Sara’s Face

by Melvin Burgess

  Our knowledge of his life over the next two decades is vague. We do know that the police have recently reopened a murder investigation from the late nineties, and that Kaye’s name has been associated with this, so far without any real evidence. Readers may remember the cases, known in the press as ‘the faceless corpses’, due to the murderer’s habit of taking the skin of the corpse’s face before abandoning the body. The implication is obvious: Kaye may have been continuing his experiments on unwilling victims.

  When he met Jonathon Heat and found the rock star receptive to his vision, it must have seemed like a godsend to Kaye. He was over seventy by this time, and had abandoned any hope of ever continuing his work or escaping from the reputation of failure and eccentricity he’d picked up twenty years before. Now, at last given the chance to carry out his ideas, the results were spectacular. Kaye seemed to be able to do anything he wanted, a veritable magician in flesh. There were, of course, voices of dissent, professional voices, who claimed that what he was doing was not backed up by proper research and that things could go wrong at any moment … but in the light of the kind of results he was producing, the public put it down to professional jealousy.

  Kaye was back on the lecture circuit and enjoying every minute of it. Film stars, musicians and politicians courted him. He had signed an exclusivity contract with Heat for five years, but there was by all accounts a huge list of people who wanted him to work on them once he was free of it. Personal relationships still eluded him, however. He was not popular with the other members of staff at Home Manor Farm, and continued to hold himself aloof from other members of his profession. It seems that over all the years his only close relationship was with Heat himself and, according to all witnesses, the only thing they ever talked about was surgery.

  When, in the course of a few weeks in April 2003, Heat’s face collapsed, Kaye was once again confronted with failure. This time, the failure walked and talked and paid him his money. Kaye became more withdrawn than ever. Sara, of course, had daily therapy sessions with him and it may be that she could say more about him, if she was willing or able. The records that Kaye apparently kept went with him to the grave in the fire that destroyed all evidence of his professional and personal past.

  Kaye, at the time of his interview with Bernadette, in the last week of his life, was a tallish man, somewhat stooped with age. He was eighty-two. He dressed at all times of the day in his white coat, as if the house itself was his hospital and his day’s work never ceased. He had a high forehead which was very deeply lined, both sideways and across, which gave him an alarming appearance – as if, in the words of one member of staff, ‘he had been scoured with a knife’.

  Bernadette and Dr Kaye had never had an easy relationship, but it had once been much better than it now was. She was deeply suspicious of what he had been able to do with Jonathon when things were going well, and since the collapse of her employer’s face, in common with the rest of the staff, she had come to loathe him with a vengeance. He had once boasted to her that ‘success can justify most things’, a statement that Bernadette actively despised.

  And yet despite all this, and against all reason, you may think, she must have maintained some respect for him at least. Bernadette’s aim in that meeting was to convince the doctor that Sara was mentally unfit to give her consent to go ahead with the operation. Kaye always put great emphasis on professionalism and Bernadette believed that if she could cast doubt upon the patient’s mental state, he would cancel or at least postpone things. Why she should have thought this is difficult to see; she had tried before and failed to do the same thing with Heat, and is on record as saying that she never once knew Dr Kaye consider anyone unsuitable for surgery. But Bernadette is an optimist. She believed in her own arguments and hoped that, as one professional to another, he would listen to her, regardless of their personal relationship.

  Dr Kaye sat quietly behind his desk, his tape recorder running, occasionally taking notes as she talked. She did her best to reach him that day, but Kaye remained as he always was, always had been – distant, professional, unreadable. Having told him her own doubts, she went on to talk about Sara’s. She told him everything she knew. She reminded him of the report she had made before she left for Jamaica, about Sara seeing ghosts with no face, wearing her clothes. She told him that Sara now believed that it was the ghost of a girl who had once worked here – ‘Katie someone,’ she said – and that she believed this girl had died or perhaps even been killed here in the house.

  And she told him that Sara had told her she was not planning on going ahead with the operation.

  ‘She told me she desperately wants it,’ replied Dr Kaye.

  Bernadette stared at him across the desk. She licked her lips. ‘But, surely, just the fact that she’s telling us different things, Doctor …’ she began.

  Kaye raised his eyebrows doubtfully. ‘I’m her counsellor, Mrs McNalty,’ he pointed out. To which Bernadette, who out of the two of them had had far more training as a counsellor than he had, could find no reply.

  At one point, Bernadette leaned across the table and appealed to him as a person.

  ‘What’s wrong with you these days, Doctor? I never see you smile any more,’ she said – which, as she pointed out herself, was a bit rich, since Dr Kaye rarely smiled anyway.

  But he did now carefully and rather ruefully, she thought.

  ‘Too many cares, Bernadette,’ he said quietly. ‘I should have retired years ago.’

  ‘Then why don’t you?’

  ‘I can’t leave him like that.’

  ‘I’m not talking about him, Doctor. I’m talking about this young girl. She’s just seventeen! She might need a new bit of skin on her face, but no more than that. New boobs and a new tummy and a new nose – what’s that all about? At seventeen? It’s crazy.’

  ‘Times have changed, Bernadette,’ he told her. ‘Young girls dream of operations like this. It’s like buying new clothes these days.’ Again, he gave her that rueful smile. ‘I never met a woman yet who liked her body. Now, for the first time, it’s possible to have anything you want.’

  ‘That’s all back to front,’ declared Bernie. ‘If they put real women in the magazines and on the TV, instead of made-up people, those girls would know how lovely they already are, without getting cut up and turned into tailors’ dummies.’

  ‘Politics isn’t my business,’ said Kaye, and he spread his hands as if to say, This world! It just keeps on turning …

  ‘Wayland,’ said Bernadette. He raised his eyes to look directly at her. She’d never used his name before. ‘She’s a sick girl. Let her go!’

  ‘I don’t hold her, Bernadette. It’s her own choice. All she has to do is tell me not to and I won’t. It’s that simple.’

  ‘But she’s a sick girl!’

  ‘Not in my opinion.’ He paused. ‘Not in the way you think, anyway.’

  The interview continued. Bernadette was appalled at the lack of progress she was making.

  ‘I have to tell you, Doctor, that I think all of this is very unprofessional.’

  ‘It will all be looked into thoroughly,’ he told her.

  ‘By who? By you? Since when is it professional practice to let the surgeon who is operating on her be her counsellor as well?’

  ‘As the surgeon who is performing the operation, it’s my business to decide if she’s fit or not,’ replied Kaye coldly.

  Bernadette could hold her tongue no longer. ‘Look what you did to Jonathon,’ she spat. ‘And now it’s her turn, is it?’

  Kaye closed his notebook. ‘And now I think this interview is at an end.’

  Bernadette blushed. She had been unprofessional herself, and apologised for her outburst. Kaye nodded. Then he leaned forward and picked up the phone. He spoke briefly into it.

  ‘Jonathon would like you to wait here. He wants a word in person before things go any further,’ he said.

  Bernadette agreed. But first, she needed to use the toilet. She got up to l
eave the office, closed the door, and then, glancing quickly about to check that she wasn’t being watched, leaned back with her ear to the door, to see if she could work out what Kaye was up to.

  There was a slight movement and she heard the doctor speak.

  ‘Happy?’ he asked.

  Bernadette jumped back, thinking he knew she was there, but there was no further noise. To whom the doctor was speaking, on his own, in an office that led to nowhere, is anyone’s guess. Those who have argued that Heat was the driving force behind the terrible crime that was about to be committed have offered this as evidence that the doctor was being blackmailed. Perhaps he was speaking to the CCTV. There is every chance, in fact, that Heat had been watching the whole time.

  Bernie was left waiting for almost an hour in Kaye’s office. She was expecting Heat to come, but in the event it was Dr Houseland who turned up, one of Kaye’s assistants, asking her to go through the whole thing again. Bernadette obliged, pleased to have the chance to put her views on record with someone other than Kaye himself, but a bit put out that she was having to go through the same thing all over again.

  Dr Houseland – who, despite his name, claimed to be from Chile – like most of the medical staff at Home Manor Farm at that time, has never been traced. Bernadette had never seen him before, but that was nothing new; medical staff were always coming and going. In the fire that destroyed the house a few days later, there were the remains of three other bodies in the wreckage, each of which have denied all the efforts of modern science to identify them. Dr Houseland may have been one of those, or he may have been an occupant of one of the cars and light aircraft that left the estate later that night.

  Houseland informed Bernadette that there were meetings going on at every level to try to sort out the process her complaints had put in motion. Heat himself, apparently, was going through a crisis of his own about the operation and it was highly likely that he would call it off whatever Dr Kaye thought. To Bernadette, that rang true. The idea that Heat himself was having doubts helped her believe that she was going to get her way.

  Houseland also told her that Heat would be seeing her shortly, and Bernadette, revived by this information, was determined to convince him that cancellation was the right thing to do.

  After the interview with Dr Houseland, Bernadette was again left on her own in the same office for another hour or so. A cup of tea, a sandwich and a slice of cake were brought to her. Then she was taken to another, smaller room where, after yet another long wait, she had an interview with Heat himself.

  Bernadette felt very uncomfortable about this one. She had spent the last ten years of her life ministering to Heat, and in return he had shown her great generosity. Heat commanded enormous loyalty among his staff but it was an unspoken truth that to go against him was a blow to his person. Heat would not be angry; he would be devastated. The effect was that Bernadette felt like she was stabbing him in the back.

  She knew at once that he’d been crying. His face, as usual, was hidden by the mask, but the glitter of his eyes gave it away.

  ‘Jonathon,’ she said. ‘What have you got to cry about? It’s not your face he’s mucking about with this time.’

  Heat blinked back his tears. He rarely sobbed, but the tears leaked down behind his mask throughout.

  ‘I only want to help her, Bernie,’ he said. ‘You know that. Why is she so scared of me? Is it true? She never shows it to my face. I only wanted to help,’ he repeated. He touched his face underneath the mask as he spoke. ‘Is it this?’ he asked.

  He had been one of the most beautiful and talented men of his generation. Now everything he had was falling to pieces. What price fame now? thought Bernie, but she could never say such a thing to him.

  Instead she came round the table to hug him. She never doubted his words then – she never doubts them to this day. He put his face into her bosom and wept.

  ‘Jonathon,’ she said. ‘She loves you the same as all the rest of us. But she’s scared. She isn’t ready to go through with this. She’s a sick girl – just like you’ve been sick, to have all this work done on yourself. Look at you! Do you want her to end up like you?’

  Heat said nothing, but his body shook with silent tears.

  ‘She needs better care than Dr Kaye can give her – and so do you. Why do I repeat myself? I’ve been saying this for years, but you never listen. If you want to help her, you can do it the same way as you can help yourself. You want a good psychiatrist. Look what you’ve done to yourself! You need help! You have to be careful – you’re in danger of luring her down the road you took with Dr Kaye, with all your good intentions.’

  ‘There’s Dr Houseland,’ said Heat. ‘He thinks she’s OK.’

  ‘You need independent people,’ said Bernadette firmly.

  Bernadette talked; Heat nodded. From what she could gather, he was terrified of the same thing happening to Sara as had happened to him, but he was also terrified of that scar on her face that the iron had left there. It made him feel physically sick, he said.

  ‘She’s perfect, she’s perfect,’ he kept saying. ‘But that scar’s so ugly. She can’t live with that.’

  ‘But, if she’s perfect, why do you want to change her?’ said Bernadette.

  ‘So she can be more perfect,’ replied Heat.

  They talked for over an hour. Heat was distraught, but willing to listen and he made several promises to Bernadette. One, that he would do his best to talk Sara out of all her operations except for the burn scar on her cheek; two, that he would postpone the operation in any event for a week or two at least; and three, that he would take her to see someone independent before any further decisions were made.

  ‘A second opinion,’ said Bernadette. ‘Everyone should have a second opinion. Then you can decide.’

  Bernadette was happy. Heat was a man of his word. In all her years working at Home Manor Farm, she’d never known him tell a lie.

  ‘We’ve all got our pasts,’ she told him, ‘and we all have to live with them. All you ever know is, the future gets shorter and the past gets longer. I’ve got to get old, you’ve got to get old, she’s got to get old. Do it gracefully, Jonathon – and let her do it gracefully as well.’

  She was late – but she had started a process. Bernadette was convinced that she had won the day. But Heat had a price.

  ‘I’ve made my promises to you, Bernie,’ he said as he stood up to leave. ‘Now I want one from you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I want you to promise me not to go public with any of this.’

  ‘I can promise that, Jonathon. I’ve never dreamed of doing such a thing.’

  ‘Good. Because if you do, I will pursue you, and your brothers and sisters, and your cousins and all their children and their children’s children through the courts of any land they live in, and I’ll strip them of any possessions they may own and any children they have the care of.’

  The biblical terms of the threat took Bernadette’s breath away, and she could only stare while Heat pulled his pashmina round his neck and stepped to the door.

  ‘Dr Kaye would like another meeting, if you don’t mind, Bernie,’ he said mildly. ‘If you’d just wait here.’

  Then he was gone.

  Several hours had passed already since making her original complaint. Bernadette was feeling frustrated at being isolated from events, especially from Sara, whom she felt she ought to talk to if only to let her know what she was doing and why. But she believed what she had been told, that Sara was being interviewed and reassessed in the light of what she had told Kaye. Nothing had happened that was untoward – in fact, the slow unfolding of events could be taken as a good sign, a sign of thoroughness. And so she sat on her own in the little interview room, waiting for the reappearance of Dr Kaye.

  The room she was in was small, maybe four by three metres, but it was quite high – high enough for the only window in it to be out of reach. Up in the corner of the room, to her irritation, a CCTV camera s
tared relentlessly down at her. It seemed to follow her around like the eyes in a painting. All she could do was sit at the desk that nearly filled the little room, and fidget uncomfortably in its steady gaze.

  Another cup of tea was brought to her by a maid, along with a pile of magazines to occupy her while she waited and an offer of food which she accepted. A little later, she was brought a plate of sandwiches. Again, she waited. Before long, she needed to leave the room to use the toilet again, but when she opened the door she found a very large gentleman outside, who accompanied her there and back, explaining that Mr Heat and Dr Kaye wanted to see her and let her know what action was being taken before she left. Shortly afterwards, when she explained to the large gentleman that she wanted to go for a walk, she was politely asked to stay where she was and to keep the door shut. Dr Kaye, or Heat, she was promised, would not be long. In the meantime there had been complaints about her and she was not at liberty to roam the house as she had before.

  As he closed the door behind her, Bernie heard the quiet but unmistakable sound of a key turning in the door. She was locked in.

  Gradually all Sara’s jokes about Dr Ghoul the face-eater came back. Her own fear of Kaye, the strange, inconsistent ways of Jonathon Heat himself, the hours and hours of waiting without anything happening, took their toll. She now noticed that the window high in the wall not only didn’t open but was made of thick bottle glass. The only other place she had seen such a window was in a cell at the police station. The door was a fire door, as solid as a tree trunk. Outside the door, in her own words, ‘was a ten-foot gorilla.’ Bernadette was, in effect, a prisoner.