What Came Before He Shot Her

by Elizabeth George

  If anything, it was even more crowded in WH Smith than it had been on the concourse. Toby’s life ring made things worse for them in the shop, but this difficulty was ameliorated by the fact that he stuck to Joel’s side like a foxtail in fur.

  He said, “I don’ want crisps wiv flavours, dis time. Jus’ the reg’lar kind. C’n I get a Ribena ’s well?”

  “Aunt Ken didn’t say about drinks,” Joel replied. “We’ll see wha’ kind of money we got left.” It would be little enough, and Joel saw this when the boys joined their sister. He said to Ness, “Aunt Ken di’n’t say two magazines. We got to have enough money for her chocolate, Ness. For the snack ’s well.”

  “Well, sod Aunt Kendra with a broomstick, Joel,” was Ness’s reply. “Gi’ me the money to pay for these.” She gestured with Hello! On its cover, an antique rock ’n’ roller posed toothily, displaying his twenty -something wife and an infant young enough to be a great-grandchild.

  “C’n I get a Milky Way?” Toby asked. “Crisps, Milky Way, and Ribena, Joel?”

  “I don’t think we got enough to—”

  “Gi’ me that money,” Ness said to Joel.

  “Aunt Ken said—”

  “I got to bloody pay, don’t I?”

  At this, several people turned in their direction, including the Asian boy who was working the till. Joel flushed, but he didn’t give in to his sister. He knew he’d get hell from her later on, but for now, he decided he’d do as he’d been told and damn whatever consequences Ness would force him to face.

  He said to Toby, “So what kind of crisps you want, Tobe?”

  Ness said, “Shit. You are one pathetic—”

  “Kettle Crisps okay?” Joel persisted. “These here don’t got flavours on them. These do you okay?”

  It would have been a simple matter for Toby just to nod so that they could get out of the shop. But as usual, he went his own way. In this case, he decided he had to look at each bag of crisps on display, and he refused to be contented until he’d touched every one of them as if they were possessed of magical properties. Ultimately, he chose the one Joel had been holding out to him all along, making this choice based not on nutritional value—of which as a seven-year-old he knew nothing at all and cared even less—but rather on the colour of the bag. He said, “Dat one’s real pretty. Green’s my favourite. Di’ you know dat, Joel?”

  “Would you stop him being so bloody lame and gimme the money?” Ness demanded.

  Joel ignored her and, having made his own snack selection from among the chocolate bars, he picked up an Aero for their mother. At the till, he handed over the money, and he made certain his was the palm the change got dropped into, and not his sister’s.

  Kendra was waiting for them outside the shop. She took the bag of their purchases and inspected them, pocketing the change that Joel gave her. In a moment of concession, she gave Ness the bag to carry. Then she made all three of the children stand still and look at the departures board above them. She said, “Now. How d’you tell which train we take?”

  Ness rolled her eyes. “Aunt Ken,” she said, “’xactly how stupid you think—”

  “Look at the destination?” Joel said helpfully. “Look at the stops between here and there?”

  Kendra smiled. “Think you can work it out for us, then?”

  “Platform fucking nine,” Ness said.

  “You watch your mouth,” Kendra said. “Joel, platform nine is right. You take us there?”

  He did so.

  Once they were under way, Kendra resumed her quiz about the trip to make certain they could find their way in the future. She directed the questions to all three of the Campbells, but only one of them answered.

  How many stops till they were to get off? she wanted to know. What d’you give the conductor when he passes through the carriage? What if you forgot to buy a ticket? What do you do if you have to pee?

  Joel replied cooperatively to each question. Ness sulked and flipped through Hello! Toby bounced his legs against the seat, watched the scenery, and asked Joel was he going to eat his chocolate bar. Joel nearly said yes, but then he registered the hope on his brother’s shiny face. He handed the chocolate to Toby, and he continued to field his aunt Kendra’s questions.

  What’s the name of their stop? she asked. Where d’they go once they reach the right station? What do they say? To who? If it’s outside, where do they go? What about if it’s inside?

  Joel knew some of the answers, but he didn’t know them all. When he faltered, Kendra asked Ness, whose reply was consistent: “Don’t care, do I?” to which Kendra would say, “Don’t think I won’t sort you later on, Miss Vanessa.”

  In this manner, they travelled west, miles and miles from anything resembling London. Even so, the three Campbells couldn’t help being familiar with this place, since for years they’d been making this journey, alighting in the countryside and walking the mile and a half to the tall brick walls and the green iron gates, either in the company of their grandmother or, before that, with their father leading them along the verge to a spot where it was safe to cross the road.

  “I ain’t going farther ’n this.” As the train pulled off, Ness made her declaration from inside the station, a tiny brick building about the size of a public toilet, identified near the tracks only by a white sign pitted with rust. There was no platform to speak of, nor was there a taxi rank out here in the middle of nowhere. Indeed, the station itself—surrounded by hedges beyond which fields lay fallow for the winter—was unmanned.

  There was a single bench in front of the station, faded green with large patches of grey where the paint had worn away over the years. Ness plopped herself down onto this. “I ain’t goin with you.”

  Kendra said, “Hang on. You won’t be—”

  But Ness cut in with, “And you can’t drag me there. Oh you c’n try, but I c’n fight you, and I bloody well will. I mean it.”

  “You got to go,” Joel told his sister. “Wha’s she goin to say when you ’n’t there? She gonna ask. Wha’ m’I sposed to tell her?”

  “Tell her I’m dead or summick,” Ness replied. “Tell her I run off to join the fuckin circus. Tell her wha’ you want to tell her. Only I ain’t goin to see her again. I came this far, innit, but now I’m goin back to London.”

  “With what ticket?” Kendra asked. “With what money to buy yourself one?”

  “Oh I got money if it turns out I need it,” Ness informed her. “And plenty more where it came from ’s well.”

  “Money from where? From what?” Kendra asked her.

  “Money I work for,” Ness replied.

  “Now you telling me you have a job?”

  “I s’pose it depends on what you call work.” Ness unbuttoned her jacket, revealing her breasts in their plunging blouse. She smirked and said, “Don’ you know, Aunt Ken? I dress to get money. I always dress to get money.”

  IN THE END, Kendra knew argument was useless. So she extracted a promise from Ness. She then gave one in turn, although both of them knew their words were largely worthless. For Kendra’s part, she simply had too much to contend with already without also having to engage Ness in a battle over how she was getting money or whether she was going to accompany her aunt and her little brothers to see their mother. For Ness, promises had long ago become idle words of the sound and fury variety. People had been making them to her and breaking them consistently over her back as long as she could remember, so she was able both to promise and to renege on that promise with complete impunity, and she told herself that she didn’t care when others did the same.

  The promises given in this case were simple. Kendra would not insist that Ness accompany them a step farther on their route to see Carole Campbell. In return, Ness would wait for their reappearance at the station some two hours hence. This deal hammered out between them, Kendra and the boys left Ness on the ancient wooden bench, between a notice board that hadn’t been unlocked and updated in a decade and a rubbish bin that looked as if it had
n’t been emptied in just about as long.

  Ness watched them go. For a moment altogether too brief, so relieved was she at having escaped another excruciating visit to her mother that she actually considered keeping her promise to her aunt. Deep inside her, there still existed the child who recognised an act of love when it was truly an act of love, and that child intuitively understood that what Kendra had in mind for her—both through the now aborted trip to see Carole Campbell and through her promise to wait and not wander off on her own—was actually in her best interest. But when it came to her best interest, Ness’s problem was twofold: First, the part of her that wasn’t a child was a fifteen-year-old girl-woman at that point in her life where parental directives seemed akin to torture by enemy forces. And second, that fifteen-year-old girl-woman had long ago lost the ability to transform the words of any adult into anything she could understand as having benefit to her. Instead, she saw only what other people demanded from her and what she could gain from them in turn, through acquiescence to, or refusal of, their requests.

  In this case and upon reflection, acquiescence meant a nice long sit in the cold. It meant a numb backside pressed God only knew how long into the splintery wood of the station bench, followed by an interminable train ride back to London during which Toby would annoy her to such a degree that she’d want to throw him onto the railway tracks. Worse, acquiescence meant missing out on whatever Six and Natasha had planned for the afternoon and the evening, and that meant being on the outside looking in the next time she got together with her friends.

  So at the end of the day, there really was no choice to be made between remaining at the station and heading back into London. There was only the waiting for an eastbound train. When one chugged to a halt some twenty-eight minutes after Kendra’s departure with Joel and Toby, Ness climbed aboard without a backward glance.

  THE OTHER THREE made an odd sight walking along the verge: Toby wearing his seaside life ring, Joel in his ill-fitting Oxfam clothes, and Kendra dressed in cream and navy blue, as if she intended this visit as a substitute for afternoon tea at a country hotel. When she had admittance past the guard gate, Kendra led her nephews along a curving driveway. This skirted a broad expanse of lawn on which oak trees stood—bare of leaves—near flowerbeds that were colourless in the winter weather. In the distance sprawled their ultimate destination: the body, wings, spires, and turrets of an unwashed Gothic revival building, its facing stones streaked with mould and grime, the nooks and crannies of its exterior a nesting place for birds.

  Crows cawed and hurtled upward into the sky as Kendra and the boys reached the wide front steps. There the building’s windows looked blankly out at them, hung outside with vertical iron bars, inside with crooked Venetian blinds. Before the massive front door, Toby faltered. Armed with his life ring, he’d trotted along so easily from the time they’d left the railway station that his sudden hesitation took Kendra by surprise.

  Joel said to her hastily, “’S okay, Aunt Ken. He don’t know where we are ’xactly. But he’ll be fine once he sees Mum.”

  Kendra avoided asking the obvious question: How could Toby not know where they were? He’d been coming here for most of his life. And Joel avoided giving her the obvious answer: that Toby had already retreated to Sose. Instead, Joel pushed open the front door and held it for his aunt. He urged Toby to follow her inside.

  Reception was to the left of the entrance, black and white lino squares over which lay a doormat that was tattered at the edges. An umbrella stand and a wooden bench were the only furniture in the foyer. A small lobby with a wide wooden staircase opened off this. The staircase made sharp turns as it climbed to the first and second floors of the building.

  Joel went to Reception, Toby’s hand in his and their aunt following. The woman at the desk was someone he recognised from his earlier visits although he didn’t know her name. But he remembered her face, which was yellow and lined. She smelled quite strongly of smoked cigarettes.

  She handed passes over automatically. She said, “Mind you keep them pinned to your clothes.”

  Joel said, “Cheers. She in her room?”

  Reception waved him off with a gesture towards the stairs. “You’ll have to ask above. Go on with you, then. Doesn’t do anyone good with you lolling round here.”

  That wasn’t supposed to be the case, however. Not in the broader sense. People came to this place—or were put here by their families, by magistrates, by judges, or by their GPs—because it would do them good, which was another way of saying that it would cure them, making them normal and able to cope.

  On the second floor, Joel stopped at another desk. A male nurse looked up from a computer terminal. He said, “Telly room, Joel,” and went back to work.

  They walked along a lino-floored corridor, where rooms opened to the left and windows ran along the right. Like those on the floors below, the windows were covered with bars. They had the same Venetian blinds as well, the sort that declared “Institution” by their width, their lopsided angles of repose, and the amount of dust gathered on them.

  Kendra took in everything as she followed her nephew. She’d never been inside this place. On the rare occasions when she’d come to see Carole, she’d met her outside because the weather had been fine. She wished the weather had been fine today: unseasonably warm and a good excuse for further avoidance.

  The television room was at the end of the corridor. When Joel opened the door, the smells assailed them. Someone had been playing with the radiators, and the blazing heat that resulted from this was melding together the odours of unwashed bodies, soiled nappies, and collective bad breath. Toby stopped just beyond the threshold, then his body stiffened as he backed into Kendra. The rank odour was acting like smelling salts on him, pulling him from the safety of his mind directly back to reality. It was present time and present place for him now, and Toby looked over his shoulder as if considering flight.

  Kendra pushed him gently into the room. “’S okay,” she told him. But she couldn’t blame him for his hesitation. She wanted to hesitate herself.

  No one looked their way. A golf tournament was on the television, and several people sat before it, eyes glued to the limited action provided by that sport. At one card table, four others worked upon a large jigsaw puzzle while at another, two ancient ladies were hanging over what looked like an old wedding album. Three other people—two men and one woman—were doing nothing more than shuffling along the wall, while in a corner a wheelchair-bound person of indeterminate sex was calling out weakly, “Gotta have a piss, God damn it,” and going ignored. On the wall above the wheelchair, a poster hung, printed with, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” On the floor next to it sat a long-haired girl, silently weeping.

  One person in the room was given to industry, on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. She was just beyond the jigsaw puzzle table, working from the corner of the room. She had no bucket, no broom, no mop, no sponge to assist her in her endeavour, just her bare knuckles, which she swept repeatedly in an arc on the lino floor.

  Joel recognised their mother from the ginger of her hair, which was similar to his own. He said to his aunt, “There she is,” and he tugged Toby in her direction.

  “She’s Cleanin’ Caro today,” one of the jigsaw ladies said as they approached. “Going to make things nice ’n’ tidy, she is. Caro! You got company, luv.”

  One of the jigsaw companions put in, “Wearing out the bloomin floor’s more like it. And tell her to do summick about your brother’s nose.”

  Joel inspected Toby. Kendra did the same. The little boy’s upper lip was slick and shiny. Kendra searched in her bag for the tissue or handkerchief that she did not have, while Joel looked round the room for something to clean Toby up with. There was nothing to hand, so he was reduced to using his shirttail, which he then tucked into his jeans.

  Kendra went to the kneeling figure of Carole Campbell and tried to remember when last she’d seen her. Months and months ago,
it had to be. Or perhaps even longer, in spring the previous year because of the flowers, the weather, and the fact that they had met out of doors. Since then, Kendra had always been too busy. Scores of projects and dozens of obligations had sufficed to keep her away from this place.

  Joel squatted next to his mother. He said, “Mum? Brought you a magazine t’day. Me and Toby and Aunt Ken here. Mum?”

  Carole Campbell continued her useless swiping, making large semicircles against the dull green floor. Joel eased forward and laid the copy of Elle before her. “Brought you this,” he said. “It’s brand new, Mum.”

  It was also a little the worse for wear, rolled up while they were walking from the station. Its edges curled upward as they headed towards dog-eared, and a handprint marred the cover girl’s face. But it was enough to make Carole stop her cleaning. She gazed at the magazine and her fingers went to her own face, touching those features that made her what she was: a mixture of Japanese, Irish, and Egyptian. She compared herself—uncared for, unclean—to the flawless creature who was pictured. Then she looked at Joel and from him to Kendra. Toby, sheltered at Joel’s side, tried to make himself small.

  “Where’s my Aero?” Carole asked. “I’m meant to have an orange Aero, Joel.”

  “Here it is, Carole.” Hastily, Kendra brought it out of the bag. “The boys got it for you at WH Smith when they picked out the Elle.”

  Carole ignored her, the chocolate forgotten, lost in another thought. “Where’s Ness?” she asked, and she looked around the room. Her eyes were grey-green and they appeared unfocused. She seemed caught somewhere in the netherland, between complete sedation and incurable ennui.

  “She di’n’t want to come,” Toby said. “She bought a Hello! with Aunt Ken’s money, so I di’n’t get a chocolate bar, Mum. If you don’ want the Aero, c’n—”

  “They keep asking me,” Carole cut in. “But I won’t.”