Ralph’s Children

by Hilary Norman

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ Simon had said.

  ‘If he comes,’ said Jack, ‘he’ll wish he hadn’t.’

  The jury had still been out on whether or not Rob Turner – whose first wife had taken their daughter so far away from him – might be a Beast in his own right, but for the time being they were wavering against, since his break-up with Kate suggested to them that he couldn’t be all bad.

  They had been relying on general surveillance and Pig’s monitoring of Turner’s phone calls to find out when she was next going up to Caisleán.

  ‘Only half the story, though, of course,’ Roger had said, ‘if we can’t get our second beast at the same time.’

  ‘Patience,’ Ralph had told them. ‘We’ll have a chance with Miss Moon every fortnight.’

  Just a matter of time.

  * * *

  ‘I think it’s time,’ the sitting female said after a while, ‘we introduced ourselves.’

  Kate shivered involuntarily.

  ‘I’m Roger,’ the woman said.

  ‘I’m Simon,’ said the standing female.

  ‘I’m Jack,’ the male near the front door said.,

  ‘And I’m Pig,’ said the man beside her.

  Messed up as her head was, Kate still instantly put the names together, the strangeness of the last one – Pig – leaving little room for doubt. Characters out of a book she’d read at school, she thought.

  She chased her memory now for any obvious pro-life connections in that old novel, gave that up quickly – then remembered an old film in which a gang who hijacked a subway train had called each other by different colours, which meant, she supposed, there was probably no real significance to these names either.

  If she got out of this, she thought she might never watch another thriller.

  ‘You paying attention, Turner?’ the man by the door asked.

  Jack. The most obviously nasty of the four.

  ‘Want a drink of water?’ the sitting male, whose breath smelt – Pig – asked her.

  She hesitated.

  ‘She doesn’t trust us,’ the sitting female – Roger – said.

  ‘Just plain water,’ Pig said.

  ‘From your own tap,’ the standing female – Simon – added.

  Kate nodded.

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  Simon walked around the sofa, her rubber soles padding almost noiselessly on the uncarpeted areas of stone floor. In the kitchen, Kate heard water running first into the sink, then into a cup or mug, then the tap being turned off.

  Simon came back into her line of vision, a red mug in her gloved right hand, one of the Habitat stoneware mugs Kate and Rob had chosen together.

  Kate watched her hand it to Jack.

  The move seemed rehearsed to her, planned.

  ‘Peel off the tape,’ Jack told the woman named Roger.

  The tape came away easily, painlessly.

  ‘Make any noise –’ Jack looked down at her – ‘and I’ll punch you so hard you may never wake up.’

  Kate believed him, meant to be still and silent, but then, as he bent over her, she suddenly became certain there was more in the mug than just water, and instinct made her turn her face away.

  Jack hit her hard on the side of her head.

  ‘Careful,’ Simon said to him.

  Kate’s left temple throbbed, her senses reeling.

  ‘I warned her.’ Jack held the red mug back, close to her face.

  ‘You want it or not?’ He shrugged. ‘Far as I’m concerned, you don’t ever have to drink again.’

  Kate managed a nod. ‘Please.’

  He was rough about it, the rim of the mug striking her upper front teeth, water sloshing out, running down her chin and over the blue roll-neck sweater she’d pulled on at home what seemed like a year ago. But at least the water seemed untainted, as far as she could tell, and she swallowed what she could, not knowing when she might next get the chance to drink.

  ‘Right,’ Jack said and straightened up.

  Roger turned, the adhesive tape in her hands.

  ‘I need to pee,’ Kate said quickly.

  ‘Tough,’ Roger told her.

  ‘I really need to,’ Kate said.

  ‘So pee.’ Jack set down the mug on the oak chest. ‘It’s your sofa.’

  Kate flushed. ‘What is it you want from me?’

  ‘It’s simple,’ said the woman called Roger.

  ‘We want to punish you,’ said the man called Pig.

  ‘But what for?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Don’t you know yet?’ asked the woman called Simon.

  Kate shook her head, trying to remember the complete text of those columns she’d written after she and Rob had faced their time of trial over their baby.

  ‘For supporting the murder of innocents,’ Roger said.

  She stood up, stretched her legs, slipped the piece of used tape into one of several pockets in her overalls.

  ‘You want to punish me –’ Kate spoke slowly, trying to follow, needing to make sense of what was happening, knowing that if her writing was, in some insane way, what had brought this nightmare to her, then understanding might be the first step of getting her out of it – ‘because I wrote some pieces about abortion?’

  ‘Only you did more than write about it, didn’t you?’ said Simon.

  Kate realized suddenly what they had assumed about her.

  Which was not so surprising, given that even Rob had made the same assumption at the time.

  ‘I didn’t have a termination,’ she told them. ‘If that’s what this is about.’

  ‘We know you did.’ Simon’s conviction was unshakable, for Ralph had given them the facts, and the Chief never lied to them.

  Till then Kate had felt Simon to be softer than the other female, but now this woman’s gloved hands were clenched into fists and the underlying intensity in her voice was alarming.

  ‘I had a miscarriage,’ Kate said, fighting for calm.

  ‘Shut up, bitch,’ Jack said.

  ‘Shut up, Beast,’ said Pig.

  There had been something about a beast in that novel, and what in God’s name could that have to do with her, with anything, and what suddenly frightened her most was a sense that there was no purpose in telling these people the truth, because they would not, did not want to, believe her. And if she could have seen their eyes, Kate suspected they would be glinting with the light of inextinguishable belief.

  The kind you could not argue with.

  Ralph

  Even now, with the game under way, I find it hard to decide which of my two Beasts I despise more. The woman who brags about killing unborn children and her other sins, or the woman who keeps her son shut away in a home while she lives under the protection of her wealthy parents.

  The home, of course, had been the clincher for the group, making Laurie Moon the worse of the two for them.

  ‘No contest’ – Jack’s words.

  So very different from the word go, this game.

  Not only because it was her very own, not just to oversee as in the past, but to devise completely.

  They were playing it to her ‘script’. Improvising, of course, as the situation developed – and if there was one thing they’d all learned, it was that circumstances had a knack of intervening, changing plans, often dramatically. Which could be a good thing at times, could be fascinating, creating the need for the group to work to their full potential, raising the stakes.

  Raising the risks.

  Her game, her chosen Beasts, but they were the ones out there, taking those risks.

  ‘This one’s for you, Chief,’ Roger had said last week, sounding as if she was raising a glass of wine, as if this was to be a performance dedicated to her.

  Ralph supposed, in a way, that was what this had become.

  If you could say such a thing about a double kidnapping.

  About murder.

  Now that it has begun, I have to sit and wait. We have agreed to communicate
as little as possible for safety’s sake, so I am, for now, at the mercy of my imagination. An armchair general, having sent out my troops – my children – to play the most dangerous game of their lives. At my instigation.

  It occurs to me, for the very first time, that I may be the Beast.

  The Game

  ‘Sleep well, did you, while they did that to your baby?’ Roger asked.

  Kate shook her head wearily. They didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Not to you.’ Simon’s voice trembled.

  Pig got to his feet and peered at the papers in his hand because looking at the words through the black stocking was almost like reading in the dark.

  ‘After about twenty weeks, the legs of the foetus—’

  ‘Baby,’ Jack interrupted. ‘It’s a baby.’

  ‘The legs of the baby –’ Pig read like a stilted schoolboy again – ‘are drawn through the birth canal with forceps, after which scissors are used to puncture the back of the head, so—’

  ‘The base of the back of the head.’ Simon interrupted this time. ‘The soft bit.’

  ‘Please,’ Pig protested. ‘This is bad enough without.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Simon apologized.

  Kate was afraid she was going to vomit.

  Pig went on: ‘So that they can use suction to remove the brains, which causes the skull to collapse, making it easier to remove the entire foetus.’

  ‘Is that what they did to your baby?’ Roger asked Kate.

  ‘No.’ Kate’s answer was inaudible, her face parchment pale and sick.

  ‘Answer her, Beast,’ Jack ordered.

  ‘I did answer,’ Kate said. ‘No.’

  ‘Bet they did,’ Jack said. ‘Bet they fucking did.’

  ‘They might have done it with salt,’ Roger said. ‘They stick in a long needle and put concentrated salt into the amniotic fluid so the baby breathes it in and swallows it and dies of poisoning.’

  ‘Enough,’ Simon said softly. ‘Please.’

  ‘All right,’ Roger agreed. ‘But I think she ought to tell us which they used on her baby.’

  ‘They didn’t use anything.’ Rage was rising in Kate, toughening her up.

  ‘Your baby never had any choice, though, did it?’ Jack said.

  ‘No,’ Kate said, for that, after all, was true. ‘But—’

  ‘I learned so much –’ Pig was reading her words again now – ‘during that short, interminable time—’ He paused, seeming to find the words difficult. ‘About abortion procedures, both therapeutic and illegal, in different countries. I learned much more than I wanted to know, details of nightmare methods and their repercussions that are now engraved on my mind.’

  ‘Poor you,’ said Roger scathingly.

  Kate’s eyes hardened. ‘Not my best writing, I’ll admit.’

  Simon moved so quickly that she startled everyone, her slap rocking Kate, leaving the mark of her latex-covered fingers vividly on her cheek.

  ‘Slow to anger, our Sy.’ Jack sounded pleased.

  ‘Sorry,’ Simon said, to him and the others.

  ‘I did not have an abortion.’ Kate’s eyes were stinging as well as her face. ‘I did not have a fucking abortion.’

  Though if she had, she went on in her head, it would have been her right.

  Not brave enough, stupid enough, to say that out loud.

  ‘They told you your baby had spina bifida, didn’t they?’ Roger asked.

  How did they know that when she’d never written about it?

  ‘Didn’t they?’ Jack made her jump.

  ‘Yes, they did, but—’

  ‘And you wanted a termination, but your husband did not.’ Roger again.

  Kate stared up at her. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Invasion of privacy,’ Simon said.

  Jack laughed. ‘She doesn’t like that.’

  ‘Your baby didn’t like it much either,’ Roger said.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Kate said, ‘I lost my baby.’

  ‘You wanted an abortion, didn’t you?’ Jack badgered. ‘Tell the truth, Beast.’

  ‘What’s the point –’ Kate felt her cheeks flaring – ‘of my saying anything if you’re not prepared to even listen to me?’

  He moved towards her so rapidly that she flinched, anticipating another slap, but instead he pulled out a roll of adhesive tape from one of his pockets, ripped off a length and smacked it over her mouth.

  ‘No point at all,’ he said.

  ‘My mum came to call this week –’ Roger took up the reading again – ‘which means, of course, I’ve been gnawing my fingernails and ripping out my hair.’

  ‘Not just a baby killer then,’ said Jack.

  ‘Cruelty to mothers, too,’ said Simon.

  ‘Almost as bad in our book,’ said Roger.

  ‘Worse, I’d say,’ said Jack.

  ‘What would you say, bitch?’ asked Roger.

  ‘What would you say, Beast, if you could?’ Jack’s smirk was clear in his tone.

  ‘If I had a mum like yours –’ Pig hadn’t spoken in several minutes – ‘I’d be the happiest man in the world.’

  Kate’s senses were reeling again, further confused by the new slant, and was there any chance that they knew Bel, or—

  ‘If I’d ever had a mum at all,’ Jack said, ‘I’d have shown her some respect.’

  Kate fought a new wave of panic, tried to ride it. None of this could possibly have any connection with her mother, who’d been so totally supportive when she’d lost the baby. And she could remember the column that the last snippet had come from, too, knew that in fact, she’d gone on to take herself to task for being unfair to Bel, had ended up being hardest on herself instead, after which it had turned into a mini-treatise on guilt. As many of her columns tended to.

  The tape over her mouth was more tightly stretched than before.

  Not the first journalist to be gagged.

  She wondered, abruptly, if she would ever write another column.

  Laurie

  Laurie had been up for a while, was drinking coffee in the semi-wreckage of her parents’ kitchen while Pete and Shelly slept upstairs, presumably exhausted.

  Laurie thought about her dad’s late night visit to her room, the unexpected warmth of it, and one of her self-damning attacks of shame engulfed her.

  The fact that Sam was so well cared for was all down to them.

  Not living with me, though, she batted straight back.

  She pushed the argument away. Same old thoughts, with no point to them. The only sensible way forward, the only valid purpose to her existence for the foreseeable future, was to go on living for her visits to Sam – even if they were more for her own sake than his.

  An old weakness had resurfaced last night, she realized. The awareness that she still, despite everything, needed her parents. She still missed the old days, the warmth and love that she had, once upon a time in her naivety, believed unconditional; the comfort of hugs and of the belief that her parents were the best.

  Sam would never feel that way about her.

  Whoever’s fault that was, it was a sad, true fact.

  Laurie drained her coffee and went upstairs to get dressed.

  Not long now.

  The Game

  Another wave of panic was just subsiding as a new one began to rise.

  Jack had begun to pace, striding back and forth across the room, something brewing, something bad, worse than this.

  He stopped, suddenly, right in front of Kate, and pulled something out of another of his pockets. Something square and small.

  She stared at it.

  A condom packet.

  ‘What is it they say women like you – stupid bitches who get yourselves knocked up, who don’t deserve babies – what is it you need most? In school, in our stupid fucking nanny state, what are they always banging on about?’ Jack held the packet up. ‘Safe sex, right?’

  Kate felt her mind shrivel up, burrow into itself.

  ‘This
is what I wanted to do to you,’ Jack said. ‘I wanted to educate you, teach you a fucking lesson with this—’

  He leaned forward suddenly, thrust the packet up against her face, and Kate could smell its plastic wrapper, and she thought again that she was going to be sick, turned her head away, but Jack grabbed her hair, turned her back to face him again.

  ‘But the others wouldn’t let me,’ he said, ‘so you’re in luck, aren’t you?’

  Kate was trembling violently.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ He yanked at her hair again, dragging at the roots.

  Her eyes were wet, and she loathed him, despised him, but she nodded, had to, had to, because if she did not, God only knew what this man might do.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Fucking right.’

  Ralph

  Not long now until the next stage.

  Till Jack, Simon and Pig left the barn and Turner.

  They had discussed at length who would stay with her, had settled on Roger for a number of reasons. First, because two men would be needed for strength. Second, because Simon was, they all agreed, potentially the softest touch, and there was no knowing what tricks the first Beast might try to play if left alone with her. Lastly, because not only was Roger much tougher than she looked, but also because if anyone did turn up at Caisleán while the others were gone, Roger would be the best equipped to whip off her mask and act out whatever role seemed right at the time.

  Ralph wanted to phone them now so badly it was making her teeth ache, but if anything were wrong, they would be phoning her.

  Their protector. Their Chief.

  She found it so hard to contemplate disaster: the kids being stopped, arrested.

  ‘I’ll always protect you,’ she had once told them.

  But as the years had passed and the games had grown rarer and riskier, she had amended that to: ‘I’ll always do my best to protect you.’

  The thought of them incarcerated and, worse, unreachable, was unbearable.

  Ralph turned her thoughts to Caisleán, pictured the scene.

  Turner trussed up and helpless, being forced to listen to her crimes.

  Such basic crimes against humanity. Against the unborn and mothers.