by Zoe Sharp
Apart from children's birthdays, and at Christmas, the room was mostly idle now, although I understand that events there used to be the height of the local social calendar. Tris still calls it the ballroom, with hazy childhood memories of a more glorious age. Ailsa just calls it a bugger to heat. I used it for my classes and for that it was perfect. It even had a proper sprung wooden dance floor.
As I came in I found just about everyone gathered round where Ailsa was urgently speaking to them. Half the people present turned to glance at me, then shifted their attention back to Ailsa.
“Look, I'm sure it's just a coincidence,” she said. “The police would have said if there was any reason to be concerned, surely? There's nothing to worry about. Please.”
She was trying to be reassuring, but there was a note of strain in her voice that belied her soothing words. Like Tris, Ailsa wore her hair short, making her head seem too small for her body. She wore large silver hoops in her pierced ears, that caught the light and jingled slightly as she spoke.
Whatever the discussion had been, my arrival seemed to mark its closure. The women dispersed, muttering, clutching children who were unnaturally quiet and well-behaved. It was probably that which unnerved me the most.
“Ailsa?” I said, moving forwards. “What's the matter?”
“Oh hello, Charlie love,” she said. She sank onto an elderly brocade chair, shoulders slumped, looking more tired than I'd ever seen her. “Some of the girls are a bit bothered by this Susie Hollins thing, that's all.”
I must have looked a little baffled. Attacks on women happen, as most of the residents could testify first hand. It still didn't quite explain the council of war. Ailsa saw my expression and gave a heavy sigh.
“They were both here,” she said reluctantly.
“What do you mean, both here? Who was?” But even as I asked the question, I knew. It came to me with a sense of creeping awareness that as soon as Susie Hollins had climbed onto the stage at the New Adelphi Club, I'd known that I'd seen her before.
“Susie and the other girl who was raped,” Ailsa confirmed. “In fact, Susie was only here a month or so ago. That boyfriend of hers, Tony, has a hair-trigger temper and a jealous streak, which is not a good combination at the best of times. He'd convinced himself that she was seeing someone else, apparently, and beat her up. She spent about three days here, I think, swearing long and loud that she was finished with him for good. Then he came round grovelling and back she went.” Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Like a lamb to the slaughter.”
She suddenly seemed to realise the macabre aptness of the expression. Her mouth formed a soundless oh, and her eyes began to fill.
Tris patted her shoulder, looking awkward. “Come on, love,” he murmured. He was trying to be bracing, but there was a note of panic there that only men get when faced with a woman about to cry.
Ailsa gave him a wan smile, sniffed, and made a determined effort to pull herself together. “I'm all right,” she said. “Really. I must get on, there's so much to do. I just don't know what to say to them to convince them they're over-reacting, that's all.” She got to her feet, moving as far as the doorway before she paused. “Two of the girls have left already, you know,” she said. “Just packed their bags and went. They never even said goodbye.”
“It's their loss, Ailsa,” I said. “You put your heart and soul into this place. They won't find anywhere better.”
She nodded jerkily a couple of times, grateful for the support and still trying to hold back the tears. “I know, it's just—” she trailed off, then finished with feeling, “Oh, bloody men!” and stamped away down the corridor.
I turned to find Tris standing where she'd left him, looking downcast.
“I wouldn't take it personally,” I told him.
He sighed. “I stopped doing that a long time ago,” he said. “Otherwise I would have thrown myself off a cliff by now.”
Six
The class I taught late that afternoon was packed, mainly with Lodge residents. It seemed that just about all the women at Shelseley had suddenly decided that self-defence was a subject they could no longer afford to ignore.
I had planned to teach them how to escape from a pinned-down potential rape situation on the ground, and had dragged out the heavy crashmats ready, but at the last minute I changed my mind. Something told me that particular lesson would have been a little too emotive right now. I went through wrist locks instead, and came away vaguely regretting that I'd chickened out.
Afterwards, I stuck my head round Tris and Ailsa's door to find Ailsa alone, poring over what looked like books of accounts. She invited me in for a cup of chamomile tea. I accepted more to be sociable than because I especially like the stuff.
“It was busier than I was expecting,” I said as she poured the straw-coloured liquid from a chipped Wedgwood teapot.
“Well, love, I suppose I can't say I'm surprised,” she said, but her eyes had drifted back to the books in front of her. Distracted, she brushed a hand through her spiky hair.
I put my head on one side and regarded her. “What happens if they all leave?” I asked quietly.
Her hand stilled, then dropped. “We struggle,” she said briefly, closed the book and sighed. “When old Mrs Shelseley died she left us some money to maintain the house for as long as it remains a refuge, but we had to re-roof the entire place about four years ago, and that ate up most of the capital. We get grant money, and some charity funding, but the bulk of it comes from social services, and to be honest, Charlie, that's what pays the bills. We can't afford to lose them.”
She looked about to say more, but a commotion had kicked up in the hallway outside, and Ailsa paused as she worked out if it was serious enough to warrant her intervention. Years of experience had tuned her senses to the point where she could instantly recognise the difference between the screams of a playfully violent children's game, and those which greeted the unexpected arrival of a drunken ex-husband and father.
It was soon clear that this was neither. After only a moment's hesitation, Ailsa was on her feet and moving for the doorway with the sort of speed you wouldn't expect from a woman of her size. Slower in mind, if not in body, I was half a stride behind.
We weren't alone in recognising an emergency in progress. Doors were opening all along the hallway, and up on the landing as well. There were already half a dozen women in the hall itself, clustered round a dark-haired girl in her late teens or early twenties. She was slumped on her knees by the bottom of the stairs, clutching at the ornate newel post like a drowning swimmer, and wailing.
“Oh God,” Ailsa muttered. She hurried forwards and bent close to the girl. “Nina, love, what is it? What's happened?”
The girl turned her face in the direction of the voice, but her eyes had that thousand-yard stare of deep shock.
“O-outside,” she managed at last. She swallowed a couple of times, her throat working convulsively. “There w-was a man. Outside.”
Ailsa threw me a single pleading look over her shoulder. I gave her a slight nod, knowing immediately what she was asking of me. This wasn't the time to argue, and besides, the girl, Nina, had started to shudder and shake. I thought there was more than a fair chance she was going to throw up, which didn't make me eager to hang around here.
I stepped round both of them, heading for the open doorway, and the darkness beyond it. The group melted back to let me through. Nobody offered to walk with me, but then, I hadn't really expected them to.
I went down the stone steps and moved quickly to the side of the house. I stood there for a minute or so, out of the sweep of light flooding from the un-curtained windows, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and my nerves to steady.
The pause gave me chance to listen for the sounds of movement, but there was nothing apart from the rattle of wind across bare branches, the hum of traffic from the main road, and the jump of my own heart.
I was mildly surprised to find that I wasn't scared, though. Not that min
d-numbing fear that freezes your blood. Instead, I could feel my senses dilating, my instincts reaching out into the night. Rather than dulling my responses, apprehension was serving to give me a sharper edge.
I had no doubts that if the girl said she'd seen a man lurking out here, she was probably right. His intentions might be sinister, but I was determined that I was not afraid of him, whoever he was.
I'd been down that road once before, and had returned coated with the bitter grime of pain and experience. I had so nearly not come back at all. It was interesting to know some good had come of the journey.
I eased myself away from the wall and tried to walk quietly across the gravel, which was an impossibility even in bare feet, never mind in the heavy-soled bike boots I'd changed into after the class. Every few strides I had to pause to clear the echo of my own footsteps from my ears.
I spent a quarter-hour moving as silently as I could through the area surrounding the drive. I wasn't stupid enough to force my way deep into the undergrowth. It would have been asking for trouble.
Even so, I found no trace of an intruder. Nothing.
By the time I got back into the hallway, the crowd had mostly disbanded. One or two of the hardier ones were lurking on the stairs. They asked me if I'd spotted anyone, and took my negative answer with sceptical smiles. Whether that was because they doubted there was anyone to find, or because they thought I was just trying to allay their fears, I couldn't be sure.
I found Ailsa back in the sitting room, squeezed onto the sofa with her arm round Nina, who still seemed as distraught as she had been when I'd gone out. Tris had appeared by this time, and was perched on a chair on the other side of the room, hollow-eyed and anxious.
Ailsa glanced up at me sharply when I came in, but I shook my head. She looked relieved.
I moved round into Nina's line of sight, and crouched in front of her. “Whoever he was, Nina,” I said, speaking carefully, “he's gone now. You're OK.”
Nina had her arms folded round her body, and was rocking gently back and forth. “It's my fault,” she mumbled. “It's all my fault.”
Uncomprehending for a moment, I caught Ailsa's sorrowful glance, and I understood then why Nina was at the refuge. She'd been raped.
I remembered Ailsa telling me a few details when the girl had first arrived. She'd been raped by a friend of the family, and when she'd told her parents, their first reaction had been of disbelief, and denial. Betrayed, Nina had run, ending up at Shelseley.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “Nina, listen to me,” I said, my voice sharp enough to cut through the layers. “It's not your fault. Nothing that has happened to you is your fault. Don't let it destroy you, or he's won. Do you hear me? Is that what you want? To give up?” I ignored Ailsa's murmur of protest and plunged on. “Come out fighting, Nina, come back stronger. Stop giving him this power over you, otherwise you'll never be rid of him.”
She twisted weakly in my grasp. “You don't know what it's like,” she moaned.
“Oh yes I do, Nina,” I said, and my voice was grim enough to register. “Trust me, I know exactly what it's like.”
There were certain similarities. I'd also known the men who had raped me, all four of them. Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay. The names ran through my mind like a mantra. They'd been on the same military training course and while they hadn't exactly been my friends, I was supposed to have been able to trust them with my life.
I still don't know why they picked me. There were only two other girls on the same course, so I suppose that cut down the odds a little. I spent months afterwards wondering what weakness in me they'd recognised. What had marked me out as a victim.
Eventually, I'd realised that I was not special, nor fatally flawed. I'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes, it's easier to believe in fate. That the story lines of our lives are already written, you just follow the script. But maybe I just didn't want to believe that my whole reason for being was to be raped and beaten by a group of drunken squaddies.
People told me I'd been lucky to survive, but it took me a long time before I could begin to view that state of affairs with any sense of happiness. Fear had evolved very slowly into anger. A desire followed first to learn self-defence, and then to teach what I'd learned to others. It gave me back control of my own existence.
I stood up, letting go of Nina's arms, and watched the top of her bowed head. She'd stopped caring much about her appearance since the attack, never wearing make-up and letting her hair grow unstyled. It hung lankly around her face, so fine that her ears stood out through it. Her shoulders were rounded. I don't think I'd ever seen anyone look more utterly defeated.
Ailsa made “leave now” motions with her eyes. I nodded silently, and headed for the door, picking up my helmet and rucksack as I went. Tris got up to show me out.
“Don't you think you were a little hard on her?” he said quietly, once the living room door was closed behind us.
I shrugged my way into my rucksack. “She's had months of hand-holding and sympathy,” I said. “She's physically recovered, the memory's fading. What she needs now is pushing until she starts to push back. She needs to face what she's been through and deal with it, not bury it under layers of cotton wool and hope it all goes away.”
Tris considered that for a moment. “Not everyone responds the way you expect to that kind of stimuli,” he pointed out gently. “Not everybody has the strength of character to cope.”
“They have to,” I said, glancing at him as I turned to go. “What else is there?”
Despite my words, I looked around me carefully as I walked down the steps again and across the gravel to the bike. The screen of rhododendron bushes looked quiet, but to be truthful, for all I could see through it, it might as well have been one-way glass. I jammed my helmet on, feeling suddenly vulnerable as it cut down my peripheral vision.
The Suzuki started up first kick. For once I didn't linger to let the motor warm up fully, paddling it backwards out of its space and moving quickly towards the road.
All the while, I could just feel a set of eyes on my back. It might be paranoia, but I couldn't seem to shake it.
I rode straight home, taking the shortest route. On the way I passed Terry's video van parked up on his round. You couldn't fail to recognise that revolting colour-scheme, even in the dark.
When I reached the flat I had just enough time to hurriedly tidy my usual debris before Sam was due to arrive. As I passed the answering machine I noticed that the message light was blinking and I hit the rewind button.
It was Clare. “Hi, Charlie. I've got the details on that, er – story you were after. I can't give them to you over the phone, but if you want to call round, I'll let you know what I've managed to find out.” Her voice sounded strangely solemn as she added, “I hope you've got a strong stomach.”
I almost rang her there and then, but a glance at the clock told me there wasn't time. As it was, Sam rang the bell just after six, armed again with a box of computer disks and a big grin.
He was wearing his usual scruffy bike jacket and battered AGV lid, together with dusty black trousers and trainers. He had a long college scarf wrapped round his neck to keep out the wind, but no gloves and his fingers were white from the cold. I don't know how he stands it.
He presented exactly the sort of image that people like my parents hate so much about motorcycling. The fact that Sam has a very good degree in something to do with computers and could probably be earning a fortune as a programmer instead of tinkering at the Uni has nothing to do with it. A lout in a suit with a sharp haircut would get their vote every time. Even if, when you asked him a difficult question, someone else had to push his chest in and out.
Sam unfolded the lap-top on the coffee table and his fingers started dancing over the keyboard. I put the coffee on and left him to it. I had to admire his concentration. By the time the coffee had filtered and stopped making blocked drain noises, he was still tapping away. He barely tur
ned his head when the mug went down beside him, just murmured his thanks and carried right on.
I was in the kitchen, staring moodily out of the skylight and thinking about Nina when Sam gave a sudden whoop of triumph. I moved back through to find him sitting back and taking a swig of his coffee, looking pleased with himself again. The Cheshire cat would have been a manic depressive by comparison. “OK, we're in,” he said. “What am I looking for?”
“Some clue as to the original owner of the machine,” I said.
Sam put his mug down and scanned the list of files that had appeared on the screen. “Of course, some of these are incomplete, but I should be able to find something,” he said.
“Great.” I hesitated, fought briefly with myself, then gave in. “Have you eaten? I was going to chuck some pasta together if you fancy it? Nothing outstanding.”