‘Yes,’ Victoria says. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘So he wasn’t too young, after all?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, God,’ Penny says, pulling a face of utter disgust and looking away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Victoria says, reaching out to touch her shoulder.
‘It’s not you,’ Penny tells her, turning back to face her. ‘But . . . I don’t know . . . It’s just so . . .’
‘Sordid?’ Victoria offers.
‘Well, yes. But it’s abuse,’ Penny says. ‘That’s what it is.’
‘Yes, perhaps.’
‘Poor you,’ Penny says with feeling. ‘I had no idea.’
‘Poor Ed!’ Victoria counters. ‘That boy was so fucked up.’
Penny stares at her sister for a moment. She shakes her head slowly from side to side as she tries to take it in. Perhaps, she thinks, her sister was right. Perhaps she had been better off not knowing.
‘You see what I mean?’ Victoria says. ‘It’s hardcore, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Penny replies. ‘Yes, I see what you mean. And yes, it’s hardcore. But I still want to hug you.’
Penny opens her arms now to offer an embrace, but Victoria flinches. ‘I’m not finished yet,’ she says ominously.
Penny frowns. Whatever it is, I’ll be fine, she thinks. Whatever it is, I’ll accept it like the understanding adult I am.
‘So, that Christmas Eve,’ Victoria says, ‘after Mum slapped me . . .’
Her cheeks still stinging from her mother’s slaps, Vicky had run to her room.
She’d closed the door and locked it. The house had once been a guesthouse, so all of the doors had locks, even if it was strictly forbidden to use them.
But today, Vicky didn’t care. Today, she felt scared – she felt scared of her mother, scared of Ed, and scared, above all, of Cecil. Slimy, lying, frightening Cecil. She threw herself on to her bed, pulled her teddy towards her and cried into his fur at the injustice of it all.
For a while – an hour, perhaps – she listened to the sounds of the house around her. She wondered if Cecil could open her door from the outside the way her mother once had when she had locked herself in the toilet. She hoped not.
She wondered if he would put her over his knee and slap her with his big, manicured hands, or if he would do something worse instead. She wondered if he mightn’t punish her by doing to her whatever he had been doing to Ed.
But to her relief, Cecil did not come, and slowly she began to relax until, eventually, her nose pressed into the bear’s wet fur, she fell asleep.
Lunchtime came and went and no one came to fetch her. She felt hungry but didn’t dare go downstairs. She didn’t even dare unlock her door.
The house was silent and all was calm, but in a way it was too calm, it was creepily calm, like a haunted house, like a ghost house, she thought.
She wondered if everyone perhaps had gone to the beach, but that was a silly thought; it was freezing outside.
Watching the movement of the origami mobile Cecil had hung above her bed, she thought again of the way he’d lied, the way Ed had lied, too, and fresh tears welled up. It’s not fair, she thought, over and over again. And each time, her mother’s voice would appear in her head, saying ‘Life isn’t fair’ – Marge’s habitual response to any accusations of unfairness. But why? Vicky wondered. Why couldn’t life be fair? Why couldn’t people just tell the truth and be nice to each other? Why would Ed side with horrible Cecil rather than with her, his own sister?
At some point, her little sister knocked on her door, but Vicky was in the midst of a bout of angry tears so she sent her away.
And then, a few minutes later, just as she was feeling lonely and bored, just as she was feeling regretful, Penny knocked again, so she took the risk – she opened the door and pulled her inside. Penny’s doll Lucy was hanging from her left hand.
‘What’s happened?’ Penny asked.
Vicky wiped her snotty nose on the back of her hand. ‘It’s grown-up stuff, that’s all,’ she said.
Penny pulled a face at her. She wanted Vicky to explain and, in truth, Vicky wanted to explain it to her as well, she really did. It’s just that she lacked the vocabulary to do so. She lacked the words to describe what had happened even inside her own head, let alone to her five-year-old sister.
‘Why are you crying?’ Penny asked.
‘It’s nothing,’ Vicky said. ‘Really.’
‘Where’s Ed?’
‘I don’t know,’ Vicky said, blowing her nose on a tatty tissue.
‘Why is Uncle Cecil leaving?’
Vicky brushed her hair from her eyes and looked out at her little sister. ‘Is he?’ she asked, as butterflies of hope suddenly fluttered in her chest.
‘Yes,’ Penny said. ‘On the three thirty o’clock train. He’s putting his things back in his case.’
‘Good,’ Vicky told her. ‘I hate him.’
‘Why?’ Penny asked.
‘I . . . I can’t tell you,’ Vicky said. And again, it was a problem of vocabulary, not desire, that held her back.
‘Why?’
‘Look,’ Vicky continued, ‘if you want to stay, you have to stop asking questions, OK?’ Penny’s questions were making her feel inexplicably queasy.
Penny bit her lip and nodded. ‘He won’t take the presents with him, will he?’
‘How should I know?’ Vicky said angrily. Seeing that Penny was about to cry, she added, ‘But no, Sis, I doubt it.’
‘Do you think you’ll still get your music player?’ Penny asked.
‘I had better,’ Vicky said. ‘Otherwise . . .’
‘Otherwise what?’ Penny asked.
‘Nothing,’ Vicky said. ‘Otherwise nothing.’
Vicky wasn’t sure what she would do if Cecil took her cassette player back from under the tree; she wasn’t quite sure what she could do. But her fear and upset were morphing to anger and she suspected that she would find a way to do something if, on top of everything else, he ruined her Christmas. Yes, she’d find a way to get her own back somehow. ‘Where’s Mum?’ she asked.
‘She’s drinking the stuff she puts in the cake,’ Penny said.
‘The brandy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is she drinking lots of it?’ Vicky asked. Her mother became relaxed and funny when she drank too much brandy. She also tended to fall asleep in her armchair, leaving them free rein to run riot.
‘She’s drinking it from the bottle, like this,’ Penny said, mimicking the gesture with one hand.
‘Good,’ Vicky said. ‘And Cecil’s definitely going?’
‘Yes. He said on the three thirty train.’
‘I wonder what time it is now?’
Penny shrugged. ‘Do you want me to go and find out?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Vicky said. ‘But don’t say it’s for me, all right? Did you have lunch?’
Penny nodded. ‘Sandwiches from yesterday,’ she said. ‘That yucky fish stuff.’
‘Can you sneak me one up?’ Vicky asked. ‘I’m starving.’
Penny nodded and smiled. She liked it when her sister gave her missions to accomplish. ‘Can we play a game after?’
Vicky nodded. ‘If you tell me the time and bring me a sandwich without anyone knowing, we can play a game once Cecil’s gone, OK?’
‘OK,’ Penny said, standing up. ‘Come on Lucy. We’ve got a secret mission to do.’
It was a few minutes before Penny returned with a half-sandwich stuffed up her jumper and good news to share. ‘It’s a quarter past two o’clock,’ she announced precisely, ‘and Cecil just left.’
‘Quarter past two?’ Vicky repeated, taking the tatty sandwich from her sister’s grasp and inspecting it suspiciously before raising it to her mouth. ‘And he’s gone already?’ she asked, speaking through a mouthful of bread and fish paste.
‘He didn’t even say goodbye to Mum,’ Penny said. ‘He just walked off up the street. He looked like he was sad.’
‘Are you sure he’s not coming back? Because he’s a bit early for the three thirty. It doesn’t take an hour to get to the station.’
Penny shook her head. ‘He took his suitcase and everything,’ she announced. ‘But not the presents. I looked under the tree and it’s all still there.’
‘Good,’ Vicky said. ‘And Mum?’
‘She’s asleep in front of the telly.’
‘Who told you the time, then?’ Vicky asked, still suspicious of potential traps and intrigues.
‘Ed, of course,’ Penny said. ‘He’s in the kitchen.’
With Cecil gone and their mother in an alcoholic daze, the children’s excitement about Christmas rekindled. It was as if the cork holding Christmas in had been released.
Ed, who was feeling both guilty about getting Vicky into trouble and relieved at Cecil’s departure, was, for a while, extra nice to them both.
After creeping into the lounge to check the tree (her cassette player was still there) Vicky silently closed the lounge door on their sleeping mother. The longer she slept, the better, Vicky thought.
They ran to the very top of the house and then Ed, wearing a sheet and making ghost noises, chased them down. They played hide and seek and slides – a game where Ed would drag them around the kitchen floor on towels.
They went out into the back garden after that, and Ed and Vicky took turns at pushing Penny on the old swing until it went so high that she started to cry.
Marge, awoken by the kerfuffle, rapped on the window pane. ‘It’s too cold out there,’ she shouted. ‘Come inside right now!’
As they discreetly passed by the lounge, Marge stuck her head out. ‘Play upstairs!’ she ordered. ‘I can’t hear myself think!’ And then, turning to Vicky, she added brutally, ‘As for you, Dirty Deirdre, I don’t want to see your face today. So get out of my sight before I do something I might regret.’
They moved to Ed’s big room, and Penny played with his Action Man, sitting it on the steam train and making choo-choo noises.
At one point, Vicky went to the toilet and, on her return, announced that Mum was ‘snoring like a pig’. They all giggled at this and Ed emulated Marge’s habitual snoring noises with hilarious accuracy.
‘Did you close the door?’ Ed asked.
‘I didn’t open it,’ Vicky said. ‘I could hear her from the hallway!’
‘We could play bannisters, then,’ Ed suggested.
‘Yes! Bannisters!’ Vicky agreed.
‘Bannisters!’ Penny chimed in hopefully, even though they never let her play bannisters with them.
But Ed had pushed her into her bedroom and shut the door. ‘You’re too little,’ he said. ‘You’ll only fall and cry and get us into trouble.’
Penny quickly became bored in her bedroom, so she sneaked out and headed downstairs past Ed and Vicky to join her mother. If she could accidentally-on-purpose wake her, Marge would hear the noise and stop Ed and Vicky’s naughty, exclusive game, she thought.
As she passed by, Ed and Vicky were arguing. They argued a lot. It was nothing unusual.
It was Vicky’s turn to slide down the bannisters, but she was holding on to the knob at the top and wouldn’t let go. ‘You’re a liar,’ she was saying. ‘A dirty rotten liar, and you know it.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ed said, ‘because Mum will never believe you anyway.’ Ed then started slapping at Vicky’s hands, trying to get her to let go. ‘If you’re going to slide, slide,’ he said, then, ‘Scaredy cat, scaredy cat, Vicky is a scaredy cat.’
And so Vicky, who was certainly not a scaredy cat, let go of the polished knob and, using her sleeved elbows to guide and slow her descent, let go. But her jumper, which was made of acrylic, gripped the handrail less than she had anticipated, so she reached the end stop with such speed that she bashed her bum against it. Had she not been so determined to prove her bravery, she might have cried.
By the time Vicky had limped back to the landing, Ed was in position. ‘That was pathetic,’ he announced.
Vicky shrugged. ‘You always say that,’ she said. ‘You always think you’re better at everything, but you’re just as useless as everyone else. You’re worse, actually.’
Ed was sliding back and forth on the bannister like a bob-sleigh team preparing to launch. He smiled at Vicky lopsidedly.
‘Go on, then,’ Vicky said. ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘Nothing,’ Ed said, looking snide.
‘What are you doing?’ Vicky asked. ‘Go on!’
Ed half-smiled, half-sneered at her, then said, ‘It’s rubbing my willy,’ he said. ‘It makes it go all hard like a stick of rock. Cecil’s does it, too. Do you want to see?’
‘Shut up,’ Vicky said, disgusted, even though she didn’t quite understand why. ‘Shut up and slide.’
‘I might show it to you later on,’ Ed said, then, in a strange, adult tone of voice she hadn’t heard before, he added, ‘Do you want to lick my stick of rock, Dirty Deirdre?’
Vicky ran at him then, her arms flailing. There was no thought behind her actions, no logic to her moves. She had no apprehension of what might come next. She just wanted Ed to stop saying dirty things to her. She didn’t like what he was saying and she needed it to stop, that was all.
‘Ah!’ Ed laughed, struggling to defend himself against her slaps with one free hand while still holding on to the railing with the other. ‘Stop! Get off me.’
He managed to grab her ponytail then, and when he yanked at it, it hurt, but as she struggled to twist out of his grasp, his hand came into view, so she bit it. Ed yelped, released her hair and held his hand up in shock. ‘You animal!’ he said. ‘You dirty animal!’
And that’s when she pushed him. She ran at him with all her might and she pushed him in the chest.
Ed smiled at first. He was falling, but he hadn’t realised it yet, so he smiled. He thought this was all still funny. And then, as his hands reached for the railings – and missed – his expression changed, so quickly and yet so slowly. He looked amused and then scared, and then as he tipped sideways and, legs kicking, began to fall, as he finally began to vanish from view, he just looked sad.
‘He just looked sad?’ Penny repeats.
Victoria, her face wet with tears, nods. ‘He looked sad. Sort of hopeless. Like he knew. He looked like he knew it was over.’
‘And you pushed him,’ Penny says in a monotone voice.
‘Yes, I bit his hand and then I pushed him and he fell.’
‘And then?’ Penny asks, even though she doesn’t know why she’s asking. She’s waiting for some thought to manifest but, in the meantime, it seems that her voice is on autopilot.
‘I ran to the landing and I looked down,’ Victoria whispers. ‘And when I saw him, I sort of knew he was dead.’
‘What do you mean, you sort of knew?’
‘There was a lot of blood,’ Victoria says. ‘I’m not sure if you remember, but his head hit that knob thing on the end of the bannister. I’m not sure if I really understood what “dead” meant back then, but I knew it was over.’
‘God,’ Penny says, her voice seemingly still carrying on this conversation of its own accord. ‘How did that feel?’
‘I was horrified,’ Victoria says. ‘I was paralysed with the horror of it all. But, to be honest, I was glad as well.’
‘You were glad?’
‘Yes. I was relieved, I suppose. I was scared of Ed. I had become really very scared of Ed. And I felt glad that it was over, I think.’
A shudder works its way through Penny’s body as she stares at her sister in silence. Victoria has been crying throughout her story but, until this moment, Penny has been strangely unemotional. But here they come: the emotions are here. Her vision is blurring; her throat is contracting. ‘So, you pushed him?’ she mumbles uncertainly. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’
Victoria nods. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Yes, I killed him.’
Penny’s thoughts, so absent just a moment ago, now com
e all together, in a rush. So many different, at times conflicting thoughts come at once that it feels as if time has slowed down just to fit them all in.
She can sense her inner self dividing and multiplying like a cell under a microscope, a thousand Pennys all suddenly present, all thinking different things.
Some of these are professional Pennys. ‘No wonder she’s so crazy,’ one of them says. ‘She’s done well, considering what she’s been through,’ says another. ‘She’ll need therapy for the rest of her life,’ says a third. Other voices come from instinctual Pennys, Pennys who want to leave right now, Pennys who want to run or hide, or hug her sister; Pennys who instead want to slap her hard.
She sits and stares at Victoria’s questioning face, and Victoria stares back and waits.
A minute passes and, then, yet another different Penny rises up within her, and this one drowns out all of the others. Five-year-old Penny is back, a sweet, uncomprehending little girl who loves her mother, who loves her sister, and who loves her brother, is back, and the sensation of all that love, well, it’s heartbreaking.
She’s in the lounge, and she can remember everything. The black and white television is there, her mother’s knitting has been cast aside. There’s a half-empty bottle of sherry and an empty glass on the little table.
Her hand is on the china door knob, now, and she can feel its cold, shiny surface. Her mother is calling to her, but she’s too scared to step out there, she’s too frightened to look.
‘Go and get Cecil!’ her mother is crying from the hallway. ‘Go and get him as fast as you can.’
Now she’s opening the door, not with urgency, but with fear, with absolute terror.
Vicky is there, looking down at her. She looks cold and waxy, she looks frozen and emotionless. And then she’s stepping out into the hallway, turning slowly to look, and now she sees it as she saw it then, because, yes, despite what she has told herself ever since, she did see it – she saw everything.
Her mother is there, crouched next to Ed. She is kissing the undamaged side of his face, she is screaming, she is weeping, she is crying, ‘Ed? Ed, baby? Ed, my baby? Talk to me, Ed? Please, not now, not yet, Ed!’
The Bottle of Tears Page 32