Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [98]
There was a silence in the small office and then the old man said, ‘Christian’s mother was a God-fearing woman.’
Pangbourne shook his head, grinning. Nope, pappy.
Christian’s mother was a clinical psychopath who never should have been left alone with a child.’
‘She was harsh but she was fair. That woman understood that there’s a heaven and a hell.’
‘In her case I hope so, Mr Leemark, because there’ll be a special corner of hell reserved for people who hurt small children.’
‘Christian was raised in a decent, compassionate home where respect for the Lord was paramount. Just as his name suggests.’
‘Wolf was raised in a hell-hole, and the only reason you were ever allowed custody of him was because you could prove you were away playing soldiers while most of those wounds were inflicted.’
‘You saying that I’m not fit to raise kids?’
‘Mr Leemark, you’re not fit to raise cotton.’
The old man’s chin juddered as he ground his teeth with rage. Pangbourne wondered if any of those teeth were still his own. For a long moment Francis Leemark seemed to be too angry to speak. Then he forced his trembling lips apart and said, ‘How dare you say that? You’re the one teaching innocent kids un-Christian religion. Heathen lies.’
Pangbourne said, ‘Listen up, pappy. When I was a little kid I sat in a one room schoolhouse. And this lady teacher used to tell us stories. Her old apple-cheeked face would light up with a beautiful inner light, and she’d sit there and tell this room full of helpless little kids stories of a man being tortured and nailed to a cross. How he had a crown of thorns that cut into his forehead and was given nothing to drink but vinegar from a sponge. And the wind howled around the room and we cried and we tried to cover our ears but we couldn’t stop her. She was bigger than us. And after all, she was supposed to be our teacher. She’d been entrusted with us and she could do anything she liked to that room full of little kids.’
Pangbourne stared across his desk at Wolf Leemark’s father.
‘And I swore that if I ever had the responsibility of teaching children I’d never expose them to that sort of wicked nonsense. You should have seen that old woman, pappy; she made that horrible story come alive in every gruesome detail. And she may have thought she was doing good, but what she really relished was the look of shock on each little face. So what, if she believed she was spreading the good word, pappy? She scared every poor kid in that class until they wet their beds. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards.
No, make that years.’
‘Well, the lesson obviously didn’t get through,’ said Francis Leemark. And with the swiftness of a snake striking he scooped up the big glass ash-tray from Mr Pangbourne’s desk and in one swift motion slammed it into Pangbourne’s head and that felt so good that he slammed it again and after the man had dropped face down on to the desk he stood up and leant over and just kept on slamming it, with a wet heavy sound like a hatchet chunking into damp timber when you were chopping lengths of firewood on a clean rain-wet morning.
Old man Leemark’s arm had the strength of a gnarled hickory branch. He kept raising and swinging tirelessly.
It was hard work, but he didn’t mind. As he worked he lost himself in the memory of a long-gone autumn morning, smoky rural sky above and wet grass under foot as he breathed the clean outdoor air and chopped firewood in the farmyard, his arm swinging rhythmically as if he was wielding a hatchet. He felt the fine pleasant muscular ache of his God-given body doing honest labour. And it was only when the ache threatened to turn into a cramp that he stopped swinging, and returned from the memory of that damp smoky morning.
Francis Leemark blinked slowly and looked around. He was like a man awaking from a deep sleep, not quite sure where he was. He wasn’t at the farm. He was indoors, in a small room. What was this place?
There was something he was holding in his hand, but Francis Leemark didn’t want to look