The Immaculate

by Mark Morris

  “Ooh, yes please, mistress. Make me suffer,” Jack wailed, rolling his eyes in exaggerated rapture.

  Gail giggled and this time lowered her breasts to his face. Jack closed his mouth over her nipple.

  Their lovemaking was unhurried and sensual. Afterwards, Jack’s body tingled so much that he couldn’t be touched without giggling. They snoozed in the warm afterglow for a while, Gail smiling as she drifted. At last Jack rolled over and murmured, “Gail?”

  “Mmm?”

  “The tea and crumpets have gone cold.”

  “Mmm,” she said again, her eyes still closed, expression unaltered.

  “You don’t care, do you?” said Jack.

  “Mmm.”

  “No, you don’t. In fact you’re not even listening to me, are you?”

  “Mmm.”

  “No, you’re not. I can tell. I think the time has come for you to be told that my real name is Spoof Blixen, and I’m from the planet Zeltoid Magnesium 3. I came to Earth in a spaceship shaped like a giant penguin, which I’ve cunningly managed to secrete behind the marmalade jar in the cupboard under the kitchen sink. My mission is to make love to every Siberian hamster I can find, introduce the word ‘plaxicrolic’ to the English language and wipe out Mexico, thus undermining the world trade in sombreros and enchiladas. What do you think of that?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Oh, you’re no fun. I’m going to have a bath.”

  As he lay back in the warm water, steam drifting about him, blurring the mirror into grey marble, Jack was dismayed to find that his unease was returning again. It seeped into his stomach, fluttered in his mind, like a fever re-establishing itself after the temporary panacea of Gail’s soothing words and their lovemaking. Was there something he had to do, something vital he’d forgotten, some appointment he was supposed to keep? Sitting up in the bath, he scooped water into his face and over his hair as though he could wash his anxiety away like dirt. He shook his head angrily, creating a spinning halo of droplets that fell in pinpricks on his shoulders. He lathered himself roughly, grumpy at both his sour mood and himself for harbouring it. When he was clean he yanked the plug from the bath and stood up to towel himself dry. Water swirled down the plughole with a sound like a giant sucking liquid through a straw.

  He was nearly dry when the telephone rang. The fist in his stomach spasmed so violently that he almost cried out. Something told him he had to answer the phone, had to get to it before Gail stirred from her snooze. He could feel his heart pulsing strongly, felt beads of sweat spring out on his forehead, his body turn clumsy with urgency. He fumbled with the door handle, his hand like something he had to manipulate from afar with a delicate remote control.

  “I’ll get it!” he yelled, and wrenched the door open. The air outside the bathroom now seemed freezing cold and raised instant goose bumps on his damp flesh. Clutching his towel to his stomach and groin, he ran into his study, his thigh colliding painfully with the jutting edge of a bookcase. He snatched up the telephone receiver, juggled it for a moment in his sweating hand, and then gasped, “Hello?”

  There was silence that reeked of surprise. Then a tentative, though imperious, old woman’s voice said, “Is that you, Jack?”

  “Er . . . yes,” he said, thrown. He knew this voice, but couldn’t place it. “Who . . . who is this?” he stammered.

  He was not sure whether the person on the other end was amused or hurt by his question. “Can’t you tell?”

  Suddenly, as if his mind had taken pity on him, her name rose to his lips. “Aunt Georgina?”

  “Of course it’s me. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Jack? Too long—though you can hardly be blamed for that, I suppose.”

  Five minutes later, when he re-entered the bedroom, Gail was still snoozing. However, she came awake immediately as if she’d been jabbed with a sharp stick, took one look at him and said, “Jack, what’s the matter?”

  He stood in the doorway, face neutral, looking at her. “My father’s dead,” he said flatly.

  There was a brief shocked silence, then Gail said, “Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry. What . . . what happened?”

  He shrugged. “Heart attack, they think.” He crossed the room and sat on the bed, facing away from her. Barking a mirthless laugh, he said, “At least it wasn’t lung cancer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Private joke.”

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  “My Aunt Georgina. She looked after me for a while when I was a child. She’s my mum’s sister. I haven’t spoken to her for about three years. She found my dad’s body in his living room this morning.”

  Gail put her arms around him and hugged him. “Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

  “Thanks,” he said vaguely. “And it’s okay . . . about my father, I mean. We never got on. I haven’t spoken to him for about twelve years. I haven’t even sent him a Christmas card for about eight.” He swivelled to face her and there was a pained look on his face. “It’s just . . . she wants me to go back to Beckford . . . my Aunt Georgina, I mean. She says it’s my duty to sort out my father’s affairs.”

  Gail kissed his nose and said tenderly, “Well, I suppose it is really, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so, but . . .” His voice tailed off into a sigh, his shoulders slumped.

  “What is it, Jack?” Gail said. “What’s wrong?”

  He sighed, pulled a face. “It’s just . . . I don’t want to go back there. It’s a bad place. For me, I mean. A really bad place.”

  He disentangled himself from her embrace, stood up and walked across to the window. Tugging back the curtain, he peered out, sunshine sidling over him and into the room.

  Tentatively, Gail said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Jack let the curtain fall back into place, turned to face her. “Yeah,” he said bleakly. “I think I’m ready now.”

  5

  THE UNRAVELLING KNOT

  “I’m not sure how old I was when I first began to realise that my father hated me. Maybe two or three. Or maybe I knew from the moment I was born.”

  Jack broke a piece of poppadum from the pile on the plate between them and crunched it. When he spoke it was in a flat, neutral voice, as if divorcing himself from his emotions would allow him to disown his memories.

  “Anyway, I remember that my childhood was spent in a state of . . . well, I guess near-panic wouldn’t be too strong a phrase. I seemed to be either trying to endure pain as best I could, or waiting for the next pain to happen, which in some ways was worse.”

  He broke off again to clear his throat and pour himself a glass of water. The jug wobbled in his hand, slopping water over the tablecloth.

  “Shit,” he muttered and half-heartedly began to mop the mess up with a paper napkin, aided by Gail. When he had done he said, “Look, are you sure you want to hear all this? It’s not exactly cheerful stuff.”

  She reached across the table and took his hands in both of hers. “Listen, buster,” she said firmly, “I love you like crazy and I want to be there for you at all times. I don’t want us to have to pretend with each other. If you have a problem or you’re feeling crappy, I want to know about it, and I hope that you feel the same about me. I want us to be soulmates, Jack. I want to share everything with you, good and bad.” He must have looked dubious because she said, “I mean it. Honestly, I do. Whether you’re a happy chappy or a glum bum, I want to be there.”

  Jack looked at her earnest face for a long moment, which seemed elfin in the reddish light of the restaurant. The flickering white image of a candle flame was reflected in the dark pupil of each of her eyes. Then he smiled and said, “I love you.”

  “Me too,” she said. “So talk.”

  Jack picked a crumb of poppadum from the tablecloth and squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger like a bug. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, resembling a nervous bridegroom who has left his speech in his other suit.


  A waiter sidled up with their order. Jack looked glumly at the channa masala, pillau rice, mango chutney and naan that the waiter placed before him. Normally he relished this meal, but just now he didn’t feel too hungry.

  As though to make up for him, Gail made exaggerated yum-yum noises as her lobster-red tandoori chicken was brought to the table together with a small bowl of salad and an even smaller bowl of raita. Normally she and Jack shared a portion of rice, but from the looks of him she would be scoffing the lion’s share this evening.

  As they filled their plates from the various bowls, Gail prompted, “Why do you think your father hated you so much?”

  Jack grimaced and shrugged, but muttered, “Because he blamed me for the death of my mother. I was a breech birth, you see, and apparently on the night I was born there was a terrible storm, so the doctor was unable to get to the cottage as early as he should have done. Because of the various complications, she died, and . . . well . . . I got the blame for it.”

  “But that’s awful!” Gail exclaimed. “It wasn’t your fault that your mother died.”

  Jack simply shrugged and spooned mango chutney onto his plate.

  “Surely, though, when your father cooled down he must have realised how unreasonable he’d been?”

  “He never did cool down. He ran out of the house into the storm and didn’t come back. In the end, my Aunt Georgina had to call the police out to look for him. They found him in the woods, unconscious, lying in mud and soaked to the skin. He was suffering from exposure and concussion and a couple of broken bones. They reckon he must have slipped down a bank and knocked himself out. Aunty looked after me while he was in the hospital, which was about two or three months. He took a long time to come round from his concussion and a longer time for his bones to mend. Aunty always said that at that time she thinks he wanted to die, which is why he took so long to get better. Anyway, he was never the same man after that. He suffered from constant depression, and when he came out of the hospital he hit the bottle hard, which, mixed with the various pills he was taking, meant that he was only half-there most of the time. For the first few years of my life, I was shunted between my father and Aunty. My father was admitted to the hospital a lot, either with his depression or because he’d got drunk and hurt himself in some way.”

  He paused to scoop a small forkful of food into his mouth. Gail said, “You mean he hurt himself intentionally? He attempted suicide?”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes maybe. He fell down a lot, broke bones, sprained things, stuff like that. Once I think he fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand and set fire to whatever he was sitting on. It wasn’t that serious, but enough to put him in the hospital. I think most of the things he did were accidental. I mean, if he’d really wanted to kill himself he’d have taken pills or hung himself or something rather than throwing himself down stairs.”

  “If he was in such a bad way, I’m amazed that you were sent back to live with him so often.”

  Jack tore a piece of naan from the doughy mass, dipped it in his curry and popped it into his mouth. Chewing, he said, “Well, you’ve got to remember this was the mid-seventies. They weren’t as socially aware back then as they are now, certainly not in Beckford. Aunty kept an eye on me, but I think she felt sorry for my father, and she desperately wanted the two of us—my father and I, that is—to make a go of it. Maybe she thought that in the long run I was the only thing that would pull him round. I was like the lifeline that kept the drowning man from going under for good.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Gail, “using you in that way.”

  “Oh, I don’t think she meant to use me,” Jack said hastily. “I don’t think she saw it that way at all. I think she did everything out of love for me and my father, and maybe that made her a little blind to what was really going on. I think deep down she believed my father loved me, and by being persistent she thought that we would work our way through the bad times and become a real family again. Unfortunately, it never quite worked out that way. My father just kept on rolling further and further downhill. As time went on, the prospect of a reconciliation between us became less and less. As soon as I became aware of his hatred for me, I began to hate him in return—not openly, you understand, but secretly, with a deep, bright child’s hatred that consisted of making myself as scarce as possible and discouraging any attempts at closeness, not that I remember there being any.”

  He stumbled to a halt and stirred his fork around in the brown mush on his plate.

  Gail said, “You spoke about pain earlier. Did you mean physical or mental pain?”

  Jack frowned. “Both. More mental than physical, though, I think. I remember my father threatening me a lot, saying he was going to give me a good hiding. I have an image of him unbuckling his belt and me running away with him roaring for me to come back. I think usually I hid somewhere for a while, often until it was dark. When I went back he was usually pissed out of his brain, dead to the world, and he would forget he’d been going to beat me until the next time.

  “I vividly remember that once he grabbed me by the arm—I don’t think I’d done anything wrong—and he leaned right into my face and told me that one night he was going to creep up to my bedroom with a big axe and kill me. I must have been about seven at the time. His eyes looked so small and crazy and he was unshaven and his breath stank, all hot and sour. It was at the dinner table and he was eating something. I can’t remember what it was but I remember his lips being all greasy and I remember seeing bits of chewed-up food in his mouth, and I thought I was going to fall into that mouth and be crunched up like the food in there. Anyway, because I was seven I believed him, and I spent a long time after that sleeping under my bed, freezing cold, terrified every time I heard the house creak, which it did a lot. I slept on bare floorboards with no blankets, the reason being that I used my pillows and blankets to make it look as if I was sleeping in the bed under the covers. God, I really, really hated him. I prayed constantly that he would drop down dead. Quite often at school I was called out of my lesson to be told that my father had had another accident and had been taken to the hospital again. The teachers were always sympathetic and I knew I was meant to pretend I was sad and shocked, which I did. Inside, though, I always felt a great surge of happiness, knowing that I would be staying with my aunt again for a while. At least there I was fed properly and my clothes were cleaned and I could sleep without fear.”

  He paused to scoop a forkful of food into his mouth. He chewed unenthusiastically. When he swallowed, the spices seemed to churn hotly in his stomach.

  “Oh, Jack,” Gail said sadly, “it must have been awful for you.”

  He wanted to say something comforting, as if she was the one in need of it. He could think of nothing to say, though, and in the end he simply nodded.

  Gail drained her glass. “Shall we have some more drinks?”

  Jack looked at the bottle of Kingfisher by his right hand and was surprised to see it empty. “Yeah,” he said. “Lots more.”

  They were ordered and brought to the table, the waiter eyeing their half-eaten food disapprovingly.

  Though Jack had a glass he drank his beer straight from the bottle. He took a long swallow, grimaced, peered at the label as though to ensure the ingredients did not include paraquat, and then continued talking in a quiet, intense voice.

  “I’ve made it sound as though I always escaped my father’s beatings, but that wasn’t the case. He hit me plenty—with his belt, with his hand, with the fire poker, once with a brick that had fallen down the chimney. There was always a reason for his beatings, I’d always been ‘naughty,’ ” he said as he made quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “but often it was really trivial stuff: I wouldn’t eat some vegetable that he’d under or overcooked, I’d left a book on the stairs, I’d left the top off the toothpaste tube. In those days people didn’t really think anything of it if kids were hit by their parents, and it wasn’t as though I went to school with bl
ack eyes and split lips. But I always ached somewhere due to his violence. My legs, my arse, my back, my arms; once he kicked me in the balls and I pissed blood for two days. I remember I occasionally went to Aunty’s when my father hadn’t been taken to the hospital, and I think that must have been when his violence got really bad, a cooling-down period, if you like. I’m not sure whether this is an actual memory or just a bunch of images that I’ve fixed in my own head as a kind of representation of what was going on at that time, but I remember sitting in a hot bath while Aunty bathed the bruises on my back, and then afterwards lying in bed and listening to her giving my father a real tongue-lashing.”

  Gail said, “Didn’t you have anyone neutral you could turn to? A friend? A teacher at school?”

  Jack smiled grimly. “I’m afraid school was another horror story. Now you know where I get my warped imagination from.”

  He took a sustained gulp of beer that emptied almost half the bottle, then wiped a hand across his face, groaning as if he were tired. He leaned back and then rocked forward in his chair, making it creak. The conversation from the other diners seemed distant, as though he and Gail were enclosed within a clear dome, shielded from the outside world.

  “Because of my treatment by my father,” he continued, “I was one of those grubby, undernourished, withdrawn kids at school. I didn’t trust people, so I found it very hard to make friends. I was no good at games, and so was ostracised for that. My clothes were never very clean and neither was I; I probably smelled, though wasn’t aware of it except that every time I went to stay with my aunt the first thing I was always made to do was take a bath. I read a lot, which was another reason I was picked on. I don’t think even the teachers liked me very much; I was one of those kids that people probably feel sorry for, but still can’t bring themselves to actually make friends with.”