The Sisters Mortland

by Sally Beauman

  I take Tom’s hand again: I’ve realized that we can’t reach Dan’s house without passing those youths who were here the last time I came—the ones who shouted all those obscenities at Fanny and me. My daughter isn’t afraid to shout obscenities back. I’d like to shout them, too. But I know that would be deeply unwise; besides, Tom’s with me, and I’m afraid of them. So I grip Tom’s hand and try not to look at them, with their faces hidden under those hoods. I go into urban threat mode; never meet their eyes and pretend they’re invisible. If they say anything, Tom, ignore them. Don’t reply.

  I’m wishing I’d covered my head—I don’t want them to recognize me. Tom and I keep on walking, as if they aren’t there—and then, just as we’re about to pass them, they move, move in that fluid way they somehow contrive, as if they’re part of one organism, all five of them. They don’t say anything or signal to one another; they just move. We can’t pass them, because they’re blocking the pavement, and when we step into the road and try to walk round them, they move again. They block us off. Tom and I come to a halt. Two of them peel off from the others and move behind us. It was a mistake to have stepped into the road. Now we’re being edged toward the gate in the railings around the Fields, toward the gathering dark beyond them. The largest of the five—the one I now know is called Malc—steps forward and says, Goin’ somewhere?

  The skateboarders have gone. I peer toward the railed-off grass area to our right. I can’t see any walkers or cyclists. The street is deserted. The street lighting is poor. I mutter something about a friend who’s expecting me. And they laugh—they crack up, they do that threatening thing they do, slapping one another’s palms, and laughing, when you know they’re not really laughing, and what this means is trouble. They know where I’m going, anyway, and my destination, I think, is compounding this trouble. The two behind us move closer. “Look,” I say, “I’m in a hurry. May I get past, please?”

  They don’t like that remark. They don’t like my voice or my clothes; they don’t like my son or me. They hate us—and I can feel the heat of that hatred. I try to see past them. I’m thirty feet from Dan’s house, less. I can still see the light in his window and his bent head. I’m willing him to look up, but he doesn’t. I know I mustn’t let them sense that I’m afraid of them. That will make the situation worse—and immediately. I look carefully at the three who are in front of us. Are they on drugs? The threat they give off is powerful, but only three of the five are physically large; the two behind us are strong, lanky boys of about fourteen. Even the ringleader, Malc, and the two huge grinning henchmen either side of him—they’re young. Not one of them looks more than sixteen or seventeen.

  It angers me, it enrages me, to be afraid of mere boys, of stupid grinning teenage bullies. So I say, “Let me pass, please,” and Tom and I take a step forward. With one accord, they move; they all move, all five of them. One grabs Tom, and one grabs me, and they start pulling us toward the park railings. I scream, and Malc punches me in the face. The blow sends me sprawling. I drop my bag, with the cell phone in it. I drop the oranges, which spill everywhere, and I can hear them saying, What’s that you got, boy? And I hear Tom make this little sound, this small gasping sound, and I start getting up and scrabbling for my phone, and everything’s slowing. I see them snatch Tom’s plastic dinosaur out of his hand; a white trainer comes down on it and kicks it in the gutter.

  Then they start tossing my son, my small son, from one of them to another, lifting him off his feet and just bundling him between them. With each pass they’re getting him closer to the railings and the Fields. I run at them then, holding my phone, trying to hit them, but the blows just glance off them, and I can’t reach Tom. One of them says, Get the phone, man, she got a phone, get the fuckin’ phone, but I can’t hear properly, I’ve gone deaf, and I know I’ve screamed again, but I can’t hear it.

  “Let him go,” I say. “He’s only a little boy—let him go.” I’m sure I was saying that, and I think I said, “Look, just let him go. I’ll come with you if you let him go.” Something like that, because the biggest one, Malc, came at me then, laughing, thrusting out his hips, and waving his hands, and saying, What I tell you, man? You hear? She’s ready for it, she’s beggin’, fuckin’ cunt is beggin’.

  But they don’t let Tom go; they’ve got his wrist twisted up behind his back now. He’s crying out in pain. One of them has his arm locked around my neck; they’re dragging both of us into the park, into the dark, and I can see Tom trying to squirm free and hold on to the railings, and then a voice behind me, a voice I don’t recognize, says: “Put him down now. Put him down now, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

  All five of them freeze. They stand very still, unnaturally still. They let go of me and of Tom, and he stumbles across to me. I put my arms around him and start backing away, and that voice says: “Go into the house, Julia. Take Tom into the house, the door’s open.” And I turn around, and I see Dan—a Dan I scarcely recognize, and I can see he’s holding something, and then I run to his house with Tom, push Tom inside, give him my phone, and tell him to call the police and to bolt the door and not let anyone in. Now, now, quickly, I say, and the door slams, and I start running back to the street because I’ve understood, now, what Dan was holding.

  Those five men are still huddled together, backed up against the railings. Dan is standing in front of them, about six feet away. He’s holding his father’s shotgun, holding it the way I’ve seen him hold it a hundred times, easily, familiarly: out in the fields, looking for rabbits, looking for pigeon. Dan was once a very good shot, the best in the village. He’s looking at them intently, his finger on the trigger. He’s done something to his hair—he’s cut his hair, cropped it close to his scalp. There’s something black and something glittering tied around his neck. His face is white and concentrated. He’s not wearing a jacket, just a white shirt; it’s cold, but he isn’t shivering.

  I hear him say in an easy, conversational tone: “Let’s have a spelling lesson, shall we? Malc, you can start. Spell ‘wanker’ for me.”

  “Man like, shit—cool it, just fuckin’ don’t—”

  “Spell it, Malc. Here’s a clue. It doesn’t end in ‘ah.’ It ends in ‘er.’ Like cocksucker. Like motherfucker. Like sinner. You want to try spelling those, Malc?”

  Malc makes a sound in his throat, risks a glance to the side. “You goin’ to stand there and do nothin’?” No one moves. “You just goin’ to stand there and let him do this, fuck—look, man, no hassle, yeah? Jesus, shit, man—”

  “You know how far I can see today?” Dan says. “The other side of eternity, that’s how far I can see.” The gun moves again, and one of them makes a retching sound. It’s the smallest of them. He bends forward and vomits on the pavement. “It’s a quote, Malc,” Dan continues. “You know about quotes? Shall we try a few? How about, You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? How about, You feelin’ lucky today, punk?” He pauses, and I see him frown. “You know what this can do at this range, Malc? It can blow a hole in your chest so big you won’t have a chest—or a heart or lungs or a rib cage. It can blow your fucking head off. So how d’you feel about dying today, Malc? You ready to die in the next ten seconds?”

  And I watch all the color draining out of Malc’s face. I hear: “Man, like cool it, okay? Like don’t do it. Fuck—I didn’t mean nothin’. Just havin’ a laugh, just—like you dissed me, man—fuck. Jesus—sweet Jesus, like don’t do it, man, you crazy or what?”

  There’s a moment of silence then. Traffic in the distance. Dan moves the gun. One of the others says, “Fuck, man.” I see the stain in Malc’s crotch and the agony in his face, and he slumps to his knees and starts saying, “Shit, man, don’t do it, like just don’t do it, I got kids, man, I got two fuckin’ kids, man, okay?” And I’m thinking, That can’t be true, he doesn’t look old enough. But it goes on and on, that gabbled animal pleading, and sometime during that pleading, Dan’s stance suddenly alters.

  “You stupid fat fuck,” he
says. “You coward. You dumb assholes—it’s not even loaded.”

  He throws the gun down on the ground. It clatters and slithers into the far gutter. Dan just stands there, waiting. I can see him now, standing there, waiting—his head slightly bowed, his arms by his side, an attitude of resignation. I don’t think he knew I was there. If he had known, he wouldn’t have cared. He knew what was coming—I’m sure he knew what was coming. And it came at him fast. There was a brief moment of disbelief, then all five of them moved. One of them bent, picked up the shotgun, held it by the barrel, and swung it. It hit Dan on the side of the skull. Then they closed in on him, swarmed over him, and I couldn’t see him, they swallowed him up. It was very swift. I saw arms raised, a glint like glass or metal. I could hear the blows, under the wail of sirens, and I could hear a voice crying out, and I could see myself, running forward, grasping at shadows. One of the shadows knocked me flying. The pavement scraped my face, and when I could see again, there was something on the ground, which they took it in turns to kick. The smallest boy was the last to kick, aiming at the throat. Red on a new white Nike trainer.

  Then the lights of the police cars came, yellow and blue up the street, and I could hear running feet, and they were all gone, melted into the dark. I crawled across to Dan, who was lying on his back with his eyes open. There was so much blood. Blood on the stock of the gun beside him, blood on his shirt, his white shirt, now red, and his face utterly altered. I lifted his head and cradled it in my lap. I think he knew I was there—or that someone was there. He focused his eyes on mine, and I could see recognition in them. His lips moved. He was trying to say a word that began with “d.”

  It might have been “Dad”—he might have seen Joe at that moment. It might have been “deal”—he might have been trying to tell me that he would deal with this, even with this—I can imagine that. I suppose it might have been anything, any word that begins with a “d,” and he never completed the word anyway. He coughed, just a small clearing-the-throat cough, the kind of cough you might give if you were about to make an after-dinner speech. The little cough brought up a gush, a spew of bright arterial blood. And that was the end. There were no more words, or attempts at words, but he continued to look at me, and I continued to cradle his head, until one of the policemen came, made the usual checks, signaled to a police-woman, and said, “He’s gone, love. Leave him to us. We’ll take care of him.”

  Tom let me back into Dan’s house, and we waited for the police there. I didn’t want to wait in that downstairs room, which had been trashed, with the sofa slit to ribbons. So we came upstairs, to the room where I’d seen Dan sitting. The light was still on. There were shotgun cartridges scattered all over the desk, and—I don’t know why—I put them back in their box and saw that two of them were missing.

  That shotgun was loaded. The police would later confirm that. Why would he have a loaded shotgun in London? they’d ask. I knew by then: I’d guessed. And that wasn’t difficult. There was a pile of objects on the desk—all Dan’s family memorabilia, the photographs of Ocean, and so on. And a small note next to them saying he would like Tom to have them.

  I took that note, before the police arrived. There was a holdall on the floor next to the desk, and it was easy enough to pretend it was mine. I took the note, the box of ammunition, the gifts for Tom, and the manuscript, those pages Dan had decided to put through his shredder. I believe he did mean to do that and would have done so. The shredder was there on the desk, plugged in and ready to use. The pages were stacked next to it, except for the last page, the one he’d reached when life interrupted him. He had looked out of the window, out through the glass; his pen made that jagged mark as he rose to his feet. He saw then that there was another way, a better way, of dying. And, being ready to do so, he took it.

  [ thirty ]

  Dosta

  The police interviewed me three times. They had tried, and failed, to trace the shotgun. That didn’t surprise me. That gun had originally belonged to Joe’s father. I doubt Joe had used it recently or had ever bothered to license it. The gun had been cleaned and oiled: I knew Dan must have done that. I told the police, three times, that the gun was not Dan’s. I told them three times that Malc had produced this weapon. That statement didn’t accord with my son’s, they informed me. My son is just nine, I replied. He was terrified. He can’t remember the details. Malc produced the gun, then there was a struggle, and Dan got hold of it. If he hadn’t, I would not be here for you to interview.

  Then how did your assailants get it back from him? the police wanted to know. I said: Dan wasn’t a vigilante; once Tom and I were safe, he wasn’t prepared to use the gun or harm anyone… he knew the police were on their way; we could hear sirens; he was trying to defuse the situation, to take the cartridges out, when they rushed him. I had to say that. They’d have found traces of ammunition on Dan’s hands. When lying to the police, who have the advantage of modern technology, one has to lie carefully.

  I said: I can’t remember the exact details, it happened too fast. I said: I’ve told you what happened three times. I had to watch them do that to an unarmed man. It was five against one. He was my husband’s oldest friend. He’s my son’s godfather. He had a brilliant career, he had everything to live for. My son and I owe our lives to Dan. I find this deeply upsetting. If you want to pursue this, and if you continue to question and harass me like this, I’ll call my solicitor.

  They’d caught Malc by then. They subsequently caught two of the others. I identified them in the lineup. All three contradicted one another, accused one another, and invented a farrago of lies. There were wildly inaccurate witness statements from the various neighbors who had called the police and watched this event from behind their net curtains. The number of assailants varied from five to fifteen. No one could agree as to their age, build, height, skin, or hair color; no one could agree as to what they’d been wearing. Every witness to and participant in this event had a different version of it.

  I perjured myself well. When, finally, a year later, I was called to the witness box, my story proved unshakable. I was a clear, unemotional, model witness—and commended as such by the judge. I was determined that there would be no mitigating pleas, and if illegal possession of a firearm could be added to the assault and murder charges, that seemed to me a bonus. Besides, I did not want the issue to be clouded by suggestions of self-defense, deliberate provocation, or suicide.

  Malc, who proved to be nineteen, was sent down for life; with good behavior he’d be out in fifteen years or less, my solicitor informed me. I did not think good behavior was too likely, in Malc’s case. His two co-defendants, aged sixteen and seventeen, went down for four and five years, respectively; the sentences would have been more severe had it been possible to prove who had struck the blows to the skull, who had stabbed Dan in the throat, and whether all five assailants were equally responsible. The other two, those lanky boys—both juveniles in any case, I think—were never caught or identified.

  Fame can on occasion be useful. I have a certain degree of fame; Dan was well known, or had been. Those facts ensured that this became a cause célèbre immediately. Once the trial was over, I set about my task: to tell Dan’s story. I gave interviews. I gave them to everyone who requested them, from national newspapers to the West Suffolk Gazette; from ITN to the smallest local TV stations. I am a professional: I gave them the sound bites they needed. I used the term hero lavishly, and they lavishly repeated it.

  I know the power of photographs, too, so I made sure they all had a photograph of Dan as he used to be, Dan in his youth, at the height of his extreme beauty. It was taken at the Abbey, by me, that last summer. I’ve always kept it. Dan is standing barefoot, in the cloister, head thrown back, dark hair falling across his forehead, dark eyes flashing. He looks about to conquer the world. That is how I wanted people to remember him—and, now, that is how they will remember him. People remember physical beauty and courage—they’re rare enough, in all conscience.

/>   The true story is better and more truly courageous, of course. But the truth was too complicated to risk. The media is not good with complicated stories. I hope Dan would approve of all this—I did it for him; it was the last service I could perform for him.

  It would amuse him, I was sure of that. Besides, Dan was subtle: By indirection, find direction out. He’d have known that this was my way of saluting him.

  I still think about that final word he was trying to say when I held him. That word that began with a “d.” Was it “deal,” as in “deal with”—a term I found he used again and again? Had Dan, dying, made one last wry joke? Perhaps it was “Dorrie.” I’d have liked to ask Nick, or Finn, or someone. But I couldn’t ask them, because Finn was dying, Fanny had flounced off somewhere again—and I was alone, except for Tom, for several weeks after it happened. It was Tom, finally, who suggested alternatives—he and Dan, I was discovering, had been closer than I’d realized. Tom thought it might be a Romany word. Dan had taught him some of those secret words, those Ocean remnants. There was dya, for instance, which meant “mother.” And there was dosta.

  I looked at Tom. We were sitting at our kitchen table. It was scattered with Dan objects, Dan talismans—the ones he’d wanted Tom to have. There was that crystal ball of Bella’s, the tarot cards, the photographs, and the plowing certificates; and Ocean’s strange tinny little charm that Dan had been wearing around his neck when he came out of his house with that shotgun. I’d asked the police for it. I’d washed the blood off it. Tom loved these things and examined them endlessly. “What does dosta mean?” I asked.

  “It means enough,” Tom replied. “Dosta—he often said it.”