Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Then finally Pa had appeared back down the stairs, eyes red rimmed as if they had been flayed, mouth in a snarl. It was morning by then, and he’d been up all night comforting Primo’s mother. Primo had slept downstairs, curled on the dirty mat in front of the small stove. He hadn’t dared go to bed. His bedroom was next to his parent’s and that was where he hadn’t wanted to be. Somehow the kitchen, with the little spread body of his brother on the table, had seemed safer.

  His step-father had not slept and the agony of the sadness, and his own guilt, and the screaming of his wife, had sent him manic. So Pa came down the stairs with the creaking steps announcing his fury as surely as the shotgun he was brandishing. He pointed the gun straight at Primo’s head.

  “You little shit,” he roared, “you weren’t never no good. It was little Gary had all the sweetness. You were always bad.”

  Primo rolled, and got himself under the table. He was gasping and choking with terror, unable to breathe, but instinct kept him away from the barrel of the gun. He crouched under the table, with his brother’s strangled body on top. He was careful not to bump his head upwards. If everything fell, then he’d have the kid sliding onto his face, and Pa’s gun in his mouth. He tried to gulp, “I’m sorry,” and then, “I’ll be good,” but all he managed were frightened pig-like noises and his step-father wasn’t listening anyway.

  The gun barrel came poking under the table. “Come out you little bastard. I’m going to blow your fucking head off.”

  Well, he wasn’t likely to come out. He stayed where he was and hung onto the table leg in case he got dragged. Then he heard his mother. “Brad, stop it. For God’s sake, are you mad?”

  “Yes, I’m mad,” yelled Primo’s step-father. “Fucking mad as fucking hell. There’s our Gary lying there, and this little shit still alive.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake,” whimpered his mother, “will it help to have two little babies dead and gone?”

  “Sure will,” his step-father was marching around the table, trying to reach down and get a grip on Primo’s collar. All Primo saw were the two huge boots with the chewed up frayed ends of laces unravelled, and the two great clammy hands reaching, pulling, grabbing. “This little shit isn’t my son. I’ve sent for the law, but before they come I’ll blow his fucking miserable little bastard head off.”

  Then he got him. The fingers closed on the back of Primo’s collar and hauled. Primo’s desperate clasp on the table leg held no force. His wrists, strong enough to strangle his little brother, did not have the strength to save himself. He was dragged to his feet and stared up at his step-father’s fury and the flailing shot gun. In the background his mother’s voice, whimpering and begging for mercy. He stood, trying to straighten, but his legs buckled and he slipped. He felt his bladder release, could not hold the fear, and pissed his pants. Not much more than a trickle; he hadn’t drunk a thing in hours. But it stank sour and burned his skinny little thighs.

  Again he was hauled up. “Say your prayers, you little shit. This is it.”

  So he ducked his head and charged. Bringing up the aim for the gun, the man had released his hold on the boy and for that tiny moment, his step-father’s grip was weak. Primo’s charge was as sudden as the discharge of the gun. Being a small child, his head, lowered, buffeted his step-father’s midriff in the belly and groin. Pa was winded and groaned in surprise, half dropping the gun. Already cocked, it exploded, the bullets shattering the floorboards beside Primo’s feet. His mother screamed. He thought he probably screamed too. He grabbed the gun barrel and twisted it away from Pa, fumbling for control of the trigger.

  It went off again. His mother stopped screaming.

  Primo stared. His eyes were tear blurred but he couldn’t miss the obvious. His mother was flat on the ground and there was another horrid smell. For a moment his step father and he both stood quite still and quiet, just staring. Then everything happened very fast. Primo knew how to fire the gun. He’d learned young, as every kid did. He’d aimed at coyotes sometimes over the years, once at a mountain lion. He’d always missed by miles. He didn’t miss this time.

  His step-father was too close to miss. He just came roaring at him, so Primo fired and bits of blood and flesh and guts exploded outwards, covering the kitchen floor and the walls and the table and the chubby little boy lying on top of the table. Primo wiped his face with his hands. It was sweaty and blub-snot smeared and very dirty, and it was spattered with blood that wasn’t his own. He stood and gazed down at his hands, which were now deep red like they’d been when he’d helped his mother skin buck-rabbits. His step-father was on the ground making gurgling sounds and squirming.

  Outside the sun had risen well up into the unclouded heights past the ranges, now beating down on the wooden roof and slats of the house. The heat was somehow more intense than he had ever known it. Hell fire, the heat of panic, the flames of terror too awful to accept but too real to escape.

  Primo fled. He dropped the gun and ran to the outhouse beyond the chicken coop. There he cuddled down in a dark cool corner beside the water tank, and shut his eyes and cried himself comatose. Crying too hard to breathe, he choked and fainted. It was the police who shook him conscious.

  “Good God son, what in hell’s name happened here? Are you alright?”

  He opened his eyes to absolute nightmare. “It was me,” squeaked Primo. “I did it.” There was blood all over him. It was a long time before he got the chance to wash.

  Three huge cops, uncomprehending faces, vacant eyes, then suspicious eyes, then disgust, then fury. They dragged him out so fast his feet, dirty bare feet all blood stained and sore, never touched the ground. Just toes scraped in chicken droppings and the dirt of the yard. The cops were shouting to each other as they chucked him in the back of the first car. He sunk into the corner and tried not to listen.

  “Three dead. This kid is some monster.”

  “Jesus, he’s only – what? Six? Seven?”

  “No, this is Brad Wroski’s step-kid. He’s nine. Looks younger than he is, skinny little bugger. Half starved, I reckon.”

  “Slaughtered his whole family? What sort of foul kid is it?”

  Primo shut his ears and his eyes and his mouth. He was still swallowing his own blood but it was his step-father’s blood he could taste.

  It was then that everything became strange.

  The police car smelled of split plastic, stale hamburger wrappers and cigar smoke, but from nowhere a strong pair of arms had taken him deep into an embrace of almost unimaginable tenderness and was hugging him very tight, rocking him like a baby, and a sweet perfume of frangipani wafted around his head. All his sick fear began to drain outwards as if being absorbed away from him, becoming distant, as if it belonged to someone else, so that he was both held, and blissfully released.

  The rocking and the perfume was a lullaby of totally unexpected safety, a serenity of love such as he had never, ever, felt for all his small life before. It was taking him into a deep warm sleep.

  As Primo closed his eyes he heard two voices. One was the police sergeant, shouting at him. The other voice was soft and gentle and insistent and took precedence. “It’s alright, my child,” it whispered, “You are utterly, utterly safe. Nothing can harm you while I am here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Dave sat on the steps and watched the dawn. Above the tree tops a soft hazy lilac turned gentle rose, then gilded lemon. A pastel dawn of sweet optimism. It floated, lit from within, before shredding out into the greater sky and bleeding behind the clouds. For a moment the rooftops were washed gold and the shadows fled.

  Dave had turned up the wide candlewick collar of his dressing gown against the slight frost, digging his hands into the fluffy depths of the pockets. His breath puffed like a tiny crystal fug, hovering before him for an expectant instant before dissolving into the new day.

  He didn’t think much. Thinking had never been a habit he’d encouraged. It only wound him into biting tight knots. Thinking had te
eth. But not thinking left feelings raw and unbound. Feelings had teeth too.

  He wasn’t particularly surprised when the taxi pulled up. Nothing much surprised him anymore, though it was six in the morning and not the time you’d expect visitors. Then Sophie got out of the taxi and paid the driver. She heaved her suitcase out behind her and stood a moment, looking at her father. The garden gate was half closed and Sophie nudged it open with her knee. The suitcase fell over in the gravel.

  Dave sat, hunched on the cold steps, regarding his daughter in vague disapproval. She had changed.

  She said, “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

  She didn’t seem to be the same person he remembered from when he’d last noticed her. The inconsequential mousey child, self-absorbed with a cross and defensive expression, had become tall and slim and smart. Her face and hands were golden tanned, her hair glossy and sun streaked. She wore elegant clothes and leather shoes instead of scuffed trainers. What was even more unexpected was the smile.

  Sophie lugged the suitcase up the path and stood staring down at her father. “Have you come back to live here?” Dave asked with a dubious blink at the case.

  Sophie shook her head. “But perhaps for a day or two. A week maybe, while I sort myself out and look for work. I need a bit of a break from my landlord. Or at least, he needs a break from me. Things have happened.”

  “Oh well,” said Dave. “I’d better make some tea.”

  The kitchen seemed ridiculously familiar, as if an old life had resurfaced from the ashes. “I thought it would be nice to see Betsy too,” said Sophie.

  “Who? Oh, Betsy. I haven’t seen her for ages.” Dave filled the kettle from the tap and plugged it in.

  Sophie smiled. “I can see that. What a mess.”

  “Not much point cleaning up and doing dishes is there?” Dave said, rummaging for mugs. “When no one comes and sees.”

  “I’ll help you clean up,” said Sophie.

  “You want to live here, you clean up on your own,” said Dave. “Why should I bother? I go to work. I come home. I go to bed. I get up and go to work. Sometimes I go to the pub. You think I ought to spend my evenings on my knees scrubbing?”

  Sophie shook her head. “I’m not criticising.”

  “Well, that’s a change,” said Dave. “So, what’s wrong with your fancy landlord?”

  Sophie found the milk, left out of the fridge overnight but altogether too cold to be off. “He’s alright but he needs time to think. I’ve paid my rent in advance, so I’ll just go back there when I’m ready. And there’s a – friend of mine – coming over to England on the 27th. I’ll need to go back to my own place before then anyway.”

  “You won the pools or something?” Dave demanded. “Flash clothes, rent in advance, foreign friends. And you haven’t even tried cadging off me.”

  “Oh well,” Sophie smiled and sat down at the little table. “I’ve got some new ideas, new ambitions. I even decided I ought to get to know my father a bit better.”

  “Not much of an ambition,” said Dave. “But you’re welcome to stay if that’s what you want. Just don’t go bitching about what I choose to do and arguing about every damn thing I say. And it’ll be me choosing what to watch on the telly. Forget MTV.”

  Sophie poured the boiled water onto the tea bags. “Do what you like. I don’t care what you do.”

  “Well, you have changed.” Dave took his mug and stared over the rim through the steam. “Tell the truth, you’re looking more like your mother.”

  Sophie grinned. “I see you’re wearing her dressing gown.”

  Dave blushed slightly. “It’s warm. Shame to let good clothes go to waste.”

  “I gave most of her stuff to the Salvation Army,” nodded Sophie. “And kept the rest myself. But you said to leave the dressing gown. So I did. I bet Mum has a right giggle about it when she looks down.”

  “Don’t be bloody silly,” said Dave.

  The passing of a cool palm across his brow brought Primo awake and the black terrors washed suddenly back, like the ebb of an awesome tidal storm into the sweet lapping of a sunlit pool.

  For half a second’s dread-filled doubt he paused, eyes tight shut, fearing to open them and find he was still alive. Then he heard Wilmot’s voice.

  “It is quite safe to come back, my child,” said the voice. “You are here with me and it is time you returned.”

  Primo opened his eyes. “You were there too,” he said. “I felt you. It wasn’t just in the dream, it was actually back then when I was a kid. You looked after me, even though it was years and years ago and I’d never met you then.”

  Wilmot tucked a pink hair-roller back under the woolly tea-cosy. His scarlet lipstick, partially eaten into vestiges of red streaks, bled through granny wrinkles up into the tufts of feminine moustache, and down well past the lower lip. When he smiled, the false teeth clicked. “The passage of time is an illusion, a commodity only relevant to the development of opportunity for growth. Without time, the static state rules. But time moves with you and is relative to your needs. Sequence is more individual than you appreciate.” He was curled on the edge of the bed and now sat back a little, while the brilliance of the sunshine behind him outlined his gentle shoulders in sublime magnificence. “You know now, do you not,” he continued, “that you only killed once in your life? This fact is of considerable relevance.”

  Primo blinked and looked away, avoiding eye contact. “Isn’t once enough?”

  “It is a little more than enough,” agreed Wilmot, “but a lifetime’s penance did not soothe either your soul, or those of your family.”

  “I was a nasty little shit,” muttered Primo, still staring into vacancy. “All full of resentment and jealousy.”

  “An unpleasant brat, no doubt,” said Wilmot. “The urge to kill, in a nine year old stifled of emotional expression, was still inexcusable. It was also, however, a brooding and stubborn immaturity, self-pity translated into childish fury, rather than the murderous sadism which you later believed to be your master. Of course, the only time you killed was your step-father, purely in self-defence.”

  Primo looked up then. “My brother?”

  “Your brother died from a bite inflicted by the rattlesnake on whose burrow he fell when you threw him down,” said Wilmot. “Had you run for help after attempting to strangle the child instead of indulging in a lengthy attack of piteous panic, he might, purely in theory, have lived. The crack you heard was the snap of the snake’s vertebrae, not of your brother’s. Your small fingers did not kill him but indirectly you caused his death. As you did your mother’s. You shot your step-father, a more direct carrier of death. They are all waiting for you, in another place. One day you will have the courage to face them. Naturally they do not blame you now, and feel no slightest animosity. But you are not ready to meet them yet.”

  “Thank God.”

  “As for the rest, it was all fantasy,” sighed Wilmot. “Such a distortion of the imagination, and a sad neglect of all those glorious inspirations of which a well fertilized imagination is capable.”

  Primo nodded. “Shit. I remember.”

  “I have no wish to be judgemental. Manure is, after all, an excellent fertilizer. But cruelty is a raw and unrefined manure, coarse stinking and vulgar, whereas only a well rotted substance gives its essence to new growth.” Wilmot stretched, then slowly stood. His legs, worn and rather knock kneed, were festooned in thick nylon stockings which wrinkled alarmingly around the ankles. They were also badly laddered. “After an enforced and prolonged sojourn as guest of the government,” the old lady continued, “you were expected to re-enter society, neatly re-formed and reformed, with a brain washed in carbolic and reprogrammed in platitudes. The small prisoner, forgiven the misdeeds of a juvenile presumed incapable of understanding evil, now re-presented to a life as unrelentingly harsh as it had been before. But no matter. You had naturally learned to express repentance. You had learned to adapt.”

  ”It was the first
time I changed my name,” said Primo.

  “You would have fared badly carrying the fame of a child known to have slaughtered his entire family before his tenth birthday,” said Wilmot, hitching up his bra straps inside his cardigan. “The name you chose is of no consequence now, nor is that with which you were born. The title you have chosen since your death is of more interest.”

  “First born,” nodded Primo. “A Freudian choice I suppose. Proof I was never really repentant at all. Certainly not rehabilitated.”

  Wilmot smiled granny teeth. The scent of frangipani, still sweet, surrounded him like an aura. “All the anger left over from a previous life was further exacerbated,” he agreed. “To banish the dreadful swathes of guilt and the misery it brought and to block the nightmare of memory, you invented, with wilfully stubborn stupidity and the pride of the creature so deeply humiliated that he is determined to be himself, whatever horror that self may contain, a continuous fantasy of death. You drifted through a wasteful life of inactivity and moronic emotional scrub and desert, by fantasizing on strangulation, on rape and on the finality of death into nothingness. You made yourself dangerous.”

  Primo knew he was crying. They were silent tears, long blocked.

  “You thought on the subject until it became a progressive obsession,” said Wilmot softly. “You operated on the very edge of voluntary insanity. Each relationship that might have brought you comfort, finished when you could not accept the love you were so sure you did not deserve, and instead introduced the nuances of cruelty. Even after dying and arriving here in blessed peace, you rejected both memory and pardon.”

  Primo nodded. “This is the hospital I wouldn’t stay in. Well, I’m back in it now.”