The Deadly Space Between

by Patricia Duncker

  I danced back to the hostel carrying bags of new clothes, which I hid in my suitcase. I couldn’t hide the fact that my plait had gone. At first my German teacher was appalled.

  ‘Isobel! What have you done?’

  ‘As you see.’

  ‘Well . . .’ She smothered a laugh.

  ‘What will your parents say?’

  ‘Look, the Nun’s had her plait off.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘You look almost normal, Lizard.’

  I glittered with pleasure.

  ‘Got a few things too. Want to see?’

  The dormitory was all admiration at my conquest and my purchases.

  ‘This your sugar daddy’s hand-out?’

  ‘He likes giving me things.’

  I am very haughty. I let the money do the talking.

  Pause.

  ‘Cool.’

  I have had two of my three wishes.

  I lay awake that night and hatched my plan. Deceit came easily. I had to cry off the school trip. I had to find Roehm again.

  I wilted theatrically during the language lessons, and then lied about my period pains, which had in fact all but disappeared. The other girls were in on it. They seconded my performance. My German teacher wasn’t quite taken in. The shrinking violet had done a bunk the day before. She listened to my faded excuses, but didn’t insist. I wasn’t one of the usual suspects.

  I don’t quite know what I felt about Roehm then. Gratitude, certainly. Curiosity? Fascination? I was a village girl, come to the city, seeing the serpent dance for the first time. I wanted to see him again. I felt like the woman of Samaria. I had been standing by the water when I had met a man who told me all I ever was and all I ever did. For the first time someone had given me his attention, had looked at me carefully, closely. I was known and recognized. Was I in love with him? Does it matter? I wanted to feel those eyes upon me.

  Once the school coach had safely disappeared I dressed up in the sexiest of the clothes he had bought me and then ran all the way through the narrow streets down to the lake.

  Roehm was waiting for me at the end of the jetty where I had first seen him. He was standing on the grey-baked planks, looking out over the water. I saw the smoke rising above the bulrushes, static in the afternoon glare. He turned to look at me.

  ‘Well, Isobel,’ was all he said, and he stretched out his arms towards me.

  I rushed into his embrace.

  He was unnervingly cold to my touch. His cheeks and hands were cold.

  ‘You’re very beautiful.’

  ‘You’re cold.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Warm me up, then.’

  He put his arm around my waist and carried me away to a sunny patch of damp grass enclosed by the reeds. The daisies flattened under his jacket as he set me gently down, still looking only into my face. I was stirred to the core by the intensity of that gaze. No man had ever looked at me like that before. And so he began to strip me of all my glittering borrowed robes. He never took his eyes off my face. I felt his cold hands on my breasts, my arms, my back, but all I saw were his cold grey eyes. He began to kiss me, my cheeks, my throat, my mouth. His lips were cold and dry. My whole body was shaking with pleasure. Then I remembered the illegal tampon in my vagina.

  Nothing could have been more unromantic.

  Roehm roared with laughter.

  ‘You are the most charming, beautiful, perverse little virgin I have ever known,’ he said, licking my ear.

  I was almost in tears.

  ‘It’s not my fault that I’m a virgin,’ I snapped.

  Roehm held me fast in his cold hands and parted my thighs.

  Was that the first time?

  I never saw his body. He never removed a stitch of his own clothing. But I was naked, white, utterly safe in his embrace. He gave me nothing but joy and a huge sense of space, all the kingdoms of this world stretched out before me. I can still feel the cold passion of his kisses in every pore of my skin. He made all things seem possible. I had had my third wish.

  How did he know where we were staying? He must have followed me. On the last day before we left he passed a message to me through one of the kitchen staff. Just an address in town and a time. Recreation time, after Abendbrot. We were allowed out for a couple of hours. But we had to stick together and be back by ten thirty. The German teacher issued dire threats of punishments which would come into force if we returned drunk or late. I was now a schoolgirl with accomplices. I set out with them. We were all going to Zum wilden Jäger, a Gasthof by the lake with candles on the tables and fairy lights in the Italian gardens. I agreed to meet them there, just in time to walk back all together.

  ‘Don’t be late, Lizard, or we’ll all get done.’

  ‘Have a good time.’

  ‘Give him a kiss for me.’

  I gave them the slip and launched myself off down the festive streets. It was a public holiday. I was surrounded by people laughing, carrying balloons. I could hear music from the carousel, the sound of the mechanical organ billowing across the traffic in the warm night. The address was a quiet, modern hotel.

  No one could say it was rape.

  I was there, wasn’t I, alone in a hotel room with a man old enough to be my father, a man I hardly knew. I had already let him kiss, suck and stroke every centimetre of my adolescent body. And loved him for it. I was there again, wanting more. I was saying yes, yes, yes, as if I was shrieking my consent out of the window, over the geranium boxes and into the streets. I offered him my body as if I was acting out a clue in a charade. I wanted his macabre marriage ceremony. With my body I thee worship. I actually believed that I knew what this meant. I wanted him to touch me again, with his hands, with his lips. I was too innocent, too trusting, too disarmed.

  There was a curious slatted light in the room from the closed shutters. Roehm stood there, staring at me from inside a blue smoking cloud. He waited just long enough to alarm me. I sat on the edge of the bed, naked and shining, beautifully bobbed and cropped for his afternoon sacrifice. He stepped out of his swirling cloud into the bands of hard light, picked me up in his arms, turning me sharply onto my stomach and pushing me down into the bed.

  My groin was wet with the expectation of his kisses that never came.

  Again, I never saw his body. I felt the chill of a zip, the sharp press of buttons on his waistcoat. He forced my face into the pillows.

  He never hit me, but there were bruises on my arms and thighs, huge purple marks from his clenched fingers, yellowing for weeks afterwards. I was careful. No one but the mirror ever saw them. When he pushed inside me I felt as if I was being torn open with a giant iron bar. I was utterly silent and so was he. I didn’t cry out. I couldn’t. My face was crushed against the fresh laundered scent of clean linen. My breath came in huge gulps. It was all I could hear. I could no longer imagine him. All I could feel was his brutal weight and the unhesitating accuracy of the pain that rose into my intestines, my stomach. He intended to hurt me. I was being ripped open, laid waste.

  I must have passed out. I can’t remember the event itself. All I can remember now is how it ended. There was an icy slime down the inside of my legs, and a hammering pain in every part of my body. I couldn’t move. Or look up. I heard his voice, un de ces voix, remember? It was like a postscript, telling me that our bargain was complete and that he had given me everything that he had originally promised.

  ‘Thank you.’

  This was the last thing he said. Then he was gone.

  I sat up. There was blood, my blood everywhere, all over the sheets. My mother brought me up never to soil anything. If I ever did I was ashamed. And she made me feel the full extent of my shame. How I scrubbed at those sheets in the tiny bathroom! The stains remained. I got dressed and slunk out, humiliated, traumatized, unable to speak. The woman downstairs was in the bar. She didn’t see me. I left the key in the door.

  I couldn’t run. Every bit of me ached and burned. I walked back stiffly t
hrough the crowds. The Stadtfest had reached its apotheosis, drunk and roaring. The tourists were swaying along in time to old Beach Boys hits being played by the Stadtkapelle band. I hid by the Gasthof dustbins and waited for nearly an hour until I saw my classmates standing on the steps, looking out for me. They all thought that it was perfectly understandable that I should have been crying. We were leaving. I wouldn’t be seeing my sugar daddy again. Still, I’d done well out of the transaction. Bravo, Lizard. Cheer up. Pull one as rich as that and it’s a sure thing you’ll hook another. They backed me up. They lied for me.

  ‘Lizard’s got a headache.’

  I went to bed with two paracetamols.

  And do you know, I was fine the next morning. Back on my feet. Super cool. Lizard’s a real ice maiden. She’s got nerve, cut her hair, got new gear, put two fingers in the air to her pious parents. Here’s looking at you, suckers. For the first time in my life I was admired by my peers. And at last I was one of them. I sat in the back of the coach with my former tormentors and held court all the way home.

  So that’s what Roehm had done for me. He had given me my freedom. He gave me a different world.

  There was no concealing the metamorphosis from my parents. My hair was cut short for all the world to see. But I looked my father in the eye as I climbed off the coach. I wasn’t going to waver now. Not in front of the others. My classmates were giggling. But apart from the hair there was nothing else visible. The Saints never contemplated bodies anyway. I just pulled my sleeves well down over my upper arms, so that no one could see the bruises, and climbed into the Maxi. My parents sat there in the front, tight-lipped. They waited until the front door was shut behind them before putting their all into chastising the prodigal returned. There was no rejoicing in heaven over lost sheep. The Saints just reached for their rifles.

  ‘How could you do this to us?’

  ‘I was so ashamed.’

  ‘We are very disappointed in you, Isobel.’

  ‘Go to your room. We’ll call you when we have decided what should be done with you.’

  I hid on the landing and listened to them. I would never have done this before the trip to Germany. Their main concern was whether to face it out in church and admit their daughter’s disobedience or force me to wear a wig. I went into my room and, for the first time in my life, I locked the door. It took a while to work out where to hide my new clothes where she wouldn’t find them: bottom drawer inside the cupboard under the sanitary towels and inside the bag with my swimming things underneath the bed. I couldn’t find anywhere to hide the black platform soles so I stuffed them into my satchel. I eventually buried them in my locker at school.

  The wig turned out to be too complex. So the story they settled on was that I had been led astray by the Sisters of Sodom. I told them that my school friends had clubbed together and pooled their pocket money to liquidate the plait. I confessed to nothing. I never wept. I never said I was sorry. I refused to repent. They summoned God to take away my heart of stone and replace it with a more convenient and biddable heart, one that they could control.

  I dreamed about Roehm. Every night. I never dreamed of him making love to me. I saw him in the boat, rowing towards me, his gaze fertile and intent. And I saw myself, as if I were two people, stretching out my hand towards him.

  Miss Shirley was the first to notice that I was pregnant. It started seven weeks later, at the end of the summer term. I had missed one period, but prudently destroyed the requisite number of sanitary towels so that my mother would suspect nothing. Do you know, I think I believed that if I covered it up, kept quiet, said nothing, the foetus would somehow disperse, be absorbed back into the place where it had begun, the soiled sheets, cobbled streets, the pale, painted gables and the lake of dark water. I was sick in my art double period, first thing Friday morning. I sicked up a mound of Shredded Wheat and buttered toast. The nausea rose up in an explosion when I smelt the turps and I only just made it to the sink.

  ‘Ughhhh . . .’

  ‘Lizard’s puked.’

  ‘Hold on, I’ll call Miss Shirley.’

  ‘Get her a glass of water.’

  ‘No point. She’ll just sick that up too.’

  Miss Shirley’s eyes were huge and dark. She sat me down beside her desk and held my hand while I sniffed into a Kleenex. She didn’t call the school nurse. I noticed that she didn’t send for the nurse.

  ‘Isobel, is this the first time that you’ve been sick like this?’

  I shook my head. Gulped. Sniffed.

  She gazed at me sympathetically, then got up and shut the door on her Friday class, which had gathered to ogle the sickening Lizard.

  ‘Isobel, have you considered the possibility that you might be pregnant?’

  I shook my head even more violently.

  ‘I don’t like to pry but you do seem quite different to me and you have all the symptoms of early pregnancy.’

  I looked up, panic-stricken.

  ‘Different? How? What do you mean?’

  To my horror she pulled her chair closer to mine and brushed her hands across my breasts. I looked down at them as if for the first time. They were no longer small, crushed, hard as limes; they were swollen and tender, becoming heavier with every day.

  I burst into tears. She rocked me in her arms until I returned to the state of uneasy sniffling. Then she sat me down in front of an earthenware jug and a bowl of lemons. I took refuge in the peaceful geometry of still life.

  Miss Shirley spent the rest of the lesson on the phone.

  I said nothing to my parents, but someone must have. On Saturday morning when I came down to breakfast they were sitting silent in the kitchen. My mother had been crying. Her face was puffy and swollen. Her eyes were hooded slits. She looked like a bloated snake. My father’s face was set and grim. There was no question of breakfast. He did the talking.

  ‘Sit down, Isobel.’

  I sat down and faced him out.

  ‘I see that you have hardened your heart still further against the Lord’s Grace.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘And this disgusting massacre of your beautiful hair was but the outward sign of your inward corruption.’

  I began to feel sick.

  ‘We will have to make special arrangements to deal with your condition.’

  I threw up a thin trail of yellow vomit onto their cheap tablecloth. My mother howled aloud, an odd animal sound, a gust of rage and tears. I rushed upstairs and locked my door upon them.

  At the Sunday lunch they said that I had come down with a bad dose of flu. There was one week of school to run, but they told me that school was finished, over. I was stained with Satan’s fingers. The Lamb wept in the Highest. I had caused his wounds to bleed afresh. The angels sorrowed over the fallen one and the powers of the pit wriggled for joy. If I did not repent and confess I was beyond redemption. In any case I was to be placed in an institution for the Ruined and the Lost. The child would be given up for adoption and I was to be taught humility, obedience, discipline, remorse. It was all arranged.

  I had one single thought and my course of action was perfectly clear. I had to get to my school locker before they did and recover my black platform soles. These shoes represented one treasured piece of the Bodensee adventure which my parents would never possess.

  I got up early on Monday morning, stole some money from my mother’s purse and caught the bus into town. I walked up the hill to the school for the first time. The security guard let me in because I was carrying my satchel and wearing my school uniform. I collected my forbidden shoes and retreated to the Art Room. Then I ran out of ideas. Sitting there in my usual place, feeling lost and hungry, I began to imagine my parents waking up, hammering at my door, finding me gone, weeping with sorrow and contrition at their own severity, realizing that they had driven me out. I floundered in muddled self-pity. You’ve never loved me. All you love is yourselves. When I die, you’ll be sorry. Etc. I had my head down on the table weeping when Mis
s Shirley came in at twenty past eight to set up the classroom.

  ‘Isobel!’

  ‘They’re going to send me away and lock me up. I’m to be kept in an institution. They said I’ll never paint another picture or go to school ever again. They say I’m a Daughter of Satan.’

  I howled into the quiet corridors of the empty school.

  Miss Shirley gripped my shoulders firmly with a man’s strength.

  ‘Nonsense, Isobel. We aren’t living in the Middle Ages. No one is going to lock you up. Sit up. Look at me.’

  Sniff.

  ‘You aren’t the first girl in this school to get herself into trouble and you won’t be the last. But you’re a bit special. And I’ve already taken steps. I’ve rung your aunt Luce.’

  ‘My aunt who?’

  ‘Your aunt Luce. Lucille. Your mother’s sister.’

  ‘I didn’t know my mother had a sister.’

  Miss Shirley stared. Then roared with laughter.

  ‘Then I’d better get her here right now so that you can meet her at last.’

  And it was as well that she did. My parents had already rung the school and told the headmistress that they were removing their daughter from her educational cesspit of iniquity. They were on their way to fetch me. But before they could get there I had been bundled out of the dining-room service entrance into the staff car park. Miss Shirley denied all knowledge of my means of escape, but even so she received a written reprimand and was threatened with dismissal. But that didn’t stop her. She banged the door behind her and then held up the enemy forces in the art room.

  And in front of me stood the original fairy godmother, a tall tapestried woman in a floating purple shawl with high block-heeled shoes and buckled straps across the foot. She had a haughty, bony face with very white make-up and plucked eyebrows. She looked nothing like my mother.