Portrait of an ordinary man

[Trigger warning: implied paedophilia and child abuse]

He was, altogether, a very ordinary man. He wore jeans and a hoodie, and he was quietly good-looking, neither plain nor showily handsome. His eyes were of a colour you couldn’t remember. Once, on holiday, he had been persuaded to have a caricature portrait taken on the beach; but the picture had come out blandly bad, as if there were nothing in his face which could be grasped or exaggerated but only what was regular.

He was a very ordinary man. No one noticed him as he crossed the bridge and dropped down onto the green. His palms were barely sweating.

The park had its usual June cohort of drunks sunning themselves, picnickers, dog-walkers, a trapeze artist balancing on a line between two trees. Above him, somewhere, the high knife’s note of a lark pierced the sky.

And children. Of course there were children in the park. If he looked at the drunks or the picnickers or the dog-walkers he could pretend he didn’t see them.

By the time he reached the bench opposite the playground, his mouth was dry. He sat down, lit a cigarette. Flicking ash into the grass, his hand barely shook.

At first, he didn’t look. Wrong to be caught looking. That awful word – wrong wrong wrong. He fixed his eyes to a patch of grass and watched a blackbird consume a worm. The black eye against black feathers, intent on its prey. The worm wriggling and curling its body in knots of pain. The cruelty of it – how mismatched the soft pink body of the worm and that stabbing steely beak.

He didn’t need to look to know the layout of the playground. The swings on the right, the roundabout on the left, the climbing frame shaped like a pirate ship in the middle of the colourful rubber matting. The children hanging from metal bars and flying skywards on the swings, shrieking.

It reminded him of the awful place. It was called the Kiddie Klub, with two ‘k’s. Even aged 8, he knew that that was wrong wrong wrong. What’s more, he hated being grouped together with the other kiddies. They hated him, and he hated them. They were loud and runny-nosed and athletic. They swung from the monkey bars and pulled faces at him. They whooped and screamed – too much, too much, too much. They asked him what his name was, and ran away screaming with laughter when he wouldn’t tell. They whispered and pointed at him. They dared him to do things, knowing full well that he wouldn’t. Everywhere, primary colours – blue and red and yellow. The colours hurt his eyes. The colours screamed at him. And everywhere that stifling smell. Warm plastic and feet and food smells from the café down the hall – cheese and baked beans. There were giant balls that swung from ropes. They would hit you with a fleshy smack on the cheek if you weren’t careful. There were slides that grazed your skin with static. There were climbing frames sticky with sweat. There was a tunnel with things hanging down that touched your face. It was terrible.

The walls of the Kiddie Klub were giant sheets of netting, unyielding. When his mother dropped him off, he would watch her receding down the hallway to the cafe, his hand outstretched through the netting – don’t go – then she was gone. The netting was rough between his fingers. He’d pound and pound the netting until it burned, and still he’d keep pounding. The skin of his hands and arms red from the netting, his cheeks red from the tears. Don’t let them see you cry. Fists to the eyes, grazing hot tears from the cheeks. Gulping sobs that died in convulsions before they were born. Don’t let them see you cry.

Once, he decided to try the ball-pit. Perhaps that would be OK. He could dive into the sea of balls, blue and red and yellow, pretend he was having fun. The plastic balls couldn’t be as bad as water, could they? He would be able to stay afloat, not fall into that world of primary colours and breathlessness. It would be OK.

He waded in, waist-deep. He pretended he was an adventurer conquering new seas, like you were supposed to. He could almost imagine he was having fun. He inched forward, carefully placing each foot so as not to tread on a ball and slip. It would be OK.

But suddenly – another boy. Laughing and playing in the ball-pit. Would he ask his name? Or dare him to do the monkey bars? Would he tease him or laugh or pull his hair? Or worse – would he ask to be friends?

He panicked. He tried to swim to the edge, but this wasn’t like water at all. The balls crowded unyielding and insistent in front of him. The edge was only a metre away, but the balls kept coming. He pushed and pushed, thrashed the balls from his path, but there they were and still they kept on coming. Everywhere, blue and red and yellow, he couldn’t see where he was going now. And suddenly something different beneath his fingers – not the tacky plastic but something soft, warmer even than the warm plastic. Flesh. The thigh of the other boy. Immediately, he froze. He looked at the boy. The boy looked at him. For a second, perfect stillness.

Was this the moment when it all began? There in the Kiddie Klub, aged 8. Had that moment led him directly to this moment, now, in the park by the children’s playground with the swings on the right and the roundabout on the left? And did that question in any way matter?

‘Hey mister!’

The words knifed his ears.

‘Hey mister! Pass us the ball!’

He barely hesitated before kicking the football back to the boy. At the sound of the kick, the bird, worm-full and satisfied, took flight.

‘Time for home!’ the boy’s mother announced, ‘Good boy, you never make a fuss!’