Dark Avenging Angel

by Catherine Cavendish

  Some things are better off left in the dark.

  Chapter Three

  The first time my father tried to kill me was when I was sixteen.

  I had been visiting a schoolfriend on Christmas Eve and didn’t realize the trains were stopping early. There I stood, on the platform, with a couple of other would-be passengers. Waiting. Freezing.

  A uniformed railway official pottered about. He took no notice of us. Eventually, with no sign of any trains, I plucked up the courage to overcome my shyness and ask him how much longer I would have to wait.

  “Oh there’s no more trains today,” he said, and his cheerfulness irritated me. I bit my tongue. Mustn’t cheek my elders.

  “But I need to get home and it’s miles away.”

  The other passengers had drifted over and nodded in agreement.

  The official looked from one to the other of us and shrugged. “There’s a phone over there. You could call a taxi.”

  One of the other passengers said what I felt, “Oh very helpful! What did you think we were all waiting for? Santa Claus? Didn’t it occur to you to come and tell us what was happening?”

  The official shrugged again. “Didn’t it occur to you that it’s Christmas Eve? We’ve got families too, you know.”

  I left them arguing and moved away. What could I do? I couldn’t call for a taxi. I hadn’t enough money, for a start, and if I turned up at home and expected my father to pay, there would be an unholy row. No, there was only one thing for it. I’d have to call home and ask my father to come and pick me up.

  Mum answered. I burst into tears when I heard her voice. “I didn’t know the trains were finishing early, Mum. There was no sign up at the station. I’m not the only one. There are other people here too.” One stood a few feet away, clearly intent on using the phone after me.

  I heard my mother’s deep sigh. She couldn’t drive, so there was no way around this. She would have to ask my father to turn out after six on a cold December night to come and pick up a daughter too stupid to catch an earlier train. Happy Christmas, Jane!

  They were both in the car and my father’s face showed no emotion. Never a good sign. I opened the rear door and climbed in. Not one word.

  That is, until he started off. He slammed the car into gear and then he let me have it. “Just how stupid are you? Why the hell didn’t you check the bloody times of the trains when you got here? Why in God’s name should I have to come out at all hours and pick you up?”

  “I’m sorry.” But I wasn’t. At that moment, a coil of anger gathered momentum in the pit of my stomach and lay poised, ready to erupt at any second.

  But my father ranted on, “Sorry? I’ll make you sorry. I’ll make you wish you’d never been born! You can forget Christmas. Christmas is for your schoolfriends who’ve got more intelligence than to get themselves stranded on a railway platform.”

  Mum piped up, “Oh don’t be so hard on her. She made a mistake. She won’t do it again.”

  “Oh shut up, you stupid bitch. I’ve had enough of you and your good-for-nothing offspring.”

  That did it.

  We had just pulled away from the traffic lights. I wrenched the door handle open.

  “Shut that bloody door!”

  “No, I won’t,” I said. “I’m getting out. I’m not spending another minute in this car with you. I hate you, you bastard!”

  The brakes screeched and the car swerved. Fortunately there was nothing behind us. The ratchets of the hand brake protested as my father yanked it hard.

  I scrambled out of the car, without a clue where we were. I started to run. Behind me, my mother’s protesting yells to come back grew more distant. But pounding feet told me my father wasn’t going to let me get away.

  I ran in blind fear. Tears of terror streaked down my face. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I had to get away from him. But I tripped over a half-concealed brick. I fell hard on my knees.

  My father dragged me to my feet and shook me like a rag doll until the teeth chattered in my head.

  My mother’s cries turned to sobs as she raced toward us.

  I saw my father’s crazed eyes in the light of the streetlamp. He seemed possessed. Inhuman. My injured knees stung, smarted and throbbed, and still I spat out my venom against this man.

  “You sadistic bastard. I hate you, hate you!”

  He drew back his hand and a stinging slap set my head reeling. My teeth bit into my cheek and I tasted blood. Before I had chance to recover, his hands were around my throat, choking me.

  I struggled.

  He squeezed tighter.

  Flashing lights darted in front of my eyes. A misty veil descended. My limbs weakened. I was falling. Something flickered behind my eyelids. A face, indistinct but familiar. My angel. But she’d gone.

  “Get off her! Get off her!”

  My eyes shot open as my mother flung herself at my father and threw him off-balance. He struggled to stay on his feet. He failed and let go of me.

  I gasped, forcing air into my lungs. A fierce buzzing started in my ears, then faded.

  My father struggled to his feet. He looked stunned for a moment.

  “You’ve really done it this time,” my mother said. “She’ll have bruises around her throat. People will see.”

  He said nothing, just brushed himself off and started back to the car. Mum put her arm around me and I leaned against her as she half carried me, coughing and spluttering, back to the vehicle, and the place I was forced to call home. We had nowhere else to go.

  That Christmas was quiet. Deathly quiet. My father didn’t speak one word to us the whole time. My neck hurt and, sure enough, on Christmas morning I awoke to a necklace of purple, blue and red bruises encircling my throat.

  Mum gave me one of her silk scarves.

  A week later, my father decided to speak to Mum. She told me he was waiting for me to apologize before he would speak to me.

  “Apologize? For what?”

  “For swearing at him and being so disrespectful.”

  “I don’t respect him. What has he ever done to earn my respect, Mum?” He’d half strangled me, but that was all right, was it? Because he was my father he was allowed to do that and get away with it?

  “Nevertheless,” she said, “please say you’re sorry and we can all put this behind us.”

  “Until the next time, I suppose. Only next time he might actually do it. He might actually kill one of us.”

  Not if I kill him first.

  I jumped. Looked around. That voice. I didn’t know where it came from. My voice? Or my angel’s? No, it had to be mine. It should have been in my head, but it sounded so loud, as if someone else was in the room with us.

  Mum clearly hadn’t heard it. She continued to stare straight ahead, unable to look me in the eye.

  I held out as long as I could, but my father kept chipping away at Mum until she pleaded with me to apologize.

  “You don’t even have to mean it. Just do it for me. Please.”

  And, of course, I did. Every word caught in my throat, which still bore some lingering yellow bruising.

  The new school term had started and the high-necked shirts we wore covered pretty much all the last remnants of the assault. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything to me about it. Teachers weren’t trained to spot signs of abuse in those days.

  Life continued much as it had all my life. I enjoyed school and hated coming home, except to see Mum and a now-senior Sukie. I dreamed my dreams of becoming a famous actress or playwright. Every year, when the Oscars were televised, I would imagine I was there. Robert Redford or Warren Beatty would present the award.

  “And the award for best performance by an actress in a leading role goes to…Jane Powell.”

  The audience would erupt. They’d be up on their feet, cheering, applau
ding. I would mount the stage, dressed in some gorgeous gown designed by Yves St. Laurent. Warren or Robert would kiss my cheek as they handed me the award. Then I would begin my acceptance speech.

  “Thank you all so much for this amazing award. It’s especially wonderful to receive it this year because the role is one I wrote myself…”

  I would then thank everyone in the universe. But not my father.

  My father tried to kill me again when I hit seventeen. On my birthday, to be precise.

  It had been a great day at school. I’d come in first in the history homework assignment and received a record (for me) number of birthday cards. Twenty of them adorned the mantelpiece and television, so I was in a happy mood when I got home. Mum had cooked my favorites for my birthday tea. Cottage pie with a lovely cheese crust on the potato and, for pudding, her deliciously fluffy, steamed treacle sponge and custard.

  My father arrived home in a foul mood. He threw his briefcase onto the table.

  “Don’t put it there,” Mum said, preoccupied with her meal preparations, I should imagine, or she wouldn’t have said it quite like that. “I’m just about to set the table for dinner.”

  The blow was unexpected and sent the plates she was carrying spinning across the room. They shattered against the wall. Mum grabbed a chair for support.

  I ran over and put my arms around her. Tears were pricking my eyelids. A flood of despondency drowned every shred of happiness I felt that day. I glared at him. “Today’s my birthday. Why do you always have to spoil everything?”

  He dragged me away from Mum and threw me across the room, where I hit the edge of the dining table. Shards of pain shot through my hip.

  A dull thud followed a sharp slap as Mum crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.

  Something clicked in my brain. “You bastard!”

  He turned his crazed eyes on me. “What did you call me? How dare you. I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget in a hurry.”

  He lurched toward me.

  I circled the table, hobbled and hurting. I couldn’t move quickly enough. He knocked me to the floor and I fell on my knees. Daggers of pain shot up my thighs.

  His hands tightened around my throat as he dragged me to my feet. With strength I didn’t know I possessed, I pushed my hands up between his arms and thrust them apart. He hesitated. I took my chance and scrambled out of the dining room, choking, struggling to breathe.

  In the kitchen, I found Mum’s carving knife in a drawer. I gripped it hard. My breath came in short gasps. Blood rushed through my ears. The familiar sour taste of bile washed up into my mouth. I turned to the sink and threw up.

  Happy birthday, Jane.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there. I watched the door, gripped the knife and wondered if I would have the courage to do it. Ram it home in his chest. Right up to the handle. Watch his eyes glaze over, as his lifeblood poured from him and he stared at me in disbelief.

  All was quiet in the house. He wasn’t coming. Sukie wandered in, looked at her empty bowl and meowed at me.

  That one glimpse of normality snapped me back to reality. I stared at the knife as if it had put itself into my hand. I was no murderer after all. I didn’t have it in me.

  With a cry, I tossed the knife back into the drawer, picked Sukie up and cuddled her. Tears soaked her coat, but she just purred. The sweet, clean smell of her fur soothed me.

  That’s how Mum found us when she limped in looking dazed. A raised lump on her forehead had already turned red and purple.

  “Now will you report him?” My voice was croaky from the near strangling.

  Mum shook her head. “That’s not what we do. What goes on behind closed doors stays behind closed doors. We don’t want to air our dirty linen in public.”

  “Mum, he knocked you out. He tried to strangle me. Again. How long is this going to go on before you do something? I’m not eighteen yet. To the authorities, I’m just a child. No one will listen to me, and he’ll deny everything. But you’re an adult. They’ll listen to you.”

  “I said no, Jane. Now, let’s forget about it. He’s had a hard day at work.”

  “Oh I see. That makes it all right then, does it?” Sukie struggled in my arms and I set her down on the floor.

  Mum picked up a tin of cat food and opened it. My cat meowed and rubbed herself up against Mum’s legs.

  “Just drop it, Jane. Please. I don’t want to hear any more about it. Go to your room and lie down. You look very pale. Have you got another migraine? I heard you being sick.”

  “Hardly surprising, is it? I’m not used to being strangled on my birthday.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic. It’s not very becoming.”

  I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. Mum and I should have been consoling each other, defending each other. Right now, we should have been talking to the police. Instead, here we were, arguing, with my mother more concerned about my unladylike behavior than the circumstances that had led us both to end the day bruised and battered.

  “So where is he now then?”

  Mum set down Sukie’s bowl and the little cat sniffed at it. “He’s calmed down a bit and he’s reading the paper in the living room.”

  As if nothing happened. As always.

  I left Sukie munching on her Kit-E-Kat and Mum bathing her face.

  I hoped my angel would come to me that night. As I lay in bed, I even thought I caught a glimpse of her as the shadows lengthened and the patterns, formed by the gently waving branches of the chestnut tree in our garden, shimmered and swayed on the ceiling. There were no more noises from downstairs and my lovely birthday tea ended up in the wastebin.

  I hoped my angel had taken note.

  When I hit eighteen, I knew I had to get away, even though it meant leaving Mum and Sukie behind. In any case, maybe it would be the best thing for all of us. One less catalyst for his anger.

  I went through the motions of applying to university and was even accepted. Initially, I saw it as the best route out. Of course, the subjects I would have chosen—English and drama—were rejected by my father. My financial dependence on him would stretch out for a further three years. This, he believed, gave him carte blanche over what I studied.

  “Drama? English? What good are they going to do you? No, you will study for a vocational degree.”

  A good job I didn’t tell him why I wanted to do those subjects. But I knew it would just subject me to more of his ridicule if I revealed my long-held heart’s desire.

  He’d given up insisting I become a doctor. My science and math results simply didn’t qualify. Eventually, even he seemed to have grown bored with his endlessly repetitive taunts. And he couldn’t deny that my results in arts subjects were pretty consistent.

  He insisted I mustn’t even think of going into “industry”. Not that I had particular leanings toward any type of trade, anyway. No, I must choose one of the professions. At least he’d mellowed enough to allow me the choice of which one. Up to a point, anyway. He wouldn’t have been too happy if I’d chosen the police force. “Mixing with all those rough types,” he would have said, his mouth turned down.

  So, law it would be. A combined honors degree in law and philosophy, simply because that was a combination offered by six universities of the caliber I was allowed to select from.

  One of them offered me a place, on achievement of a B and two Cs in my Advanced level final exams. My lack of self-confidence meant I doubted I would accomplish that. Even if I did, I would have to accept that my father wouldn’t allow me to live a proper student’s life. I’d be over a hundred miles away but he’d still be in control. I would still be dependent on him.

  As expected, along came the inevitable lecture. “If you get to university, I will expect you to work hard. None of this gallivanting about, going on stupid protest marches. I expect you to get a first class h
onors degree. Nothing less will be acceptable. You’re going to be costing me a great deal of money, even with the grant. So, you will account for every penny you spend and I will expect to see a list of your expenditures every month. I don’t expect to see that you’ve been spending my money going out to the pub.”

  I said nothing. I’d already lied to him in order to make sure I didn’t have to apply to the local university, which would have meant staying at home. I told my parents that the careers teacher had recommended the six I did apply to as having the best academic record for law. With no other knowledge to go on, they believed me.

  So now I was faced with the prospect of slogging hard all day, every day, while every other student at the university would be enjoying nights out, making friends, having a ball.

  Looking back, I could have just rebelled. After all, how would he know what I got up to? But he had orchestrated my life for so long I felt certain he would know. Somehow, by some means, he would be aware if I so much as crossed the threshold of a pub when I was supposed to be working on an assignment. I wouldn’t have put it past him to turn up unannounced one evening, only to check up on me. Then it wouldn’t just be me who suffered.

  I started to apply for jobs.

  As for boyfriends: I dared to have one—or, should I say, attempted to have one—just once. George was a nice guy. He went to the boys’ grammar school and was the brother of a schoolfriend. I was told I had to bring him home before I would be allowed to go out with him.

  My father took one look at him and left the room. Next, he summoned my mother.

  George and I sat in awkward silence while embarrassment burned my cheeks. Poor George looked as if he would love to be almost anywhere but where he was right then.

  My mother came back in and called me out.

  “I’m sorry about this,” I said.

  George just gave a weak smile.

  My father’s darkened face sent my spirits plummeting.

  “Get rid of him. I don’t care how you do it, but get rid of him.” His eyes blazed with that cold fire I had grown to both hate and fear. “You’re not going out with him.”