Tower of Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  Broadacre had been so vast and so bewilderingly complex that at this distance Mary could not sort out any particular strand from those early, tangled memories. There had been so many new impressions and new faces: new routines to learn, new mealtimes to adjust to, different arrangements for recreation and work, and sessions with unfamiliar doctors and psychiatrists.

  Christabel had stayed with her throughout it all, of course, her strength forcing Mary to cope, helping her to look for ways to make this unbearable place endurable, her thoughts tangling with Mary’s to make up the pattern of those years. At times it was difficult to know which were Christabel’s thoughts and which were Mary’s own.

  But the one memory-strand that had never become tangled or indecipherable was the memory of that doctor who had examined her after the rape attack, and of his look and his tone.

  Virgo intacta, he had said, and he had given Mary that look half of pity, half of contempt. As if he was faintly bored. As if he was relegating her to some lower-class, inferior pigeon-hole. And as if he might be thinking: this one’s never even been laid, and she’s never likely to be either, stuck in here. So put it on the file that she’s a virgin and close the filing cabinet, and draw a line under the whole thing. Mary had hated him with a deep and passionate hate. Fine sodding chance I’ve had to be anything but virgo bloody intacta when I’ve been locked up inside madhouses since I was fourteen.

  That had been the moment when she had looked down the years that stretched out in front of her and seen their unutterable dreariness. Unless she was very clever or very lucky she would live her life inside Broadacre, or a place very like it. She would spend her days doing stupid unimportant work that they said, patronisingly, was ‘rehabilitating’ and ‘worthwhile’. Mary knew the work was neither of these things, because anyone with half a brain could see it was invented work, trivial work. Trivial. The word rasped against her mind, hurting, humiliating.

  Mary Maskelyne, trivial! The Sixties icon, trivial! The teenager hailed as an anti-heroine almost before the word was common currency–the girl to whom all those other teenagers had written, asking for advice, asking how to find the courage to do to their wicked, abusive parents what Mary had done to hers! Dubbed as trivial and of no interest! How dared the doctor imply that! And written in the records as a virgin! Did that mean that in the years to come–perhaps after she was dead–when people wrote biographies of famous murder cases, they would say things like, In the 1960s there was the famous multiple-murderess, Mary Maskelyne, who lived and died a virgin…? And all those people in the future would think, Imagine that, Mary Maskelyne was never screwed. She killed people but she never got fucked, poor old cow. There was something faintly pathetic and slightly comic about elderly virgins. They were a sub-breed by themselves–twittery old spinsters, eccentric great-aunts, all a bit peculiar because they had never been laid.

  A little pulse of anger had started to beat inside Mary’s mind then–or was it anger? Mightn’t it be the secret, hunched-over thing in her mind again, four years older, but uncurling just as strongly as it had done that other time? With the thought the anger-pulse seemed to change pace very slightly, so that it was no longer anger, but excitement. I’m planning again, thought Mary. I’m weighing up ways and means, and I’m calculating what to do to be revenged–yes, and to make life more interesting, and it feels good!

  She lay on her bed in the ugly dormitory that smelled of stale sleep-breath and sweat, and stared up at the ceiling. It was covered with myriad cracks and it looked a bit like the map of Europe, although if you turned your head it looked more like an elephant, with Italy where the trunk was.

  If the rape had been complete that doctor would not have spoken so dismissively. If she had conceived a child as a result of it he would have looked at her with very different eyes indeed. A child. They would all sit up and take notice of that, because they would have to! The whole country would sit up and take notice, as well. Press releases would be issued, and the papers and the television and radio stations would all take it up. The newspaper headlines would be banners, exactly as they had been four years earlier. Maskelyne raped inside Broadacre…they would scream. Killer to give birth to rapist’s child…

  There would be public inquiries and news items. They would resurrect the film footage of Mary arriving at court for the trial, and there would be interviews with psychiatrists and social workers. The letters would all come pouring in once again, and once again Mary would be important. And that doctor would be made to feel a fool, because he had got the whole thing wrong.

  The cracks in the ceiling stopped being Europe, and rearranged themselves into a different pattern. Christabel’s face. Not quite as it was in the old photographs from home, because Christabel was older now. But unmistakably Christabel, looking down at Mary, the sister she had never known, smiling at her, whispering into her mind that it would serve them all right if Mary could lose her virginity in here, if she could become pregnant. Telling her to go for it, Mary, make the bastards look stupid, get yourself screwed and enjoy what follows.

  Get yourself screwed…

  How? And who? And when? The curled-up blackness deep within her mind went on planning and calculating, and the golden strength and the glowing energy of her dead sister trickled in and out of Mary’s thoughts.

  Ingrid had not minded about the virginity thing, in fact she had seemed rather pleased about it.

  The night after the rape she had come into the bathroom again while Mary was there, and she had perched on the edge of the bath exactly as she had done last time, except this time Mary was actually in the bath, covered in soapy water.

  Ingrid had wanted to know about the doctor and his examination, and she listened carefully, her head tilted to one side as if she were trying to hear not just what Mary was saying, but what she was thinking and feeling as well. She said there was nothing wrong with being a virgin, in fact it made Mary special. It meant there were things they could explore together, said Ingrid: feelings that Mary could experience for the first time. This time she did much more than stroke Mary’s thighs and give her that single wistful kiss: this time she explored Mary’s whole body, reaching down into the warm water to caress her breasts. To start with Mary had the curious feeling of being pulled out of her skin, and forced into another that did not quite fit her, but after a while she quite liked it.

  What Ingrid did in the damp, soap-smelling bathroom, the door locked against intrusion, was worlds and light years away from the gruntings and heavings of the semi-rape of twenty-four hours earlier, just as the soft fragile fluttering of a butterfly’s wings or a bat’s was worlds and light years away from the heavy, leathery pounding of an eagle’s wings or a gryphon’s.

  But both sprang from the same root. Both rendered the creature airborne.

  Ingrid’s fingertips and Ingrid’s flicking tongue rendered Mary airborne that night; they took her up and up into a breathless, coiled-spring excitement, and she had thought that if only it would go on she would be for ever grateful to Ingrid—

  And so she had been. She had been breathlessly, enchantedly grateful to Ingrid, until the day that the enchantment had dissolved, and she had seen what lay beneath the magic. Betrayal. Ingrid had not cared about Mary at all. She had probably been laughing at her all along–telling the other staff at Broadacre about the things Mary had let her do, bragging to them about Mary’s wide-eyed gratitude.

  And in the end, Ingrid had betrayed her.

  Get yourself screwed, Mary…

  It was easy to slip out of the dormitory during the recreation time one week later–Mary had rehearsed it three times, and each time she had been able to go unchallenged more or less anywhere she wanted.

  Recreation time was seven until eight: the hour after supper and before the bedtime bell. Most people watched television, although as Mary went cautiously out of the block she could hear that some of them were playing stupid Monopoly or Ludo–she could hear them screeching with silly glee, and she could hear th
e pit-pat of the table tennis game as well. It was a good time to pick, though, because it was a time when the warders thought they knew where everybody was. But Broadacre was so big it was easy to get lost for an hour or so, and there were so many staff that they had not all got to know Mary yet. They knew the fourteen-year-old whose features had been blazoned across all the newspapers, of course; they knew the back-combed hair and skinny-rib sweater and the heavily made-up eyes, because everybody knew that. But they did not know what Mary looked like now, four crucial years on, with her hair cut into short, feathery fronds, and her face almost free of make-up. It was laughably easy to give the warders the slip, and go along to the men’s dormitory. If anyone recognised her or stopped her, she would say she was looking for the library because she wanted a book to read.

  The man who had attacked her on that first night was called Darren Clark, and he was in Broadacre because he had raped several little girls. Ingrid had said that the attack on Mary would have been a kind of initiation ceremony to him: he had done it before with new patients and the attendants were supposed to keep him under supervision when new people came in, but he liked giving them the slip.

  Darren Clark’s family were quite well-off, and they had been able to employ a very good barrister to defend him against the rape charges. They had paid doctors to provide reports saying he was not responsible for what he had done, because they had not wanted the shame of having a son who was a criminal. They thought it was far less shameful to have a son who was mad, said Ingrid.

  Mary did not care whether Darren Clark was mad or not, providing he could do it to her properly, providing no one interrupted them–and providing she got pregnant as a result.

  It was an awful lot of ‘providings’. But she had sent the note to him–‘Please meet me in your dormitory at seven o’clock tomorrow night’–and if he did not turn up it would not matter all that much. If he showed the note to anyone, that would not matter either, because Mary had not signed it. The end would simply be that she would have to look for someone more suitable. But she thought Darren Clark would come. She thought he would be intrigued and flattered; Ingrid said all men were screamingly vain. She had said, as well, that Darren Clark was quite intelligent most of the time. Mary supposed this meant when he was not raping children or initiating new inmates.

  Mary had told Ingrid that the rape attempt had been loathsome. She said she had hated the feel of Darren Clark’s body writhing against her, and the hard stick of his erection pushing between her legs had made her feel so sick she had nearly thrown up in his face. Ingrid had laughed softly, and said, ‘Poor baby. He wanted to piston-pump you, Mary, that’s what he wanted. I’m glad he didn’t get that far; you’d have hated that a whole lot worse.’ Mary had said whatever you called it and however far it had got or not got, she had hated it anyway. She had wanted to scrub her skin for about a month to get rid of the memory of him touching her and slobbering over her.

  But she was no longer sure if the encounter had really been all that hateful. Writing that careful note, going stealthily through Broadacre tonight, was beginning to feel fiercely exciting. It was much more exciting than waiting for Ingrid to come on duty and signal to Mary that they should meet in the small bathroom at the end of the corridor, or somewhere equally secret. And after the first time Mary had been aware of a faint impatience with Ingrid. ‘No penetration,’ the doctor had said that night, but there was no penetration with what Ingrid did, either. What Ingrid did was ineffectual. Incomplete. It was all very well to stroke and kiss and lick, but after a while it had made Mary remember how her attacker’s body had felt–hard, insistent, masculine. How would it have been if the attendants had not come running to separate them…?

  The male dormitories were in a different wing from the female ones. You had to go along a dingy corridor that crossed a stretch of scrubby garden where the inmates were supposed to plant spring bulbs and make herb borders. There were not many people about at this time of early evening but there were some, and so Mary walked swiftly and purposefully, nodding absent-mindedly at anyone she met so that it looked as if she was expected somewhere.

  The corridor was draughty because of having windows on both sides all the way along, like a railway carriage, and it smelt of damp. But underneath the damp was another smell that Mary could not at first identify. And then she knew what it was. Human despair. The agony of minds that were locked away–not just locked inside Broadacre, but locked inside their own bitter, lonely incomprehension. For the first time since coming here Mary saw that Broadacre was different from the Young Offenders’ Hostel; the YOH had been where the yobs and the joyriders and the teenage drug-dealers were put because they were not old enough for grown-up prisons. But Broadacre was where the helplessly mad people went. And if I am not very careful, I shall become part of the madness.

  There were cold electric light-bulbs overhead, and at this time of day they were switched full on, making the windows into oblongs of blackness. Mary could see her reflection in them, a bit blurry because the windows were misty with condensation, but recognisable. She glanced across to the other side. Yes, the reflection was there as well. And then her heart leapt suddenly, because wasn’t there another reflection there?–a second person, no more than a hazy shape, like a ghost twin or a phantom image, walking alongside her?

  Christabel?

  Mary’s heart began to thud against her ribs. She had surely imagined it. No, there it was again, an indistinct outline against the dark garden. Small and thin and pale. Like something struggling to materialise. Christabel, walking alongside the sister she had never met, her mind locking into Mary’s and filling her up with that dark strength, just as she had done four years earlier…

  Do it, Mary…

  Yes, whispered Mary to the night-garden. Yes, I’ll do it.

  The men’s dormitory was almost identical to the women’s–there were the same rows of iron-framed beds, and the same curtain tracks overhead so that you could curtain off your few feet of space and feel private. In the women’s dormitory there were odds and ends of make-up on the lockers, and magazines with articles about pop stars and royalty strewn about. Here, there were shaving brushes or electric razors. There were magazines as well, but Mary thought they were different ones. At the youth place there had been a lively trade in porn mags; there would be sure to be something similar here.

  If you were romantically minded you would not think this a very nice place to lose your virginity–properly lose it, not fiddle and finger around with it as Ingrid did. But it did not matter that there was no scented garden or flowery bower, and in any case that stuff was for those wimpish creatures you read about in books. This was not about romance, it was about getting screwed as thoroughly as possible, and getting pregnant. It was about showing that doctor that she was neither trivial nor boring, and it was about reminding the outside world that she still existed.

  Yes. Good. And stay with me, Christabel.

  She moved along the row of narrow iron-framed beds, searching. Here was his bed–there was a plastic name-tag at the foot, with ‘Darren Clark’ written on it in a round, careful hand.

  The large plain-faced clock over the door pointed to three minutes to seven. Exactly right. Mary lay down on the bed, listening intently for sounds beyond the door, watching for signs of movement beyond the square of frosted glass in the door’s top half. The minute hand ticked its way up to seven o’clock, and there was a stab of disappointment–he’s not going to come!–and then hard on the heels of this a lurch of hope, because soft footsteps were coming along the corridor. Was it? Yes, it must be.

  There was the dark outline of a man beyond the frosty glass, and then the door was pushed open, and Mary smiled the secret smile and felt the excitement spiral upwards. He had come, just as she had known he would.

  What surprised her was not the physical side–she had known what to expect, more or less. It was the way she felt after it was over.

  For what seemed a very long time he
stood uncertainly at the foot of the bed, not moving, not even seeming to want to touch her. Well, what did you expect? jeered the inner voice. That he’d sit on the bed and read poetry to you? That you’d discuss love and life and undying devotion before he tore your clothes off and–what did Ingrid call it?–piston-pumped you? And then Mary realised that he was not going to be turned on purely because she was here; he needed more than that. He needed violence, and he needed his victim to be frightened. Of course! So rewrite the script, Mary, and do it quickly!

  Speaking slowly, testing each word before she let it go, she said, ‘I came to ask why you attacked me that night,’ and saw his eyes widen with interest. Yes! Good!

  He said, ‘Were you frightened?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I was.’ Had he taken a step nearer? ‘I didn’t want you to do that to me,’ said Mary. ‘I mean, I didn’t want you to screw me.’ Was that right? Should she have said ‘fuck’?

  ‘They all say they don’t want it.’ Yes, he was moving nearer; he was on the edge of the bed now. ‘But really they do want it. I know they do. You want it now–that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘No—’ Had that sounded convincing? She shrank back against the bedhead. ‘I came to tell you I hated you—’ Remember Ingrid’s remark about initiation ceremonies, said the inner voice. ‘It was my first night here,’ said Mary.

  ‘I know it was. I like to check out the new females.’ He reached out a hand, and his fingers suddenly grabbed Mary’s wrist. Mary gasped, quite genuinely. ‘You won’t scream this time, will you?’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t come here for this—’ Oh, get on with it, you prat, before somebody comes in…

  But it was going to be all right. He was bounding onto the bed, dragging her skirt up to her waist, still holding her wrist with his left hand, but thrusting his right hand up between her thighs. Mary felt his fingers brush her–there, in the place nobody had ever touched, except for Ingrid, except for that disdainful doctor–and she struggled and tried to push him away. At once his hand came up to encircle both her wrists, forcing them over her head, and he half knelt on her, one knee pushing her legs apart. His breath gusted into her face, and Mary struggled again, panic rising despite her resolve.