by David Pinner
‘Oh I know Jimmy was faithless, Gwynne, and that he totally betrayed me with that whore, but now I…well, I do forgive him. And I miss him terribly,’ Mary said huskily, clamping her handkerchief over her eyes, in a vain attempt to stifle her tears.
‘So now you know what such a terrible loss feels like, Mary, don’t you?’ the witch retorted to her snivelling guest. ‘Although, of course, your loss is nothing compared to mine.’
‘It’s true, Gwynne, it’s true. But I still feel as if all the life’s been kicked out of me. See, I’m sure that there’s still a helluva lot more horror out there…waiting for me,’ Mary sobbed, moving away from the fire. ‘It’s the reason I can’t go to the Police. ‘Cause if I do, then the cops’ll splash what Jimmy did all over the News. And so, within the hour; Jimmy’s name’ll be dragged through the mud. And as I’ve lived with him for the best part of three years, they’ll spread shit all over my name, too. Then there’s my poor darling Bella, who will be endlessly teased and tormented at school.’
Tearfully, Mary slumped down onto the settle by the window, where she stared out at the alien November sun.
Gwynne nodded. Still massaging her aching hands, she crossed to the Welsh dresser. She pulled out the cork from an old wine bottle, and she poured some yellowish liquid into a glass tumbler. While Gwynne was pouring, Mary blew her nose again.
‘God, I hate this village!’ she sniffled.
‘It’s your rival, Lulu Crescent, you should hate, Mary.’
‘Oh I hate her, too. For stealing Jimmy from me.’
‘But if you remember, Mary, last Friday, I told all you women that you should have finished crucifying Crescent when you had the chance. And if you had let your kids go on stabbing the slut to death with their knitting needles, you could’ve packed her off to Hell there and then.’
‘You’re right, Gwynne. I wish to God I had listened to you, and then none of this would’ve happened,’ Mary said, frenetically screwing up her handkerchief in her hands.
‘Yes, Mary, and, what’s more, you could’ve done for the Crescent-whore this morning, if only you’d thought about it.’
‘How could I have “done for” her this morning?’ Mary asked, with a puzzled look.
‘As you were passing her place on your way here, you should’ve gone into her cottage, and then you could’ve accused her of being the direct cause of all this misery. You see, Crescent’s bound to be up to her evil neck in making Jimmy…’
‘Don’t say the word!’ interrupted Mary as more tears welled up, blurring her vision.
‘As you will,’ Gwynne shrugged. Then after she had swirled the yellow liquid around in the tumbler, the witch added contritely; ‘No, listen, Mary…I am truly sorry for what you’re going through.’ She crossed to her distraught neighbour with the tumbler. ‘Now drink this, dear, and you will find that it’ll help you.’
‘What is it?’
‘A glass of my home-made wine. It does wonders for comforting sorrow.’
‘Look, Gwynne, if you don’t mind, but I won’t, thanks,’ Mary said, crossing back to her chair by the grate. ‘I find booze only makes things worse. So I’ll just stick with this cuppa tea you’ve kindly made for me.’ Then with a mystified expression on her face, Mary shook her head at the witch as she whispered; ‘Although I must say, Gwynne…you still totally amaze me.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I’ve told you how I…well, how I found Jimmy under the tree, and so I…well, I do find it very strange that you haven’t asked to read what Jimmy’s written in his notebook.’
‘I don’t need to read Jimmy’s notebook to know why he hanged himself,’ Gwynne said, after taking a sip of her wine.
‘But how can you possibly know why he did it?’ Mary demanded incredulously.
‘I once read Jimmy’s palm briefly in my garden. And now it all makes tragic sense,’ Gwynne said, massaging her pain-distorted fingers.
‘When did you read his palm?’
‘Twenty years ago, when Jimmy had just turned nineteen. You see, he was suffering with another of his excruciating headaches, so he came to see me. Then he asked me to read his palm, and tell him his future.’
‘And did you tell him his future?’ Mary said, gnawing her lower lip.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because suddenly Jimmy pulled his hand away from me, and then he ran out of my garden,’ Gwynne said as she picked up her discarded knitting, and she stared at the woollen snake in her lap. ‘But although Jimmy only showed me his hand for the briefest moment, nevertheless, in the centre of his palm, I still saw the image of the dead body of his twin-brother, Don. Yes…and poor Don was lying in a neglected grave.’
‘God in Hell!’
‘Yes, and I’m afraid that is where Jimmy will find his god now.’
‘But after you’d read his palm, why didn’t you go to the Police, Gwynne, and tell the cops what Jimmy had…well, what he’d done to his brother?’ Mary demanded, now on her feet and gazing down at Gwynne in disbelief.
‘Because everyone knows I’m a witch, Mary. Including the Police. So even if I had told them what I had read in Jimmy’s palm, the cops would never have believed me,’ Gwynne said, discarding her knitting, and crossing back to the fireplace where she peered into the fluttering flames. ‘And, anyway, I still wasn’t sure whether I had superimposed his twin’s dead body onto the palm of Jimmy’s hand. You see, I only glimpsed Don’s ghostly image for less than the blink of an eye. And even if Don was really dead, well, at the time, I didn’t know where Don was buried,’ she said, refocusing on Mary. ‘But I suppose my real reason for not going to the Police was…well, just before Jimmy ran out of my garden, he told me how much he was grieving for his parents, who were killed in that car accident. And also Jimmy said that he hated running the farm on his own, which made me feel deeply sorry for him. Plus, as I say, at the time, I had no real evidence to back up my suspicions, so…’
Abruptly Gwynne trailed off. Then a new revelation blazed into her mind, and the witch clutched her wrinkled forehead with both hands.
‘Yes, Gwynne, but now it seems that all your suspicions about Jimmy were right, doesn’t it?’ Mary asserted as she tugged Jimmy’s notebook out of her coat pocket. ‘So you must want to read the reasons he gives for hanging himself.’
‘I don’t need to!’ Gwynne snapped, cutting her off.
‘But he explains everything in here,’ Mary snapped back, clutching the notebook.
Grim-faced, Gwynne waved her hand dismissively, and she limped over to a dilapidated bookshelf in the opposite corner of her parlour. As Mary continued to thrust the notebook under Gwynne’s nose, the witch ignored her, while she pulled a much-thumbed, Victorian Bible from her bookshelf.
‘Oh c’mon, Gwynne, you won’t find Jimmy’s explanation in the Bible!’ Mary cried, brandishing the notebook. ‘The terrifying truth is in here!’
‘I don’t need to read his notebook to know that Jimmy lied to me that day in the garden about his brother, Don. What’s more, Jimmy has been lying to everyone in the village ever since! You see, the writer of Genesis prophesied it all in here,’ Gwynne clarioned, thrusting her forefinger at the relevant passages in her Bible.
Mary peered over her shoulder, and when she had read what the witch was pointing at, she whispered, ‘God in Heaven.’
‘That is very doubtful, too. So now, Mary, you see why you have no choice but to take Jimmy’s notebook straight to the Police.’
‘I can’t go to the cops.’
‘It’s the only way you’ll get your revenge on Lulu Crescent because you can bet your life, the whore was up to her ears in helping your lover to hang himself. So now go to the Police, and tell them everything that you know about Crescent, and her liaison with Jimmy. It’s the only way that you will incriminate the bitch. Then the Police will imprison her, and they will throw away the key.’
13
It was late Monday afternoon, on the same day,
1st November, 1999.
As the hunched figure of a woman, in a sea-green overcoat, sat on a rock, the dusk was suffusing Thorn’s cliff-top in a haze of deepening purples. The woman was overlooking the waves, which were churning the shingle in the bay below her. She seemed oblivious to the seagulls and the terns screeching their defiance at the sulphurous sun, while its orb was descending into the horizon. And, equally, she ignored the bearded man, who was running towards her across the cliff.
When the man panted to a standstill beside her, she still refused to look at him as she observed sardonically, ‘I’m surprised that it’s taken you so long, Paul.’
‘I couldn’t’ve come any earlier, Lulu, because the Police came round to your cottage, didn’t they? And they’ve been questioning you for most of the afternoon, right?’
‘That’s what I mean. If you hadn’t been so bashful, Paul, you could have come and joined in the party. You see, I’m sure Inspector Glenville had several questions about your activities in the wood last night that I’m sure he would have liked to have asked you about.’
‘Jesus wept!’
‘Yes, I understand He did a lot of that latterly,’ Lulu nodded, with an understanding smile.
‘Look, after what’s happened, Lulu, well, I just don’t understand how you can…? Well, how the hell can you just sit here on the cliff like… well, “Like patience on a bloody monument”?’
‘Because I like “smiling at grief”,’ she said as she allowed her gaze to move up from the declining sun. Then she focused on the crescent moon, which was glimmering in the empyrean, and she murmured, ‘Although even more…I adore…watching the Rising Goddess re-possessing Her World.’
‘Jimmy Vaughn was right about you, Lulu, when he screamed at you in your cottage!’ Paul shouted. ‘But then, of course, you don’t really care a toss about anything, or anyone, do you? Except for your godforsaken, godless-fucking-moon!’ he raged on, rubbing his vibrating temples with his fingers.
‘Yes, but that’s not the reason that the inside of your head is on fire again, though, is it?’ she countered as she pointed at the bars of carmine, streaking the twilit-sky. ‘You see, unlike the wholesome furnace in the Heavens, Paul, the source of your anguish has much more to do with your hellish thoughts, hasn’t it? Although, in truth, I’m not yet certain as to the exact nature of your thoughts. Although, for all our sakes, I wish I was.’
‘You can’t get out of it like that, Lulu. Though you do seem to wriggle your way out of most things. But I still don’t understand how you managed to persuade the Police not to charge you with…’
‘What could they charge me with?’ interrupted Lulu.
‘They could’ve charged you with goading Jimmy into topping himself. Because that’s what you did, isn’t it?’
‘You should have read his notebook, Paul. Then you would see things quite differently.’
‘What notebook?’
‘Yes, despite prowling around the grave, you failed to spot it, didn’t you?’ she said, standing up to face him. ‘But this morning Mary discovered Jimmy’s notebook in a plastic bag beside the grave, and then she went to the Police with it. That’s why they came round to my cottage.’
‘Look, as you obviously know so fucking much about everything,’ Paul exclaimed, waving an accusatory fist at her, ‘Then I still don’t understand why the Police haven’t arrested you!’
‘The reason’s simple. The police came round to my cottage to question me because I had an affair with Jimmy,’ she said, smiling ruefully. ‘But once they had established that after I had waved goodbye to Jimmy yesterday evening, I was alone in my cottage for the rest of the night, well, then there was nothing the police could charge me with, was there?’
‘You weren’t alone in your cottage! You were in the wood with Jimmy last night when he took his life. What’s more, I’m certain that it was you, who urged him to top himself!’
‘You were in the wood with him, too, Paul,’ Lulu countered, while she rose to her feet and buttoned up the top of her sea-green overcoat. ‘And I’m equally certain that you don’t want the police to charge you, do you?’
‘What the hell can the cops charge me with? When I was asleep when he topped himself.’
‘You were “asleep”?’ Lulu queried, with a sceptical smile, as she moved off along the rapidly-darkening cliff.
‘Yes, and, what’s more, Lulu, I know it was you, who put me to sleep!’ Paul bellowed, hurrying after her, with his clenched fists.
‘And you really think the police will believe that?’ Lulu said, continuing to smile and moving on.
‘I still don’t see how you can just accept all this horror so bloody casually?’ he demanded, catching her up, and grasping her elbow.
Then he forced her towards the edge of the cliff.
‘I don’t accept it casually,’ she replied, unsuccessfully trying to prise his fingers away from her forearm. ‘You see, in my very full life, I have seen many similar occurrences.’
With her free hand, she pointed at the dark waves, which were a hundred feet below them, crashing on the boulders.
‘Now either push me over the cliff, Paul. Or let me go.’
‘You’re something else, aren’t you, Lulu?’
‘Yes, and you and better believe it. So release me.’
Shaking his head ruefully, he detached his claw-like fingers from her arm. After studying his face a moment, Lulu moved off along the cliff. Now totally disconcerted, Paul hastened after her, although at a discreet distance.
‘Look, the one thing I’m sure of, Lulu, is if you hadn’t put me to sleep in the wood – which you know you fucking did! – then I could have stopped poor, deluded Jimmy from topping himself,’ he said shadowing her.
‘You could never have stopped him because Jimmy wanted to take his own life,’ Lulu said, pausing a moment to gaze up at the rising moon. ‘And if he hadn’t committed suicide last night, he would have done it today, or tomorrow. You see, it was his brother’s voice in the oak grove that finally gave Jimmy no choice in the matter.’
‘So it was…Don’s skull in the grave, then?’ he whispered in sudden realisation.
Lulu nodded, staring over the frothing sea as she concurred; ‘And it was Jimmy, who killed Don.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. You see, Jimmy was like Cain, in your Bible,’ Lulu insisted. ‘And like Cain, Jimmy “rose up against Abel, his brother, and he slew him”.’ Then she added, ‘And like you, Gwynne Spark often refers to her Bible, too. As she did this morning – with Mary. But then, of course, Gwynne had already read the Biblical-truth in Jimmy’s hand twenty years ago.’
‘So if you and Gwynne both knew that he had killed Don, then why the hell didn’t either of you make Jimmy go to the police, so he could confess to murdering his brother?’ demanded the writer, massaging his juddering temples.
‘Because until last night, Jimmy didn’t believe that he was capable of murdering anyone. Let alone his twin brother,’ Lulu said dolefully as she turned away from the last blood-red streaks of the dying sun. ‘What’s more, Jimmy has continued to believe that for the last twenty years. And despite the fact that his brother’s voice has been calling to Jimmy, from his grave under the oak, since the day he was murdered. Yet during all that time, Jimmy ignored his dead twin’s accusing voice - until last night. And, indeed, it was only when Jimmy had exhumed Don’s grave, and then he unearthed his brother’s cloven skull that – at long last – Jimmy discovered that he had slain his identical twin, in much the same way as Cain slew his brother, Abel.’
‘But why did he “slay” Don?’ Paul said, staring into Lulu’s dusk-enshadowed eyes. ‘In God’s name, why?’
‘Because the day after their parents’ funeral, the twins found a letter from their father. And although it wasn’t a formal will, the letter made it clear that their father had left the farm, and all his worldly possessions, solely to Don. Then moments after Jimmy read - what he regarded as his father’s “devastating-c
ruel will” - he got the first of his terrible headaches. And that evening, when the twins went for a walk in the woods, Jimmy still had his excruciating headache. And in the middle of the wood, Jimmy had a fierce row with his twin because Jimmy was still inordinately angry that he’d been left absolutely nothing by their father. And while the brothers were raging at one another, there was a violent storm. Then Jimmy, who was suffering with the mental “storm” in his pain-stricken skull, was suddenly blinded by a lightning-flash, and simultaneously he was deafened by a thunderbolt. Yes…and in his manic frenzy, Jimmy clubbed his twin to death, with a branch from the ancient oak.’
‘Yes, but how did he…well, how did bury Don’s body?’ Paul asked as they stood face to face on the rapidly-darkening cliff-top.
‘Jimmy ran home, grabbed a spade, and he returned to the wood, where he dug a grave under the ancient oak, and then he buried Don’s body in the grave. Afterwards, he threw the spade into the sea – like you did last night, Paul, with your spade,’ she said pointedly. ‘And when Jimmy returned to the farmhouse, he burnt his father’s letter-cum-will, in which his father had bequeathed the farm solely to Don. Then he gathered together all his dead twin-brother’s possessions, and although the storm was still raging, Jimmy dug another hole, close to the farmhouse, and he buried all Don’s belongings in the hole.
‘Then while Jimmy was leading his horses back to their stables, a thunderbolt ripped some tiles from a stable roof, and one of the tiles crashed down onto the back of his head. It didn’t render him unconscious, but it gave him the greatest headache of his life. However, the following day, Jimmy discovered that his head was no longer aching, and that’s when he told his friends and neighbours that his brother, Don, had gone off to London. And several days later, Jimmy informed everyone that he had no idea as to where Don was in London.
‘And, of course, the police and Missing Persons tried to find Don, but obviously no one ever succeeded because – as the authorities said at the time – “So many young people get lost in London”. Yet all the while, Jimmy continued to feel bereft because he genuinely missed his brother, and so, naturally, all the villagers sympathised with him. And as there was no sign of any legal will, and as Jimmy was the next of kin, he took over the owning - and the running - of the family farm. Then, very soon afterwards, Jimmy told everyone how much he loathed running the farm on his own.’