As Recorded: Paths of Error

Book Three of the Paths of Error trilogy

As Recorded by Sam Smith

Copyright Sam Smith 2015

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‘The paths of error are various and infinite.’ Edward Gibbon

Chapter One

Thursday 10th March 1983

The neurologist said that it was probably all down to boxing. I don't see the point of this.

"For research. The collection of evidence."

To prove what?

"About you in particular? Nothing. You're not the only subject. But, from all the evidence, we might be able to find common trends, patterns. About ourselves - ? We're funded by a body known as the PTT. It is they who are paying for your stay here. You are comfortable here?"

And this is the price?

"No. These sessions are voluntary. Your refusal, if you do refuse, will be accepted, your reasons and reactions noted. And that will be that."

I still don't see the point.

"The gathering of knowledge. Without knowledge we act on faith, prescribe on prejudice. The first step to wisdom is admitting one’s ignorance. We know nothing about you."

What more d'you need to know?

"For the purpose of this research - everything. Half would be worse than nothing. You are comfortable here?"

Yes.

"Have you anywhere else to go?"

No.

"Anything else to do?"

No.

"Then - why not? Help pass the time. All I’m asking is for you to tell me about yourself. In your own words. I promise not to probe. Nor to provoke. What’s wrong with that?"

I don't trust you.

"See how it goes?"

If you say so.

"Cigarette?"

No thanks.

"Did you do much boxing?"

Done a bit.

"Amateur or professional?"

Amateur.

"Never thought of turning professional?"

No.

"Why not?"

Didn't want my brains scrambled. Besides, I started too late.

"How d'you mean?"

Most boxers start as schoolboys. If they're any good they work themselves up to Olympic standard. Then, when they've got as far as they can go as amateurs, they turn pro. I was nearly seventeen by the time I had my first fight.

"You win?"

Yes.

"How many fights did you have altogether?"

Fifteen... sixteen. Twenty. Can't remember. I boxed for the Navy team.

"You were in the Navy?"

That's where I started.

"How did you start? By that I mean how did you come to first step into the ring?"

I had a pub fight with another rating at Combined Training. In North Devon. When I finished there I was sent to gunnery school at Wembury. Just outside Plymouth. A couple of the ratings from North Devon went to Plymouth with me. They must've talked about my pub fight. A boxer at Wembury asked if I fancied having a go in the ring. I didn't have much money, nothing else to do in the evenings.

"And you won your first fight?"

Yes.

"What weight did you box?"

Welter.

"Ever lose any fights?"

One. On points.

"In Plymouth?"

No, Whitby.

"What were you doing there?"

Courtesy call. They had space on a boxing programme, thought it'd be a good idea to invite someone from the ship. I was the only boxer on board. Trouble was I was out in the North Sea when I was told I'd be fighting. Nowhere to train properly. No one to spar with. My third fight. He turned out to be a southpaw. Never been in a ring with one before. Even sparring. Took me a round to figure out how to hit him. And he had the longer reach, was just inside the upper welter limit. I was just inside the lower.

"Southpaw?"

Left-handed. Unorthodox. Leads with the right instead of the left. You can end up banging gloves together mid-air instead of hitting one another.

"But you did hit him?"

Cracked one of his ribs. I ducked under his right, and, as I went round the back of him, I banged him under his arm with my right.

"But you still lost?"

He was getting more home than I was.

"Ever fight another southpaw?"

In Portsmouth. Couple of years later.

"You beat him?"

I only lost that one fight.

"So you never got knocked out?"

No prompting, eh? You don't have to get knocked out to have your brains scrambled. That fight with the first southpaw? - I never took one big punch. Just jabs. Next morning my eyes were ringed with blue - as if I’d been wearing eyeshadow. And as far as I could remember I hadn't taken one direct punch to the eye. You ever boxed?

"No."

Well let me explain. Suppose I was to reach across this table now and slap you hard across the face. It would physically stun you. You’d feel your brain rock about inside your head. I don't say you’d see stars, but there'd be a red explosion of shock. And you'd remember that one slap. But if we were to have a game, say, stand toe to toe over there and try to slap one another, and the one who got the most slaps home won, then you'd be so busy trying to slap me that you'd hardly notice the slaps I gave you. My hands would just be an obstacle to be overcome. An irritant. Unless I got so on top of you, and you became so defensive, then maybe you'd give up, but only because the match had become unequal. And not because of the slaps you'd received, but because of the slaps you couldn't give. And the next day your face and arms would be sore, and you'd be surprised at the places you'd been hit that you hadn't noticed.

"I've played rugby."

There you are then. And that's not to say that I didn't take some big punches without going down. I did.

"To the head?"

"I had this other fight in Whitby. Later on. He was a short, well-muscled bloke. I easily outpunched him, was walking it on points. My corner told me not to mix it. If I remember rightly he'd lost half his fights on points, had won half on knockouts. But I got bored. He stood square on, was a doddle to hit. I decided to open up. From nowhere he caught me a right cross.

"Ever seen any boxers knocked out? Next time have a look at their faces. All you'll see there is surprise. Because that one punch didn't hurt any more than the others they'd taken. Why should that one punch have that effect? And when they get off the deck they're indignant that they're not being allowed to box on. They don't feel hurt.

Now that punch didn't knock me out, but I felt the shock waves travel down my backbone, sink into my legs, and land like lead weights in my boots. All the sounds went far away. And it was as if I left my body and watched myself. I sort of stood to one side and told myself what to do. Jab, pull back, jab, stand off, jab. Like a kid with a remote control toy. And back in my corner I told myself what to say, when to nod, when to shake my head, when to stand up and box again. Then, suddenly, it all fitted back into place. And I coasted home. But it frightened me. And do you know what? No one else noticed that he'd hit me that hard.

"Ever get hit like that again?"

In Portsmouth. A lucky punch. Same reaction - telling myself to box my way out of it.

"You ever knock anyone out?"

First fight. Only he didn't go down. Ropes kept him up. Ref stopped it at the end of the second.

"What's it feel like?"

Frustrating. You want to go on hitting them. As if they've cheated you.

"Knock out anyone else?"

A couple of Cassius Clays. One was a squaddy. Though the only thing he had in common with Cassius was that he was black, and he thought he didn't need a guard. I knocked him down every round, last round he was counted out.

"Where was that?"

"Southampton. Navy team. The other one was a Yank in Malta. Intership match. That went four rounds. Being white didn't stop him thinking he was Cassius. Big showman. I played safe, outboxed him. He got so narked because he couldn't get near me, laid a hundred dollars down for me to go another round. He was stupid. I opened up, fairground stuff, and banged him out.

"Don't, though, get the idea that the point of boxing is to knock the other man out. It's usually a mismatch if that happens. Boxing is an art. Most good fights are tactics and strategy. I really enjoyed the close fights I had, all the while trying to outwit each other. Trying this, trying that, see what happens if... Finding an opening in his defence, trying it again.

"Like with that first southpaw. He reckoned afterwards that if the fight had gone on any longer - if it'd been professional - I'd have eventually beaten him. He couldn't find a defence for that right into his ribs. And I've had fights where I've won the first two rounds on points, and in the third he's found a way through; and if that fight had gone on any longer I would've lost. That's why I didn't turn pro.

Most boxers know how good they are. You can't fool yourself. Not for long. Someone will soon deliver your comeuppance. And so the only reason you turn pro is if you know you're good enough to become champion. Or if you weigh up the pros and cons, decide that you're competent enough to make some money at it.

"You decided you weren't?"

Oh I was. But there were easier ways of making money. And I'd met enough old boxers to see what they ended up like. Slurrers and sluggards, we called them.

"You don't slur."

I've got other symptoms. I can't drink any more. A couple of pints now and I'm as pissed as a fart. And stupidly aggressive. And it's not being unaccustomed to drinking. I tried to build up tolerance, had a couple glasses of wine every evening. But even they made me woozy.

"Could be other reasons."

Could be. But I have to wear glasses now. The optician said my sight probably deteriorated because of blows to my head. And he didn't know I'd boxed.

"Probably."

You bastards always play safe. Probably. We're all guinea pigs to you. It's probably a virus - try these pills.

"We, you said, called them slurrers and sluggards."

Derek and Dan, my brothers-in-law. They fixed me up with my second fight in Whitby. After I got married. They both boxed. Had both been schoolboy champions. Their father was Jimmy Willis. Lightweight champion. Heard of him?

"No."

And he thought he was legend.

"Those recent stitches in your head - was that a fight?"

Accident.

"Were you knocked out?"

Flesh wound. Neurologist said no connection.

"What kind of accident?"

Accident accident.

"Derek and Dan boxed?"

Derek was heavyweight. Their mother was big. And Dan was welter, went up to middle. It was his rib I cracked.

"They turn professional?"

Packed it in before I did.

"Did your wife approve of your boxing?"

Was furious when I gave up.

"You're divorced now?"

Yes.

"Any children?"

Three. Two boys and a girl.

"Ever see them?"

No.

"Miss them?"

What d'you think?

Do you?

No.

"Right. I think we've gone as far as we're going to go today."

Chapter Two

Monday 14th March 1983

"Tell me about your father."

"A bit obvious? But if that's what you want. For all the good it'll do you.

"My father was blind. He was a pilot in the war. A Hurricane. Shot down any number of German planes - Dorniers, Heinkels, even Messerschmitts. Then he crashed on landing. His plane caught fire. He was blinded.

"And not just blinded: he was pretty badly smashed up. Might have been better if they'd left him for dead. Apart from the plastic surgery, he spent over a year having other operations. All in all it left him a little crazy. He used to have what my mother called ‘turns’. And he talked to himself all the time.

"He wasn't like most blind people, didn't acquire an acute sense of hearing. In thinking aloud to himself he had to shout over his thoughts. He was a bit frightening until you got to know him.

"All his skin was like stretched red rubber - the kind of stuff they used to make aprons out of. Plastic surgery had built his nose back a bit, but it was still like two black holes in the middle of his face. And he had no eyebrows, just two red empty orbs. And no lips. And his hair was like straw. Actually it looked like a toupee, but it wasn't. Looked like that because the skin had been burnt off up to his helmet. And his hands were like two red lobster claws. If I was sitting near him as a child he used to grip hold of my leg and shout at me. Not angry. Just shouting.

"He really should have been in an institution. But my mother had married him against her family's wishes. He was a Londoner. The same week he crashed, both his parents and his young sister had been killed in a bombing raid. Small wonder he was crazy. And he was my mother's responsibility.

"At first, when I was little, he just seemed to be crazy. He used to scream in the night, and I'd hear my mother settling him down. And he used to take me to this chapel in Winner Street. You had to go up steps to it. Bit like an outpost to a fort. And he wasn't the only crazy there. One fat man, looked like a farmer, broken veins all over his face, used to say he'd eaten his children. All in slow Devonshire vowels. And he was more puzzled that he should have done such a thing than repentant. And another one - I can see what she was now - a straggly frustrated old spinster, had thick glasses. She said she'd been attacked by the priapic devil. I used to imagine this gorilla with horns somewhere on the loose in Paignton.

"It was a bit like a Negro spiritualist revival. A paler version. And the voices weren't so mellow. All shouting at once. Then my father would bang his white stick on the floorboards. They would all go quiet, and he'd shout, 'I seen God! I seen God! He is Light! He is all Light!' And I hadn't started school then, wasn't even five years old.

"As I got older I could see that his turns followed a pattern. First the screaming dreams, then he'd start going to chapel. Then I would come home from school and there would be the doctor in the kitchen washing his pink hands and telling my mother not to worry. Ever noticed how doctors always have plump pink hands?

"My father would be all right then for weeks, months, wouldn't go near the chapel. I remember one turn he had, though. It was after I realised that he was some sort of war hero, someone to be proud of and not ashamed of. And I used to find out about him to answer my friends' questions. They all assumed that every British pilot had been a Spitfire pilot. So I had to tell them about Hurricanes, what planes he'd shot down.

"One day I asked him while he was having a turn. Only I hadn't realised. To get him talking I asked him what it was like flying. 'Up there it's all blue. Blue! Light! Floating! Free!' And sticking out his arms like a kid playing planes he went crashing round the living room.

"But he wasn't always like that. He had a quirky sense of humour.

"When I was little we used to go down to Broadsands. There’s a wide winding road of concrete slabs goes down to it - under a viaduct. Huge tall arches. As we were walking under it a steam train went over the top. 'Look, boy,' he said, 'A steam pilot.'

"And as I grew up he stuck up for me. 'Boys will be boys, May.' 'It's his age.' I remember once I went shooting rats in a barn. The farmer gave us an egg for every rat we shot. When I got home, really proud of my dozen and a half eggs, he said, 'Silly boy. You're supposed to shoot the birds, not the eggs.'

"Tellies first came out when I was a boy. My mother wouldn't buy one. She told me that I was selfish for wanting one when my father couldn't watch it. But all my friends would be indoors watching their tellies and I'd have no one to play with. And next day in school I wouldn’t know what they were talking about.

"So I was mooning about the house one evening, making a nuisance of myself, and he asked me where all my friends were. I said, watching telly. 'Get the boy a telly, May!' he shouted. She said that we couldn't afford it. He said that if everyone else had got them then they couldn't be that expensive, and of course we could afford it.

"Actually he enjoyed the telly more than I did. I used to give him a running commentary. Remember Mr Pastry? Try giving a running commentary to that. This has fallen over, that's slipped, there's a man hanging from the light... I wouldn't be able to talk for laughing, and he'd be laughing at me laughing. The two of us rolling over each other on the sofa.

"We watched war films together. 'There’s a Hurricane!' I shouted one day. 'I can hear it, boy,' he said, 'do you know? I can smell it too.' But what he liked most was Westerns. Which was all right by me because I'd be allowed to stay up late so I could give him a commentary. My mother was no good at it. A dry-gulcher to her was a desert ditch cleaner. We got on well. My friends, once they got used to him, liked him.

"I'll tell you of when he first met my friend Newt. 'Who are you?' my father shouted at him. 'Tom Newson!' Newt shouted back. 'That's what I like,' my father shouted, 'a good strong name in a strong clear voice. Peter mumbles. Tom Newson, eh?' 'That's right, Mr Oldway,' Newt shouted. 'Are you deaf?' 'No!' my father shouted. 'Are you?' 'No,' Newt shouted. 'Pleased to hear it,' my father shouted.

"He designed a trolley for me and Blue, another friend. It was the only trolley that had the brake lever between our legs, braked both back wheels at the same time. All the rest had the brake on one back wheel. Put it on hard when you were going fast and it turned the trolley over. And he designed a kite for me. And when Pancho's rabbits had a litter he was the only grown-up who didn't say drown them. Pancho, Blue and I helped him build the hutches. He started breeding rabbits after that. Made himself some pocket money.

"He was the one who helped me with my homework. Maths and the sciences especially. He was interested in them. I used to buy him science magazines, read to him about transistors - all new then. He was explaining Einstein's theories to me when I was fourteen. And the first astronauts - that really got him. 'Imagine that, boy. No up, no down. The world out there like a blue moon...'

"He was the only one I felt safe with during my puberty. I had a bad puberty. Plump and spotty. Blushing all the time. He couldn't see me so didn't feel he had to make a joke about it. I used to take him fishing with me. And it's funny - I might've been embarrassed then by everything else, but I wasn't by him. I suppose it was because this big red rubber doll shouting at the top of his voice made everyone embarrassed who looked his way. And I was used to him, stole a march on them.

"And I stole off him. You need money when you're fourteen, fifteen. My mother got a job in a chemists. He had to pay the Saturday morning bills. So I did it for him, pocketed some of the change. And he stole out of the change too, used to slip me five bob. He used to tell my mother he'd bought hay or food for the rabbits.

"I wanted to go in the Air Force, but he asked me not to. Said he couldn't bear to think of me crashing. So I went in the Navy. He died before I finished my training. I came home for the funeral.

"He'd had one of his turns. My mother hadn't noticed the signs. She was at work all day and they'd had separate rooms by this time. She'd written to tell me that he was going to the chapel to sing ‘For Those in Peril...’ I'd written back telling him to wait until I got to sea. I was busy. She was busy. Chapel hadn't seemed significant. And at the funeral were three of them from the chapel. The lame skinny preacher and a couple of the women.

"The preacher said a few words - that my father must have known where he was bound, for, in his last moments, he had returned to God and he had made his peace. My father, in his calmer moments, had been an agnostic. He was a scientific man.

"At the crematorium - his second burning - the lame preacher buttonholed my mother out by the car. He told her what a good man my father had been at heart, how - come the end - he had defied those forces trying to keep him from his God. And more - insinuating that my mother had stopped him going to chapel.

"It was the only time I saw my mother close to cracking. I told the preacher to stuff it, gave him a shove in the chest. But still he went on about understanding our distress at losing a loved one, turning his other cheek... So I gave him another shove, told him to hop it. 'Go on. Hop it!' I said. And he limped away. My mother and I looked at each other horrified. And we were driven back to Paignton looking out of opposite windows, both of us trying desperately not to laugh. Unseemly, you know.

"Before I went back to Training my mother told me not to feel too bad about my father. She reckoned that without me he would have died long before. Me being around, growing up, had given him an interest in life. Then, just as I was about to leave for the train, she pushed a brown envelope into my kit bag. Some things, she said, that my father would have wanted me to have. I didn't have a chance to open it until I was on the train.

"In it was his DSM. First I'd known of it. And there were some photographs of him. My mother had previously told me that she had burnt all the old photos of him after his crash. Hadn't wanted to be reminded of her handsome swashbuckler in blue, she had said. Most of the photographs were of him in RAF uniform.

And I didn't bear the slightest resemblance to him. He had a long thin face, blond hair. My face is square, hair's black. My mother's face is round, and she's got brown hair. She doesn’t dye it. I don't take after her. He wasn't my father.

"What did he die of?"

Heart attack, the doctor said. Brought on by fear. He told me about his screaming dreams once. When we were fishing. A bright sunny day. Calm sea. He said that not one of his dreams was about the actual crash. It was the fears he'd had on other flights. All the near misses that he'd had coming in to land. Before he did crash. The plane from nowhere suddenly on his tail. Watching a friend's plane go spinning to the ground. Some pilot hanging helplessly in the sky on parachute strings. What'd he say? - like a toddler swinging on his reins. With cannon shell everywhere. There but for the grace of God went him. And his imagination did the rest.

"You're positive he wasn't your father?"

"Why else keep the photographs secret? And it's easy enough to work out. I was conceived a year or more after he crashed. When I first found out about sex, the thought of my mother doing it with that screaming red rubber dummy sickened me. But, of course, he couldn't do it.

While he'd been in hospital, expected to die, she had been with another man, had conceived me. Then, when he recovered, in his confusion she convinced him that I was his. Whether he knew the truth or not, he accepted it. And she'd already been cut off by her family for marrying him, she'd been ditched by the man who'd got her in the family way. The big red rubber dummy was all that she had.

"What was your reaction?"

I thought it was all one big joke. Pick the bones out of that.

Chapter Three

Thursday 17th March 1983

"If I asked you to picture your mother, what one image would first come to your mind?"

"One image? She never smiled. I suppose she must have. I can remember coming home on leave, having a lie-in, and listening to her and Helen downstairs. Not laughing, but being cheerful. But I can’t remember her ever smiling. Not that she was miserable. Or frowned. She just kept a completely straight face. Expressionless. Stared right at people. Unnerved them. To me she's always been an enigma. A Mona Lisa who didn't smile.

You couldn't talk to her. You couldn't ask her how she felt. Or what she thought. She'd tell you what she thought you needed to know, and no more. I still don't know whether she even liked me or not. She used to tell me off for being naughty, make me do my homework, but she was never interested in me as my father was. No, she's an enigma.

"You never talked about your father with her?"

"About him not being my father? I tried once, after Helen left me. I was looking for sympathy I suppose. All she said was, 'Water under the bridge.' And when I first told her that Helen had left, all she asked was, 'What about the children?' I said they were Helen's. She seemed satisfied with that.

"I'll tell you how well I knew my mother: I never realised how posh she spoke until the day of my wedding. And I also realised that day that I'd never seen her mixing with other people before. And her accent wasn't remarkable only because everyone else's was Yorkshire. I had to listen to make sure she wasn't putting the voice on for the occasion. But Jimmy had been plying her with brandies, and she was a little unsteady, slurring a little. But no lapses into the vernacular: that accent was all her own.

"She surprised me there in another way. One Uncle didn't realise that Helen was pregnant and that's why we were getting married. He thought it was a bit quick because I had to get back to my ship. But someone let slip about Helen's delicate condition, and after that he couldn't take his eyes off Helen's stomach. Which was flat as a dab - she wasn't even three months.

"Jimmy got shirty, asked the Uncle if he wanted to take his bloody toaster back. 'No,' the Uncle said, 'just never crossed my mind.' And my mother patted the Uncle on the shoulder, said, 'That's to your credit.' Yet a