by Jean Bedford
I am Lilith now,originally the owl goddess and then the first wife of Adam;the incarnation of female wisdom,yet terrible in punishment,swift to swoop and tear.My recently acquired friends find it a difficult name to pronounce.My young lover calls me‘Liette’,and she laughs whenever she says it.I have a whole new history,one you would not recognise.There is a husband dead of cancer,and a privileged childhood of city mansions and boarding schools.There are the forged documents,my new name carefully superimposed on references which I knew the nuns would not bother to follow up,they were so happy to have me,so grateful when they observed my expertise.
*
You always wondered who I was,even when you saw me,the vulnerable child,desperately seeking understanding.I’ve often wondered if your death,the sudden heart attack in an otherwise fit middle-aged woman,might not have had something to do with your sense of failure with me.It came at a time when I knew you had no more to offer me,when you knew you would never reach me.I know it ate at you,like acid on iron,that you could not get through to what you thought was there.But I think somewhere deep and inarticulate you were beginning to suspect whatwasreally there,and it terrified you;that you hid the knowledge from yourself and that might be what killed you.It’s why I address this to you,this confession of myself—because I believe you loved me,although you never knew me.Perhaps you are the only one who has ever truly loved me.
*
Tomorrow I will go to London for the weekend.I have an apartment there,too,in my old name.You never knew that I’d become rich,did you?Rich by my standards,anyway.When I was made a ward of the state,they somehow appointed an extremely efficient property manager.We let the farm for ten years,and then when I sold,it fetched more money than I’ll ever use.Thirty hectares of prime land,creeks and orchards well maintained always by my father,kept up by the local farmer who’d used it.
I went back once,to sign the sale documents,and I drove up the lane through the Lombardy pines to where the house had stood.Only fragments of the foundations still poked through the vines and scrub that had taken over the clearing,and bathed in sunlight it seemed a benign spot,cleansed.There are new houses along that stretch of road now,and the place is not nearly as isolated as it was when I was a child.Even so,I was surprised at how everything seemed to have shrunk—even the two miles from the crossroads seemed shorter.The dark Lombardies were stunted,tattered,not the fearsome-looking giants of my memory.
I walked down to the creek and bent my head in silence for a few minutes at the place where my sister rests.I let a sprig of wattle drop to float above her.
*
I wore a black wig and affected a limp when I signed the lease documents to the London flat,though I used Carly’s name.In case they ever work it out and try to find me.Just to confuse them further.But I don’t think they will realise,now.It was so easy to convince them that I was overcome by grief,first at Tom’s leaving me,and then at his death.It has always been easy to convince people of what they want to believe.Most human beings are gullible fools,if they are not tyrants.
In London,where I go every few weeks,I will write a letter to Alastair and one to Tess.They both think I live on the outskirts of that city,and they address their own letters Poste Restante.They are the only ones I keep in touch with,out of necessity.Tess,because she keeps me informed of what is going on—she is my unwitting mole;and Alastair...well,that’s a different sort of necessity altogether.
It’s dangerous for me to retain this contact with them,but I have come to disregard danger.I have come to believe that I am protected until the day my mission is over.And that is not yet.It is possibly many years in the future.There are so many of them,the betrayed and the broken,too many for me to save all by myself,but I can only do what I am capable of.And I have to wait for the signal.For the demons,who think I make their sacrifices for them.
The ones I regret—those who died out of a different necessity,like Tom,and Alastair,though he is not dead yet—are the ones the demons gave no signal for.I don’t regret what Paddy has become;he always carried the germs of this madness,and he always annoyed me with his group therapy games after he came out of the hospital.I despised him.I often suspected that he saw more of me than I liked when we were young and the others talked about their pasts.I never joined in,of course,but I sometimes caught him watching me,as if he knew,on some primitive,visceral level of his own.Anyway,I had to preserve myself,didn’t I?Or I wouldn’t he able to continue.And l must continue,or the demons will take me.
Do you want to know,now,how I managed it all?How clever I was?Oh,not the sordid details of the deaths—the dildos and other implements.Believe me,they were only used after the children were blissfully unconscious—I never intended them to be hurt and they never were.But the grand picture—is that what you would like to know?My bluff and double-bluff?I thought I would be triumphant,telling you at last,but I’m not.I’m strangely reluctant to go back over it,though I have felt the need to tell you pressing on me lately.
I visited Paddy several times after he was arrested—I’ve told you that,already.Mick arranged it for me.Such a good bloke,Mick.He always was.Half in love with Rosa,devastated at the prospect of losing his little Sharon,grief-stricken over Tom,yet he still found the time to rally the rest of us.
You taught me the techniques I used on Paddy,though you would never know it.Hypnotic suggestion—so simple when the subject is amenable,and so easy to reinforce when he is disintegrating mentally.And there were the hallucinogens on top of that.He was never averse to drugs,Paddy.
The first time I saw him again after the last picnic,I tried a light hypnosis.He went under without a murmur,and didn’t remember a thing later.Each time after that I intensified his susceptibility to my suggestions.He wrote those disks they found,to my dictation,some of it material from this,the true record.
Sometimes he wondered where the time had gone on my visits,but there was always dope for him to smoke,or Ecstasy to drop,and other shit I encouraged him to buy.It was easy to convince him he’d simply been out of it for a while.It was also easy to add the special magazines to his existing,rather tame,collection,and to fold the flannel sheets into the cupboard.The sock stuffed down behind the bedboard was safe—his housekeeping left a lot to he desired.That was when I wished I’d kept mementoes of the others,to reinforce the evidence.
He knows it all,Paddy;it is all floating imprisoned somewhere in his subconscious,if it could only he unlocked.But it never will be,now.He had to know it all,so that his bewilderment would be greater,so that he would always wonder,on some level,if these shadowy memories might not really be his own.
The important thing was that he should never reveal that Diana was Carly,and he didn’t.It surprised me that he had enough strength left in his damaged brain to make those allusions to what he knew,to the faces of the goddess,hut no-one took them seriously.They seemed like disjointed ramblings,and they were,though I was worried for a while that someone might make the connection.Noel Baker,the journalist,was the one who made me most anxious—she had already puzzled out so much,and she visited Paddy a few times,too.But she’d lost her enthusiasm for it by then,it had touched her too closely.Tess tells me Noel tried for a while to rouse some interest in Paddy’s innocence,but no-one was interested finally,except Mick.It caused an unbeatable breach between Mick and his little Sharon and put paid to Noel’s flirtation with the enemy,too.
Tess tells me Noel has gone overseas herself now.It would be amusing to bump into her one day.Or perhaps not.Tess tells me everything—she has always told me everything.Very useful,before and after Paddy’s arrest.I beg her for the gossip now,for news of everyone.
She and Judith are still together,but on very shaky ground.Tess is seeing a shrink—not Fran,Fran is dying—and she resents it;Tess,that is.I expect they will stay together,pecking away at each other until they are dessicated husks of old women bitterly stamping about and breeding bulldogs.
Tess writes to me that she,also,doesn’t believe in Paddy’s guilt,that she can’t under
stand it.I write back soothingly,telling her she will eventually come to terms with it.They have never worked out who Diana was or how the flat came to be in Tess’s name.They never will.She feels spooked by it,she writes,as if she has a secret enemy.She was never my enemy,Tess,but she was convenient.There was a time when I thought she would be the prime scapegoat,before I met Paddy again.At first I thought he would be a good fallback suspect,but then I saw how much more suitable he was for my purpose.
I dressed to look like Tess when I rented that flat,although it turned out not to be necessary.But I liked feeling I was Tess,for that brief time,with my pale long wig and white face;the cool white clothes.I might do that again,some day.
They will never quite believe her,although they say they do;Judith will never trust her now.And in the unlikely event that Paddy ever recovers,is ever able to release any of the truth from his crippled psyche,she will be at the centre of their attention.He was always hopelessly in love with her and I was Tess,for him,sometimes towards the end.I let him call me Tess while we fucked.He will never be able to unravel that subconscious confusion.
I had other evidence prepared to implicate her,to prove she was Diana,against all her denials,and I will use it if l have to.
Mick and Sharon are still occasional lovers,but she has moved into her own flat.They no longer trust each other.I always predicted that would not last.Now I predict that eventually Mick will go to Rosa and he’ll be happy looking after her and playing the guardian stepfather to Tom’s children.I hope so—I came to be fond of Mick again in the end,after years of feeling contempt for his easy blokey ways.But he revealed a loyalty stronger than anything I’d expected,and I admire him for that.
Rosa,I don’t care about any more.It irritates me slightly to think that Mick’s happiness might also bring about hers,but I suspect the shadow of Tom will lie there between them,preventing her from seeing Mick for what he really is.She will always feel he is second best and so she will never be entirely content.
In some way that she can never express,Rosa knows,too,I am sure of it.She is still disbelieving of Tom’s suicide,against all the evidence.She still has an instinctive belief that he came to me that Sunday,though she is intellectually convinced that he didn’t.She will never work it out,but I enjoy the sense that the seeds are buried in her somewhere,dormant,never to spring into the full knowledge of who I am,what I was to her.
*
Poor Tom.There was no possibility of him going back to her.There never had been.I always intended it to end that way;there was no other way for it to end.I couldn’t bring him with me on this next stage,and he knew too much to be safely left.
He did come to me that Sunday night,of course.He described Paddy’s ramblings about the faces of the goddess,and said that Mick was going to try to find out more about Diana.
‘Did you tell Mick who Diana really is?’ I asked him,transfixed by a moment of almost euphoric fear.I had not expected Paddy to be capable of even naming Diana,let alone that he might manage to translate his blocked awareness into my own secret mythological language.
‘No,’ Tom said.I wanted to talk to you about it first. Wasit you that Paddy was visiting in that flat?’
I saw him find the answer somehow in my face;I had no chance to lie,to delay things further.He slouched further down in the armchair and gave me a baffled,pained look.
‘I have to tell Mick,’ he said.‘Which means I have to tell him all about me and Diana.I have to tell him all about me.’
I was silent.I had not anticipated this and I had no story prepared to explain Paddy’s alibi.So far Tom had not woken to the obvious implications,but he would as soon as he stopped worrying about himself and his image crumbling in his mate’s eyes.
‘I thought there was no more Diana,’ he said at last,as if he had been falsely told of her death and had mistakenly mourned her. ‘But she was there for Paddy.Why wasn’t she there for me,too?’
‘It had run its course with you,’ I said. ‘You no longer needed Diana,but Paddy did.’ What I meant was that I no longer needed to be Diana with him,but I had seen a way she could be used for Paddy,to snare him irrevocably inside the web I was weaving.While I spoke,I was thinking furiously.I took Tom’s empty glass out to the kitchen and then ran upstairs.
I needed something that would knock him out for a few hours until I got him where he needed to be.I had everything all ready,though I hadn’t thought it would be used so soon.I had to hastily remake all my final plans as I shook the capsules into whisky.
‘Here,you need something stronger,l think,’ l said,handing it to him.I had poured myself one,too,and I lifted it in a farewell toast,watching him gulp his,seeing his expression of dawning comprehension change as the drug took effect,as he half formed the questions he would never ask.
*
I wore one of Tom’s old wigs over a plastic surgical cap so that none of my hair would get mixed with the strands I knew he’d left inside it.I dressed in the sort of clothes that a man might dress in,hoping to pass for a woman:a loose shirt and a short wrap-around skirt,which went round me several times.I put on a pair of his own high heels,stuffing cotton wool into the toes.They made my feet look disproportionately large,adding to the effect.
I packed a plastic hag with some of Tom’s other things—a nightdress I’d bought him,some female underwear—and took it downstairs,with a change of clothes for myself in a bundle.I would have to wait a bit longer,until I was sure it was too late for anyone to ring and find me not there,and that my neighbours were asleep,though they were used to my occasional comings and goings at night,and they all knew I was on call at the clinic.
When it was time,I half carried Tom out through the door from the house to the garage.He was still capable of taking a few steps by himself every now and then,but I’ve always been physically strong;nurses have to be.I put him on the floor in the corner and covered him with a blanket.
Back inside the house I had another drink.I would have to rewrite the suicide letter,make some reference to Paddy.I did that quickly,gloved up,on Tom’s computer still in the spare room.He’d only taken his laptop when he moved out.I typed Mick’s name onto a stamped envelope and tucked the letter inside the flap.I took it downstairs and put it on the kitchen table.I soaked the first version I had written days before in hot water from the sink until it was a mass of pulp and threw it in the bin.Then I forced myself to sit down and think it all through again,so that I would not forget anything.
Finally it was late enough.I plastered make-up on my face and put fresh gloves on before I picked up the letter.I took it out to the garage and pressed Tom’s warm fingers to the sheet of paper and the envelope in the appropriate places.I used his tongue to moisten the seal.
I activated the doors and backed my car out onto the street.I drove Tom’s car into the garage in its place.I heaved him onto the floor in the back and put the blanket over him again.He moaned faintly and then was still.I had already put the key in the ignition when I remembered the make-up.
I ran inside and picked up lipstick,liquid base,powder,eyeliner,all I needed,all Tom’s,all with his traces ingrained in them.I caught sight of the open whisky bottle—I would need that too.I shoved it all into the bag.
I didn’t start his car immediately.I ran a final mental check over the house,over Tom,over what I had done.I looked inside my handbag to be doubly sure the morphine was there.Then I was ready.
I hesitated as I turned into the street,then stopped.I ran,clumsy in the big shoes,and moved my car into the driveway.
Now that I have begun to tell you,I am no longer reluctant.I feel the old seductive sweetness of talking to you.I can tell that this will not be the last time I will go over and over these actions in this record.Each time I write about them,I will remember some new detail,each repetition will gain in texture and nuance.
I drove to the motel in the Cross and booked in for a week under the name of Terry Logan.I made my voice hoarse,knowing I would sound like a man trying to speak falsetto.I got har
dly a glance from the night-clerk,who was more interested in trying to go on watching the late-night movie on the small television suspended in a corner.
I parked outside the unit and unlocked the door.My heartbeat accelerated wildly as I heaved Tom from the car to the room,but there was no-one in sight.I had chosen this place carefully—it was well known that it mostly rented rooms by the hour,or to low-lifes in hiding from someone or other.I didn’t think they’d be too worried about room service.
I took off Tom’s clothes and then I dressed him,with some difficulty,in the suspender belt and stockings,the lacy silk underpants,the satin nightdress.I stuffed his jeans and shirt into the plastic bag and left it on the bench.I made up his face in the same way as mine and placed the wig slightly askew on his head,as if it had slipped when he moved.I put the wrap-around skirt and the blouse on the chair beside the bed.I took the cotton wool carefully out of the shoes and lined them up underneath.
I got into my own clothes,stuffing the cotton wool in my pocket,and then I sat looking at him for a long time,not seeing the pathetically ludicrous figure he made lying there,a line of spittle drooling from his lipsticked mouth,but remembering how much I had loved him,once.I was sorry that this would be my last image of him.
Finally I sluiced whisky round the bottom of a glass and poured water into it,then stirred in the morphine solution.I decanted it into the large syringe from my bag and depressed his tongue gently with a spoon.I released the mixture in a slow stream,stroking his throat so that he swallowed every now and then.When it was all gone,l wrapped his hand around the glass and the bottles and left them on the bedside table.I rinsed and dried the spoon and put it back in the cupboard.I had already put the strip of tranquillisers I’d used first into his pants pocket,and pressed his fingers to the room key.
I checked that I had not left anything of mine lying around and then I kissed him lightly on the mouth.We wore the same lipstick and I didn’t think I would leave a saliva trace.I put out the Do Not Disturb sign as l left.