Ex Chapter 11 - meat cleavers, CCTV cameras and little fingers

Saturday had arrived as Saturdays do and Daniel had woken at 4am to find his father standing over his bed, sharpening a meat cleaver and singing the aria “One Fine Day” from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Nothing out of the ordinary there then.

“Up we get” said his father whipping off his duvet with the speed and dexterity of a thirty stone bullfighter and leading Daniel out of his bedroom by his wrist. He had never held Daniel or Ash by their hands and had done so just once with their brother, and then only in death. Holding Daniel’s hand would have promised a degree of intimacy that his father had no facility to deliver - that particular cupboard was bare.

“Shall I get dressed dad?” Asked Daniel as his father dragged him down the stairs of their house towards the front door, “because I’m only in my pyjama’s and its quite cold.” His father paused and looked down at him. His eyes seemed to soften for a moment. “I never wanted this, but this is all we have left, you and I. It’s what we are.” And with those words the calm waters which still filled the tidal pools in his father’s heart were swept away and the bitter current that carried them would never allow them to return.

“What is the meat cleaver for?” asked Daniel, already aware that this was a question to which he did not want a response. But he had come to realize that no matter how bad answers might be, surprises were far far worse.

“For little fingers and CCTV cameras.” His father looked at him as if this had been obvious and in many ways, it had been.

---

“This is the mountain that you will be climbing” said Daniel’s father gesturing towards nothing that was remotely mountain like as far as Daniel could see but plenty of things that had the potential to cause him irreparable harm.

His father had driven them to St Pancras Station and had parked just outside the multi story car park. Realization dawned upon Daniel in the manner of a veal calf, exposed to light for the first time, only to discover it was the neon glare of the slaughterhouse.

The Austin Allegro struggled up the ramps of the car park to the top level, encumbered by the combined weight of expectation and Daniel’s father’s arse. After disengaging said arse from the long suffering driver’s seat, Daniel’s father waddled over to the nearest CCTV camera, hacked it from the wall with a single blow of the meat cleaver and crushed it underfoot as if it were a fag butt. He was looking at Daniel's life vest with unaccustomed satisfaction. It occurred to Daniel that his father was much more interested in the falling aspects of climbing, than the ascending parts.

At the edge of the car park balustrade, Daniel and his father paused and wordlessly shared a glance over the top into the abyss.

“Off you pop then Daniel” said his father - gesturing vaguely towards the wide blue yonder “show me what you’re made of.”

“What if I get to the bottom dad, can we go home?”

There was a further period of silence whilst Daniel and his father looked over the balustrade, 6 floors down a sheer wall of concrete to the frost licked pavement far below where a cat had paused to probe an errant ear. It looked like a furry ant. There were indents in the surface of the wall but they were no more substantial than a pattern. Spiderman would have struggled with this task, little boys in pajama’s weighed down by life jackets had no need to apply.

Daniel looked back at his father - his question was redundant. From the impatient manner in which his father was tapping the meat cleaver against his thigh he did not think he had time to launch an expedition to locate his better nature.

So this was fear.

Daniel climbed on to the edge of the balustrade and lowered himself onto the first of the more prominent bricks. His fingers and toes were small enough to gain some purchase and with desperate precision he edged down inch by inch.

After two minutes he had actually begun to believe that he might make it all the way but without warning he lost his grip and began to slip and then fall backwards. With every sinew in his body, he tried to remain connected to the wall but soon his only foothold was in thin air which is, by and large, less substantial than concrete.

Daniel’s father saw his son begin to fall and a smile passed across his face like a newly dawned sun. He swirled the feeling of fulfilment around his mouth like a delicious belgian chocolate but there was a lingering aftertaste of something unfamiliar - regret? His life was like an express train without a destination, a racing horse with no finishing line. He had cradled his dead son in his arms and now he could not escape from death, it clogged his pores, impeded his every breath and his only choice was to deliver his burden to Daniel. So not regret, no, but also not resolution.

Daniel had stopped falling. Gravity’s embrace was inexorable and yet he had defied it. The life vest had snagged on a light fixture, leaving Daniel suspended 20 metres from the pavement.

“Ohforfuckssake” said Daniel’s father and not without due cause. He began to run towards his car but whilst his feet were willing, the ham hocks that now occupied the positions his ankles used to be in, showed little inclination to follow suit. He turned back and leaned over to get a better look at what was holding the life jacket in place but it was what he heard that persuaded him to head back to his car again. The life jacket was ripping apart under Daniel’s weight.

Daniel’s father reached the penultimate level of the car park to find his son just over an arms length below him. Part of the life vest had been shredded and the part which remained attached to the light fitting would bear Daniel’s weight for only a few seconds more. Daniel’s father found himself reaching out a hand as Daniel looked up and reached out his own. As they extended their reaches, their finger tips touched, before the life vest gave way and Daniel fell again, clawing for the hand of the man who had killed him.

Daniel’s father looked beyond his extended grasp towards the area of pavement where his son would shortly explode only to see it filled by a milk float.

---

The milkman's usually unremarkable progress was impeded as a 1974 Austin Allegro screeched to a halt across his path. The entire car appeared to resonate as a behemoth struggled to escape from behind the steering wheel and gradually unfurled itself out of the driver's door.

The enormous unit that was Daniel's father walked directly up to the milk
float and motioned a single meaty hand sky wards.

"Couldn't lend me a hand, could you - there's a child on your roof that belongs to me?"

The milkman stepped up on his seat and peered onto the roof of the float where a boy in pyjama's was sitting. The boy waved at him apologetically.

He pulled away as if slapped in the face, checked on the milk float roof again where the child was still waving, reached up, grabbed the child and handed him down to his father.

"Where...?" Was the milkman's sole contribution.

"Fell off the car park, sleepwalking again, he's a bastard for it." said Daniel's father as he deposited Daniel rather too vigorously into the passenger seat.

They were both shaking as the Austin Allegro threaded its way back through the ice kissed streets of North West London. Daniel looked at his father’s expressionless face, his eye’s illuminated like tiny neon shop signs as he reached behind Daniel’s seat and handed him a blanket. He glanced at Daniel and said ‘this changes nothing’ but the snow globe they occupied had just been shaken vigorously once again.