Tim Comes Home

 CHAPTER 3

Tim Sullivan—the real Tim Sullivan—the policeman who had rescued the boy, lay in his hospital bed and considered what a fuck-up he had made of his life. He had once been a pious and idealistic youth who had thought of being a Franciscan friar. Something about the simplicity and extremity of the life had appealed to him, but he drew back at the last moment because his schoolfriend, Paul Topham, was going into the ordinary seminary to become a diocesan priest, and Tim thought he might join him. They had been very close friends at school, both of them very handsome, top class athletes and popular; most of the girls (and one or two of the boys) had been devastated when the prospect of marriage, or at least sex, with one or other of them seemed forever off the cards.

Both young men had persevered at the seminary, and were ordained deacons, (the step immediately before priesthood) taking their vows of celibacy at the age of 24. But in his diaconate year, when working in his first parish, Tim met a pretty barmaid in a pub and fell hard. He abandoned all thought of the priesthood, and applied to Rome to be returned to the lay state. His dispensation from celibacy came through, and six months later Paul, now a priest, and not without private reservations, officiated at Tim’s wedding to Sylvia. A little over a year later, baby Catriona was born, looking (as new-born babies will) like neither of her parents.

Having now to choose another career, Tim had decided to join the police, and his five older brothers clubbed together and put down a deposit for a mortgage on a small house in Brighton. And, as the saying goes, Tim and Sylvia lived happily ever after until the next day. It was about a year and a half after the marriage that Tim returned home unexpectedly to find Sylvia in their marital bed with a stranger. Tim hit the stranger, and flung him out of the front door in his underwear, throwing his other clothes out of the upstairs window. It was the first and only time in his life that he had behaved aggressively. Sylvia could not understand Tim’s rage and grief; she was a simple soul who liked to give her affections freely, and in her opinion, Tim was out of order. There was no meeting of minds. They raged at each other, and in the end, a couple of weeks later, Tim moved out and found himself a small flat. When he went to put a deposit down for the landlord, he found that the joint account he had with Sylvia had been emptied; it had contained all his life savings. The landlord was understanding, and gave Tim time to go back to his brothers and ask for a loan, which they willingly turned into a gift, together with something to help him buy again all the necessities of life, like saucepans, towels and spaghetti.

A solicitor’s letter arrived shortly, stating that Sylvia was divorcing him on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour and desertion. The court case did not go well, Tim was sullen and aggrieved, and behaved badly; the magistrate—a dyke if ever there was one, he thought— was utterly unsympathetic to Tim on principle, as the violent and unstable man who walked out on his wife and their baby, and not faced up to the problems. She was not interested in Sylvia’s adultery, which she considered understandable ‘under the circumstances’. In granting the divorce she ordered Tim, as the ‘aggressor’, to pay all the court costs, maintenance for baby Catriona (to whom he could have one hour’s supervised access every other month), and ninety percent of the mortgage of the house. Sylvia left the court and smiled smugly at a devastated Tim. She walked arm-in-arm with the man Tim had seen in her bed, who was wearing an expensive suit, and he decided then and there never to see her again.

In order to meet his crippling financial obligations, and also to fill his mind with something not to do with Sylvia and Catriona, Tim began to work all the hours God sent. He took all overtime that was offered, and cajoled his colleagues into letting him do more. Unsurprisingly, after a while, he began to get seriously depressed, and it was only the intervention of a colleague at the Police Station that changed things. The friend, Thomas, was a serious keep-fit fanatic. He would call by Tim’s bedsit, and sometimes physically strip Tim and force him into his sports gear. At times, Tim thought he hated Thomas, but as his fitness level grew, the world looked a kinder place, and he found his depression lifting. When Thomas was transferred to a station far away in the North East, Tim was functioning again, and had become once again a very fit and very good-looking young man, spending all his free time, such as it was, either in the gym or running. A substantial legacy from an understanding great-aunt helped to pay off a lot of the mortgage for the house he could never even visit, and he felt able to meet the world again. He had also grown in self-understanding, and the suffering he had experienced had made him a good listener, something not often found in policemen. At work, many of the people on his patch had a very soft spot for their local constable, and he loved that part of his job. But other parts he hated. He hated the violence, he hated the hatred, the bitterness of horrible people. He hated the police stereotype; the brutal over-careful enunciation in a South London accent that was supposed to suggest to the listener that this copper was someone to be reckoned with. As a gentle-spoken man himself, he was despised by many of his colleagues as being ‘superior’, and not ‘one of the lads’. Since he was naturally affectionate, this got to him too.

So his career, then, was going nowhere fast. He considered himself a good copper; his averages were among the highest in his station, but he had been several years in the Force, and was still a mere Police Constable. Only promotion could make the unpleasant aspects of the job more bearable. He had no illusions. He had been approached once or twice with offers to join the Freemasons, but his principles, as well as his Catholic faith, rendered that impossible. As a result, he was never promoted.

Then one rainy night, Tim had met a young lad who had begun to change the way he looked at the world. He hadn’t been on duty, he was just out for a run in the freezing rain and found this battered waif by the roadside. Taking the lad back home with him, he had cared for him like a baby, before handing him over to the hospital and social services the following day. The lad had somehow opened a window in his heart, and he realised as if for the first time that his real problem was loneliness, and the need for someone to love, unconditionally, and be loved in return. Remarriage was out, on account of his faith, so it was going to have to be something else. Something, perhaps, to do with children. That lad had been the first child he had ever interacted with; he himself was the youngest of six brothers, and he had always been surrounded with people who were either his own age, as at the school and the seminary, or older than him, who had shown him nothing but affection. Unlike that poor lad; the first person younger than Tim who had shown him affection, and who had actually needed him.

And then, one night about a year and a half later, Tim had got beaten up when he was walking down a dark alley on his regular foot patrol. He never saw who did it, he just woke up in hospital with multiple fractures and abrasions. The month he spent in bed provided a lot of time doing nothing—the first time since the divorce when he had not been able to fill his mind with distraction—and, not being able even to hold a book at first, he spent the time thinking. He remembered how the lad he had rescued had wanted to stay with him, and he remembered the strange resonance that he found in himself. He couldn’t even remember the boy’s name, though the memory of his face, and above all his wonderful smile, was as fresh as anything. In fact, he remembered that he had never even known the boy’s name. When he could stagger around the hospital feebly with a stick, he managed to take himself down to Casualty to see if they had a record of his visit. The ward clerk there rather primly told him that the records were confidential, and he had no right to any information. So that was that.

One day he had a bedside visit from his old school and seminary friend Father Paul Topham, now the Headmaster of St Tarcisius’ Home for Boys. It was wonderful to see him again, and they gossiped about their friends and what they were doing. Soon, Tim found himself pouring out his heart to Paul, and Paul was, as ever, straightforward in his advice.

‘Get out of the police, Tim. They don’t deserve you, frankly, and as far as I can see it’s doing you more harm than good in all sorts of ways’.

‘What else can I do Paul? I’ve made such a fuck-up of my life so far! I’ve failed in everything I’ve turned my hand to. I’m a failed Franciscan, a failed priest, a failed husband and father, and now a failed policeman.’

There were tears of self-pity in Tim’s eyes, and Paul gave his friend a hug.

‘Never a failure, Tim. You just haven’t found your niche yet. But you have so much love to give, and you’re like a blocked pipe; with no outlet for it’.

Tim began to tell Paul all about the boy he had rescued in the night, and how he kept thinking about him, and how he would like to give him a home. He asked Paul how he might find him.

Paul said, ‘Without a name, it’s very difficult. If he were a Catholic, that would narrow it down a bit, because if he wasn’t returned to his family, he’d have ended up with me at St Tar’s. Was he a Catholic, do you think? Though, I suppose, the finer points of theology were not something you discussed in your evening together’.

Tim thought, and then remembered a conversation in bed. ‘No, I’m certain he isn’t a Catholic. He’d never even heard the word.’

‘Then start looking at Turling Park. That’s where most of the others go’.

And when Paul left, Tim began to think about his life, and what he might do with it, and how he might find that strange boy.

Back home at last, he submitted his resignation to the Police Force, then began cutting out advertisements for job vacancies. He applied for many, and received many offers, but the only post that really jumped out at him was that of a groundsman at Turling Park, the regional state home for boys with special needs. An orphanage, by any other name. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps he would meet that strange lad again who had opened his heart which had been closed for so long. At any rate, there would be lots of people needing love there, and he could, as a sporty man, perhaps, have something more to offer the lads than just mowing their lawns.

He applied for the job, citing Paul as his referee, went for interview, and was pleased to be offered the post two days later.