PURPLE SHIRTS

I was led room by room around the enormous estate and read sections of an information booklet between introductions. Victoria House was built and owned by a Rhodesian silversmith, named in honour of the Queen at the time of its completion. When the grandson of the builder died, he left in in trust to the charity he founded, also called Victoria House. At the time of my visit it housed 160 people with developmental and learning disabilities. I discovered that the strange looking folk I saw outside had Down Syndrome.

Once we had arrived at the halls of residence, I was taken into a small room by a tall bearded man and given a list of rules to memorise. I was not allowed into the halls until I could recite them all. One rule stood out, the last on the list and the only one I accurately recall. Do not talk to residents wearing purple shirts.

I was lead into a large hall with zigzagged parquet flooring and three very tall windows with semi-circle Celtic wooden toppers at the far end of the room. A very old piano sat centrally and a man with a step ladder was working above it, fiddling with wires in the ceiling. Dust was falling onto the top of the piano and glistened on its descent as the sun broke through the clouds and flooded into the hall. A large peacock coloured tortoiseshell light-shade rested on the floor nearby.

I had never seen a place like this before, It looked like more money had been invested in the soft furnishings than in the entirety of my parents house. Mrs Tapscott walked me over to the windows. I touched the curtains that accompanied them. They were otherworldly luxurious on my fingers. Here I was introduced to Rosie, a middle aged woman with Down Syndrome in a pink dress, with a large sunflower bow clipped to straight shoulder length brown hair. She had seen me touching the curtain and began running her hands on them before backing into one and wrapping herself inside. Cocooned, I could see her bending her knees up and down. It seemed the luxury of Victoria House was not lost on Rosie. She giggled until giggling turned into total rapture and a staff member was summoned to calm her down.

Her laughing was music to me and I was caught smiling from ear to ear by Mrs Tapscott. I was told that I'd be reading to Rosie and that I should pick a book from the reading corner and take a seat. As I strolled across, a group of six residents made there way into the centre of the room and began to ask questions of the electrician. He seemed completely at ease with them, made his was down the ladder and sat at the piano. The room was then full of music I recognised.

Despite my mothers neurosis, she had always been liberal with the arts and what I was allowed to see as a child. We were both big horror fans and together would consume works by auteurs of the macabre in print and on celluloid. Despite never fully understanding context, at eight I had read every Clive Barker novel and short story, regularly rifling through mothers book collection for the nastiest looking cover I could find. When it wasn't all about the horror, it was all about Doctor Who.

Mother insisted the best Doctor was Patrick Troughton, whom I recognised as the priest from The Omen and so had decided the same. The electrician was playing the Doctor Who opening theme with gusto. After a few minutes observing the scene, the body language of the residents was beginning to change and I could sense something brewing. They were swaying from side to side, as if anticipating something. The electrician seemed none the wiser, said something I couldn't make out and got up from the stool. One resident walked slowly toward the electrician and slammed his hand onto the top of the piano. After a few awkward seconds he shouted 'play . . it . . again'. The others shared glances, then began to support his demand with shouts of 'yeah' and 'play'. I couldn't see the electricians face, but could see he had a defensive posture, raising his hands, palms facing forward.

Before any further escalation, the tall bearded guy appeared again and led the antagonist away. With that the others dispersed and made their way separately through various doorways. I retrieved a copy of The Hobbit, sat on one of the chairs and waited for Rosie. Now that she was completely calm, Mrs Tapscott brought her over accompanied by the bearded man. Behind him I could see the piano slamming man sitting on a chair, arms folded, wearing a purple shirt.

THE BEARDED MAN

Rosie wasn't remotely interested in what I was reading, though I persisted for thirty minutes or so, her agitation was obvious throughout. Mrs Tapscott asked repeatedly what the matter was, at which point Rosie would look at the bearded man, as if seeking permission to speak, then would readjust her sitting position and cease looking around for a few minutes before resuming the behaviour. I caught Mrs Tapscott glaring at the bearded man, who seemed too focused on Rosie to notice. When he decided it was fruitless to read any further, he stood and announced there had been enough excitement for one morning and led her away across the hall and through a bottle green door.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I placed The Hobbit back into the shelves when a frayed book, sitting atop a row of leather bound encyclopedias, caught my eye. It was called Summonitores Libro. It looked old, with thick yellowing pages, many of which were loose, a few floating onto the floor as I opened it. As I reached down to recover them, Mrs Tapscott suggested we should go and meet some of the other residents. Placing the book under my arm, we walked side-by-side toward the green door. As we were about to push it open, a man accompanied by a police officer in uniform entered the hall.

The bearded man opened the green door as we were about to go through it, almost knocking Mrs Tapscott backward. Without a word, he made a beeline straight for the man in the suit. I heard the man introduce himself as DI Broad. The female officer with him looked over at us and tilted her head slightly, then made her way over. She referred to me by name, and asked me if I was Derek's son. Stunned, I said yes. She smiled and said that my father had shown her a photograph of me and my sister on Holiday in Great Yarmouth and that my mother had babysat her when she was a kid. Her smile disappeared, the pleasantries ceased and I was questioned as to what brought me to Victoria House. Mrs Tapscott interceded, moving slightly to one side, ushering the officer away from me so they could speak privately.

I had been asking myself the same question. What was I doing there? Why me and not Ben? She knew me well and couldn't possibly have thought it had been me saying those words. And my father showing photographs? It seemed as though he could barely stand to be inside the same house as me most of the time. The alleged display of sentimentality was way out of character.

I tried to hear what was being discussed by the bearded man and DI Broad. From what I could work out, one of the residents was missing, something was said about needing a statement and the voices were raised. The bearded man looked ashen as they shook hands. The inspector, whilst slim, was sweating profusely and wiping his brow throughout their short conversation.

The bearded man departed into the little room where he had shared the rules with me and the officers now stood together. They were whispering to one another, holding their hands over their mouths. Broad looked over took a couple of steps toward me. 'Keep your eyes peeled son', he said. As they made their way toward the exit, the Down Syndrome man wearing the purple shirt shouted 'he fed Gilly to a worm'. Both officers turned around to see who spoke out, looking confused, they glanced at one another and left.

I walked over to the hall windows to see the officers standing on the driveway next to an unmarked black car. In the back seat, I could make out the figure of a large man. I noticed the burning tip of a cigarette and a large cloud of smoke escape through the drivers door as DI Broad entered the vehicle. The figure felt familiar, someone I knew. All of my fathers male colleagues were big men, seemingly a prerequisite in 1970's police recruitment policy, utilized for intimidation and compliance. As they drove away, I felt a drop in my stomach.

THE RAIN

Mrs Tapscott decided that after lunch our field trip should be cut short and made arrangements for Mr Column to return and pick us up. From the hall windows I could see black clouds were swarming. I had only ever seen clouds that dark during the hurricane in 1987. They didn't look real, as if painted onto the sky. Lurching toward Victoria House, they brought a howling gale that animated pot plants and tested the flexibility of the bushes and newly planted trees in the fields beyond the driveway. Before too long, the gloom had smothered the area and everything appeared as dusk.

With every minute that passed, the drum rolls of thunder grew louder, as if the clouds were accompanied by a descending army on horseback. Then came the rain and I could barely see a few feet out from the window. I wasn't sure how sensible it was for Mr Column to drive to Victoria House, I certainly didn't want to be in a car during a storm. I imagined a series of grimly ending vignettes in anticipation of our journey home. Quite a lot of them included vomit.

My father had always stressed to me, typically when commenting on my school work, that if something sounds or looks important, it probably is. His instruction, bolstered by twenty years of experience in the police, wading through undulant swamp in search of gold, was to write everything down. In the absence of pen and paper, repeat it over and over again until you can recite everything you have seen or heard, backwards. I could feel his influence, and just for a moment, his hands on my shoulders. It felt like pressure to speak up.

I needed to better understand what I was doing at Victoria House. My gaze left the violence of the weather and my eyes browsed the hall for Mrs Tapscott. She was standing beside the bearded man, who was wearing a coat, as if he were ready to leave the safety of the building. I heard him say, 'I'll be back soon' before he left. I had questions in my mind, but wasn't sure how I could ask them to get satisfying answers, I wasn't exactly a talker.

I ran through the observations I had made. One. Excluding the bearded man, there were only 4 members of staff that I had counted during introductions. This seemed oddly light for 160 residents and it didn't seem at all surprising that a resident had gone missing. Two. Mrs Tapscott seemed very familiar with everything that went on and seemed to know the bearded man quite well, this needed an explanation. Three. Purple shirt man was still sitting, arms folded, in the same chair and two hours had passed. Despite his calm, this seemed cruel. Four. The information booklet I was reading said that people with Down Syndrome can easily become frustrated, I would be out of my mind sat in the same chair for that length of time, how could he be so calm? Five. Where were all of the other residents? Of the 160, I had only see a handful come into the hall and I had seen none of those working on flowerbeds when I arrived, return. I was going to make my way over to Mrs Tapscott when I heard a tap at the window. It was Mr Column. Maybe these questions wouldn't need answering after all.