‘Are you sure about that?’ Ian leans forwards in his chair. ‘Mary, when I told Hester about what happened when you hypnotized me, she practically wet herself. According to her, that was absolutely textbook hypnotic suggestion. Because it was just after you’d been doing all that research in the library, and Paul had just dragged Ben away, so we needed something else for the film.’
‘So she thinks the details of Dory’s death were all conjured up by me in an attempt to salvage my career.’
‘You have to admit it looks pretty iffy. So I thought I’d ferret around, do a bit of research to see if I could get together some supportive evidence, to shift the argument back in the other direction. That’s why Viv’s been following up some of your past cases, to see if your published accounts match the historical record. And why I got in touch with Karleen to interview her for the film.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. Hester had let slip that your new book was running into trouble—’
Mary snorts. ‘It was doing fine before she put her oar in.’
‘So I thought I’d rustle up a decent case for the defence before I said anything. Then Ben found those fucking diaries and it all went frigging tits up.’
‘Ah yes,’ Mary says. ‘The diaries.’
‘Yes, the diaries. The ones you might have read as a girl. Are you refuting the Bridey Murphy interpretation now?’
‘Yes, totally – though you’re right, I was pretty discombobulated at the time. But I’ve since discovered that Miss Turnbull never took the diaries out of her flat, and would never have allowed me near the place in case I encountered Lord Jim. I know, I know,’ she says as he opens his mouth to object, ‘it wouldn’t stand up in court, as it were – but it’s enough to convince me, which is all that matters to me.’
‘Do you think it’s enough to convince three million BBC2 viewers?’
Mary shrugs. ‘They’ll have to make up their own minds.’
A heavy square machine she hadn’t noticed earlier whirs and beeps suddenly then starts churning out a series of typewritten pages that look disturbingly like one of her own academic papers.
‘So what happened when you investigated my old cases?’ she asks.
‘Most of them check out with the historical record – which is pretty bloody amazing, actually – but I’m afraid there were one or two striking anomalies.’
‘You do realize they could be due to cryptoamnesia too,’ says Mary. ‘Hester probably neglected to mention that it can work in two directions – both to create a false memory and to adulterate or otherwise distort a true one.’
There’s a knock at the door and, when he opens it, a uniformed waitress wheels in a loaded trolley. The scents of fresh coffee and warm brioche fill the room and Mary discovers she has an appetite after all. When the waitress has gone, she pours herself an unaccustomed bath-sized bowl of latte and dunks the corner of a similarly outsized croissant.
‘You were telling me about cryptoamnesia,’ says Ian, lifting the silver cover off a plate of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs and reaching for the pepper-grinder.
‘Well, when people encounter a gap in their memories they tend to fill it in with whatever seems to fit with the surrounding information – which is not always what actually happened. In the purest case you get a completely fabricated memory, in which every detail is untrue. But what more often results is a patchwork of remembered and imagined events as the conscious mind attempts to paper over the cracks, as it were.’
She takes another bite of croissant, then cradles her cup in two hands. Any moment now, she’ll start wanting a Gitanes, but there’s a discreet ‘no smoking’ sign on the table and a smoke alarm in the ceiling immediately above. She wonders what would happen if she opened the window.
‘Hester thinks I should call in a second hypnotherapist,’ remarks Ian casually. ‘To find out from Ben how much of this Annie story he was picking up from you. Apparently this was never tried in the Bridey Murphy case – though God knows why; it’s the obvious thing to do – hypnotize that Virginia woman again and find out if she really did meet the real Bridey Murphy when she was wee.’
Mary stiffens. ‘Why not just hypnotize me?’ she suggests sarcastically. ‘Find out if I did read that diary. Find out how much I knew in advance about all the hundreds of cases I’ve treated in this way since I started practising.’
‘I want to believe you—’
‘I don’t need your belief, Ian,’ she snaps, pushing her plate away. ‘When I agreed to this film, I knew there was a chance I’d be blown out of the water. And of course if that happens, it will be enormously difficult for me on a whole series of levels. But that doesn’t mean I want to be cosseted and protected. I want to find out about this phenomenon just as much as you do – even if it means I’m proved wrong.’
‘Oh, I do love you.’
‘For heaven’s sake! Can’t you be serious for a minute?’
‘I am being serious, Mimi. You’re clever and passionate, utterly original, sexy as hell—’
‘Please don’t start that all again.’
‘When you kissed me the other night—’
‘As I recall, it was actually you who kissed me,’ she objects.
‘But you kissed me back – don’t try to deny it.’
‘What about Hester?’ she asks, then regrets it immediately.
‘Hester? What’s she got to do with it?’ Then his face clears. ‘You think I’m having an affair with Hester, don’t you?’
She blushes. ‘It did cross my mind,’ she says. ‘After all your comments about how bad it was with the lovely Christina.’
‘Hah! So you’ve been considering it then.’ He shoots her a triumphant look. ‘After all these years of playing hard to get, you’re finally considering having an affair with me.’
She opens her mouth to deny it, then closes it again. What would be the point? He wouldn’t believe her – and he’s right, in a way. A part of her has been toying with the idea ever since she walked him back to his hotel that night.
‘Come on then,’ he says. ‘Kiss me again.’
‘What?’
‘Take off your ridiculous boots, Mary Charlton, and let down your hair and come to bed with me.
Before she can object, he’s fallen to his knees in front of her and has started to unlace one of her Doc Marten’s. She knows she should stop him, that this is ridiculous, that she’s being irresponsible – but she seems to have lost the power of speech, and the sun’s warm on her hair, and her legs have gone weak, literally—
He’s just easing the boot off when there’s a loud knock on the door. ‘It’ll just be the waitress for the trolley,’ he says, getting to his feet. ‘Sorry, I should have put up a do not disturb notice.’
But when he opens the door, Laura and Ben are standing there.
‘Howay, lad,’ says Laura. ‘Get your gear together. It’s time to put your Auntie Laura on the witness stand.’
Chapter Fifty-Five
…Can you see the hallway? Good. And the doors? Now I want you to open one of the doors and step through. Where are you? What’s happening?
1919
It’s a Sunday and I’ve just wakened up. The curtains are drawn so God knows what time it is. My head’s splitting and I want to spew up. I roll over and there’s the slops bucket by the bed, and the smell tips me over the edge, so I’m retching, puking up, and it stinks of whisky. And each time I retch, it’s like my head’s going to crack open and my eyeballs pop out of their bloody sockets. And I’m thinking: what a fucking stupid waste of a day off.
Now here comes Flo with a cloth and a bowl of water, and kneels by the bed and wipes my face for me, and takes the bucket off down the stairs to empty in the nettie. So I’m flopped back on the pillow, feeling like shit, when she comes in again with a fresh bucket and a cup of tea, then opens the curtains a bit – enough to see by, but not so much as to make me wince – and she’s just
pulling the door closed behind her when I call her back.
‘Thanks, pet,’ I say. ‘That was some night.’
‘Ay, seems like.’
And I reach out a hand and she takes it and comes to sit on the bed. And I’m trying to dredge up a morsel of tenderness for her, for she’s bonny enough still, and does her best, I suppose. I can see a fresh bruise on her arm, where she’s rolled her sleeve up. It’s a funny shape: long and narrow. Further up, I can see the edge of an older one peeping out: greenish, fading.
Last night’s and last week’s, I’m thinking. I can’t remember doing them, but how else would she get them? And that red one under her hair on the one side that never fades, that makes me ashamed to look at. Talking to her now, man to wife on the bed of a Sunday morning, I can’t think what gets into me.
Half the time I don’t know my own strength, see? With the bairns, right, I forget they’re only little; so I go to give them a bit slap, for cheeking me, giving me a look, and they go over like bloomin’ skittles. Thing is, you need that sort of force when you’re dealing with a mouthy deckie, or some snooty Scot down the Low Lights.
Then after, I’ll catch her staring at me with that sorrowful look on her face, and it makes me want to give her one too. Not that she’d ever say anything – oh no, not her. I’d like it better if she’d have a proper barny with me. But she thinks if she plays nicey-nice, and smiles, and puts on her lacy pinny, that’ll sweeten me. Well it might work with her mam and da, but it’s not working with me.
So here’s me lying in bed, drinking the tea, and I’m thinking, how did this happen to me? When did I go from being a young lad with all the lasses chasing me, to a husband with a wife he can’t stand and a houseful of bairns he never asked for? Because she’s trapped me, hasn’t she? Florence butter-wouldn’t-melt Sheraton. What with that Annie business and getting herself pregnant, well I had to marry her, didn’t I? It was either that or bugger off somewhere like nancy Jimmy did.
Bugger off! That’s a laugh, isn’t it?
Looking back, though, that’s exactly what I should of done, and never mind how it looked. Packed a bag and hopped on a trawler bound for Iceland or somewhere. Shetland. Norway. But you don’t think, do you, when you’re young? You can’t see into the future. You can’t see that if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep heading where you’re heading, and you’ll get there in the end – but it’ll not be where you want to be.
So now I’m thinking: I’ll make it up to them, her and the bairns. I’ll stop boozing. Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? You come ashore and go straight down the boozer with the lads. Thing is, when you’re back off a ten-day trip, and you’ve cranned out and collected your share, well you’ve got to let off a bit steam, haven’t you?
Then you come home and you’ve a different kind of steam to let off, but the bairns are there, and she’s got the tea ready and her careful welcome-home-pet face on, when all you want to do is pull her skirt up and bung her one. But you can’t, can you? Not with the bairns there. So then you want to bung her something else, for trying to make it better when it was broke a long long time ago.
It’s nowt to do with the money. The money’s great. Even if I piss half it down the drain, I’m still raking it in. I told skipper Milburn, didn’t I? The otter trawl’s the gear to go for. But he’d never listen. It’s got these canny tickler chains at the front, see, that tickle up the long stuff from the bottom while you’re pulling the net along, so there’s nowhere else for them to go but inside.
Amazing what gets scooped up with the cod, mind. Stuff I never knew was down there. Fry all shapes and sizes, penny stamps, shrimp, crab, weed. Most of it rubbish, but still.
By, but there’s nowt like the sight of a bulging cod end coming to the surface when you’re hauling a trawl catch, with the warps straining and the capstan screaming at full steam. And you’re hauling and hauling, bracing your legs – then here it comes, this great mass of fish, and the boat’s listing right over with the weight of it, and the gulls going crazy. Then there’s that beautiful moment, when the cod end’s clear of the waves and you’ve swivelled the crane to bring it over the boat, and it’s just hanging there dripping water and small stuff, then you pull the warps and let it spill onto the deck like a great whoosh of silver spunk.
With the long lines, see, it’s all winding, winding, winding; then every few feet or so there’ll be a cod or haddock to unhook and chuck in the hold. Fair enough, it’s only the biguns that take the bait down – the littluns just nibble it off, don’t they? So you’ve a cleaner catch, and you can sort them as you’re unhooking. But I can’t be getting on with that faff any more.
With the herring it was the same malarkey with the old lints. So you’d shoot the nets and they’d hang there like a curtain while you drifted, and the littluns would swim straight through, and the biguns would get stuck and try to back out, but they can’t because their gills are caught. So when you haul you’ve got a net stuck full of flapping fish that you’ve to shake out, yard by yard, one-two-three-shake, one-two-three-shake, for three, four, five hours, spell and spell about, which really takes it out of you.
Looking back I can hardly believe we did it like that. I mean, the seine nets make it so easy, with small holes so the fish don’t have to be shaken off, and two drifters either side, so you wrap it round the shoals, and pull the lower warps tight, till you’ve made your purse. So it comes up like a cod end, doesn’t it? All in one go: a purse of silver darlings, all sizes. And the deckies sort them – seven inch and over for the market, and the tiddlers shovelled on to the farm trucks for fertilizer. What could be simpler?
Anyway, like I say, we’re raking it in.
I see skipper Milburn sometimes, down the quayside: still on the Osprey, still mooring up along by Clifford’s Fort. He’s stuck with the long-lining – though God knows who he’s got picking flither for him these days, and setting the hooks and mucking, since Mrs Milburn’s gone.
Da says he’s never got over it – the two of them going, one after another, so quick.
…Good, very good, Tom. Now I want you to go back to when you were a younger man. It’s the summer of 1898, the middle of the herring season. Where are you? What are you doing?
1898
I’ve got Da’s matches. He’s thinks he keeps losing them, leaving them in the pub and that. But I’ve nicked them, haven’t I? So he can’t have his bakkie till he’s brought some more. I like to see him casting about for them, then cussing and stamping out the house down to old Ma Burdon’s shop. Stupid bastard.
I tried smoking his pipe once. When he was passed out in bed one night. I tipped the spit out and wiped the end, then tamped in a bit of fresh bakkie and tried to light it, sucking on it like I’d seen him do, to make the flame go in. I must have been about ten, eleven – coughed so hard I nearly puked up! It’s like anything though, isn’t it? Hauling, coiling, splicing, gipping. You get the hang in the end.
That night, though, trying to get the pipe lit, I burnt my fingers on the match. You’ve to keep the match going, see, sucking and sucking on the flame till it catches. And it takes bloody ages because pipe bakkie’s sticky as treacle.
God knows where Mam was. Out in the scullery most likely, sorting herself out; having a bit cry.
Anyway, the matches kept burning down, so I’d drop them just before the bakkie caught. It was driving me nuts, so this one time I held on to it instead of flinging it away; I was that mad to get the thing lit. And this time I did it! Fingers stung worse than with bloomin’ jellies, but I got that pipe lit.
After that I kept on with it, didn’t I? Striking a match, then keeping a hold till it burnt down. It got so’s I could hardly feel it any more. I mean, I could still feel it, sharp as ever, but it never broke through to me any more. I could look at the flame burning lower, and the wood going black, and just squeeze tight and breathe slow till it went past.
The night Mam died I went out and bought three boxes. I wanted to kill
my da that night. If he’d not been blubbing and clinging on to me, I would have done too. I mean, it’s a bit late to myther on now about how he loves her, when she’s popped her clogs. I wanted to kill her too, for leaving us with him. But that was Mam, wasn’t it? Always leaving us with him. One slap too many and off she’d slope to Nana’s till he sobered up. Never gave a thought to what would happen to us, did she? Load of quivering mice locked in with a spitting cat.
I kept thinking, one day I’ll stand up to him. If I do enough matches, it’ll make me hard. But by the time I was hard enough, she’d pegged it, hadn’t she? It was her heart, the doc said. I felt like saying, what heart? That got kicked out of her a long time ago.
Thing is, soon as I faced up to him – you know, gave him a proper thump – he keeled over, didn’t he? It was pathetic. One minute he’s roaring, stotting, lashing out at me. Next thing you know, he’s out in the scullery wiping the blood from his nose. And when he comes back in, he’s never said a word. Just sat down to his tea as if nowt happened – and never tried it on with me again.
I look at him now, great lump of lard, and wonder how I was ever so scared of him. It’s like anything, see? You’ve just got to show who’s the boss.
Good, now stay in that time. You’re still a young man. Do you know a girl called Annie?
Annie Milburn? I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know spuggie Annie. She was always tagging along with us, wasn’t she? Me and the lads: Jimmy, Collie and Hylton. We were a gang, see? And she wanted to join in.
Then later, after Mam died and Da was put in jail after that barny down the Bullring – well they shared us out, didn’t they? The lads off the boat. Took a bairn each till Da had done his time. And I went to the skipper’s place, and berthed in with Jimmy and Frank.
Right up to that point I was fine: burning my matches, keeping it going – even at the funeral – and later, seeing Da getting lifted and carted off. But lodging at the skipper’s place really did for me. The way Mrs Milburn was with those bairns – it made me want to blub like a wean. Watching them tugging at her, asking for a cuddle, and getting one – it made me feel it all, see? About Mam dying and that.
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