Sheer Blue Bliss

by Lesley Glaister

  They murmur on down there and only some words can she hear, sometimes a laugh, female, nervous. Listen, there’s the girl’s name. Lisa, heard that before. Tony’s voice louder than hers but saying nothing of any significance. Connie tries to concentrate but her mind buckles under the weight of … everything, the shock, yes, the phrase in shock comes to her, surely that’s what she must be in. Shock. This odd indiscipline of mind, inability to concentrate even though it might make the difference between life and death. But she swings dizzily between lucid and not, lucid is pain and the other is not and which is worse? Helpless, helpless. Go back then, go back to memory. She tries, a moment of Patrick with his arms around her, face against his living chest, warm, warm and beating but then it’s cold and then it’s gone.

  Quiet now downstairs. She moans again, the damp space on the tape loosening against her breath, the stick giving, soon, soon, she will have a voice. The girl, Lisa, says, ‘What was that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I heard something.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘It wasn’t nothing.’

  ‘Must’ve been Benson then, dreaming, snoring. I don’t know.’

  ‘Funny kind of snoring.’

  ‘Come here.’

  ‘Tony!’ A giggle, delighted. What are they doing? Connie hums loudly, this is the way to make a noise, loud hum, the tape vibrates, unbearable tickle against her lips, she tries to bring her wrists up to free her mouth but they are swaddled in the sleeping bag. Patiently, patiently, if she works with her tongue and blows and hums against the tape she will free her mouth.

  ‘That’s never snoring.’

  ‘Hey, let me …’

  ‘No, just a minute. Is it her? What’s up?’

  ‘You want it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What you here for then?’

  ‘Tony, stop it, no.’

  Connie bangs her heels feeling her mind shatter into stars of pain that brighten up the attic for a flash, tries to pull herself up from the chair but falls back, moans loud as she can against the horror of hearing this, heart banging in time with the explosions in her heels.

  ‘No. Please.’ Sounds of scuffling, a chair falling. ‘Tony, no, please.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up.’

  ‘Aaah!’ Surprised pain. NO. Constance fights against the tape on her mouth, nothing will give, she can make a noise now but what good is a noise? Something smashes down there, plate or glass all sharp on the floor. She winces at the thought of soft flesh on the shards of it.

  ‘All right, all right, there’s no need … I won’t fight …’ the girl’s voice gone high like a child’s.

  ‘No, you won’t fight, fucking tart.’

  ‘Please.’ Now she’s crying. The sound of something tearing. ‘Mummy,’ she sobs, ‘oh God.’ Tears come into Connie’s eyes, useless, useless. A grunt from him, oh no please no he’s raping her, raping her and there’s nothing Connie can do. Patrick is hovering over the trap-door, clear navy-blue with the raindrops streaming through him. Connie looks at the empty canvas but there is no help there, empty face of a dead man, long, long gone. Nothing Connie can do and if he is raping the girl maybe he will kill her, too. Kill them both. The fog no longer warm but icy. The girl’s sobs and the voice of the man, grunting, grunting, like some animal. If Connie could put her hands over her ears she would but there is no escape from what will follow. She lowers her wrists against her lap and lets them lie on the soft pillow of hair, all she’s kept, that and the portrait of Patrick shorn.

  A crash, a slam. It is finished. Connie shudders, fear and cold combined, and shock yes, in shock, tremors that shake her bone against raw bone. Are they gone, both? Or only him? The girl, is she still there?

  How long can you sit in the quiet and dark without sleeping? Despite the horror and the pain, Connie does sleep. Even dreams something vague about fish. How can she sleep after all that … She wakes, feeling immediately guilty. How long? Some bird crying despite the night – only the sky has lightened. So considerable time gone. Giddiness. No fog. Pain. The memory of the dreadful night plain now the fog has gone, like sunshine on a bomb site, the rising stench of ruin. Long, long quiet.

  Then Connie hears the sound of the door, footsteps, the floor vibrating as Tony sets foot on the ladder. The shadow of a gull over the skylight seems to take a long long time. She huddles down smaller and smaller, her insides screwing tight.

  And his face is there, face white, eyes red. He does not look her in the eye but looks her over, checking for life, perhaps. His eyes are like those of a child woken from a nightmare to find it real and of his own making. He says nothing, goes down again. She can hear a lumping about down there and then he comes back up the ladder with the body of the young woman, head lolling, hair fair on his shoulder against the black of his own. For a second she is struck by the contrast and shocked at herself for noticing. He lugs her up, struggles her body in through the trap-door, shoves her away from the edge. Her short black dress is ripped at the hem, the skin white on one bare leg, the other still clad in black nylon, the loose leg of a pair of tights trails from between her legs like some awful limp birth. Her cheek slides along the floor over the dust and the dead wasps.

  Tony stands over the prone girl. ‘Help,’ Connie says, manages to say almost audibly. Her heart beats very fast and small like dripping water. He turns and she looks into his eyes but it’s like looking through the windows of a burnt-out house, there’s nothing there but ash. His lips open as if he’d say a word then close again. She feels almost, almost sorry for him. He suddenly reaches his hands towards Connie who cowers, screws up her eyes, retreats into and into herself for surely this is it. But all he does is pull away the sleeping bag, spread it on the floor and tip the girl on to it. Then he’s gone, the door banging, really gone this time.

  But Connie is bound up and Lisa may or may not be dead and Connie can do nothing but make useless sounds against the tape. It is all so bright as the sun comes out. It glints on the taut wires of pain threaded through her bones. Each speck on the floor, each insect casts a shadow larger than itself, the thin shadows of wings like cellophane, dust motes glitter in the air. Another perfect morning. The girl lies still, blood clotted in the fair fluffy hair, and there is nothing nothing Connie can do.

  ELEVEN

  Tony trudges along, eyes screwed up against sharp spears of light. His eyes water from such brightness, sun puddled on the rippled sand. Waves wash up and down, up and down, like nothing’s happened. The rucksack is heavy on his back. He turns to look back at the trail of footprints that lead from between the dunes and along the beach. Now what?

  Starched sheets. That’s it. Hold on, Tony, don’t lose it now. You didn’t kill. She wasn’t dead. Breath on your neck when you lifted her. Warmth. You can smell life and she smelled of it. She got what she came for is all. Bitch. So shut up. Cold and clean this morning. It seems to be a lovely day. What next, though? What?

  Starched sheets and clean clothes and go back. Not good to go backwards but … there was security there. It was a life. And Donna next door with her candy soft bed. No harm there. A girly bed with her harmless books beside it, Bible, all the things in her bathroom: perfumes, creams to dip your finger in and sniff, the stuff in her drawers, underwear, white slippers with bunny ears.

  He bends down, the rucksack nearly overbalancing him, to pick up a shell. Walks along fingering it, rough and dry on the outside, spiralled: a whelk? Very pointed at the tip, presses his finger on it till it hurts. Almost trips over a sand-castle. He stands amazed. Someone with a bucket and spade has built a castle. When? Too good for a child’s castle, it’s huge and complicated. Many buckets of sand turned out neatly, some of them crenellated – one of those fancy buckets they must have had. He has a sudden memory of banging a spade on the bottom of a bucket to turn out the sand. This is perfect. No messy broken edges. Someone took their time over this. Someone cared about it, decorated it with shells, those little pink-and-white ones
and strips of bright green weed. When was a person here building a sand-castle? He lifts his foot to smash it. But stops. Instead, he presses his shell on to the top to make a little peak and walks away, quick.

  Sails out there, lots of sails, some race? Like wings, pink, yellow, green, the sun on them. Gulls on the water, the air fresh as … as milk cold from the doorstep with those beads of moisture on the bottle that tell you it’s really cold. That’s what he needs, to drink something pure and cold and white to fill his hot dark insides. Those wings out there, so childish bright. School milk kept by the radiator, all clotted warm through paper straws. Who was it used to blow in his till it frothed up from the bottle, slimy white? The sour smell of old milk on his jumper. No.

  He needs something cold and absolutely clean. His hands stink of woman. Did wash them under the tap but still that smell, can’t stand it, dark private stink. Squatting, he rinses them in the sea but the ripples come up to his trainers. Mustn’t get them wet. Can’t take them off what with his cut foot. Could swim like yesterday, was it only yesterday? Yesterday someone else built a castle on the beach. And that makes him gasp with loneliness.

  Is it over then? No elixirs. No saving, is there to be no saving? No Seven Steps to Bliss. Did he ever believe that, really? Worse now than ever. There’s nothing. But it’s all right. They won’t die and no one will ever find him, not stupid, didn’t give them his address, not stupid you could never say that.

  But Patrick has let him down. Led him to this. To this … to this fiasco, this end of a … quest. And now what?

  He looks back at the castle which casts a long fancy shadow in the early morning sun. All he can do is go forward. Make a plan. Walk to the village, bus to King’s Lynn, train to London, tube to Brixton. Home. Safe.

  Then? The whole point of that life was the waiting. What now? Oh what has he gone and done? Just walk on. Walk.

  TWELVE

  Connie doesn’t take her eyes off the girl but she works against the wiry pain and the weakness in her arms at the tape on her mouth, loosening with her tongue, scraping with the tape on her wrists until at last there is flap loose enough to let her suck in air, to speak audibly.

  ‘Hello,’ she says. Her voice sounds strange and creaky to her own ears after even so short a time. By poking with her tongue she frees the other edge.

  ‘Lisa.’ No answer. She tries again, louder. ‘Hello, Lisa.’

  A moan. Oh thank God, the girl’s alive. With a renewal of vigour she brings her wrists up again and frees her mouth a bit more. ‘Hello, Lisa.’ She doesn’t know what else to say. The girl groans and blinks, rolls over a bit so that Connie can see her face. Oh yes, recognises her, the rosy girl who came with the photographer. Yes, Lisa, that’s right. Not so rosy now. Lisa opens her eyes and blinks, looks up at Connie, dazed.

  ‘It’s Constance,’ Connie says. ‘Remember? Constance Benson. Know where you are?’

  The girl says nothing, lies there, blinking, her eyes very pale blue in the sun, dust on her cheek. Eventually her lips move. The voice when it comes is flimsy and dry as tissue paper. ‘Yes. I know.’ With obvious difficulty she moves, pushes herself into a sitting position. ‘Ow.’ Her hand goes to her head, fingers probing the thickness of dried blood in her hair, the slight oozing. She brings down her fingers to look at them, thin wet streak of red.

  ‘He brought you upstairs.’

  ‘My head …’

  ‘It’s stopped bleeding, nearly.’

  ‘But it hurts.’ She starts to cry, looks down at her legs, one black nylon, one blue mottled flesh, remembers. ‘Oh God … the bastard …’ Her hands go back to her head, ‘Oh it hurts. The bastard, the bastard … and you …’ She suddenly registers Connie’s plight. ‘Oh you … he …?’ She gets to her knees and crawls to Connie. ‘I’ll get it off.’ She reaches for the tape that remains stuck to Connie’s top lip.

  ‘Do it quick,’ Connie says and shuts her eyes.

  ‘OK. Wait …’ The tape is off and Connie’s lips sting as if someone has swiped her with a nettle.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, tears rising in her eyes. ‘Oh you poor child.’

  ‘I feel sick.’ Lisa sits back on her heels.

  ‘Could you just …’ Connie holds out her wrists, the girl looks at her blankly. ‘Lisa.’ Lisa picks weakly at the edge of the tape.

  ‘Just help me get free and I’ll help you.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why did he do this? The bastard. I thought …’ Fresh tears fill Lisa’s eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Connie says, aware that it’s anything but. ‘It’s all right now.’ She wants to touch the girl to comfort her, remembering suddenly the incredible comfort in Sacha’s hands reaching to her through the chaos of her grief, that hand the only real, the only solid, thing.

  Lisa finds the end of the tape and picks at it but she has to stop every minute or so to press the heel of her hand against her mouth as if to hold the horror in. ‘It’s all right,’ Connie says again, ‘just keep calm, we’re all right,’ speaking as much to herself as Lisa. The last bit of tape is the hardest, painful, the skin feels almost melded to the tape, it’s like being skinned, she half expects to see raw sinew where the tape has been instead of a white ridge, slightly swollen, edged with angry red.

  ‘Thank you.’ The feeling of freedom is amazing. To be able to move her hands. She flexes them backwards and forwards, feeling a sharp fizzing as the blood returns. She rubs at the sticky ridges which are both sore and numb, then extends a hand to stroke Lisa’s head. ‘There,’ she says, ‘there, there.’ Lisa flops her head against Connie’s knee and sobs, choking out words. ‘It hurts, oh it hurts to cry, the bastard, bastard.’ Connie waits a while, lets the girl cry on, watching the thin trickle of blood that is still leaking from the wound.

  ‘Lisa,’ she says after who knows how long, ‘Lisa, we must get down from here. You need some hot sweet tea, we both do, we need to … to do something.’

  Lisa raises her head and winces, gives a gulping shudder. Her blue eyes are sore from the crying, smudged about with something blue. Her tears have soaked right through Connie’s skirt and tights.

  ‘If you could just …’ Connie indicates her ankles taped together, and, her shoulders still convulsing, her hands trembling, Lisa tries to undo the tape, but can’t get it all off. ‘Take my tights off,’ Connie suggests. Lisa half laughs, looking wild now, face mottled white from shock and pain, red from weeping. ‘It is rather undignified,’ Connie says, as Lisa puts her hands up Connie’s skirt to pull down her tights, and as Connie raises her hips from the chair to help her, the two of them do laugh, high and hysterical, Connie is horrified by her own wild cackle and it hurts her poor stiff shoulder, back, all of her, jarring with the stupid convulsions.

  ‘Oh I’m going to wet myself,’ Lisa says. ‘Oh no …’ and as she says it Connie can feel her own full bladder on which she has not allowed herself to dwell. And the two of them laugh, wiping away tears and groaning with pain, shuddering with horror and yet unable to stop. Connie can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying but tears keep coming anyway. Until Lisa manages to get Connie’s tights down to her ankles, eases them over her feet and pulls them off. Then the laughter dies.

  Connie watches Lisa get shakily to her feet and balance herself to put her foot into the empty leg of her elaborately laddered tights. Then changes her mind and takes them off altogether. She looks round at Connie, eyes open wide, scared. She looks so young and even through the stains of tears and smudged eye make-up she has a baby peachy look, her eyes the palest blue they could be and still be blue. She goes to the trap-door, sways, Connie sucks in her breath, watching her intently, willing her not to faint or slip.

  Lisa stops. ‘You don’t suppose he’s …’ her voice a whisper.

  ‘No, he’s not there. He’s gone. Don’t you see? He’s gone and left us.’ For dead, she doesn’t add.

  Lisa goes down, her eyes staying on Connie
’s until her head disappears through the trap-door. ‘Oh the flowers,’ she says. Connie looks round the room, at Patrick whose eyes are warm, yes they are, concerned, at the floor, the mess of it, the sleeping bag, smeared now with blood, curly whorls of tape, Lisa’s tights and her own tights like two shucked skins and the sketches of Tony … crumpled now and trampled … sketches she almost enjoyed doing. Ha.

  It’s hard to stand. She has to force herself through the pain of it. Each movement sends a searing jar right through her. But she has to do it, has to go down. Each rung of the ladder feels like a blade to her poor footsoles. Down in the kitchen she stands amongst the ruins of a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, shakes her head at the stupid waste. Then she fills the kettle. Although it hurts so much even to lift her arm there is pleasure in the freedom to do such a simple thing.

  Lisa comes in from the toilet, shivering. ‘I’m all sore,’ she says. ‘How could he have done this to me? How could he? And the flowers … I bought them for you.’

  ‘Tea first,’ Connie says, ‘then a wash. It’s a shame about the flowers. But thank you anyway.’ She can’t bend down to pick them up. The air is filled with the chilly sharpness of their sap.

  ‘I’m cold.’ Lisa sits down and lays her head on the table, her arms cradling it. Connie turns the gas heater up as high as it will go. ‘I’ll get you a shawl,’ she says. Goes into the dark hateful room, the floor going now, a hole where maybe Tony’s foot went through. Oh the dank stench. If she could bring out the chest of drawers she need never go in there again, seal up the door. Forget it. She shudders. She brings out a pair of long woollen bloomers and an old red shawl, drapes the shawl over Lisa’s shoulders. ‘Put these pants on to keep your legs warm.’