm not going to hit you,' he said through a pained smile, eyes darting around the roomful of grown men gawking at him, but no one was interfering, neither to talk sense to Mr Watson nor to step between them.
Without warning, Mr Watson's hand came up again, and John barely had time to brace. The crowd groaned, and a few of them started forward, but before they could advance even a few steps, Mr Watson snapped. He balled his fist, cocked his arm, and next John knew, he was on his back on the sticky pub floor, blackened vision clearing just in time to see his father launch himself on top of him, to grab his shoulders and shake him like a rag doll, crying, 'It shoulda been you! Not her! It shoulda been you!'
It took three men to pull Mr Watson off his son, two more to lift John back to his feet. He was sporting a bloody nose a sharp pain that made his eyes water, and Mr Watson was sobbing into another man's shirt. 'Get'm outta here,' he cried. 'Can't stand to look at him, I can't!'
'He's not thinking right,' someone said, and two men put their arms around John's slight shoulders to bear him up and lead him away from the pub. They brought him back to the council flat, and while one sat him on the sofa, the other went to the fridge for some ice.
'Don't give him no mind,' said the first. John could hear in his voice that he, too, was slightly buzzed. 'Not when he's like that. Sometimes, when a man's hurting, he takes his pain out on those he loves most. An' your dad, he's hurtin' bad, son. He misses your mum so bad, it's eatin'm up inside.'
The second handed him a damp flannel to mop up the blood, and an ice pack for the nose. They were treating him like a man who'd just got into a barfight with another man, not a child who had been struck by his father. So he needed to buck up and act like a man. He nodded stoically.
'It's fine,' he said. 'I'm fine.'
John spent Christmas morning alone. He had hoped, before the incident in the pub, that Harry might surprise them all and show up unannounced, a Christmas miracle if ever there was one. But now he was praying she didn't come. God, if she saw the state of him. His nose wasn't broken, he was pretty sure, but the blood had pooled below both eyes, leaving him puffy and purple. He was already concocting a story about slipping in the shower, just in case, but it turned out that he didn't need to use it.
It was well into the afternoon before Mr Watson returned. One of the lads at the pub had taken him to his own house. He had slept in the spare room while the man had Christmas morning with his family, much to his wife's displeasure. But now he was coming home, and he carried with him a gift to say he was sorry.
'Erm, happy Christmas, son,' said Mr Watson, passing John the gift.
John didn't need to be a genius to know that this gift had been meant for some other kid, probably the son of his pub friend. It was wrapped with paper they didn't own, and when he ripped into it, he discovered a Robo-Copter, which was meant for a child half his age.
'Thanks, Dad,' he murmured.
Mr Watson sat beside him, looking uncomfortable. 'Look, erm.' He rubbed his nose. John stared at the floor. 'What happened last night . . .'
'It's okay.'
'No, it's not. I was in a bad way, John. I did a bad thing. I'm sorry. I don't know how you'll ever forgive me, but I'm so damn sorry. I shouldn't have hit you.'
John didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing, and Mr Watson, he didn't know what else should be said. So he stood up and went to the kitchen. His hand touched the fridge handle, but he reconsidered, and he went for a glass from the cupboard instead.
He stayed sober for three more nights.
Lewisham, 1990
John couldn't keep a girlfriend. The girls liked him, there was no doubt about that. He was kind and funny and attentive, and cute, even if he was a little short. There was no trouble getting a date, and he enjoyed going out—enjoyed the girls and holding hands and making out—but he couldn't keep a girlfriend, not for more than a few dates.
He didn't understand what was wrong with him, why no one wanted him beyond a few nights of fun. Maybe it was because he was poor and couldn't afford nice restaurants or too many nights at the cinema; maybe it was because he kept wearing the same three shirts. They were always clean and he made sure to shower and smell nice, but he knew he had a worn look about him. Maybe he had an annoying tick he didn't know about. Or maybe—
'You lie,' said Stacy. 'Like, all the time.'
He lied? He didn't lie! He just, well, told sorta half-truths. Like the time he had visited Harry and they had rowed about Dad and his drinking and he had told her not to go down the same road and she threw a bottle at his head and scratched his face . . . Well, he had said it was a cat, and Moira thought he was cheating. Or when he hadn't shown up one night to take Chloe to the outdoor concert in Hyde Park because Dad was throwing up so much in the toilet he was afraid to leave him. He said it was himself who had got ill. Or when he sported fat lips or smelt of alcohol himself from another physical encounter where he was trying to set his belligerent father to rights; Sophie thought he was on drugs. Or the hundred times he said he was fine, just fine.
He couldn't fess up to the truth of these things. How could he possibly say those words? My dad's an alcoholic. He's killing himself, and me along with him. He couldn't. They were horrible, ugly words, and to say them was to betray his father, not help him. And the other: I miss my mum. He couldn't say that either. It wouldn't help anybody, saying those things.
John wished someone would just know. He wished someone would see him, really see him, and in an instant know he was not all right. One look and know exactly who he was and what he was going through. He wished there was someone in the world who could give him a once-over and say, I see you, John Watson. This is who you are, and I'm okay with that. Foolish hope, really. Fairy tales.
Lewisham, 1991
'Promise me something.'
John clasped his hands together before the open hole. He was angry but couldn't show it. Too many eyes, side glances and hard stares, were on him, pitying gazes and curious gawps. So he made himself expressionless and fought against all feeling. He was here to do a duty, the only duty a failed son could still perform, and then it would be over.
'Promise me that when life knocks you down—and it will knock you down, John. Hard.'
Gran had an excuse. She was too old, too frail, too ill. But Harry? She had promised. She had looked John square in the eyes and said, 'I'll be there.' Yet he stood alone.
'You know how I know? Because you're one of the good ones. Like your mum. So it's going to go after you, and it'll hit you, hit you 'til you're grounded and on your knees, begging for it to stop.'
None of his friends had come, and it was just as well. They hadn't come when Mum had died, either. It was weird, understandably, attending the funeral of a friend's parent. There was no right thing to say, no right way to act. They couldn't make it right. So yeah, it was pointless, coming. What use was it, just standing at someone's side? Pointless.
'But it'll keep coming, and coming, 'til you don't think you can take it no more, when you don't think you can hurt no more. And John, when that happens, I need you to promise me something.'
'Yes, sir.'
'This.' He pointed to a bottle of an empty bottle of pilsner on the kitchen table between them. John had stopped cleaning up his bottles, and they were piling up around the house. But though Mr Watson had a devil of a hangover, he was in a rare state of lucidity. The apology for smacking John around the night before was standard practice these days, but this—this 'advice'—was new.
'This cannot be your medicine. Don't you ever turn to this for comfort, because you won't find it. You stay the hell away from it. Or it'll drag you down further than you knew you could sink. You got me, son?'
'Yes, sir.'
It had been a heart attack, in the end, a complication of advanced cirrhosis. John had been with him in the flat when it happened. He had noticed the smell first, something foul, and then the look on his father's face, strained, frightened. Then the squeezing of his chest, the gasping for breath, and just before the collapse, his eyes searching out his son, searching for help, and not finding him before his eyelids closed for the last time.
'Have something in your life. A reason. Because if you don't, this'—he held his trembling hand as though clutching the handle of a glass of beer—'this becomes your reason. And it will kill you.'
John had hated him for saying that. So Mum hadn't been a reason? His children hadn't been enough? John didn't understand. Why did he love the bottle more than me?
The coffin, bought with charitable donations to St Luke's, was lowered into the hole, and the eyes on John were now urging him to act. He hadn't done this last time and was unsure of his duty. Slowly, he crouched before the unearthed dirt and scooped up a small mound in his palm. Blocking out any feeling of what this rite meant, he tossed it into the pit and listened to it fall upon the closed casket like rain. Shoulda been me, he thought. When he stood again, he expected something to happen, like at the last funeral. Hands on his shoulders, palms patting his back, an arm around his shoulder, his father's arm, buoying him up. This time, there was nothing. No one touched him. Slowly, the fellow mourners retreated, dispersed. Disappeared.
London, 1992–2001
In 1992, at the age of 19, John enrolled in St Bartholomew's Hospital and Medical College where he met fellow student Mike Stamford, a sharp young man from Canterbury with a penchant for genetics and sausage rolls, and he often carried the latter in his backpack, half a dozen at least, to see him through the long days of lectures and study. He was not ungenerous with his lunch, and when one day he diagnosed John as looking a bit 'peaky,' he forced a sausage roll into his hands and commanded him to eat. They became fast friends.
Mike was a big lad with a big heart. When he learnt that John had nowhere to go that first Christmas, he invited him to spend Christmas with him and his family in Kent and wouldn't take no for an answer. When John mentioned that his gran was dying, he travelled with him to the care home and waited respectfully in the reception area, telling John to take his time. He even attended Gran's funeral, a few days after the final stroke, so John wouldn't be alone.
But he wasn't alone, not this time. Harry showed up, and she was sober, in temperament as well as blood-alcohol level, and he was happy she was there, up to the point where she nodded at Mike and whispered to her little brother, 'I didn't think it was just me.'
'What?'
She made a crude gesture with her two index fingers.
'Shut up, Harry,' he grumbled.
'What!' She laughed. 'I'm happy for you! Come on. Let's go get pissed.'
He had an active dating life—as far as medical school would allow—and more often than not had someone to call his girlfriend. Sometimes it was a fellow medical student, and if not that, then a girl met at a pub or club or the Tube. He was bold in that way, fearless. Over the years, he even sustained a couple long-term relationships, one lasting almost six months. But though he always saw himself as a good bloke and future husband material, none of the relationships ever lasted. One by one, his girlfriends dumped him. Harry had insights into that, too.
"You don't quit people, John." She poured the last of three glasses, and when she settled back into the sofa of her new flat, she put her arms around the shoulder of her new girlfriend, a cute and petite woman named Clara, who looked a little embarrassed that Harry was being so openly affectionate. But it was just the three of them, and John wasn't one to pass judgement. He liked Clara, thought she was cute, and a good match for Harry, given her relative sobriety. 'That's your problem. That's always been your problem.'
John picked up his glass and swirled the wine. He felt guilty, even years later, drinking anything at all. Mum wouldn't be pleased. 'Excuse me?'
'Even when it's bad for you, when someone is bad for you, you keep on like a kicked but loyal pup. It's terribly unattractive.'
'Oh, that's not true,' said Clara softly, trying to keep the peace. She could sense the sparks in the air, ready to ignite.
'You don't know what you're talking about.' John hoped his seeming disinterest would signal to her that he didn't want to talk about his relationships, especially not in front of Clara, who didn't deserve to be treated to the family misery. He had come over because he wanted a night out, which just happened to coincide with the fact he'd been dumped—again—two days before.
'Don't I?' Harry downed her glass in one, not even pausing to breathe. So. It was going to be one of those nights. Did Clara know it yet? She surfaced. 'It's just like with Dad all over again.'
'Harry.' He needed her to shut up, right now.
'Oh please, don't try to tell me that you couldn't leave, that he needed you. I've heard you say that shit a hundred times already. Say it, John. He smacked you around like ragdoll.'
'Shut up, it wasn't like that.'
'There you go again.' She shook her head at Clara as if they were sharing a private joke, but Harry seemed to miss Clara's mortified expression.
'I was practically full grown the first time he ever laid and finger on me—'
'You were fifteen.'
'—and he had his demons. You know how he got, he wasn't even himself.'
'John Watson. You were a fifteen-year-old child.'
'No, I was an adult. I had to grow up pretty quickly, you see, once you'd left.'
'And you just had to stay. To take care of him.'
'Someone had to.'
'That's not my point,' Harry deflected. 'It's the same as with everyone. All those girls you dated back then, now all these women. Jessica and Rachel and Tilly and Flora and What's-Her-Face with the eyebrow thing. And face it, you choose bad. There was the one that made fun of you for being so short, the one that kept standing you up, the one that cheated on you, the one that slapped you in front of her friends—and you stayed with them! All of them! And in the end, it's still always them who break up with you. Have you ever severed a relationship, John? No. Not one. You don't quit. You keep on, even when it's killing you.'
He had been pushed too far; he didn't want to hear this, any of it.
'So I should be like you instead, is that it? You who leave everyone?' He slammed his glass back to the table and stood up. 'Sorry, Clara. Just thought I should warn you. This'—he gestured between the two of them—'is doomed.'
Then he got up and got himself the hell out of there.
Feasibly, John couldn't afford medical school, but he had a solution for that, one he had discussed with Gran before she passed away, and he applied for student bursary before his first year was through. Legally, it was like making a promise. Upon receiving his degree in medicine, he would register with the UK General Medical Council and then go out for Army Officer Selection. In this way, the RAMC would pay for his schooling, and in return, he would join the Royal Army Medical Corps.
It was a sound deal, he thought, going into the Army. It wasn't like there was much tying him to a civilian life.
In 1997, twenty-four-year-old John Watson, now fully licensed, travelled to Leighton House in Westbury for a 24-hour briefing on how to prepare himself for the Main Board, a four-day assessment that would determine his fitness for becoming an officer. He left feeling nervous, doubtful. There would be physical tests, written tests, and psychometric tests, and while he had been preparing for this for years, he suddenly had visions of himself failing spectacularly and being laughed out of Army Officer Selection. He was a doctor, licensed and now practicing, and of that much he could be proud. But somehow, it wasn't enough. He could do more. For his mum, for his dad, for Gran, he somehow felt the weight of their deaths as reprimand if he didn't make of his life something meaningful.
So he returned for the Main Board with a steely resolve that belied fears. Day one of assessment began. He ran two kilometres in 10 minutes and 55 seconds, threw a medicine ball 2.9 metres from a seated position against a wall, and registered 47 units on the mid-thigh pull. Afterwards, one of the evaluators admitted to him that he didn't look the sort to be able to pull it all off. He was short, for one, and so already at a disadvantage in many ways. But he hadn't been worried about the physical assessments. He wasn't worried about the written tests, either. Every night for over a year, he had been brushing up on his general knowledge, kept abreast of current affairs, and studied his military history. Nor was he stressed about the psychometric tests, as he had always done well at those.
It was the interview, on day 2, that concerned him.
'Becoming an officer means long stretches away from family and loved ones, often with minimal contact.'
'That's fine, sir.'
'Fine? It is equally important to have a strong social network to support you back home. Tell me, Watson. Who do you include as your social support?'
He licked his lips. To be honest, no one. But he knew that was a poor response. 'I have a sister,' he said.
'What about parents?'
'Both my parents have passed, sir.'
'Tell me how.'
The army was not soft.
'Mum died of liver cancer when I was fifteen. Dad died of complications related to drinking.'
'He was a drunk.'
'An alcoholic, yes, sir.'
'You drink, too?'
'Rarely, sir.'
'How rarely?'
He swallowed. 'Only socially, sir. I promised myself I would never drink alone.'
'One can get drunk in company.'
'Yes, sir,' he conceded.
The interviewer made notes on a page, which lay flat on the surface of a desk, and he made no attempt to hide his markings: family history of alcohol abuse.
'Your sister drink?'
John nodded tightly. 'Some.'
'Older sister or younger?'
'Two years older.'
'Married or single?'
'Single.'
'So no one to rein her in when she drinks, eh?'
John didn't know why they were harping on about the family drinking, but he was beginning to feel defensive. 'Her girlfriend is a positive influence. She's got a good head on her shoulders.'
'Girlfriend?'
John stilled. Her Majesty's Armed Forces prohibited homosexual servicemembers, nor did it look too favourably on citizens of an alternative sexual orientation. Already, he was feeling ashamed of himself, of his family, and what he said next did nothing to make him feel better about it. 'Flatmate. Just a good friend.'
The interview continued for another hour, and in the end, John remembered very little about what was asked or what answers he gave, but for the ones at the start. If he defended his credentials or acclaimed his passion for medicine or professed his patriotism for Queen and Country, he had no idea. But as he left the interview, he noted, reading upside down, that the interviewer added a little diacritic at the top of his page, just after his name: a little plus sign, maybe a t. Not knowing what it meant, or that his record had just been flagged, he left the interview, feeling slightly unsettled but unable to dwell on why. Never mind. He needed to prepare for the next task, and the next day, and the day after that. No sense fretting over a tiny t.
The year was 1979, and hostilities between the Soviet Union and Britain, and frankly the rest of the Western world, ticked a few notches higher than usual. Nuclear war, they said, had never been more of a threat, and all it would take was for one world leader to get a little too nervous, and for his or her trembling finger to hover just a little too long over a big red button before something slipped.
The fear of espionage and treason were at an all-time high, and not without reason. Memories of the Cambridge Four (eventually to become Five) were still fresh in the memories of most Britons, and certainly most British diplomats. Spies. Defectors. Traitors. How could this have been prevented? What could Britain have done to catch them out before they put the nation at risk?
That was how it started, anyway. The programme. Codenamed Barbican, it had been instituted—by some unnamed higher ups, both nebulous and unquestionable—as a research programme, that was all. Just research. Initially, all it meant was data-gathering, analysing subjects for common traits, red flags, anything that might suggest future dangers to the security of Great Britain among its politicians and diplomats.
But in short time, the programme expanded. Not only were politicians and diplomats the subjects of inquiry, but military personnel, too, and then citizens, just ordinary citizens. Well, maybe not so ordinary. The brilliant ones, especially. Then, research evolved from data-gathering and analysis to include flags and watchlists. They had identified common traits among the more dangerous of Britons, traits that sometimes manifested early and could be tracked, observed over time, and in some cases—rare though they were, and the most top secret of all confidential initiatives—exploited.
John Watson, who knew nothing of any Barbican, did not know he had been flagged. He was not of great interest, in any case. Hundreds if not thousands of men's records were tagged with a note indicating a family history of substance abuse. Fewer, though, coupled that with both orphan-status and self-selecting for the military outside family influence (a grandfather who had served, for instance). It was this, three checkmarks on a longer list of traits, that earned him his first official mark: a little plus sign. There was no cause for alarm, and there would be no watchlist. Not unless he gave them further cause of concern.
He wasn't the first to be marked, and he wouldn't be the last. Five years before, another man with a similar profile had been flagged: parents dead from overdose, an older brother killed in combat during the Gulf War, and fixating tendencies had earned newly enlisted Royal Marine Sebastian Moran his first little plus sign. It would be several years, however, before either Moran or Watson made his way onto an official watchlist.
While in training Sandhurst, John met a young man named Bill Murray, who was training at the nearby Pirbright to become a CMT. Just twenty years old, he had an indefatigable sense of humour and was seldom to be found without a smile on his face, and he was often one beat of silence away from telling an off-coloured joke.
'He's a catch, innit?' said Harry, leaning close to John at the Old Wheatsheaf and using her brimming glass to indicate Bill, two raucous tables away.
'Come off it, Harry,' John sighed.
'Don't doctor types go out for nurses, though? Isn't that what you do?' She laughed into her lager.
'He's got a girl back home,' he said tightly, hoping no one was overhearing this conversation. 'Which is exactly what I'd have, if I had anybody.' He had been enjoying himself, but Harry and her little jabs always made him tetchy. 'You gonna do your usual and get so drunk I have to fireman's carry you out of here again?'
'Fuck you,' she said, drinking.
The boys liked Harry. They liked how coarse, boisterous, and unapologetic she could be, especially when she got a few in her. For her part, she liked being thought of as 'one of the guys.' John, though, felt only longing for a sister he could actually talk to, not bicker with. They were all that was left of their family, after all. Why couldn't they be ordinary?
The first time he took aim at a target, he shot it dead through the centre. His trainers thought it was a fluke. Hell, he did, too. The closest he had ever come to firing a weapon before had been a water pistol. But he was a natural. Two hundred metres with a service pistol, fifteen hundred metres with a rifle, he was a crack shot. He was recommended for sniper training, though he declined. That wasn't what he was there for. Still, he wore his accommodations with pride and appreciated the admiration the other officers-in-training held for him.
In 1998, 2nd Lieutenant John Watson began foundation training at a Defence Medical Group Unit at Frimley Park. In 1999, he made rank as lieutenant. At the start of the very next year, it was announced that gays and lesbians could serve openly in the military. Just one week later, he received a letter from Harry, filled with jokes about how she should enlist, and wasn't he relieved he could step out of the closet at last? Get him some Army action? It was fruitless arguing with her. She just enjoyed taking the mickey out of him. Largely, he suspected that she often felt lonely in her identity and wanted someone to commiserate with. He felt for her. He did. But he wasn't about to pretend to be something he was not.
It was in the summer of 2001, at the age of 28, that John achieved the rank of captain and became second-in-command of a subunit of eighty soldiers. There were plans to deploy him to Estonia come autumn, his first overseas placement. But then, in September, two passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers in Manhattan, and the military landscape changed overnight. His deployment charge changed, and before the year was out, Captain Watson had shipped out to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, 2001–2009
He was a career soldier, an army doctor, and he was good at it. Back and forth between England and the war abroad, he preferred the war, and when he was away from it, he was left counting the days until he was deployed again. The work was more exciting, challenging. Invigorating.
'I swear, my whole existence is a deathscape. Any second, someone close to me approaches the mouth of mortality, and it's up to me to pull them back. It feels like living.'
Major Sholto gave him a hard look but returned to his tray of mash and beans. 'Very poetic, Watson. You should be a writer. But best keep thoughts like that to yourself.'
They had developed a custom of sitting at the same table in the canteen together, when duty didn't require that they be elsewhere. John admired Sholto. He was a sombre bloke, the kind of man who spoke little and when he did, he didn't mince words, who commanded respect by means of his bearing and comportment, not intimidation. If he told you you were being an arse, you thanked him for it because you believed he was right and you should do better. Frankly, he was the kind of man John aspired to be.
Many of the men in the unit felt the same, and they took to Sholto as something of a father figure, especially the younger men who were away from home for the first time. For John, though, who was only six years the major's junior, he was a mentor at most, but a friend first.
'How do you mean?'
'Talk like that, someone might think you actual enjoy war. That you get off on it.'
'That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is—'
'I know what you're saying. You're not the first man to find his purpose on a battlefield. But what I'm saying is, your higher-ups are more likely to misconstrue your attitude as something . . . dangerous. Maybe even threatening to the unit. So, like I said. Bottle that up, yeah?'
'Yeah, I'll do that,' John murmured.
'Listen, Watson. You're one of the best doctors I've ever met. Something happens to me, you're exactly the person I want standing over me with a scalpel.'
'Ha ha.'
'This is just me watching out for you in return. Call it an advanced return of favour.' He winked, one of those rare Sholto winks that all the men hoped would one day be bestowed upon them. He finished off his water, stood with his tray, and went back to work.
No one knew exactly when a spider began to spin webs in the Middle East, and not just in Afghanistan, but in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, too. Spider silk is invisible, after all. Sometimes, an unsuspecting traveller felt the faintest of silken brushes against the cheek, but having been alerted, a subsequent search for the source of the shiver revealed nothing, neither of web nor of spinner.
Other times, a victim was caught in the web.
There were rumours. Just whispers at first, but they grew louder. Someone in another unit had defected. Another someone had turned traitor. Yet another someone was found to be spy. Who? Why? What happened? The colonels, brigadiers, generals, they all seemed to know something, but they remained tight lipped and evasive. And in that silence, suspicions grew, one soldier suspecting his own brother-in-arms.
'I heard it was an officer,' said one man. 'Like, a high-ranking officer. A colonel, maybe.'
'I heard he were a sniper.'
'I heard he took out seven of his own unit before he disappeared into the desert.'
John took little stock in the rumour mill and paid little attention when conversations like that one got running. He barked at his men to calm their tits and get back to work, and was thus little disquieted by the proposition that there were turncoats among them. The men he knew were his friends and compatriots, and he would not treat them as anything less than honest, good men, which, foolishly, was how he expected they felt about him in return.
He had a cool head under the most extreme pressure, one of the qualities that made him such a good doctor. But under the right sort of pressure, he ran hot.
He had just finished up in the phone tent. Fifteen minutes, he had been given, to make a call back to England and talk with Harry. It was his birthday, and she promised him she wouldn't forget. He had been home the year before, and they had made plans to celebrate. But she must have started early because he had showed up at the restaurant and waited, and waited, for over an hour he waited, until Clara rang him up on his cheap mobile to apologise, but they wouldn't make it.
'Drunk already, is she?' he asked tonelessly, trying not to care. He'd cared too much with Dad, and it hadn't made a lick of difference.
'I'm sorry, John. I tried.'
Harry had apologised, too, once she'd sobered up, and promised that next year it wouldn't be like this. She was going to get help, and then she'd treat him to the night of his life. Neither knew, at the time, that he'd be back in Afghanistan over his next birthday though. Still, she promised to be there when he called, and she wasn't.
On his way out of the tent, he passed Brigadier Keen, who spotted his hardened face and quipped, 'Look alive, Watson, this is a barracks, not a cemetery.'
He said nothing but continued on his way. But behind him, he heard another soldier explain on his behalf, 'Family didn't answer the call, sir. Again.'
'Who, the shit-faced sister? Should count himself lucky, I reckon, not having to deal with her.'
John stopped in his tracks. He debated, but the coals had been stirred, and as he turned back, he felt the heat rise in his face, hotter than the Afghan sun. He walked straight up to the brigadier.
'Say that again?'
Brigadier Keen's eyes narrowed. 'Watch yourself, Watson. You're addressing a superior officer.'
'Say that again, sir. What about my sister?'
'Nothing you don't tell yourself every night you go to bed.' He gestured with his head, indicating John back away and carry on as he was. 'Back to your station.'
'I'll hear you apologise first, then I'll be on my way.'
Keen balked. 'Back to your station, captain, that's an order.'
John held his ground, jaw clenched tight, and waited. In some distant part of his brain, he knew he was out of line, knew the others in the tent were watching with nervous tension, but he didn't care.
Keen took a menacing step closer until they were toe to toe, nose to nose, if John's had come anywhere above Keen's chin, and they glowered at each other. 'I'm warning you. Back away or I'll write you up for insubordination. Is that what you want? A permanent mark on your record? And all for a drunkard and a dyke?'
The switch had been flipped; the fire in his belly flared. Without a second thought, John swung, and he swung hard, his fist connecting with the fat nose on Brigadier Keen's ugly face, and the man was down.
John never told Harry how close he came to a dishonourable discharge, let alone for what. He had disobeyed a direct order, and he had assaulted a superior officer. A mark of insubordination went on his once-clean record, and if this went to a court martial, he would face up to ten years' imprisonment. Ten years. For her. He wondered if she would even care.
He put on a good face, but as he waited for his superiors to decide his fate, he was terrified. This life . . . He had struggled so hard for it, took such pride in it. He was a good soldier, a respected officer, a frankly amazing doctor. Would one moment of weakness and poor judgement end it all? What would become of him then? He would rather be slaughtered on the battlefield than face discharge.
But it was complicated. Brigadier Keen was in hot water, too, for his use of abusive, insulting, and provocative language, as testified to by the other soldiers in the phone tent (who, it must be admitted, had more positive feeling toward Watson than toward Keen). At a time when the army's sensitivities regarding gay and lesbian soldiers was high, Keen's affront was entirely unsympathetic, and had the potential to cause the Royal Army great embarrassment.
After six weeks of inquests and hearings, it was determined that a court martial was not appropriate. Instead, a compromise was reached, one that would punish both parties, but John the most. He had, after all, defied a direct order from his superior, and in the presence of lesser soldiers, no less, an act of defiance that could not go ignored. Fortunately, instead of dismissal or forfeiture of seniority, he was given a reprimand on his record and a service compensation order of £3,000 for fracturing the brigadier's nose. Brigadier Keen was warned not to seek any further damages, neither to Watson's reputation nor wallet, and suffered a reprimand himself.
In the end, the two officers shook hands. 'I hope you believe me when I say, I was wrong to insult your family, and I am sorry for it,' Keen said.
John pumped his hand twice and kept eye contact. 'Water under the bridge.'
'You throw a mean punch, Watson.' He smiled to show good humour.
'You can thank Sandhurst for that,' John answered, and they laughed together.
So John let it go. He accepted his punishment and believed Keen's apology; the world was sometimes just and often good, and he trusted in that.
Though the reprimand became a black mark in his permanent file—and suggested to him, depressingly, that he would never advance above the rank of captain because of it—the label of insubordination was removed. At least, on the official file.
He didn't know that there was someone else keeping score.
The tally marks added up. The little plus sign for troubling family history was joined by his erased insubordination mark and follow-up psych evaluations that labelled him as 'volatile'. Added to that were his talents as a sharpshooter, the enemy soldier he saved from the sting of a scorpion in close quarters, the death of Colonel Stephens in the field, and his disregard for Major Sholto, a supposed friend, who died only feet from him while he callously decreed him a priority 4—dead in all but the most technical sense. In short, his profile reflected too closely that of a certain apostate who had been seduced by a spider. Quietly, They designated him as deadly. His status: risky.
So They turned a wheel and set in motion a series of events that would lead to his removal. It began with the demise of Major Sholto, and was meant to end on the road to Ghorak.
Against all odds, however, John Watson, did as he had always done, and survived.
But his army days were at an end.
London, 2010
'Afghanistan or Iraq?'
Something was happening. He didn't know what. John felt like he was catching up in a conversation he was already part of but didn't remember how it had begun.
'Afghanistan,' he answered. It was like coming out of a daze. No, not quite. More like, stepping out of the fog, and suddenly, someone was . . . seeing him.
I see you, John Watson.
Sherlock Holmes saw everything. He knew that John was a military man, and a doctor, from a single glance. He knew John was pinching pennies from his expensive but regifted new phone and that his limp was psychosomatic from the way he stood perfectly still. He even knew Harry was a drunk. He didn't care. He saw not the broken man but the soldier who missed the war and needed to find a way back. So Sherlock Holmes gave it to him.
And all it took was a glance.
London, 2010–2015
He fell in love, the kind of love he didn't recognise and couldn't explain, but it was love all the same. And as the weeks and months and years flew by, Sherlock became more than a flatmate or a friend, but a deeply entrenched part of who he was, his very being, like a heart transplant. Sherlock was his new heart.
The day he died, John felt like that heart stopped beating.
And yet.
John kept living. He survived. Be a fighter, little man, he heard echoing in his head, scornful and cruel. He blamed himself, more than he blamed Moriarty, more than he blamed Mycroft, and he believed that living was his punishment. He had watched Sherlock die, and then his sister Harry, and then his long-time friend Mike Stamford. Like he had seen so many die before him, Mum and Dad, Stephens and Sholto, and so many others. He was left alone, with no one, neither friend nor family.
And yet.
He met a woman named Mary. Softly, in fits and starts, his heart started beating again, that weary, achy, warrior-like muscle. And he knew that, to keep her, he would need to fight. Fight away the demons, the ghosts; fight off the depression and despair; fight away the bottle and the pistol and the past, fight to live. He had his reason. Mary was his reason. And then she was gone.
And yet.
Sherlock Holmes was alive. And because he lived, John Watson lived, too. And again, John came to him a broken man, and again, Sherlock saw beyond the scars and wounds and hurt to who John really was. He saw him. He knew what kind of man he was, and what he was not, and he refused to let John forget it. Despite himself, some days against his own desire and willpower, John kept living. But it was harder than it had ever been. The lives he had loved, the people he had loved, gone, all gone. All but Sherlock. And he knew . . . In Sherlock was his first and last and truest love, his last hope of a life of happiness and meaning. Sherlock was his reason, and had been all along.
He had failed the others. He would not fail his friend. He would do what it took, whatever it took, to protect him, to save him from more sinister forces and crueller fates than the ones that lay behind. He would kill for Sherlock. In fact, he meant to. And, if it came to it, in the end, he would do what he could not do for Mum, or Dad, or Harry or Sholto or Mike or Mary: he would die for Sherlock. Maybe, then, his long, sorry life would have been one worth living.