Becoming Tess

by H K Thompson

  In Tess he saw the under and overtones of his parents. In a turn of the head, a facial feature or a gesture or movement or a tone of voice or a phrase, he saw and heard the dreaded presence of his parents. They seemed to accompany her. When she appeared at the cottage door, uninvited, he had seen his mother and his father in turn and simultaneously, demanding entrance into his sanctuary. She had lied to him about why she was there. He could see through her to them and they were there just as night followed day. He knew what she was up to. She was spying on him for them. His paranoia, stoked by his addiction and the brain damage it had inflicted over the years, sometimes overcame him and he pushed the broken front door shut and pulled his decrepit and threadbare furniture in front of it to prevent invasion. He muttered and chattered until he finally subsided into both his solace and his enemy, sleep. And then it all began again, only this time in the boundless possibilities of the unconscious. Here there were no holds barred and anything could happen. Stephen’s rock and hard place now were sleep and waking. There was no let-up.

  He rolled his scrawny cigarette and looked about him for some matches. He found a box on the shelf by his chair with one remaining, hidden amongst the dirty charcoal of those struck and put back for some strange and unremembered reason. He struck it in anticipation of the meagre comfort the tobacco would give him and drew on the roll-up, inhaling what there was of the smoke, rejuvenated more by the memory of the nicotine hit than the reality. The day was grey, in keeping with his state. He felt a pang of hunger, stood unsteadily and searched the kitchen surfaces, the cupboard and the defunct fridge for scraps of nourishment. He made a mental note to go shopping for food before he died of starvation. He made himself tea without milk and sat back down on his chair to recover. He dozed off and when he woke with a start he had no idea how long he’d slept. He could hear a noise which he took to be, rightly, a vehicle coming down the track towards the house and he became instantly alarmed. People never came here. And not twice in one day. He thought quickly through the fug of his mental processes, more in panic than in any sensible way. His anxiety landed him in paralysis. His thoughts were too quick and unformed and he could not translate them into meaningful action. Before he knew it someone was pushing open his broken front door dispersing his broken furniture and he thought, wrongly, that it was Tess come back to have another go. He lurched out into the passageway intent this time on repelling her for good, and came face to face with his nemesis, a burly form encased in leather jacket, bullet head but with dark glasses removed of necessity in the deep shadows of the house. He was followed by another who looked similar, who grabbed him in an arm lock and shoved him roughly back into the kitchen. For Stephen it was like being a wisp, propelled by an inestimable force against which there was no resistance. He knew he was powerless. He had no strength. He thought, with sudden pathos and clarity, How are the mighty fallen, as he landed with a shocking thump on the armchair that had only recently offered him comfort and rest.

  Last into the room was a man in a suit, smart and trim, slim and efficient. Stephen recognised him and knew him to be relentless and entirely without the civilising virtue of mercy. He groaned involuntarily and the man in the suit smiled and said “Yes, Stevie, it’s me.” His heart sank as he heard his name spoken with an even tone of menace. It was doubly menacing, he wearily thought, because that was the name his mother called him when she was in the process of inveigling him into her own personal conspiracy. She called him Stevie with all the threatening nuance of an animal eating its own young. He had cringed then, years ago, with the terror of the suborning as he capitulated to her favours and went along with her manipulations knowing that it would lead to damnation. So the man in the suit suborned him now in a play act that brought back the horrors of the past and confronted him with the horrors of the present. For one chilling moment Stephen believed that he was already dead, that there was no need to resist, his fate was settled by forces so much greater than himself. He dropped his shoulders, sitting there in the once again comforting chair, and decided to give in to his destiny, to die a painful death of retribution for things he had done. He knew that he had cheated the suit and that one day they would catch up with him and despatch him.

  Stephen said disingenuously, “What do you want? What have I done? You’ve got it wrong.”

  It was a gesture of resistance, a lame challenge, a sign of impotence as the child defended himself weakly and tragically against the insurmountable power of the grown-up.

  “Come on, Stevie,” he said as the leather jackets loomed over him, their hands crossed at their waists as if in some parody of military attention.

  “Where’s the money you owe me, Stevie?” His name sounded like a chant in his ringing ears: Stevie, Stevie, Stevie. He was haunted in his own kitchen, the demons had entered and there they were, in front of him. He felt sick and dizzy, on his last legs, holding on to the irony of his name as it was spoken to him and as it reverberated through his head.

  “Go away,” he shouted hoarsely and weakly. “Get out of my house.”

  He was being brave and foolish at the same time as he looked up at the three faces above him, staring down at him, fixing him with a gaze of both malevolence and ennui.

  “Come on, Stevie. We’re not going until you give me what I want. It does belong to me after all.”

  He spoke again, his two mutes edging closer to the chair, rubbing their knuckles as if in preparation.

  He knew what was next and he flinched, slightly but visibly and the first blow came suddenly, violently and shockingly, into the side of his head as he sat below them. It almost knocked him off the chair, only the battered arm saving him from the hard stone floor. He reeled and felt a sensation in his nose and a smell of singeing and then a pain in the same place in his head where he had fallen before, with Tess. He cursed with terror in his voice, straightened slightly and looked up, sideways, at the mute who had hit him. He turned his head dizzily and looked at the man in the suit. His eyes felt dead. There was no expression, only the helpless confusion of the beaten. He knew he was finished and he decided not to fight. The money they had come for was long gone and he had only his broken and sad life to give them. Somewhere deep in him he was saying to them, “Take me, take me. There is nothing else. Do it quickly.”

  Speed was not in the mind of his persecutor. He signalled minutely to his henchmen, who picked Stephen up like a scrap of flotsam and dropped him onto a kitchen chair, one of only two, battered also, and began to tie him onto the sorry piece of furniture with four thin lengths of rope. They tied him tight and the rope, he knew, would slow his circulation and that would be uncomfortable. He had an intense awareness now of what was happening. His mind had cleared miraculously and he felt as if he were entering the home straight and soon he would be at the finishing line and all the pain and struggle would be over. He felt glad. He felt happy that it would soon all end and that they would do their job. This was his deliverance and they were his deliverers, these brutal men in suit and leathers. He looked up at them arrayed before him, collapsing at the waist from his exhaustion, and they began. It was as if in slow motion, the blows falling one after another onto his raddled frame. There was a certain epic poetry to it as their choreographed routine inflicted excruciating damage to his face and head. There were some blows to his chest and kicks to his shins but he could scarcely be bothered to differentiate their destination, he only knew that he hurt all over, on every inch of his body, inside and out.

  His was a crescendo and catharsis of pain that left him shocked but peaceful as the salvo stopped and his inquisitors paused to draw breath and listen for his confession. But there was none. Only a sound from outside, unrecognisable but distinct. His tormentors spun round to face the window and one made for the door. He disappeared and was gone, shouting something after seconds and then followed by the other two. Then Stephen felt cheated, he felt angry that his end had been interrupted, that the moment for which he now realised he had been preparing himself had
been intruded upon. His stay of execution felt like an outrage to him. He wriggled helplessly on his chair, the ropes biting into his wrists like a chastisement. There must be someone out there but no one ever comes here, he thought.

  There was only the silence of the darkening day and the wind and the rain that clattered intermittently on his windows and the undergrowth outside. He could hear nothing of them now. They had fallen silent. They had moved away from the cottage and off into his hinterland of fields, woods and hedgerows. He sat slumped and distressed, anxiety growing. The peace and atonement he had felt only minutes before were evaporating. He was returning to the half-life that was so familiar to him. That was worse than death, he thought. Much worse. He was tipped again into the endless recrimination against those who had wronged him, the bitter fruits of his unrequited anger and the pain that consumed him at his core. The feeling of being cheated grew stronger and he railed inside himself against the inconsiderateness of everyone and particularly of whoever had disturbed his final eradication.

  He had reconciled himself to his end, he thought, and that immense effort of will had come to nothing. Someone had interfered on purpose, had come to his cottage and intervened in his fate. Stephen Dawson had always had a strong sense of entitlement, probably originating in the lack of anyone giving freely to him in his early life. He had built the huge narcissistic edifice of being deserving by right, of which there was to be no question or doubt. From the deep and inexorable deficit of love that Stephen suffered he constructed, painstakingly and without his conscious knowledge, an immovable belief that he was entitled to whatever was there for the taking, whether it be money, or emotion, the lives of his addict customers, the cottage in which he now existed, his possessions, whatever he desired and, even now, his death. Through all the machinations and manipulations of this all-consuming sense of being owed, he had got what he wanted, he had taken it, used and consumed it and, never being satisfied, he had reached and grabbed for more and yet more.

  He listened for sounds outside the cottage but still could hear only the rain and the wind rushing through the trees. There were no voices to be heard. He knew that their vehicle was still outside. They had set off on foot to pursue whoever had appeared uninvited at the cottage. It had to be Tess. But why had she come back? Did she want to take advantage again of his weakened state, to humiliate him further? He became agitated, rattling the chair legs on the stone floor as he fought against his captivity. He was enraged that he had not been finished off, that he still had to bear the grotesque charade of torture and taunting that only delayed his end. Stephen was feeling sorry for himself, that he was not dead but suffering the indignity of confinement and immobility as he waited on the whim of his tormentors.

  And then, after what seemed an age, he heard faint voices in the distance, above the sound of the worsening weather and the rustling and grating of brush and branches, coming closer to him. As he listened with dread to their approach and the different tones of the three voices he could discern, he wondered whether they had found Tess and what they would have done to her. He felt nothing at the possibility, only a perverse satisfaction that she would have suffered too, just as she had made him suffer. He experienced a small frisson of pleasure at the idea, that justice had been done and that she’d been made to pay. The feeling of pleasure grew and grew. They had done it for him but they had no idea of their favour.

  He afforded himself a fleeting smile and concentrated again on his vigil, waiting for them to re-enter his house. But they stood outside for some minutes. He could hear their lowered voices faintly talking, then a pause, then more inaudible conversation, then the unexpected sound of a car door opening and shutting followed by two more doors slamming shut, disturbing the quiet between the gusts of wind that swept the countryside. Then a starting engine followed and the vehicle drove away down the track, picking up speed at an alarming rate, stones flying out with the spin of the wheels and hitting the walls of the outbuildings. And then the quiet again and Stephen left to die slowly, unable to loosen his bonds. He was completely helpless and the victim of his teeming, hateful mind briefly cajoling first himself for this turn of fortune and then Tess, for coming to remind him of who he was, where he had come from and for prolonging his end. He lingered for what seemed like hours on her culpability, absolving his own responsibility by blaming her.

  He fell into a swoon or a sleep and sometime later he awoke to the sound of his front door being pushed hard. He played safe and remained immobile, as if unconscious. He heard a figure come into the kitchen and pause, taking in the scene before them. He felt his wrist being held by a hand and for a moment he was transported to a recollection of warmth and holding deep in his bones, a hallucination perhaps because he could not remember when or who had held him warmly. He did not move a muscle and his breathing was shallow, waiting for the next movement, for confirmation that the hand that held his wrist belonged to Tess. There was no one else. He felt the hand held close to his mouth, the slight warmth of it radiating out to touch his face. Then the figure moved, to the sink, he thought, and there was the sound of clatter. The next thing he felt was cold metal on his right wrist and a sawing movement that began to hurt him as the blunt metal and the rope bit into his flesh, already sensitive from blood deprivation. When the binding gave way he allowed his hand to drop limply by his side as his rescuer set to work on the left-hand rope.

  There were the same sensations, painful and uncomfortable, and the rope snapped and his hand fell to his side, swinging slightly. He felt his body move to the side as if he were suffering from vertigo. He couldn’t get his bearings. He was disorientated and his hands were hurting as the circulation began to fill the starved blood vessels. He thought wryly, Life hurts. Then he fell with a crash to the stone floor, sideways, unable to control his disorientation, with the chair still attached to him at his ankles. Involuntarily he let out a moan, mostly from the surprise but also from the thump as the air was knocked from his body. His rescuer cut the ropes at his ankles and he flopped to the floor in the immense relief of no longer being upright and shackled.

  He began to move his legs and Tess, for he was sure now that it was her, began to rub his already painful wrists. Suddenly, the pain penetrated his sensibilities and he lashed out at her. It was then that he heard her say:

  “Stephen, it’s me. Tess. Don’t fight me. I’m here to help you.”

  Chapter 20

  Tess sat down onto a kitchen chair with a thump as Stephen pulled her back with unexpected force. There was desperation in him as he prevented her departure and made her stay. She found that she could not refuse him. She was still compelled by complicated forces in her that kept her there in his derelict cottage, being abused and now pleaded with. She found it difficult in her own mind to navigate the tortuous pathways of Stephen’s desires, needs and aversions, and her own for staying. His actions were beyond the realm of rationality, but she was aware that there was an indisputable logic to them. The rejections and revilements of the adult Stephen were at grievous odds with the need for comfort and safety that Tess could see in his frightened eyes. She understood such conflicts and suffering and succumbed to his unspoken and rough gesture, sitting quietly and in readiness in the chair, waiting for him to make his next move, wondering how it would come.

  She was no longer physically afraid of him, cowed by any superior physical strength. She knew she had bettered him and so did he. He was no longer the invincible bully; rather he was a beaten shell, ruined by life, the life he had somehow chosen. She didn’t feel sorry for him but felt that she was helping a wounded animal that needed her, and while with Stephen such an inclination was hazardous. But she had a confidence that her caring was within bounds and that she could control the situation. She was prepared now for his unpredictabilities, his sudden flights of violence and pushing away, his involuntary aggression long since his master. She felt in charge of her situation, able to stand up to his ranting and anger.

  He loosened his grip o
n her wrist, realising that she was not resisting the aggressive gesture that was asking her to stay. He dropped his hand and looked her in the eye, the first time that he had truly communicated with her since she’d arrived. His look was returned and he turned his head to focus on the wall behind her shoulder. Her answering look was alarmingly unfamiliar. He said:

  “Why did you come back?” he was suddenly lucid and direct, his voice hoarse and uneven.

  “Because you interrupted our conversation with your hateful violence,” she replied, surprising herself with her commanding tone. There was some anger behind her reply but, she felt, it was good anger, the anger that comes from feeling strongly about things.

  “I came to see you, to see how you were and all you could do was accuse me of things that I’m not guilty of. That wasn’t fair, Stephen. Yes, I came because Mum had asked me but I also came because I wanted to see you, to see how you were. You’re my brother.” She found herself saying things she hadn’t expected, and she wasn’t entirely convinced by them.

  He moved his eyes from the wall behind her shoulder to her face again. In his eyes was the look of an angry child who didn’t trust her. There was no place in his psyche for an emotion that would expose him to betrayal and abandonment. At some point in the past he had reached out and been rejected, the object of his supplication had turned their back. Eventually his need and capacity for trust had been replaced by the implacable stubbornness of mistrust and the deep need to be alone. It was this that was part of the merciless inhumanity of Stephen, of his ability to reject in turn all empathy in himself and cut off any link or connection he might have had with other people.