He fell silent and stared at me, his entire expression seized by doubt, his face constricting, the realisation of what was possible hitting home. His left cheek was smudged with blood, an uneven line sprouting from a straight gash, its colour hidden in the gloom. I raised the javelin again. Terrible, tantalising thoughts burst in my mind. If I chose I could ram the blade right into his heart, or I could slice him portion by portion, reducing him, snipping away at his weight, cutting him down to a manageable size. I could disfigure him in any way I chose, make his body vile, unapproved, tortured, messed up, mutilated.
I had to say to myself: not here, not now. I could decide when. I could describe it, name it, keep it safe and keep it secret. Not here, not now. Only I knew when. I was in charge: I defined time and place.
I made him shuffle beneath the window. Underneath the frame, probably where there had been a shelf or ledge of some kind, there was a line of long, rusted nails. I had already curled some of these into hooks with the pliers whilst I was waiting. I wrapped more string around the point of contact of his wrists and secured it to the hooks. I just had to trust that they would hold. If he did manage to break free I assumed he would have a difficult job negotiating the steps, almost certainly likely to fall and kill himself. He wouldn’t take any such risk. I could see it in his eyes, a bully but a coward.
I was satisfied. I had successfully taken my first prisoner.
I went up to him again and leaned over him. He made no attempt to kick out this time, obviously having learnt to respect my rage. I told him to put his lips together, press and pout them so they could be kissed. Then I slapped electrical tape over them so that I didn’t have to hear another word from him. It didn’t stop him trying, but there was no point at all.
I rifled his pockets until I found his keys. Then, before leaving him, I took the blanket and wrapped it about him. No sense in letting him die of the cold.
I was waiting behind the door for Agnes’ homecoming. By then I felt every inch an ancient warrior, having run through the dark, across mine slag, and along the lane from St Bridget’s, holding my weapon at waist height, a hunter and a soldier. I let myself in through the kitchen door and waited. There were lights on in the house, which troubled me at first, until I reasoned that Harold would simply have left them out of laziness.
I had a moment’s trouble with Agnes as I led her from the modernised living-room into the kitchen. As I guided her through the doorway, my blade behind her back, she had the temerity to try and make a dash for it. I hadn’t let my success with Harold go to my head and never underestimated Agnes for a second. I suspected she would try something so as soon as she moved I was onto her, and caught a thick bundle of her hair in my hand. Naturally I hadn’t been fool enough to hold the weapon anywhere but at the knife-head so that Agnes was always within reach. Of course I had to teach her a little lesson. I swung her round, bent back her head, exposing her slack neck and brought the knife against it. I told her plainly that if she tried anything like that again I wouldn’t hesitate to run the blade right across her throat. I gave her a small nick for good measure. It was unfair not to let her know how serious I was.
I bound and gagged her, tied her to a kitchen chair, then tied the chair to the table. I had already closed the curtains in the kitchen. I switched off the light and slipped out, locking the door behind me.
Mr Drake was a much easier proposition altogether. His kitchen door was unlocked. I let myself in as quietly as I could, tip-toed into the living-room, put my arm around his chair and held the blade at his throat. He made no attempt to speak, or defend himself in any way. As well as the malice that lay just beneath the surface of his expression I sensed something else, resignation, expectation, maybe even perverse hope. I wasn’t prepared to ask.
I couldn’t hear their defences; I was deaf. If they had pleaded, discovered an eloquence completely alien to them, I am afraid it could only have fallen on stony ground.
I wasn’t listening.
I deposited my weapon in one of Harold’s pig-sheds, and then I went home to bed. After such exertions I needed an early night.
I would like to say I dreamed of birds in flight, mermaids swimming, Siren songs, but I don’t remember dreaming at all, and refuse to lie about that.
*
The next morning I went to a phone box and rang Donald. He was vague and bleary. Had I woken him, I asked? Yes and no, he said, it was early, but he should be up, getting ready. I told him he would have to shout to be heard. I couldn’t hear if he didn’t shout, not on a phone. I think he said something about not wanting to shout. I wondered if he was alone. He threw the question back at me. Was I alone? I told him he didn’t have to be angry, I was only asking, wondering if he didn’t want to be overheard, and then I assured him that I was alone, very alone. He didn’t pick up on the semi-dramatic addendum, maybe because the pips went for more money or he hadn’t heard. I told him that I missed him. I said it quietly, so quietly I failed to hear it myself, so maybe he didn’t catch it either, or if he did, decided to ignore it. He wondered if I’d had time to think, then immediately snapped that he felt ridiculous shouting down a telephone line. You’re right, I said, there should be something more for us. He tried to speak reasonably, but couldn’t quite manage it, having to shout. He said he couldn’t do it and had to go, had to get ready. I didn’t interrogate that idea that he couldn’t do it. I said it was all right, I had some pigs to feed anyway. The pips went again. The last thing he said was that he thought I was joking. I held the phone to my ear for sometime, listening to nothing but the idea in my head that I was joking. Then I put the receiver down. I really did have some pigs to feed. There was no reason they should be overlooked. Besides, I had a weapon to collect.
Chapter Eighteen
Harold had wet himself. He cursed me when I tore the tape from his mouth. Unperturbed I strolled quite calmly to the other side of the chamber and leaned against the wall. I told him I’d fed his pigs, so he didn’t need to worry about that. He swore again and threatened to kill me. My calm spirit sank. A child’s refrain of sticks and stones may break my bones petered away in my head. I wasn’t prepared to treat this as a game. Someone was going to die. Besides it wasn’t remotely true. Of course a name could harm you. It claims you, fixes you to its own doggerel history; makes you something you can’t help.
I lifted the weapon and held it like a javelin, eyeing it along the shaft, aimed at his chest. ‘‘How do you like being called names?’’ I asked. ‘‘Sempie, for instance. How do you like that?’’
He stared at the point of the blade, as if it were the object that had to be watched, outfaced, and not me, not my shifts of expression, signalling now or maybe later.
I lowered the weapon, made my way slowly to him then waved the blade in front of his face. I leaned close to him. I could smell his breath which was fetid. There was dry black blood smeared across his cheek. I smiled and uttered: ‘‘You don’t even know your own name, and now I possess your body as well. There really isn’t much going for you today. No name, no body. Nobody. Tut, tut. And you such a big man. Christ, I’ve such a desire to slice your face into a pattern, but I’m fighting it, honestly, but I’m not sure how much of a fighter I am. Do you get that?’’
‘‘They’ll be looking for me.’’
‘‘Speak up, all right, speak up.’’
‘‘I said they’ll be looking for me.’’
‘‘Who? Who’ll be looking for you? The last time I saw her Agnes was all tied up, so she won’t have missed you.’’
‘‘What have you done, you bitch?’’
‘‘Names again. Now, what do I make of that? What should I do with my acquisition?’’ I stood up, holding the shaft of the spear loosely in my hand, the blade dangling over his chest. ‘‘You see I’m in charge, I own the weapon, I own you.’’ I turned and walked away from him. I was serious. The urge to make him pay straight away was so great I had to put him out of arms length. I resumed my position against the wall,
watching him, his patient interrogator, the weapon upright beside me. ‘‘I’m prepared to listen to you, if you’ll speak up. My hearing aid is in and switched on and the batteries are new, but you’ll still have to speak up. That’s the only chance you have, to make yourself clear. So, why did you hurt Stephen?’’
He gazed back at me, at first blankly, then with a quickening of his eyes, his dulled intelligence obviously working, and then he slowly shook his head.
‘‘You don’t know, do you? You know you’ve hurt so many people you can’t work it out, can you? But I don’t for a second believe you hurt people just because you can, there has to be more. Christ!’’
*
It shocks me yet that I was banal enough to believe that Stephen could have deserted Abby. I should have known better. I had seen the way they loved each other, that relative and dependent union of the two of them, an image made up of so many moments of time – residential school, the shore, the tower – a rebus. I should have known he would never have deserted that. He would have been deserting himself. I wonder if that was why Abby had stopped declaring her name, because she shared an identity.
I saw them together after he had returned, strong and healthy again just as Abby surmised, in the room in the tower, lying on the blanket that I had brought for them, their accomplice. They were rolling together, stretching and colliding, like kittens or puppies, creating spontaneous, arbitrary shapes, so that it was difficult to know where one ended and the other began. It was the most primitive of all gestures, that animal caress, playful, profound, uncontrived. It couldn’t last. They were illicit lovers, illegal.
At the time I was guilty of thinking it fortunate that I was the one to interrupt them. I shuddered to think what Harold would have done if he had been the one to discover them there.
As Stephen stood up and approached me, signing something like welcome, I saw Abby’s face contort with the gnawing pain of absence, absence rather than separation, because she understood, recognised in her sister’s fault, that they weren’t free to be together. What chance did they have? They weren’t even able to listen out for an intruder.
Like a fool, I thought I had saved them, saved her: I was as culpable as the rest.
Abby stood up and came beside him, pushing her head beneath his arm, her eyes peering at me as if I had hurt her. I reached out, signalling a need to touch her, but she looked at my hand as if it were an alien object. She said nothing, and that nothing was wretched.
They must have come together, though, despite the likelihood of discovery.
When they realised she was pregnant they locked her up.
*
‘‘Why did you lock her up when you found out she was pregnant?’’
He stared at me for a moment, wanting to defy me, yet at the same time wary of me and uncertain. In the end a moderated defiance won out and he retorted: ‘‘Why do you think! We were ashamed.’’
‘‘Ashamed?’’ He glared at me, indicating that the word didn’t need explaining. ‘‘You could have married them off. You didn’t have to leave him wandering round the pig-sheds, grieving for her. That was vicious, spiteful.’’ His expression remained defiant, but again shot with uncertainty. I stepped towards him. ‘‘It was strange you didn’t beat him up! Did you enjoy his suffering that much?’’ I kept on walking.
‘‘I don’t remember,’’ he called out, successfully stalling me, the weapon. He shrugged and repeated: ‘‘I don’t remember.’’
‘‘Just a shrug,’’ I uttered. ‘‘What happened is just a shrug.’’
‘‘I wasn’t really involved. It was Agnes. She thought it better, that’s all.’’
‘‘You always live to someone else’s plan, don’t you, but you don’t really know whose and quite frankly don’t really care. You’d smile at God, be ignorant of science, scoff at politics and screw your face up at fate. You’re just here in a permanent present.’’
‘‘She was right,’’ he called, moaning it. ‘‘She wasn’t fit to look after herself, wasn’t fit to have a baby.’’
‘‘But she did. At least you never stopped it happening.’’ He didn’t respond but stared straight at me, his expression again balanced between defiance and uncertainty. I peered at him, probing him. ‘‘But you tried, didn’t you,’’ I said. ‘‘I can see it in your face, the fact that you tried to get rid of the baby. You did, didn’t you?’’
He considered for a moment and then snapped: ‘‘She wanted it for the best.’’
‘‘She?’’
‘‘Agnes, for the best, and it would have been better, wouldn’t it? But it was too late, and … well, it didn’t happen.’’
I smiled: ‘‘And she would have bitten your hands off. You would have knocked her out though, wouldn’t you? Presumably whoever you got wouldn’t hear of that, a step too far even for your hired help, a drunken vet I suppose, not likely a midwife. I see, another shrug. You dispense with the past so easily.’’
‘‘It’s over.’’
‘‘No Harold, it’s here, I’m here, not permanently, maybe an existence you can’t conceive, but you’d better believe it.’’
He screwed his face in frustration, despair and sheer ignorance. I don’t suppose he had ever felt so powerless, so impotent, so entirely out of control. I went closer to him. His eyes fastened on me, vigilant and panicked. He tried to back away, but it wasn’t possible. He was in confined space, imposed in it. I went closer. I lifted the spear. He looked terrified. It was obvious he wanted to speak up, but even he realised the insubstantiality of that, the inaccuracy. What would he have managed, his repertoire was so seriously lacking? He gave himself to instinct. His face showed it all.
‘‘How could it be for the best?’’ I demanded.
‘‘Agnes said,’’ he wailed.
‘‘Said what?’’ I shouted, feeling suddenly exhausted, the weapon indescribably heavy. ‘‘What, what did Agnes say?’’
‘‘That she wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t behave right. That she might hurt it.’’
‘‘She wouldn’t have hurt Stephen’s baby.’’
‘‘She did.’’
I rammed the blade an inch away from his eyeball. ‘‘No, she did not.’’
He looked along the upper edge of the knife and slowly uttered: ‘‘But it wasn’t Stephen’s baby.’’ Then he glared at me, his eyes wide with fear, loathing and temper, and screamed: ‘‘Who the hell is Stephen?’’
*
Memory unites and divides us. It is the truth and the lie we stand our ground for: and it is the thing from which we hide ourselves away. We are editors of time, who don’t really understand time at all, can’t unravel its shape or pattern.
I search for Abby, and for me, and Grace Powers in the days before she was ashamed of her language, in the places we used to be, but what exactly am I searching for? The simple answer is, I suppose, enthusiasm and disappointment, the steps that fell either side of a very slim divide. Did it all turn out as we said, or was it never remotely likely to?
At first we had very few words at our disposal, then we gained some more and lost others. We were like so many village kids at their supposed play, in the main bewildered, sometimes bemused, often afraid, attracted by a very limited vocabulary indeed. It took us a long time to realise so much was acquired by rote and a rulebook, though we were always aware that Abby’s poetry was of a different order, of a different place, better than anything we were taught. It was at least honest. I could do with some of her creativity now, lines of verse that would make everything, if not worthwhile, at least possessed of space and motion.
So I interrogate the landscape, standing on slag banks, eyeing the surrounding escarpments, troughs, spoil and the enclosing thread of horizon, but its contours quickly merge, blur into oneness, rock and soil, mountain and sea, its possessing silence pierced by something I don’t recognise because I have been immune to sound for so very long, but might be a curlew, oystercatcher or wren, certainly a dying breed, to add to all
the other dying breeds, the earth voicing its discarded ghosts.
Iron Age settlers crafted long straight fields here, which the Romans took as their own, who then left forsaken altars, fractured brickwork, mosaics, splinters of people, fragments of belief. Then three, maybe four hundred years later the Norse renamed it, made it Viking land, hunting deer, hare and fox, and farming, after which there were hundreds of years of mixed arable and grazing, producing a self-sufficient Medieval people immune to kings and popes, until the growing Elizabethan markets demanded sheep, cattle, pigs, domesticated meat in abundance. Two hundred years of selling; and then there was ore and coal, new industries to place alongside farming, though the iron-ore and coal mining boom quickly degenerated into a hundred years or more of decline, to a point of no history, zero time, which we always conceive for ourselves, convinced that we represent the end of the line.
It’s all sham, though. Of course they bruised and scarred the landscape, but what of themselves, their personal intrigues, their skirmishes and desires? There have been so many lies told here, so many abuses and so many deaths, and it has all passed away as if it were nonsense and of no consequence, and the history that survives is too short to recall leaving only a degraded here and now. Without witness and record that too will pass away, of course, and I find myself saying, thank God. Like Nora, I crave freedom, the undifferentiated crowd.
I prefer to live with scepticism. I don’t know why scepticism became the norm, but for me it seems there was no other way.
Then my sister signs to me, and I can’t help but sign in return. Like everyone we have our attributes.
At some point you have to deal with yourself as a stranger, and strike away the permanent present and lay bare all the paths, conduits and sewers that led to it.
My Name is E Page 26