Shellshock

By Anthony Masters

David's dad is driving him crazy. He is always moaning about his art, upsetting his mum, disregarding their sick Gran and generally making everyone miserable. Only Jan, David's kind and understanding friend, makes it all bearable. When his dad moves to Spain on the trail of his 'vision,' David follows for a holiday. But waiting for him there is the cunning orphan Miguel, vying for his dad's attention. And when Jan comes to visit, everything goes from bad to worse. Miguel goes to dangerous lengths to drive a wedge between David and those he loves. As Miguel's interference gets more and more perilous, they are all caught up in something very strange indeed, for there is a local legend about the 'Rock People,' about a curse, and revenge...

In this novel for young adults, first published in 1990, Anthony Masters shares deep insight into social problems experienced by children and teenagers, and explores difficult themes of family break-ups, bullying, illness and death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781448213955

Anthony Masters

Anthony Masters was renowned as an adult novelist, short story writer and biographer, but was best known for his fiction for young people. Many of his novels carry deep insights into social problems, which he experienced over four decades by helping the socially excluded. He ran soup kitchens for drug addicts and campaigned for the civic rights of gypsies and other ethnic minorities. Masters is also known for his eclectic range of non-fiction titles, ranging from the biographies of such diverse personalities as the British secret service chief immortalized by Ian Fleming in his James Bond books (The Man Who Was M: the Life of Maxwell Knight). His children's fiction included teenage novels and the ground breaking Weird World series of young adult horror, published by Bloomsbury. He also worked with children both in schools and at art festivals. Anthony Masters died in 2003.

Book preview

PART ONE

Walking Shadows

Autumn 1988 – Spring 1989

‘It’s time this family had an adventure,’ said his father over breakfast. David looked at him warily. Life had been eventful enough, what with Gran going into the home and his parents quarrelling so much that one of the guests had complained. ‘We’ve got the offer of the Spanish house. We should take it for the year.’

David knew that he was only making this often-repeated statement to upset Mum. His father had been going on about the Spanish house for over six months now, ever since he knew that Gran would have to go into the home. What Tod hadn’t realised and what had come as such a terrible shock, was that Mum still wouldn’t leave her, even when she was in St Swithin’s. David could have told him that any time, but instead he had sat back and waited for the explosion. When it came, it was much bigger, much more damaging than even he had imagined.

Never had he heard them quarrel so much and so badly. They were at it day and night, his mother stubborn and patient; his father shouting and inconsolable. He was a tall, passionate man with an untidy ginger beard whose personality was as big as his frame. If only they’d talked about it before, long before, David thought. Why hadn’t they stopped living in a dream? Surely they should have both realised it would always be stalemate. And Gran? Well, she had been in a state of martyrdom for years and hardly realised what was going on outside her own world. As for David he was torn between his love for all three of them. But it was his father who dominated them all. Tod with his charm and his laughter when the work was going well or other people were around; Tod with his dark moods of gloom and despondency, his long silences, his sudden flashes of temper.

His mother stood up and began to clear the dishes.

‘Don’t go on about it now, David will be late for school.’

It was a cold, dull, rain-driven November morning, dark with scudding clouds and crawling traffic. The Adams lived in a tall town house in Canterbury near the cathedral where his father, a sculptor, was employed as a mason.

‘Let’s all be late,’ said Dad. He was desperately frustrated by his routine job, and the lack of time he had for the sculpture that ruled his life. This was a Monday morning. On Mondays his father always felt worse, and showed it, but only to the family. If the telephone went – or a guest appeared, he would switch on the charm. But neither David nor his family really resented this. They had simply got used to it.

David scrambled to his feet. He must leave before the arguing began again and the guests started complaining. What had started as bickering had become full-scale warfare and he couldn’t stand it any more.

‘I’m not complaining.’

David sat opposite his gran in the St Swithin’s lounge. She was a diminutive figure in a huge armchair. Her shoulders were hunched, her head had sunk to her chest and a ball of untidy knitting lay on her lap. But that was where the cosy image ended. Mrs Carpenter had run her own cleaning agency in South London for years, and although she had been living with David’s parents for a long time, she was still fiercely individual and had a tough mind that was, sadly, beginning to break up.

‘Of course they’re all geriatric here – half barmy. Completely barmy.’ She spoke in a very loud voice and looked around her challengingly. Luckily the residents in the lounge that had once been a ballroom were mainly too deaf to hear her. One of the care staff heard though, and looked at David with raised eyebrows and a smile. Gran had only been in here a week and already she was notorious.

Mrs Carpenter was still a handsome woman, despite her wizened frame. Her face was gaunt and her eyes looked like dried blackcurrants but her bone structure gave her face real distinction.

‘If it wasn’t for my waterworks I wouldn’t be in here,’ she pronounced to the room at large and then winked at David. They had a special friendship. She knew everything about him and at fourteen he still confided all his secrets to her, whether they were to do with girlfriends or school or music or his ambitions. He wanted to be an archaeologist, but hadn’t really discussed it with his parents. Only Gran.

‘Well?’ she said, reaching for the cup of brackish-looking tea, her own brew that she insisted the nurses master. ‘What are they doing back at Dunroamin?’

Five years ago, unable to make ends meet, her parents had moved from an outlying Kentish village to buy the house in Canterbury and turn it into a guest house. They had inherited the name and had kept it on for a joke.

‘Arguing.’

‘That’s all they ever do,’ she snapped. ‘Argue, argue. It’s not right.’

‘They used to be OK.’

When they lived in the old tumbledown cottage, Dad had happily travelled into Canterbury, Mum had worked on her own sculpture when she wasn’t in the garden and he had gone to the village school. They had been such happy days.

‘That’s before I lost my independence.’

It was actually a long time before she lost her independence, but Gran had become a bit confused about time recently.

David shrugged. ‘You being here hasn’t made any difference.’

‘Don’t know about that.’

‘Well, I do.’ He’d tried to sound as positive as he could but she wasn’t having any. ‘If it wasn’t for me you’d have that year in Spain.’

‘We can’t afford it.’

‘Rubbish. It would do you all good. I’ve told Mary – leave me here. I’ll be dead soon.’

‘No one’s leaving you anywhere.’

‘I’ve got cancer; it won’t be long.’ She sipped miserably at her tea, like an old hooded owl. David knew that she didn’t have cancer; she had a heart condition and was becoming so incontinent that his mother could no longer physically look after her.

‘She could live at least another ten years,’ the doctor had said recently. ‘She’s only seventy-two.’

‘You’ll live to a hundred.’

‘Not if your dad has anything to do with it.’

‘Gran –’

Suddenly she stopped being a querulous, self-absorbed old lady and became perceptive and shrewd. This was what David loved so much about her. It was as if the wrinkles and the bent body and the cantankerousness were only a mask and underneath still lay the real person.

‘David, I’ve begged your mother to go with him. It’s the break they both need. And your education would benefit so much from a year abroad.’

‘I’d miss my mates.’

‘Now who’s being selfish?’

‘But –’

‘He can’t take much more, your dad. Fifteen years a mason and hardly ever a holiday. Weekends and evenings sweating in that studio – he’s obsessed with it all. And you know what he’s like – putting on an act for outsiders, getting dried up into himself at home.’

‘He’s had exhibitions.’

‘Never enough time for his real work. He’ll break out, you know. Before it breaks him. He’s been good since you were a kid.’

‘Good?’

‘Your dad’s got a driving force in him. Watch out.’

But David knew that. It frightened him somehow, knowing something like that was buried in his father. He specialised in huge abstract sculptures. Sometimes they looked like sitting giants; other times piles of rock. He didn’t make any money out of them, but a lot of people thought highly of him. Critics mainly. The general public didn’t understand them. Neither did David, except that they were somehow part of his father – the immovable part maybe. Like his rock-solid belief in his own ability.

‘If he could just go to Spain …’

‘Mum doesn’t want to go.’

‘She would if it wasn’t for me.’

The conversation was becoming circular.

‘He’s a walking shadow.’ She took another long draught of tea and looked round the room malevolently. How she hates it here, thought David. Then he became aware that she was looking at him very seriously. ‘I want you to talk to your mother. Persuade her to go before it’s too late.’

‘She won’t leave you. She doesn’t want to leave you. Neither do I. Dad will get over all this.’ But in the back of his mind David knew he was wrong. His father’s patience was wearing thinner and thinner.

‘I don’t think he will,’ she said abruptly. ‘If he doesn’t go, he’ll hold it against you for the rest of your life. Your dad needs to go. Deserves to.’ She paused. ‘He ought to grow up too and something’s got to make him. He’s like a big sulky kid at the moment. He hasn’t got what he wants and he’ll do anything to get it.’

Gran leant back and closed her eyes. The effort of being responsible for other people had exhausted her.

‘Don’t break the family up,’ she muttered. Then she opened her eyes like an angry old vulture. ‘Nurse!’ she yelled. ‘The tea’s cold.’

The next weekend David took his bike and rode off alone to Faversham where a network of muddy creeks traversed the marshes and, further on, a huge grey estuary lapped at a muddy foreshore. He wanted to think but instead met Jan. They had been friends for a long time now, but recently there had been a cooling off. It had something to do with the fact that the more his parents quarrelled the more he wanted to be with them and so he saw less of Jan. Idly pedalling he had cycled through her village. Had he taken the route deliberately? It was hard to say; there was another one he could have taken. She had been coming out of a shop