The Philosophy of Disgrace

by Ann Troup

  Lila’s kitchen clock ticked, marking the moments that his words hung in the air, ‘Better than knowing why.’ She said finally.

  He gripped the cup, almost crushing it in an effort not to hurl it at the wall and watch the jagged shards flail her as they fell. ‘What about me? I’m not a little girl who needs to be protected from life’s shit Rachel.’ He yelled watching her wince at the violence of it and not caring ‘don’t you think I deserve to know why?’

  Every nerve in her body was screaming, she felt sick, she was sick. Vile, disgusting and sick. An aberration. Couldn’t he see that for himself? ‘I didn’t love you, I didn’t want her. I made a mistake.’ Even though she closed her eyes when she said it, she could sense that her words had sliced him like a razor, sharp and sure, the extent of the damage delayed by the swiftness of the cut.

  He stood, moved towards her slowly, every step an exercise in measured control. He felt drunk, surreal, and incapable of coherent thought.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Peter Haines stared down at the impassive, unconscious form of his wife and wondered if he loved her. Wondered if anyone could truly love a woman like Frances? She was admirable in many ways, cultured, elegant, and formidable. Qualities quite desirable in a partner, but traits, which could hardly be termed as lovable and cosy. This was the first time he had ever observed her in a state of relaxation, she looked different, not soft, just less determined than normal. It was a strange experience to see a woman you had shared a bed with, shared a life with, suddenly being transformed into a stranger because of a bump on the head. Quite disturbing really.

  He had always been proud of having her as his wife. She represented him well, even though she could be a little strenuous in her opinions at times, even though her proprietary efficiency was a little forced. She was a good wife, a faithful wife, but passionless. Her emotions ran cold and had set like stone, only ever emerging as grit toothed, hard sound bites, and only then when absolutely necessary.

  Children might have helped. However, they had never come along, and if he were honest, he wouldn’t have known what to do if they had. He wasn’t a man able to tolerate mess and chaos, so maybe it had been for the best. He had no memory of being a child, couldn’t relate to what it was like at all. Even in his mother’s house, proudly populated with pictures of decreasingly younger versions of himself, he couldn’t make the connection, just felt slightly embarrassed by the tight-lipped, two-dimensional boy that he saw staring back at him from the photographs. Sometimes he was sure that he’d been born old.

  Despite all that, the one thing he had never, ever anticipated was the prospect of being associated with scandal. Part of the reason that he had chosen Frances for a wife was because her background was good, her family were a little odd, but of good pedigree as he had been led to believe. Never would he have contemplated that they could be capable of the level of depravity that was splashed all over the newspapers. It had been a shock.

  In some respects, his other recent discovery had been a greater shock. When Valerie had died both he and Frances had been relieved, not only were they free of an unlikeable burden, they stood to inherit a share of The Limes. Initially he had held out hope that Valerie had made a will, cutting out at least Rachel, and favouring Frances above Stella. Typically, she had not. The process of probate would be lengthy but at least straightforward, he’d assumed. He’d been wrong, a complication had emerged already. Not only had Valerie not left a will, neither had William, and to top that, there was no evidence that William was actually dead. When he had heard from the solicitor that no death certificate was in evidence, he had been incredulous, until he had discovered that there was no grave either. No funeral had taken place, no notice had been in the papers, and it seemed that William had simply disappeared. The only will that had ever existed that decreed ownership of the house was that made by Venetia, which meant that William still owned the property. It was a nightmare situation, and one that was costing him eighty-five pounds an hour every time their solicitor even thought about resolving it. If just one of the bodies had been William it would have been far more simple, distasteful, but simple.

  Now that he thought about it, the whole thing had been a sham. In selecting him as a husband Frances had achieved respectability, had managed to disguise herself and her family so that they couldn’t be recognised for what they were. He’d been duped, all his assumptions were wrong. Stella, the single most ineffectual example of the human condition in his opinion, had been someone to be pitied. Valerie, her pride in Frances had been nothing but guise and guile, all designed to ensnare him and link him to a family of felons and sycophants!

  He couldn’t even bear to look at Frances anymore, lying there peaceful and oblivious, with nothing worse than a head wound when his whole life had been torn apart by her lies. In disgust he took the flowers he had bought for her, a beautifully arranged hand tied bouquet, and rammed them into the waste bin. He was a decent man, a good man, honourable and upright, and he wasn’t equipped for this. Resource-less and angry he stalked from the ward.

  Amy was well and truly pissed off. Sent home from her placement early, she had caught a train home, desperately trying to phone her dad for the duration of the journey so that he could pick her up from the station. Only he wasn’t answering his phone, and now she would have to catch a bus. She hated buses, especially late buses. They were full of drunks and sodcasting kids and people with hygiene problems.

  All her life Charlie had been there. She had never come home to an empty house, had never been turned down when she had asked for a lift, had never opened the fridge and found it bereft of food. Dad was always there, always had been, and now he wasn’t and she was more annoyed with him than she wanted to admit.

  Besides, it was his fault she was here at all, standing on a freezing bus stop next to a person who obviously failed to see the relevance of the ‘i’ in i pod. Where the fuck was he? They needed to talk, about what was in the papers. She had been in the office writing up patient notes before handover, when the other student, that supercilious prat Nick Gribble, had slapped the paper down on the desk. Everyone had looked up, as he’d said, ‘never told us your dad was a criminal Amy.’

  Mortification hadn’t been the word for it, so she’d told him to fuck off and had got a bollocking from her supervisor and told to go home. Somehow the prospect of bouncing of the walls in the nurses home hadn’t appealed, so she’d come home, and no one was here for her. What made her really angry was the fact that if something that really mattered to people had happened that day, like a bank had gone out of business and money was at stake, the stupid papers wouldn’t have even thought about raking something up that had happened over thirty years ago. There was a photograph of him, her dad, taking up half the page, and all because the woman who’d gone missing, the one who’d killed her husband and baby, had been a witness at his trial. Didn’t put a photograph of Stella Baxter in there did they? Don’t suppose her kids had her past rubbed in their faces! How fair was that?

  Neither he nor Gran had ever talked about why he’d been in prison. She’d always known he had been, ever since her second day at school when Lee Price, a particularly noxious kid who always had dried snot on his jumper sleeve, had said, ‘My mum said your dad is a murderer. He chopped your mum into little pieces.’

  She’d stared at him in disbelief, trying to equate what he had said with her dad, her big, strong lovely dad. ‘At least I’ve got a hanky! I don’t wipe bogeys on my clothes’, she’d cried. She still felt stupid when she thought about it.

  Gran had picked her up, and had been shocked to see a bandage on her hand. Lee Price had stabbed her with a pencil over the snot jibe. It had all come out in a tearful torrent, and Gran had told her that it was true that her dad had gone to prison, but that it wasn’t true that he’d killed anyone. His first wife had been killed, but not by him. She had taken this on her five-year-old chin, because it was gospel if Gran said so. She had never since questioned his innocence, ev
en though she had been haunted by the thought that he did seem to have a habit of marrying people who suffered untimely deaths.

  After that, Gran wouldn’t discuss it, and she had been warned on pain of death to ask her father about it. However, the story ate at her, the dead first wife became the antagonist in her nightmares and she’d had no choice but to find out what had happened. When she was thirteen, she’d gone to the library and had mastered the mysteries of the microfiche machine in order to read the reports of what her father was supposed to have done. It didn’t stand up in her mind, the words “frenzied attack” in the same sentence, as her father’s name was so incongruent she had laughed at it. In her mind she had packed it away in the same place as the death of her mother, and it was in the mental filing cabinet labelled ‘Romantic Tragedies’, along with other things that were too difficult to think about often. As far as she was concerned, the fact that bodies had been found at The Limes proved that her dad was innocent beyond doubt, whoever had been killing people there, it hadn’t been him. Whoever it was had more than likely framed him. Simple.

  At least, that’s what she believed on good days. That’s what she would tell someone if they asked. On not so good days, when the world was full of dark impending shadows and seemed a sunless place, she felt very differently. Torn. Between what she wanted to believe and what her logical mind suggested to her. The belief that her father was incapable of being a frenzied murderer was absolute, but the suspicion that he might be capable of great passion, immense feeling and deep hurt was a worm that crawled in her brain often. Making her wish that she were someone else, somewhere else.

  All she could base her darker thoughts on were the facts that her father loved her with a devotion that bordered on obsession, and he still loved her mother. If Gran didn’t stay him, he would have locked Amy in her room forever where he could keep her safe. She wouldn’t just be wrapped in cotton wool; she would be incarcerated. Just in case. He didn’t, but she could tell he wanted to, and that only the voice of reason stopped him taking her to a desert island where she would be safe forever. She knew he still loved Rachel, because he never talked about her, and if anyone asked him his face would cloud with hurt so intensely that no one dared ask him again.

  If he had loved the first wife as much, would he have killed her rather than lose her to someone else? She knew for a fact that he would kill anyone who threatened her safety. He had said so often enough.

  Once, when she was seventeen, she had shared her worries with her best friend Kayleigh. Kayleigh had said that the only way to find out if he had killed the first wife was to ask her. They had hidden themselves in her Gran’s bedroom and made a Ouija board out of scrabble tiles and had invoked the spirit of Patsy. Gran’s room had seemed a good choice of venue, after all how scary could anything be if it was experienced on a bed of quilted pink satin surrounded by kitten ornaments whilst breathing in air that smelled only of Cyclax and Coty L’aimant.

  Bloody terrifying as it turned out, they had scared each other shitless.

  Kayleigh had led the proceedings, her mother owned a deck of Tarot cards and she was familiar with the ritual of such things having been witness to many a prediction of handsome strangers and sudden windfalls. Kayleigh had laid the letters out in a circle and had written ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on two pieces of paper, on a third she had written ‘Goodbye.’ These she placed in the circle, and in the middle, she put a glass tumbler. They had debated the glass, it had a picture of Blackpool tower on it and didn’t seem a serious enough object to use in the circumstances, but it was all they had to hand and neither of them thought that any restless spirit would be too concerned about a bit of kitsch. Kayleigh had said that any spirit manifesting in Delia’s bedroom would have to be oblivious to tat, otherwise they wouldn’t bother coming at all. Amy had laughed with her, but had felt mildly offended all the same.

  They had both said the Lord’s Prayer, just in case, before putting each putting a tentative digit on the upturned glass. ‘Is anybody there?’ Kayleigh had asked, sounding like Boris Karloff in a bad horror film. Amy had nearly fainted when the glass started to move, and had pulled her finger away accusing Kayleigh of pushing it, which she strenuously denied, sulkily saying ‘If you’re not going to take this seriously I’m going home.’

  Amy had reassured her that she was deadly serious and they had tried again, watching incredulous, as the glass seemed to propel itself around the circle of letters. The first few words it spelled out were nonsense, not even real words. Only when Kayleigh asked for Patsy to communicate with them did anything significant happen.

  ‘Are you Patsy?’ Kayleigh asked the air.

  Amy had shuddered as the glass moved towards the slip of paper bearing the word yes.

  ‘Were you murdered?’ was the next question, again the glass moved to yes.

  Kayleigh had stared at her, eyes wide, ‘Who murdered you?’ she said ominously.

  Amy had been barely able to breathe as the glass had moved round the circle in undecided moves, finally spelling out the words, ‘not him.’

  ‘See,’ Kayleigh had said, pleased with herself.

  Scared and unconvinced, Amy had asked the question again, but nothing happened, the glass just seemed to quiver under their fingers. ‘Did my father kill you?’ she demanded, feeling desperate for a reiteration that it wasn’t him.

  The glass moved again, sweeping around the circle again and again in dramatic arcs, then stopping suddenly in front of the slip of paper, which said ‘goodbye’.

  Unnerved by the experience they had scooped the letters back into their little bag and shoved it back in the Scrabble box. The notes that Kayleigh had written they screwed up and threw into the bin. Kayleigh was convinced that Amy had conclusive proof that Charlie was not a murderer. Amy wanted to believe it but wasn’t sure, her logical mind refused to allow her to accept that they had just communicated with a dead woman. But what else could it have been?

  ‘What’s up, you scared?’ Kayleigh had asked.

  ‘No’ she’d lied. ‘I was just wondering, if we could do it again, see if we can talk to my mum?’

  They had agreed to try it again the next time they had the house to themselves, probably Tuesday when Delia would be out at bingo again. They had, but absolutely nothing had happened at all, the glass hadn’t even attempted to move. Kayleigh had explained that it was because Rachel’s spirit was at rest, she had passed peacefully and wasn’t earthbound like Patsy.

  Delia had put an end to any further forays into the paranormal, she had found the screwed up words in her bedroom bin and had instantly worked out what they had been up to. Her attitude towards dabbling with the unknown had been expressed with enough fear and anger to dissuade Amy from trying it again for a very long time, especially when she had insisted that she couldn’t sleep soundly in that room afterwards.

  Amy would never tell her whose spirit they had been trying to talk to, and suspected that her Gran’s insistence that the bedroom was tainted by their activities was just an excuse to get Charlie to redecorate the other, larger room and move her things in there. Delia had even gone so far as to burn the Scrabble game, just in case it was tainted too.

  She hadn’t kept in touch with Kayleigh, not since they had left school and gone their separate ways. She missed her, there was no one else she could be as open with, or who knew so many of her secrets. However, given her experience with Nick Gribble, maybe that was a good thing.

  The bus finally arrived and she climbed aboard behind the iPod idiot and found a seat at the back. She tried her dad’s number again, just to let him know she was on her way home. He still didn’t have it switched on. She felt irrationally annoyed that he wasn’t available to her when she needed him. At least now, because of the things she was learning about psychology in college, she could identify that her reaction was that of her inner child who felt abandoned. Consciously she tried to rationalise her feelings by persuading herself that her father was a grown man who was entitled to
an independent life. Perhaps he was with a woman, was out on a date? She pushed that thought away, it hooked her inner child badly and she couldn’t be bothered to analyse it.

  When she finally reached home, she found the house quiet, dark and empty and it made her shiver. Her first task was to turn on all the downstairs lights, switch on the TV and crank up the heating. Only then could she stop looking over her shoulder every few seconds to check if she really was alone. She had half expected to find a note from her father explaining where he was, but he hadn’t been expecting her home until the weekend, so it was an irrational desire on her part, yet she was disappointed. ‘You are not the centre of the universe’ she said, speaking out loud as if the sound of the words would have a greater chance of admonishing her selfishness than if she’d merely thought them.

  For one lonely moment she thought about ringing Gran, but would have to explain that she’d been sent home in disgrace, and why. It wasn’t worth the hassle. Instead, she wandered out into the kitchen and began to mooch in the cupboards in search of something easy to eat. She found a pot noodle lurking in the back of the cupboard, but rejected it on grounds that appealing as it was in principle, it would taste of reconstituted cardboard. They always did, even after a couple of pints when most bad food seemed to take on an edibility which when eaten sober it wouldn’t have remotely possessed. Eventually she settled for a microwave pizza.

  She picked at it, nibbling at bits of the topping as she watched TV mindlessly, trying to decide whether to have a bath, or ring round to see if anyone was out and wanted company. In the end, she decided to work on an essay, a case study on one of the patients at Tynings, the unit where she had her placement. Bill had been the wrong patient to choose in a way, she couldn’t examine his past, as nobody knew about it. He had been a street drinker until the police sectioned him and he was admitted to the unit. Then he had been diagnosed with Werner Korsakoff syndrome, an alcohol induced dementia. Because it was a rare diagnosis it he had seemed like an interesting case to study, now that she had to produce fifteen thousand words on the man, it seemed to be the worst choice ever. It wasn’t even as if he was a pleasant character, he was dirty and he gave her the creeps. But it was too late to change now, the essay was due in a week and she would just have to make the best of it.