Read Snow Blind Online

Authors: Richard Blanchard

Snow Blind (3 page)

“Don't think the worst babe.” She swipes me on the back of the head as hard as she can. I shut myself down, locked in a sickened peace before my life can re-start its bloody mess.

“Bepe my baby, Bepe,” she calls out to the road.

“Urghh.” She emits a primal scream that reverberates in my bones, which I will never forget. Both hands are cupped over her mouth but she cannot prevent the escape of this inhuman guttural moan. At first I am embarrassed that she had made such a noise in public, but I look up to see her beautiful face full to the brim with wide-eyed terror. Through her eyes I see the unfathomable well of the universal parental soul, at the bottom of which is an unparalleled vortex of demonic agony from which there is no escape. This is the unthinkable part of having a child, losing them. The blinding light of her world has been snatched away, the pride and power of parenthood is under threat. She has so often told me that once you are a parent to one child, you become a parent to all children. This never kicked in for me before. This is parenthood, why has it taken me over two years to see it? At the point of tragedy I see my true responsibility. More worryingly Bepe was our relationship, the love we rallied around. Sophia's tension disperses through her thumb and forefinger locked onto the back of my neck. Somehow I enjoy the pain, as it is fully deserved. As the most culpable adult I will be assigned the millstone weight of the blame. My left arm reaches back to offer empathy but she shakes it off and walks haltingly towards the front of the taxi.

The accident would take the souls of eight lives. With Bepe gone his stricken parents would never make their union, we would walk away from each other without a glance. She would sleep on the floor of his time-frozen bedroom for four years. I would sleep on the floor of the ad agency for four weeks. The light of life would go out for four grandparents, and each in quick succession hastened towards earlier graves. The haunted taxi driver would never recover, always the night terrors and the contradiction being a child killer took against his own family life. I could imagine living in rancid isolation, a sneered-at pub loner, the man single women cross the street to avoid. My family don't die early; I would be locked into the insufferable torment of memories of the little life I surrendered for an iPhone. I started babbling this to myself. There is no inane stag weekend now.

“Is this your son?” A male voice from my right shatters my foresight.

“Is this your son?” he repeats. In the seconds since the accident I had lost all hope of him being intact.

“Is this your son?” Bepe is alive and reaching down for me. I look up to accept the intact but limp shape of Bepe into my arms. His face is a puddle of tears and shock, his eyes swollen into slits. He went too far but has come back. His top is soaked with dirty cold water, presumably from some nearby puddle. His second coming brings more life to me than his first. Two and a half years ago Sophia's mother relegated me at his birth to being a redundant outsider but no more. His appearance then seemed like the frantic production of a coven of white witches. At first I was allowed to look not touch while they hid any hard evidence of his magical appearance.

Sophia lurches past me from the scene of the car crash.

“Sophia, he's fine, our baby is fine.” She grabs her son from me and screams from her empty womb. They envelop into one, her muscular hold seems to be trying to morph him back inside her body for ultimate protection. She cries and gasps for air, jerking her whole torso.

My life is resuscitated; it comes flooding back in glorious 4D High Definition Technicolor with surround sound. An engine roars high above in praise of my recovered spirit; its burnt petrol particles are like smelling salts. Each breath tastes most wondrous. I feel the damp concrete coldness eke through my corduroys, set dead against the warmth of the spring day. It is that day, the one that bakes the earth for the first time in months, heralding an aching change to the tone of the year, real growth begins.

“I saw it all. He ran across the road, tripped and fell just onto the edge of the pedestrian island.” My fellow traveller helps me to my feet. From my restored height I now see that the blue car was not an immediate danger to him, it was in the outer exit lane across the paved area Bepe landed on. However the travelling taxi must have swerved to avoid him and clipped the open door of the static one.

“Thank you. Thank you.” I clasp his hand and shake away some demons.

“Don't thank me, I just picked him up. Thank God, Praise Allah and the rest of them that he is alright. Let's face it, there is nothing you can do to stop them getting into scrapes is there?” I feel unqualified to answer, having only just graduated with a scraped third-class degree in parenting. He goes back for his trolley and to offer himself as a witness to the feuding taxi drivers.

I look afresh at Bepe's beautiful wet face. Plumped, red, olive-skinned cheeks, redness competing against his brown eyes, a small bloody graze on his forehead. For the moments we were ripped apart he became faceless, I could not see him for fear he never came back. This is unconditional love, not one you can mentally re-appraise the nature and strength of right up to your wedding day. I shudder in his humbling presence.

“Why did you let him go?

“He just ran babe.”

“You silly fool, you almost got him killed while you picked up that bloody phone.” I leave the harsh judgement and blame at my door. Sophia leans forward to spit out the acidic pre-cursor to a full on vomit just released into her mouth.

“Diddy get my plane,” Bepe gives his game away. His escape was to recover the plane from the car. I contemplate recovering it for him so he won't run again. I am damned for taking one toy and almost damned forever by leaving the other.

“Let's get you tidied up kiddo.” I rejoice at the prospect of another mundane change of clothes, however incessant these demands I will never begrudge another one.

“Home Diddy? Bad Diddy.” Gravitas disappears as he screws his nose and mouth into a grin. Sophia kisses away his warm salty tears.

“Mummy and Bepe are going home; let's get rid of daddy on the big plane now.”

“Plane Diddy,” shouts Bepe as we revolve back inside. He is my son like never before.

C
HAPTER
3

Dan 13:47

My bones ache, relieved of unthinkable tension. A security guard back inside the terminal is glaring at my abandoned guitar case. I hastily pick it up and return to contemplating travelling with the inhumane chemistry experiment that is my combustible friends.

“What the bloody hell have you packed your guitar for?” My brother Chris arrives with his expected disdain for this trip and all who sail in her. I let go of it to shake his hand and find it scraping my shins through my beige mini cord trousers. The pain is not so bad, just a dull marrow deep ache in my slight shins. I grin at his rounded ruddy blonde presence. He is a ruffle of a man; he looks akin to one of the haystacks at the end of his field. I am happy he is here but I know he is extra baggage on this delicate trip. I have always loved his steadiness. Chris Greenhenge never made store by anything that could not be done manually, a world where words are hardly used. Fashioning potatoes and children from seed, soil and sunshine is his contribution to life. Our physicality is completely different; he is hewn from our father's rock-like presence, me from my mum's delicate ancestry.

“Been here long?” I ask.

“No, Sandra and the kids just dropped me off in the Land Rover.” I imagine the mayhem of seven bodies crammed into the far reaches of the vehicle, some seated, some on sheep dip canisters.

“Sophia, right good to see you.” He offers his grinding roughskinned grip to her.

“Bepe nearly had an accident outside. Dan let him run out of the airport and almost let him be knocked over by a taxi.”

“Are you stupid or what? Why did you do that?” He is happy to instantly blame me rather than seek further explanation. He exchanges worn glances with Sophia; both are paid-up members of a responsible parent club that I have been blackballed from. Sophia treats me like Bepe's sad older brother who has yet to leave home.

“Listen, will I know any of these characters?” Chris is worried.

“Of course. Johnny and Max from my year at school, Robert you met at college once and of course Juliet.” The last name betrays information I withheld till the very last. I have avoided telling everyone except Jonny my best man and Sophia, in the hope of skipping past inevitable resistance.

“What, women on a stag do!”

“Listen, she was a good friend.” She was much more but I cannot remind anyone of that.

“Sounds a bloody odd bunch.” With that he withdrew his approval and sat it squarely on a fence, waiting for the appropriate time to chide my ill-judged selection. Old rogue friends and an ex-girlfriend, who I broke up horrendously with; it didn't exactly feel risk free.

Bepe reminds us he is still here by firing his gun at the stomach of the security guard who starts to move towards us. I pick him up quickly. They scowl but ignore the non-lethal weapon in my son's hand despite the briefing from outside.

“Let's go up to check-in guys,” I say.

“Postman Pat,” Bepe thinks the security guard has the look of a village mailman about him as we ascend the escalator which runs alongside the inside windowed shell of the building. We rise above the two taxi drivers who are now occupied with the police. The angel who returned my son has flown. A brief contemplation of what might-havebeen causes me to stumble at the top.

“Face forward, can't you read?” Chris points out a sign that I would never have thought I would have needed.

I ignore
SELF SERVICE CHECK
-
IN
, a concept I mistrust completely, to find
DESKS
23–26.

S
EE A MEMBER OF STAFF BEFORE YOU JOIN THIS QUEUE
– another sign barks at me, denying me my right to join the great British queue.

Bags shuffle forward in the dreaded line. Some owners are desperate to unburden themselves and proceed to retail therapy; others are starting their holiday right here. Chris and I pass over our luggage. We agree to check in separately so we can both get aisle seats; me because of oversized legs, Chris because of an oversized body.

“Here's Johnny!” Sophia is unaware of the grimacing axe-wielding face in my head, rolling his eyes through a wooden door. Johnny offers nothing but solace, we smile at each other knowing that there is love with no edge. No proving, no probing, just approval and openness. I first noticed his unkempt rebel fringe in class 3R and we have co-existed since. I can show him my soul and he will nourish it. We completely unite over the post-punk musical tapestry that succoured us through adolescent acne-afflicted angst. He will add a dose of calm to the heady stag brew.

“Look who I found, Dan,” Johnny's appearance has a sting in its tail. Back at self check-in, I see the fit scrubbed presence of Robert. His feathered flick haircut has been unchanged for decades. At first glance he cuts a boyish non-confrontational figure, but as he marches towards me with hand outstretched he bellows confidence at my shrinking mojo. He usually pulls the strings and presses the buttons to get whatever he wants. Our college friendship was probably only due to him wanting shagging access to the less available female populace I naturally befriended.

“You skinny twat! Saw you downstairs as I transferred from Barcelona but you disappeared outside after what I assume to be that Sprog of yours. I didn't think I was going to make it; there was a BA client junket this weekend in Aspen. I thought at least I would get us some serious skiing though. Chamonix will be better anyway, not!” He pretends to punch me in the stomach as proof of our familiarity. The only punch he has ever pulled.

“I'm skiing demon at the moment. I could still hop out to Aspen on Sunday anyway; I will see how things go. Depends on the totty quotient. Can't think there will be much going on with your track record though, I will have to make the running as usual.” Everyone waits for the tide to go out. Robert just goes; any points of issue are seldom challenged by anyone for fear of a further diatribe.

“Good to see you. Thanks for the plane tickets and hotel.” I strain to lie and find a new conversation away from him. His idea for a ski weekend coupled with free travel was enough to bulldoze Johnny into cancelling the log cabin he had booked in Scotland. I resented him for making a vulgar offer the group lapped up but Johnny couldn't refuse.

“No sweat. If the marketing director of BA can't get some slummy economy flights to Geneva then what's the point? Anyway I said I would give them some feedback on the state of economy class since I last went on it twenty years ago.” He leaves us in no doubt as to his perception that we are privileged to be in his company.

“And you two getting married, I can't see the point of breaking up a good thing myself. Sophia you still look foxy, maybe business class these days though. Give me a snog.” Chris and Sophia think this is a compliment on how classy she looks. Johnny and I wince knowing that this Swingers reference suggests considerable growth in the size of my fiancées lovely Italianate behind and her inability to fit into an economy seat. She pecks both cheeks after he had tried a full-frontal kiss assault.

“And here is the Sprog himself.” He pats Bepe on the head like a grimacing Tory politician touching the unwashed masses. How dare he touch my son like that?

“Need a java now. I'm off to Cosa Nostra.” Finally we get away from being his audience. Having not acknowledged Johnny or my brother, having insulted my fiancée, disregarded my son and embarrassed me, I judge our initial round with Robert to be a fantastic success.

The steam frother of the coffee shop sucks us into Cosa Nostra – The Sicilian coffee company. Their strap line reads Y
OU KEEPA COMING BACK OR WE BREAKA YOUR LEGS
. When did the threat of violence become a customer focused unique selling point? I can see Sophia bristle at the Italian caricature that brings everyone to this vision of underground Italian culture.

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