Page 3 of Lord of the Lock

2

Chapter Two - Nathan

My father was late. Again. And in the month I’d been home, it was getting increasingly hard not to go stir crazy with his constant antics and cries for attention. “Come on, you wanted to go out!” I shouted down the hallway of my parents’ new bungalow.

“Well give me a minute, I can’t work with this bloody thing!” My father bumped into the door frame with his wheelchair as if to prove a point, even though the door frames had been specifically widened to help him. I knew I should feel sorry for him but…after a month of him battering me and my mother down, it was starting to grate on my nerves.

“The nurses offered you lessons, you just chose not to take them up on it,” I muttered. “And you swore at the prosthetics team…”

“I was confused, I was under anaesthesia!” he lied.

“Sure.” It was exhausting arguing with him. Which is probably why my mother had given up so easily. “Right, so are we heading to the hotel for a drink like you wanted?”

“I don’t want to go to thehotel. I want to go to the Eagle.”

“Then you can go by yourself, Dad.”

“It’s not accessible, I can’t get the door open by myself.”

“Then ask someone to help you.”

“I should never have raised such an ungrateful son.” And there it was, he’d won the argument with one simple, horrible sentence. Every potential retort died on my lips.

“Fine, let’s fucking go,” I muttered. As my father left the door, heaccidentallyran over my foot with one wheel. There was no apology, nor would I expect one. I locked up the door and followed him as he pressed forward on the little nub that propelled the electric wheelchair over bumpy pavements and toward our destination. One of the places I dreaded the most.

We didn’t talk on the journey over, which gave me a lot of time to think on my fear. And to let it grow. There were four establishments in all of Pont to gather and have a drink. There was the Pont Hotel, run by my parents until the smoking had taken my father’s leg. Mum ran it now, mostly by herself with constant nagging from him and an ever-growing list of happy customers. Then there were the rugby clubs, owned and run by Pont and Pandy rugby clubs themselves. Pont were a semi-pro rugby team who had sent a couple of players in their time over to the Welsh squad. Pandy were amateur players, and the source of most of my fear for coming home.

The Eagle was a kind of truce ground where both rugby teams frequented. I hated the place, and the way those players had treated me way back was the reason I’d scarpered years ago, firstly to Cardiff and then to the tiny town of Hiraeth on the West Wales coast. But my father’s illness had brought me home to Pontycae. To Hell.

The Eagle was quiet, but that was nothing unusual in the daytime. I kept an eye out for people I knew as I opened the door for my father, and my eyes briefly alighted on the three big men in the corner. I recognised a rugby-player build when I saw one but I vaguely recognised the three men too. I wasn’t about to go prodding, in case they were tormentors I’d somehow forgotten.

As soon as I stood to walk to the bar, one of the men stood upon and walked over.Of coursethat would be just my luck. But as soon as he opened his mouth, I knew he wasn’t a harm or a face from my past. “Three burgers please…and another two pints,” he said in a deep, thick Scottish voice. All of the men that had bullied me had been Pontycae born and raised. The man gave me an easy smile as he gestured to me to be served next, and I did my best not to cringe away from him as I ordered mine and my father’s drinks.

When I’d moved to Hiraeth, it was to totally remove myself from the drama and shit that followed me everywhere in Pont. Even then, it had taken some time to be comfortable around some of the taller, burlier men there, much as they reminded me of the Pandy rugby players. And then as soon as I’d settled in, my mother had called me. Dad’s operation had gone fine, she had said, but he desperately needed help around the house. Help she couldn’t give when she was running the Pont Hotel from dawn to dusk. So I’d come home, and so far avoided places like this. Like the Eagle.

As I got back to the table, I looked over at the table of three again. Of the three, the one I thought I recognised locked eyes with me again. He was massive, easily six and a half foot tall and built with arms that could crush a car, and had deep brown eyes that I could melt into from across a room. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull and there was stubble playing around the edges of his cheeks. Once he saw me looking, his eyes dipped and a blush darkened his tanned cheeks. I recognised him still, but there was no malice in his eyes. And I was pretty sure I had my bullies memorised to the last detail. It was strange to see so gentle a face on a body like his.

My father and I drank in silence, him sipping on a dark ale and me a lemonade. I had no desire to talk to him, and for once the alcohol seemed to soothe the constant pain that he told us he was in. I felt sorry for him sometimes - Type 1 diabetes wasn’t his fault - but the refusal to help himself, his cruelty to my mother, his nurses and a complete mental block on going to therapy and his complete attitude change to all of us around him were all enough to make me angry. He was making life horrible for all of us, and he had turned my life back upside down. I was looking around corners again and scared to leave the house. Because of him. And…well, the otherhim. Lewis.

As soon as my father was done with his pint, I took a note from his wallet to get him another. If drinking bought me his silence for now, I would keep him drinking until the bar closed.

I stood up, and at the same time the door creaked open. And there were voices. And if anything proved my own hypothesis about remembering my bullies, it was those two voices that sent a shiver of anxiety from my head to my toes. I turned from the table to look at them, and their voices died instantly as they spotted me. My own fault for having a hair colour that could be seen from space.

Ryan and Charlie were long-time players for Pandy Rugby United, and they were inseparable best friends. And they were good friends with Lewis, the cause of all my problems. They were both above six-foot tall and people often had joked about them being twins back when I hung around with them. The biggest difference being that Ryan was wiry and muscular, whereas Charlie was built bigger,like a brick shithousemy dad would have said in a happier time.

They took a step toward me, and I took a step backward, bumping up against the table. I had no doubt that they wouldn’t care about beating the crap out of me in a place like this.

“You know we’ve told you not to come back here,” said Ryan. His knuckles cracked ominously under one palm.

“After what you did to Lewis, I’m surprised you didn’t leave the fucking country,” said the other.

I held my hands up even as I cowered away from the two of them, desperate to show them I was no harm to them. Out of the corner of my eye, I was aware of the man from the other table approaching, and I knew then that I must have somehow forgotten the worst bully of them all. Because he was massive, and he dwarfed the two of them in both height and stature. His arms could rip tree-trunks out of the ground and those fists were scarred like they’d seen a hundred fights. If he was on their side, I worried that one rogue punch could kill me

“P-please,” I stuttered. “I-I-I’ll leave. No need t-to fight.”

I had practically flattened myself up against the table, my father remaining curiously quiet behind me as the three men approached. And then the giant slipped around the other two. So he wanted to get the first punch in. Figures. My breaths were coming out faster and faster but I balled up my hands into fists. I might be terrified, I may not be able to make the man budge an inch, but I was going to put up a real fight. I expected that he would snap all five-foot-seven of me in half with one swipe.

And then one of his massive hands scooped me up from the table into an embrace, crushing me against his side and holding me up on shaking legs. “Weenie-beanie!” he said to me. “I’ve missed you so much. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were back in town.”

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