by Adams, Guy
The waitress laid it out for them – paper doilies on the plate, Anna noticed, as if you couldn’t risk the Eccles cake staining the china.
‘Enjoy,’ she insisted with a slight Hungarian accent and vanished back down the stairs.
‘Oh I think we will,’ agreed Davinia, taking a big mouthful out of her Eccles cake and chuckling through a shower of pastry crumbs.
‘I’m sure Anna will tell me everything about herself that she thinks I need to know,’ said John. ‘I don’t think it’s fair to hear personal details from you.’
‘Oh, don’t be so bloody pompous,’ Probert replied, ‘I’m not just here to gossip, it’s important, I’d hardly bother otherwise. Anna is not quite the woman you think she is.’
‘I know all about that,’ said John. ‘Aida Golding adopted her, she told me.’
‘She told you about her parents?’
‘She doesn’t remember them.’
‘She remembers them only too well,’ Probert replied. ‘Her father was Douglas Reece.’
‘Who’s Douglas Reece?’ The name was vaguely familiar but John couldn’t place it.
‘Douglas Reece was the East End Ripper, remember? We allegedly heard from him that night.’
John tutted. ‘We heard from no such person, it was just one of Golding’s confederates putting on a silly voice.’
‘Yes,’ Probert agreed, ‘it was Anna.’
‘Anna? Don’t be ridiculous, she was sitting right next to you.’
‘Indeed she was, in the dark, if you remember, Golding is always very careful to ensure that we can’t see a thing at these affairs. Anna had been working with her for years, she’s always had a skill for voices. No, more than a skill really … perhaps a better word would be affliction.’
John stood up. ‘That’s enough. I have a lecture to get to and I don’t have time to sit listening to this twaddle. I presume Golding put you up to this did she? Trying to get her own back? Stir up some trouble?’
Probert didn’t move from his chair. ‘Oh, I’m sure she’ll make a nuisance of herself soon enough,’ he said, ‘but I’ve come of my own accord.’
‘A likely story.’
Probert snapped, that calm, noble air he so liked to affect was replaced by genuine anger. ‘I don’t make a habit of interfering in other people’s business, Pritchard,’ he shouted, ‘but this whole mess has gone on far enough. If I can help make sure nobody else is hurt – or worse – then I shall do my damnedest to see that it is so. Whether given your permission or not. Now sit down, you stupid man, it’s better for Anna that you know about all this because if Golding’s right then someone needs to be keeping an eye on her.’
John hesitated for a moment then resumed his seat. ‘All right,’ he agreed, ‘but only for Anna’s sake. And that’s not to say I believe any of it …’
But he did, of course, he believed it all.
‘I can’t stop thinking about what happened that night,’ said Davinia, much to Anna’s unease. The last thing she wanted was to discuss the death of Father Goss. ‘It was just so awful, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Anna agreed, ‘it was. I’d really rather not talk about it.’
‘Well, naturally,’ agreed Davinia, ‘who would? All that blood …’ she rolled her eyes as if feeling faint. Of course, in reality she was more alive than ever, there was nothing that invigorated Davinia more than the grotesque. ‘And the East End Ripper!’ Davinia gasped with pleasure, too wrapped up in her own excitement to notice the discomfort the conversation was obviously causing Anna.
‘I don’t suppose you remember it?’ the older woman continued. ‘You’ll have been far too young when it happened but the whole country was up in arms about it. “You make sure you get a bus home,” my Henry used to tell me, “don’t go walking around at night on your own, not with a lunatic like that on the loose.” Not that I would have been walking in the sorts of areas he tended to pick on, of course, we’ve always been North London, the closest we get to the East End is Albert Square! Do you watch EastEnders, dear?’ she asked. ‘Henry never used to allow it on but I have to say I never miss it now he’s gone. They’re addictive, aren’t they, the soaps? Moving wallpaper, that’s what Henry called it, nothing but moving wallpaper.’
‘I don’t really watch much television,’ Anna said, grateful of the change of subject.
‘Oh, very wise,’ Davinia replied, ‘rots the brain, I’m sure. Or the eyes, one or the other. You must excuse me.’
She rose to her feet and wandered purposefully up the stairs in the direction of the toilet.
Anna was left quite alone in the empty tearoom, staring at the steam that rose from the spout of the teapot.
‘What a gobby old bitch,’ said Bad Father, taking a seat at the table.
For a moment, Anna could say nothing, her fingers slapping her lips in shock as she looked around to make sure nobody else was here to see or hear him.
‘Go away!’ she begged him. ‘Go away! Go away!’
She hadn’t seen or heard from Bad Father since that night in John’s garden, had hoped, in fact, that he was gone for good, washed away by the rain.
‘It’s you that keeps bringing me back,’ he said, dabbing at pastry crumbs on the table with his finger, ‘thinking about me, talking about me …’
‘That was her, not me. I didn’t say a word.’
‘I noticed. Didn’t exactly stick up for your old dad, did you?’
‘Oh please …’ Anna began to cry, turning to look over her shoulder, terrified that Davinia would return at any minute and see them. ‘Please leave me alone.’
‘She’s a horror,’ he said. ‘“My Henry”’ this “my Henry” that. I bet he would have loved to shut her up. I bet every night he dreamed about taking an axe to the bitch just to stop that flapping mouth. I don’t know how he could bear it. I should kill her now, as a favour to him.’
Anna sobbed as upstairs the toilet door opened and Davinia began to descend the stairs.
‘Douglas Reece was an extremely disturbed man,’ said Probert, ‘textbook loon, thought he was doing God’s work by getting rid of all the “fallen women”.’
‘There’s no such thing as a “textbook loon”,’ said John.
Probert shrugged. ‘You’re the expert. What would I know?
‘He wrote letters to the police,’ he continued, ‘just like the original Jack the Ripper. That’s how they caught him in the end, a thumbprint on one of the envelopes. He had previous form after a rape accusation in the seventies. They tracked him down, religious mania, history of violence, he fit the bill. They stormed his flat one night, typical heavy-handed Met operation, clomping boots on the stairs, kicking in of doors. He was alerted and he beat his wife to death with a poker before they could enter.’
‘Oh God …’
‘He was likely planning on doing the same thing to his daughter, four-year-old Anna. They kept her in a cot in the living room, she was far too big for it, curled up in there like a panda in a cage. Makes you sick. When the police burst in, he changed his mind. Cut his own throat over the cot.’
John put his hand to his mouth, unable to say a word.
‘Dowsed the poor thing in his blood before the officers pulled him away and he bled out on the carpet. One of the men grabbed Anna, did his best to wipe the blood off her and got her out of there. Chap’s name was Sherwood, as in the forest, works in private security now. Passed over one too many times for promotion. I talked to him at length. He was relieved to know the girl was still alive, I don’t think he held out much hope for her. By the time they handed her over to social services she was screaming her head off.’
‘Hardly surprising.’
‘What was surprising was the voice she was using to do it.’
‘“The voice”? What are you talking about?’
‘Dissociative identity disorder, isn’t that what you lot call it? Anna hears voices and they trigger changes in her personality. Douglas Reece was the first of those personalitie
s to take shape, presenting himself that very night. When they dragged her into the hospital she was shouting at the staff in a man’s voice – or as good an approximation of one as a girl of four could make. Over time more and more personalities developed, most benign, some, like Reece, the trigger for violent behaviour. As she grew older, her control of them increased, mainly under the instruction of Aida Golding.’
‘Who used her as a prop for her seances?’
‘Absolutely. Hateful little beast, isn’t she? Not an ounce of morality in her.’
John shook his head. He was thinking about the voice he had heard outside the house, the night he had found Anna standing in the rain. But it hadn’t happened again, had it? Was she better away from Golding’s influence?
‘She’s better now,’ he said to Probert, hoping very much that that was true.
‘We on our own?’ asked Davinia once she was back at the table. ‘I could have sworn I heard someone else up here.’
Anna didn’t dare to speak. She stared at Bad Father, watching him as he licked the pastry crumbs off his finger.
‘She doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that I’m here,’ he said. But that wasn’t altogether true was it? As soon as he had spoken, Davinia’s face pulled a confused expression and she looked at Anna.
‘You what, love?’ she asked, ‘you got something stuck in your throat?’
‘Stuck?’ laughed Bad Father, ‘you’ll soon have something stuck in you, all right.’
‘It’s clever,’ said Davinia, ‘I’ll give you that. Very good. Is that what I heard? Were you practising while I was upstairs?’
‘I don’t need practice,’ said Bad Father, ‘I know what I’m doing. I’m doing what poor Henry would have wanted.’
‘Now love,’ Davinia said, ‘don’t get nasty. I’d rather you didn’t bring my Henry up, I’m very sensitive about him, you know.’
‘Oh God,’ Anna couldn’t believe her eyes, her hands grasping at her face in shock.
‘It’s all right, dear,’ said Davinia, ‘you don’t have to fret, I’m just saying.’
But it wasn’t Davinia Harris’s words that had so shocked Anna, it was the appearance of a fourth person at their table. Another man, but one who made no secret of his time spent in the grave. His flesh was powdery layer upon layer, great chunks missing to expose the darkness within. It was as if he were made of old plaster. As he leaned forward it was with a dusty crunch of decaying bone.
‘Look at him,’ said Bad Father, ‘and he was hardly much worse when he was alive. Drained day by day. A shadow of a man. All because he lived with that.’ He inclined his eyes towards Davinia.
‘Sandy, my love,’ said Davinia, ‘you’re starting to worry me now. Do you want me to call someone?’
Anna looked first to the resurrected Henry and then to her own Bad Father. The latter placed his finger to his lips and slowly shook his head. Anna realised there might yet be an opportunity for her to make everything all right.
‘I’m fine,’ she said to Davinia, ‘sorry. I just … sometimes I …’ Try as she might, she couldn’t think of an excuse for what the old woman had heard.
Davinia took pity on her, ‘Forget about it, dear. Finish your tea and we’ll say no more about it.’
‘She’ll certainly be better for being away from Golding,’ Probert agreed, ‘though you’ll forgive me if I point out that someone as damaged as she is can hardly be cured overnight.’
‘No,’ John agreed. ‘Of course not. She’ll need a lot of time. And a lot of help.’
‘Help you can hopefully give now that you know what you’re facing.’
John nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘Forget it,’ Probert got to his feet. ‘I don’t make a habit of giving two shits about anybody but myself but I thought I’d try it for once.’ He smiled. ‘Besides, I cannot begin to tell you how much I loathe Aida Golding.’
‘You and me both,’ agreed John.
*
‘Well,’ said Davinia with a good deal of forced cheerfulness, ‘I can’t sit here chatting all day. I’m sure we’ve both got things to be getting on with.’
Anna nodded. She was scared to speak unless absolutely necessary, convinced it might encourage Bad Father or Henry, who were both still at the table with them. Henry had dipped two crumbling fingers into Anna’s teacup, a greasy swirl of oil spreading out from where the desiccated stumps were rehydrating themselves.
‘I’ll pay,’ insisted Davinia. ‘It’s been lovely to have someone to talk to.’
She got up and headed for the stairs, Anna cautiously following. Bad Father and Henry stayed in their seats.
At the till, Anna thanked Davinia, still glancing around but finally daring to believe she had left their demons behind.
Out on the street the bustle of people and the heavy traffic served to knock away some of the fear she had been feeling. Watching the big double-decker buses, delivery vans, speeding taxicabs and motorbike couriers that whizzed past as she and Davinia reached the main road, Anna couldn’t believe that this was a place she could be haunted. This was the noisy, electric, petrol and steel real world. This was not the muddled confines of your own head or the lonely, empty night.
‘Drive like lunatics, don’t they?’ said Davinia, shaking her fist at a white van that nearly clipped the kerb at the crossing. They’ll kill someone one day.’
‘Indeed they will,’ said Bad Father and Anna screamed as she saw the crumbling remains of Henry leap forward and shove his wife into the road. There was a pointless squeal of tyres from the traffic as Davinia bounced off the bonnet of a UPS van, connected face-first with the rear window of a taxicab and then flipped back to be folded and pressed flat beneath the braking wheels of the traffic that, even now, was rear-ending each other in an attempt to avoid the inevitable.
Anna screamed. After a pause while the information soaked into the crowd around, she was joined by the sound of other, horrified voices. She ran. Nobody watched her go, they were all focused on the road, a great sweeping wave of people descending on the site of the accident, to help, to look, to know. There’s nothing that fascinated people more than looking at death, Aida Golding knew that.
She ran back through the market, twisting and turning at random as the city squatted over her. Her lungs tightened, her head whined like metal against metal. Finally, turning into a small green square, she tripped and came to land in a pile of damp leaves. She lay there, a scared animal waiting for the predator to move on. But the predator was there with her, its fingers sliding in-between the leaves to poke and prod at her. ‘We got her!’ Bad Father chuckled. ‘And soon we’ll have them all!
John walked out with Probert, agreeing that he’d keep in touch, knowing that was a lie.
‘I hope it’s all right,’ said the peer. ‘It would be nice to think she could get back on her feet after everything Golding’s put her through.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ said John, ‘at least she’s safe from her.’
‘For now.’
‘For ever, there’s no way she knows where I live. I’m ex-directory and they won’t give out addresses here. Unless you’ve told her?’
‘No, and I never would. Still, as far as Golding’s concerned I’d never be sure of anything. If she wants to find you – and I’m sure she probably does – then she will.’
Fourteen
The Life and Death of Shaun Vedder
Eighteen months ago
‘PSYCHOLOGY, EH?,’ THE old woman said, shifting in her bed and releasing a gust of flatulence from within the yellowing sheets, ‘what’s the point of that?’
‘It would help me understand you,’ Shaun might have said but, tired and not in the mood for a long argument with his mother, he chose to say nothing.
‘I mean, Christian’s got sense, hasn’t he?’ she continued, ‘he’s getting a City and Guilds in electricity. He’ll be straight into a job with that. Psychology? Waste of three years, if you ask me.’
‘I didn’t’ wa
s the next thing Shaun could – but did not – say.
‘Still,’ his mother relented, ferreting in an eiderdown for her Silk Cut, ‘keeps you off the streets.’ She found the pack, lit one and sent a mushroom cloud of smoke up towards the light brown ceiling. ‘And the less money you have the less smack you can afford.’
‘Pot, mother,’ Shaun finally chipped in. ‘I was caught smoking a little pot, not doing smack.’
‘Pot, smack, they all sound fine until you end up on Jeremy Kyle slapping your wife about.’
‘I won’t end up on Jeremy Kyle, Mum.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you will. No bloody drive, that’s your problem.’
Sixteen months ago
‘You Shaun?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m Bobby, we’re sharing.’
‘Cool.’
‘Yeah … Hope you don’t fucking snore.’
Fourteen months ago
Shaun watched as Mr Pritchard began to map out a diagram on the overhead projector. For a couple of minutes he was lost in the sweep of the bright red pen reflected across the white wall of the lecture hall. He wished Mr Pritchard could just draw on it all day, filling the whole room with spirals and squares and circles and—
‘Shaun?’
Shaun snapped out of his daydream, having slid forward on his seat and nearly fallen on the floor.
‘Sorry,’ he said, spilling his books and sending his biro flying several rows forward.
‘You all right?’ Mr Pritchard asked, smiling.
He was a gentle man, Shaun thought, a nice man. There was no malice in that smile. The same could not be said of the sniggering from all around him.