“I’m taking him where he can’t come to any harm. I’m sorry, Collie, but you’ll understand one day.”
“I’ll have to go to the police. I can’t let it stand like this. They were innocents. Max killed them…”
“No!” she screeched loudly, her hands going to cover her eyes. “No he didn’t! Stop saying that. Stop saying those horrible, horrible things!” Her chest was heaving and a tear slid down her soft cheek. “They hurt him, Collie. My first husband, Mr Walton, Bernard. They were all responsible for what he turned out to be. If not for them he’d be all right. He’d be well and he’d be a famous writer. Believe me, Collie; Max didn’t do those things you say. It might look like that, but he didn’t. He just didn’t!” She gunned the engine. “Now please leave us alone, I want to go.”
Miller opened the rear door and slid inside the car, closing the door behind him. “Has Carl been in contact with you, too? Is that it?”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” she sniffed.
“He’s a little weasel,” Miller spat. “He’s really worked this one out, covered all angles; if he can’t get me he’ll get you. Or both of us.”
“All our life people have tried to hurt us,” Connie said. “And all we ever wanted was peace. They deserved everything they got. For what they did to Max. I don’t regret it, not really…”
Miller’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Connie?”
He watched her readjust the rear-view mirror so that she could see her face in it, and she began to dab at her eyes with the tissue, to wipe away the smudged mascara.
And then realisation began to seep icily in. Miller looked from Max to his mother and then back again. The engine grumbled quietly to itself and the fans in the dashboard made a peculiar whirring sound. Connie reached into the glove compartment and took out a tube of lipstick which she started to apply, her composure returned.
“I don’t regret it one bit,” she said softly. “I’d do it all again if I had to, to protect Max. Nobody harms Max. Nobody. Not any more. I swore I’d do all I could to protect him, and I have. I shan’t let anyone harm him ever again, whether it’s you or that nasty man Carl.”
“It was you? You murdered them?” His words seemed to come out in a gasp. Their eyes met in the rear-view. Max began a soft mewling sound that gradually escalated into a full-blown squeal like that of a pig. He started to rock back and forth, obviously agitated. “What’s wrong with him?” Miller asked of her, faintly alarmed.
“Pass me that carrier bag from the back seat,” she said, and when he did so she took out a writing pad. Rummaging in the bottom of the bag, soothing Max as she did so, she found a pen. She gave both to Max and he stopped his wailing instantly, grabbed the pad and pen eagerly and set about writing.
“That’s all he wanted,” she said. “That’s all he ever wanted really.”
Miller eyed the old man. There was much about his form, seemingly collapsed in on itself, with its blank watery eyes and quivering rubber-like lips, that Miller found repulsive; and yet here was Max, that same magnificent, unpredictable creature from his childhood and youth. He recalled Max’s mental anguish, his intense desire that grew with every year to believe he wasn’t Max. To escape from being Max. To believe that he’d been robbed of his rightful place amongst a normal, dreary, everyday family where nothing unusual ever happened; where extreme violence and murder was non-existent. And who better to want to be in this respect than Philip Calder? Dull old Collie with the dull mum and dull dad.
And now Miller knew why Max hated the handsome, attractive young man that he had been, and why he longed to exchange it for the plain-featured Philip Calder. Because in his already damaged mind he must have begun to make the connection very early on, and confirmed to him throughout his young life, the belief that beauty equated with violence. His mother’s unfortunate life had proven so. Max wanted the little bedroom with the slippers. He wanted the Ruby Deanes of this world. He wanted the parents that Philip Calder had. So much so he actually came to believe he was the real Philip Calder. But this caused a problem, because there already was a Philip Calder. Who, of course, had to be an impostor, a changeling.
Yet there was more to why Max sought to release himself from the bonds that were himself. It was all becoming clearer to him.
“It’s not true, Connie, is it? Tell me you didn’t…” He couldn’t bear to think it, let alone say it out loud.
Connie stroked her son’s arm as he scribbled away at the paper, content and happy. Her face was that of any proud mother contemplating her son. “I would do it all over again,” she said, as if talking to Max. “I took out the Bible the day Max was sent to hospital as a kid because of that bloody first husband of mine. I sat holding it as I looked at my little boy’s poor bruised body, his bloodied bandaged head, and I swore on that book there and then that I would not let anyone do that again. People like that are evil, Collie. Vile, evil people. Do you know what it feels like to see your own flesh and blood, a part of you, treated as if it’s an animal?” The rage showed clearly in her face as the muscles rippled beneath the skin, and her eyes appeared to stare straight through him, viewing another scene entirely. “I see it every day, Collie, at the King Street Refuge. It still goes on and on and on.”
“But old Mr Walton…”
“That day in the garden… Max wasn’t the same after that beating he gave him. He would get worse. We both saw it. Tell me you never saw it, Collie Tell me you never saw a change in him.”
I looked away. We both knew that Walton had done something to Max. Not immediately, not visible the very next day, but gradually it became clear to us all that Max’s hold on reality was slipping away. And he became more aggressive with it. Sure Max was already a strange young man, no doubt the beatings he’d had as a kid being a contributory factor, but yes, Walton contributed to this already fragile state of mind, did irreparable harm to him. And all because of a half coconut…
“It wriggled inside my head like a worm, Collie, like a huge great worm that ate me up, night after night, day after day, seeing my son changing into something else. In the end I couldn’t take the hurt and …”
“You used to clean from him. You still had a key.”
She nodded vigorously, her face a mask of pain. I’ll go to Hell, Collie, that’s what’ll happen to me. Straight to Hell. But I’d do it all over again, mark my words; I’d do it all over again to protect him. I swore on the Bible. Swore it and meant it.”
“And Bernard?”
She sank in on herself, and Miller became aware of just how old and tired she really was. For the first time he saw beyond the Connie Stone he knew and loved. She was an empty shell. All the joy, all the hope, the singing, the dancing, all had been sponged from her soul. It devastated him to see her so.
“Bernard Randolf was a good man, I thought. He was quiet, attentive, appeared to want to get on well with Max. He wasn’t like the others. I thought he was a little like Gavin – you know, the real Gavin Miller. I knew when I met Bernard I’d marry him. Max hated him, of course, and I couldn’t understand why. I put it down to his worsening mental condition. But Bernard seemed to let it slide over his head, and we got on with things as best we could. Until Bernard was made redundant. Things changed then. He began to drink, to throw things around the house. Then one day he belted me, Collie. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me all over again. But it was happening, a nightmare, like my first marriage.”
“He started on Max, is that it?”
“An argument late one night. Bernard was stone-drunk again, breaking things, running around the house in a rage. He started on me, but that was nothing really. It was when he began to shout abuse at Max that it started to get to me again. Poor Max. All he was doing was writing at the table, like he’s always done. The next minute he’s had a chair broken over his back. I thought Bernard had killed him. I really did.” Tears dribbled down her face again and she flicked them away with a finger, steeling her expression. “I couldn
’t take anymore, Collie. I just had to protect him, to stop anything bad happening to Max again. You do understand, don’t you?”
He did and he didn’t. He was numb with it all. “So it was you? He didn’t commit suicide?”
She shrugged. “In a way he did. I was only carrying out what was an inevitability.”
“That’s so callous, Connie. Bernard was at heart a good man.”
She turned on him, stabbing out a finger. “What do you know? What do you really know? Nothing! Nothing! He was like all the others, just wanted to hurt people. He hurt Max. I thought you’d see it, Collie, but I was wrong; you’re like them too! Now get out. We want to go!”
Max turned a page and started to fill the next side. “But don’t you see, Connie? You’ve helped make Max what he is.”
She gasped. “That’s a horrid thing to say!”
“He’s feeling a tremendous guilt, I see that now; guilt at being Max. He used to think – still thinks – that it was he who was the cause of the turmoil, the brutality. He must have been aware that whatever violence was meted out to him would be repaid a thousand fold by you. And as a result it was he that was ultimately responsible for what happened to Walton and Bernard. He must have suspected what you’d done to Walton. Maybe he followed you, saw you, whatever, I don’t know how he knew. Perhaps you told him, if not outright then indirectly in other more subtle ways. Don’t you understand? Your obsessive protection drove him to desperate measures, and perhaps added to the strain on his already fragile mind. By being aggressive with any man that came into your life he was trying to warn them off, feeling that something bad would happen to them if they got too close to you, if it got out of hand. That’s why he and Bernard were always at each other’s throats and why he never appeared to take to him right from the beginning. Max was trying in his own way to protect him. To protect him from you, Connie, and when he couldn’t protect them he retreated into being someone else and blamed himself for their deaths. He became me.”
“That’s rubbish, Collie! Don’t say things like this!”
“I didn’t see it at first, but now it makes sense. The autobiography he’s recently written was a way of blaming himself for what happened to those people. He felt he’d killed them personally. To him Max was the murderer, just as in the manuscript.”
“Get out of the car!” she spat, striking at him with a clenched fist. “I thought you were my friend!”
“Max did have some damage done in childhood, that’s true, Connie. I can’t deny that. But you helped create what he is today. He wanted to escape the fact that you were his mother, and yet he couldn’t, because the bond between you was far too strong. So he kept you always within reach on his fantasy island, dead and locked away in an ornate mausoleum, the embodiment of perfection, forever honoured and worshiped, not the real obsessively protective Connie Stone.”
She gave a screech and pummelled him with her fists, reaching out over the seat as far as she could. “Bastard! Bastard!” Her breath pumping out in huge gasps. “You’re like all the others!” Finally she turned away from him, staring ahead through the windscreen. Max grunted to himself, ignorant of the proceedings.
“So now he’s forever going to be Philip Calder, locked away in some kind of exotic cell. And ironically the real Philip Calder might just as well be dead too, because he’s gradually been taken over by Gavin Miller. Nobody wants to know about Philip Calder now. In truth they never did and never will. I used to like to believe I was Gavin Miller, not that no hoper Calder, but that was never the case. Max was the real Gavin Miller, the hugely successful author. And I’ve hated him for it ever since.”
“Get out of the car.” She said frigidly. “I don’t want you here.”
Drained emotionally, Miller opened the car door and stepped out onto the gravel. “Where are you going?” he asked again.
“Wherever we’ll have peace. Wherever Max will be safe.”
“What about Carl? We still need to work things out. He plans to blackmail or ruin me. He’s threatened to expose Max as a murderer…”
The car’s engine increased in revs as she put her foot down, her hand on the gear stick. “Don’t worry about Carl,” she returned evenly. The anger had subsided, and Connie, too, looked drained of all energy. Her eyes revealed an empty shell.
Miller closed the car door and peered in at the driver’s window. She wound it down. “Connie…” he said quietly.
“Yes?”
He glanced over at Max. At that moment it seemed that Max was aware he was being looked at, for he lifted his head from the paper and met Miller’s gaze. For a fraction of a second Miller thought he saw recognition in them, almost as if he might open his mouth and say something. The Max of old was there, shining through the aged mask, and Miller cursed himself for never being able to understand entirely what motivated this strange creature until a few moments ago. And then the recognition in Max’s face switched off, the link between them severed forever as if a mental copper wire that connected them had suddenly sparked and blown. He returned to his writing. Miller stared Connie in the eyes.
“Connie, I’m going to miss you…” he said.
She looked away, sighed heavily, her white fingers clutching the wheel tightly. She was fighting inner demons. Then she turned and gazed into Miller’s eyes. For a few seconds she said nothing. Tiredly she smiled. “I’ll miss you, too, Collie,” she said.
“I’ll miss Max,” he murmured. “Max,” he said to the rocking figure. There was no response.
“He hears you,” she said. “Believe me.”
“Take good care of him, Connie.”
She wound up the car’s window and shoved the gear into first. The car roared across the gravel. He watched as it receded down the long drive of Overton Hall, the sound of its engine fading even before he saw it turn silently and spectre-like onto the main road. Connie and Max were gone forever, disappearing from his life as suddenly and as dramatically as they’d entered it. He felt the emotion rise within him, and accompanying it a bittersweet fusion of memories that had been stirred like silt from the riverbed of his past, and which rose to cloud his mind.
Something caught his eye. Something that shivered in the breeze. He went to the spot so recently occupied by the car and bent to retrieve it. He held it up before his eyes. He knew Max had dropped it getting into the car.
It was a feather. A crushed white goose feather.
A white feather with bird shit on it.
* * * *
40
An end to things
The pain had gone now, and for that he was thankful. He’d never been able to stand that sort of thing. “Don’t hit me!” he’d scream at school, or to his dad when he used to beat him, “I don’t like being hit!” But they hit him all the same. So it was a blessing it had faded, replaced now by welcome warmth, a curious heat that flowed from somewhere deep inside him and radiated outwards to engulf his entire body. It reminded him of a heat lamp, lying on a beach in summer, something of that nature. He couldn’t move, but that was fine; now he didn’t want to move, and anyway to move meant greater pain and he wanted to avoid that. His sense of urgency had gone. In fact he couldn’t remember what was so urgent anymore. Even the sight of his beloved books lying scattered on the floor all around him, his own blood soaking into the pages, didn’t have any effect on him whatsoever, and he marvelled at this change in him.
Carl glanced up, his eyes seemingly the only part of his body that he could use now, and saw the vast empty gaps on his shelf. Why were there gaps? What was missing? It was vaguely amusing, to be lying here contemplating an empty space.
A memory intruded. That of Mrs Randolf. The smell of her perfume. Somehow it lingered in his nostrils. It wasn’t unpleasant. He never guessed she’d do something like that. Never. And he didn’t even feel the pain of the knife in his back, just an uncomfortable stiffness and a dizziness that forced him to the floor. The pain crashed in on him as soon as his face hit the carpet. He’d never exp
erienced anything remotely like it, and he blubbered and tried to scream, but there was something stuffed in his mouth and the words and pain were dammed up behind a wall of cloth. He wanted to remove it, but the pain was too intense and he couldn’t move his arm. He remembered books falling on the floor all around him, onto him, and he felt their hurt too. His beloved books! What is she doing?
Through a mist of tears he saw her open up a bag and toss one or two into it; particularly the Flemings, which he’d explained the value of, then others of equal value. Mrs Randolf had stabbed him and was now stealing his books! He wanted to scream even more but somehow the thought of wanting to scream brought on a fresh bout of agonising pain that shot unrelenting throughout his being.
No, not stealing. She was making it look that way.
Now, looking back at it, he admired her for it, in a crazy, twisted sort of way. Because now it didn’t matter anymore. It didn’t matter that he was moments away from dying and that she’d killed him, stolen his books, ruined many others. He was happy. For the first time in his pathetic life, Carl actually felt contented and at peace with himself.
There was blood soaking into one of Gavin Miller’s novels.
It’s ruined completely, Carl thought drowsily.
* * * *
Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller Page 37