by M. R. Hall
Benedict, was quoted as saying, ‘Katy’s death was a tragic and sadly unavoidable accident to which no blame can be attached.’
‘What is it?’ Steve asked.
Jenny shrugged, placing the articles back on the table.
‘There’s something. I can tell.’
‘It’s Dad, I suppose.’ She tried to untangle the knot of emotions that had been disguised by her initial shock.
‘What about him?’
‘He could have quite a temper. I can remember him smacking me, the look on his face, more than angry, enraged.’ She drew on her cigarette, assailed by fragments of long-forgotten memory: her father erupting at a spilled glass of milk and a sharp slap on the legs; his face, boiling red, yelling at her mother, the sound of her shriek as he hit her, her sobbing as he thundered down the stairs and crashed out through the front door.
‘You look tired,’ Steve said. ‘Shall I drive you home?’
Jenny didn’t answer. She was remembering the helpless, terrified feeling her father’s fury stirred in her. Even as a small child she had intuited that it came from somewhere deep within him, a place neither she nor her mother could reach.
‘Jenny? Why don’t we get the bill? We’ll pick something up and cook at your place.’
She shook her head.
‘You’ve got to eat. You look like a ghost.’
‘I’m going to see my dad.’ She stood up from the table, grabbing the photocopies and stuffing them into her handbag.
‘Now? Isn’t it a bit late?’
‘He doesn’t care what time it is. He doesn’t even know.’
‘Jenny, I really don’t think—’
‘You started it.’
She marched inside, making for the exit. Steve chased after her, grabbing her arm. Otavio looked round from tapping an order into the till.
‘Jenny, please.’
She turned, sharply. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘At least let me come with you.’
Brian Chilcott had been confined to the nursing home in Weston-super-Mare for nearly five years. When Alzheimer’s struck in his late sixties, his second wife left even more quickly than she had arrived. ‘What would I be staying for?’ she said to Jenny. ‘He’s not my Brian any more, but he’ll always be your father.’
It was the time of the evening when the elderly residents of the home were being given their night-time sedatives and hoisted into bed. With Steve in tow, Jenny passed along the carpeted corridor that smelled of urine, disinfectant and cold tea, catching nightmarish glimpses of decrepitude through semi-open doors.
Her father’s door was shut. Jenny paused to gather strength.
Steve put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘I do.’ She reached up to touch his fingers. ‘Come in with me.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘For me. He won’t know who you are.’
She pushed open the door and found her father propped up in bed, wearing bright blue pyjamas buttoned all the way up to the neck. For once the television was silent. A magazine lay open but untouched on his lap.
‘Hello, Dad,’ Jenny said quietly.
The old man, seventy-four years old and as strong as a carthorse, turned to look at them, but said nothing.
‘Dad, you know me, don’t you? It’s Jenny?’
He stared at her blankly, seeming to focus on the wall behind her.
Steve sat on the arm of the stiff-backed armchair in which Brian spent most of his waking hours. ‘Hello, Mr Chilcott. I’m Steve. Pleased to meet you.’
Brian appeared to respond. His eyes moved briefly to Steve’s face before travelling to Jenny. She thought she detected a faint hint of recognition.
‘I’m sorry it’s been such a long time. I’ve been busy,’ Jenny said, adding the lie: ‘Ross sends his love.’
Brian turned his gaze back to Steve.
‘That’s not Ross. That’s my friend, Steve. There’s Ross.’ She pointed to one of the few framed family photographs arranged on the shelf at the far end of the bed: Ross aged fourteen, posing with a surfboard on a Cornish beach.
There was a long moment of silence. Brian seemed to lose concentration and drift back to wherever he had come from.
‘Dad—’
No answer.
Jenny was beginning to abandon hope, when her father said, ‘He’s the spit of me, that boy, and trouble with it.’ He smiled.
It was a phrase he’d coined long ago, but at least it was something. The nurses had told her there were days, even weeks, during which he said nothing at all. But on some days he would bellow obscenities and hurl his belongings around the room without provocation. There was no pattern to his behaviour. His ex-wife was right, Jenny thought, he wasn’t himself any more, so much so that she scarcely connected him with the man who, after her mother had left, had brought her up single-handedly from the age of twelve.
She reached into her handbag. ‘Dad, I want to show you something.’
Steve shot her a look, losing his nerve now that he was confronted with the reality.
Ignoring him, she produced the crumpled photocopies and smoothed them out on the blankets.
‘You remember last time I was here I asked you about Katy – Jim and Penny’s little girl? I want to know what happened to her.’
She held the first article in front of him. ‘The newspapers said she died falling down the stairs. You must remember that.’
‘He’s got a man’s shoulders, that boy. He’ll be a strong ’un. We worked on the trawlers when we were lads.’
‘Please,’ Jenny said. ‘I need to know. Look.’ She held up the article bearing his picture. ‘The police took you in. They came to get you from our house, I remember. I was outside in the street and they took you away in their car.’
Brian appeared to look at the article and study it. There was nothing wrong with his eyes. He’d never had glasses, not even for reading.
‘They thought you’d hurt her. You were at Jim and Penny’s house before the ambulance came. There was a row, the neighbours heard it. Please, Dad. Try.’
The dim lights in his eyes went out. He yawned and tugged awkwardly at the pillow that was keeping him upright.
‘Dad, wake up,’ Jenny said urgently, and thrust the third article under his nose. ‘They said it was an accident. She fell down the stairs and hit her head. Why didn’t you ever talk about it? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about her?’
The old man batted her hand away. Sensing that she was getting through to him, Jenny persisted. ‘You called me Smiler – do you remember? Do you remember the swing in the garden? You used to push me. I remember that.’
Her father grabbed a handful of blankets and brought them tight up under his chin.
‘I think maybe that’s enough,’ Steve said.
‘You can understand, can’t you, Dad? I know you can. You wouldn’t forget a thing like that.’
He closed his eyes, a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan escaping from his depths.
Jenny shook him by the shoulder. ‘Dad, tell me.’
Steve got up from his chair. ‘Jenny—’
Suddenly her father snapped out a hand and seized Jenny’s wrist with an iron grip that her made her cry out in pain.
‘Stop that.’ She tried to prise his fingers away. ‘Steve, help me.’
‘You know the deal, Smiler. You keep my secret, I’ll keep yours.’
‘What do you mean? Dad?’
He slackened his grip, a lost, bewildered expression taking the place of the anger that had briefly contorted his face. Sucked back into the void, he was an empty shell again. If there was a fate worse than death, Jenny thought, it had come to her father.
ELEVEN
JENNY WOKE LATE, the alarm clock telling her it was nearly eight-thirty. Leaden, she hauled herself out of bed, vaguely recalling Steve leaving shortly after daybreak, kissing her cheek as she had drifted back into sleep. As the fog cleared she remem
bered they had been talking until nearly three, Steve trying to convince her that if anyone had a sinister connection with Katy’s death it was almost certain to be her father. He had been impressive, piecing together the evidence like a criminal lawyer, almost persuading her that Brian was responsible for the year-long gap in her childhood memory. He wanted to hide something, Steve said, and he’s terrified you into hiding it too.
‘Like what?’ she had asked.
Steve had answered with a look. He didn’t have to spell it out.
She had always rejected the idea that her father had molested her. Her feelings towards him weren’t hostile or ambiguous enough; and she could swear that nothing had happened during the years when they had lived alone together, her mother having fled with her Jaguar-driving lover. Yet if he had, the dark dreams that had haunted her for so many years would make perfect sense: the ominous crack opening in the corner of the bedroom in her family home, the unseen, malevolent presence that lurked in the darkness beyond. She almost wished it were true.
Steve had pressed her to make another appointment with Dr Allen. It was her moment finally to drag the memories from her subconscious while the door was still open, he had said. She had resisted, pretending to him that she couldn’t face it while she was so busy at work, too afraid to admit the full extent of her terror. Not only was she frightened of falling into a place from which she would never escape, but she feared that the truth might reveal her as a monster from whom Steve would recoil.
She staggered to the window and drew back the curtains to reveal a perfect deep-blue sky. A pair of buzzards circled above the oak woods opposite; to the right of the cottage the patchwork of meadows and copses that sloped all the way down to the Wye was a vision of Eden. It’s all there for you, Steve would have said, you just have to reach out and take it.
The phone disrupted her moment of tranquillity. She stumbled stiffly down the narrow stairs to answer it in the study.
‘Oh, you’re still there, Mrs Cooper,’ Alison said with mock surprise. ‘I only tried you at home to make sure. I thought you’d be over the bridge by now.’
‘I’ve been catching up here where it’s quiet,’ Jenny said, in a voice still thick with sleep.
‘If it’s quiet you want, I should stay at home. Father Starr’s on the warpath. He’s insisting on speaking to you. I’ve got his number.’
‘What about?’
‘Do you think I didn’t ask him?’
Jenny’s call was answered by an elderly, austere-sounding priest. She could hear several male voices in the background and footsteps on wooden floors. Father Starr took a long time to come to the phone and spoke to her curtly. Could she please meet him at Clifton Cathedral, he asked.
‘Can you tell me what this is about?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘I see. Don’t you think some indication would be courteous?’
‘Please grant me this one interview, Mrs Cooper. I would be most grateful.’
Each year, as summer reached its zenith, there were a handful of days during which the Wye valley radiated such transcendent beauty that it was impossible not to be inspired to a vision of a clear and uncomplicated future. Meandering through the graceful corridors of beeches that reached out and touched each other over the five miles of road between the villages of Tintern and St Arvans, Jenny felt her spirits lift. The sun spiking through the branches brought a simple, brilliant thought: she could rise above the tribulations of her past, and set her own parameters. It didn’t need prayer or divine intervention; she could choose, right here and now, to take control.
She could begin with Starr. He was an obsessive who couldn’t believe one of his converts capable of murder. He was manipulative, too, taunting her with mention of Alec McAvoy. It wasn’t hard to understand his motive. And who but an egotist with fragile self-esteem could spend his life ministering to a captive audience of prisoners for whom the Church offered the only viable prospect of hope? A multitude of inadequacies could hide behind the priestly mask. She resolved to leave him in no doubt about what she thought – that he was wrong about Craven.
Father Starr was waiting impatiently on the steps of the brutally arresting modern cathedral. Built in the early 1970s largely of concrete, its three-pronged spire seemed to jab accusingly at the sky: a monument to the hubristic century that had created it, demanding rather than inspiring awe. Jacketless, a short-sleeved clerical shirt hugged his lean frame.
‘Good morning, Mrs Cooper.’ He didn’t offer his hand. ‘It’s a little too hot to talk out here, don’t you think?’
Without waiting for her answer, he turned and led the way through the cathedral’s glass doors into an interior which, if it hadn’t been for the abstract mosaics of stained glass, struck Jenny as having all the magic of an airport terminal. Vast concrete beams welded the building’s precast sections together. The altar stood beneath a hexagonal concrete dome of which even Calvin might have approved.
‘You don’t appreciate the modernist architecture?’ Starr said, reading her thoughts.
‘No,’ Jenny said, determined to follow through on her resolve.
‘I try,’ Starr said, with a suggestion of a smile. ‘And invariably fail.’
He nodded to the altar, crossed himself, and directed her to the end of one of the many rows of chairs that substituted for pews.
‘I think the architect’s idea was to allow for purity of thought,’ he said. ‘In that, at least, I feel he succeeded.’
Jenny was about to ask him what was so urgent that couldn’t wait, when she realized his small talk was veiling a silent prayer. His eyes were focused inwards, his folded hands perfectly still.
After a moment’s meditation he said, ‘I would usually be performing my duties at the prison on a weekday, but apparently I have been the cause of complaints. I have been asked to hand over my responsibilities to another priest.’
‘Complaints from whom?’
‘Two prisoners is all I have been told. Their identities have not been disclosed to me, of course. That would allow me to defend myself, which would never do.’
His sudden bitter tone surprised her. It was that of a man unused to rejection.
‘Have you been told the substance of the complaints?’
‘The governor informs me that I have exerted “indecent ideological pressure” on certain prisoners, thereby offending their freedom of conscience.’
‘Have you?’
Starr shook his head. ‘Never. I offer myself to prisoners to talk, that’s all. To force myself on them would be anathema. My order’s way is always to lead by example. If others see you have something they wish to possess, they will make the approach. In truth, Mrs Cooper, I am bewildered. Five years in La Modela, every day in the presence of evil, and not a single word of complaint.’
‘You must have some clue what prompted this.’
‘I have a suspicion, but I’m afraid you’ll accuse me of being paranoid.’ He turned to look at her, the first time she had seen genuine humility in him. ‘Believe me, I’m not prone to conspiracy theories, but these complaints mean I can no longer contact Paul Craven. I fear for him. His behaviour has become erratic, his thoughts disjointed. I had become the one person whom he could trust.’
‘You think the complaints against you were manufactured?’
‘I hesitate to believe that—’ He checked himself and gazed at the altar.
‘But you do?’ Jenny said. ‘Who does this benefit? I thought priests were welcomed by prisons.’
‘It may be a perfectly valid grievance,’ Starr said, in an effort to convince himself, ‘but I suppose there may be some who would like to see me discredited. A priest suspended from his post for browbeating doesn’t make the most compelling witness at an inquest, for example.’
‘I wouldn’t pay it much attention,’ Jenny said. ‘Besides, any evidence you gave would hardly be critical.’
‘But the allegations can be put, and repeated in the press. I will be called
a zealot and my belief in Craven dismissed as delusional.’
Jenny thought of Ed Prince’s parting words at the Mission Church the previous afternoon: his sly allusion to those Christians who didn’t like the way his clients conducted themselves. She’d guessed he was referring to Starr, but in the turmoil of the evening she had left her thoughts half-formed. Was Prince implying that the priest had an agenda beyond exonerating Craven? She had come intending to tell Starr she couldn’t help him, but he had headed her off and was dragging her into the mire.
Be direct, that was the only way. Hit him with the hard questions now and gauge his response. A would-be Jesuit couldn’t deny the power of logic. If all he had to offer was blind faith in Craven with no facts to back it up, she could let him down with a clear conscience.
‘Let me ask you something, Father,’ Jenny said. ‘What do you make of Eva Donaldson?’
‘In what sense?’
‘Her life story. Her conversion. What she represented in a spiritual sense.’
He gave her a sideways glance, reading her with eyes from which there was no hiding place. ‘Are you asking me if I believe God was working through her?’
‘If you like.’
‘And whether I approve of her church?’
‘You couldn’t be much further apart,’ Jenny said.
‘Protestants forget we have “phenomena”, too. But we subject them to scrutiny. The Catholic Church treats the experience of a solitary individual with caution. Doctrine, scripture and the accumulated wisdom of two thousand years must all play their part in discerning truth.’
‘You’re sceptical about her.’
‘What would you expect?’ He smiled. ‘But just as for you there is only truth and untruth, for me there is only that which is from God, and that which is not. I am touched by Miss Donaldson’s story, but I am also aware that human beings can generate a level of collective emotion that apes the action of the Holy Spirit. You can experience it in a football crowd – the collective surge of passion that physically lifts the exhausted player.’
‘Football crowds don’t reform young criminals or eradicate pornography.’