The Penance Room

by Carol Coffey

  “We were there for almost nineteen years and by then we were unwell. Penelope had a breakdown even though we were in a place which should help you with these matters. She began to imagine that Daddy was coming for us and she even woke at night and cried about it. Even though the medicine made her shake, they gave her more tablets. We would sit together in the room and I would wipe the drool that came from her mouth and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t met James, Daddy would never have turned on us. Penelope knew what he would do. Penelope knew that what he really wanted was to control us and when he realised that someone wanted to take me away, he was enraged.

  “Sometimes I would shake Penelope and beg her to wake up and take charge again. I was never sure what to do without her. I was afraid. New people would come into our ward and some of them were dangerous. I pushed our beds together and we slept beside one another. We kept hoping that somehow Henry would find out where we were but he never did. Then one day the doctor received a letter from my father saying that he had had a stroke and that he was very ill. He said he wanted to give us another chance and that he would take responsibility for our welfare. The doctor told us and we pleaded with him not to send us. We begged him to write to our brother but he refused. He wrote to our father and told him that we were too unstable to be released into society but Daddy wrote back and said he was our guardian and that he was taking us anyway.”

  I look around the room and notice that everyone is sitting forward, anxious to hear what happened and hoping that the women were not forced to return home.

  “No one would listen to us. I told them that if they sent us back there that he would kill us but we were unmarried and Daddy had complete control over us. When we arrived back at the house, there were only two servants, a cook and a maid. We had never seen them before. Daddy had got rid of the all the servants who knew us and the new ones were instructed not to speak to us. A doctor came to see us regularly. He’d say ‘How are your thoughts today? Anything unusual?’ and Penelope and I would say ‘No doctor, nothing unusual.’ For almost a year Daddy didn’t – didn’t come to our room at night. His speech was difficult to understand and his left arm was paralysed. He looked very old to us. All day he sat in his room and wrote notes. One night he slipped a note under our door telling us he was sorry for what he did and that he wanted us to live in the house after he was gone. But as soon as we read it we heard his cane moving closer and closer to our door. He came in and tore the note from Penelope’s hand and started calling us names, terrible words. He said it was his job to cleanse us. He said that he would always be watching us. Even after death, he would be in this house watching the vile women we had turned into.

  “At night he would come to our bedroom door and we would hear him crying outside. He would touch the handle and turn it slightly. Sometimes we knew he was beating himself with his walking stick. We became afraid. We told the doctor. We said that we thought Daddy was mad but he told the servants to increase our night-time medication. Sometimes Daddy would come to our room during the day and look through Penelope’s underwear drawer but he never touched mine. We knew then that soon he would start to come into our room again and that no one would believe us. He had complete control over us. We realised that there was no way out for us. We started saving up our medication and hiding it under my underwear. We made a pact that we would die together and we would go to a place where he could no longer hurt us.

  “We had saved almost two weeks’ medication when he became ill. He asked the servant to bring us to see him and we stood at the foot of his bed, afraid even though he could hardly breathe. The doctor listened to his heart and shook his head. He told Daddy to make sure he had his affairs in order and, you know, sick as he was, he smiled so strangely at us that we were more afraid of him than when he was able-bodied. He started to laugh and began to cough up green phlegm than ran down his nightshirt. The doctor left and Daddy waved for us to stay. I was glad he was dying. We were finally going to be free. Henry could come home and we would be a family again. He waved the maid away so it was just Penelope and I standing there, trembling but knowing that soon we would be released from the terror he had made us endure our whole lives. He tried to speak again and spit flew out onto the bedclothes. We squirmed and he noticed. He tried to sit up and we cowered. I can still see him. I can still see the dim light in the room. His face was crumpled into a red ball of anger. He seemed to know what I was thinking, what we were both thinking. His speech was slurred but we understood every word he said. ‘My will!’ he laughed. ‘Henry can never come back here. If one of you marries, my estate will transfer to my second cousins and you will be penniless. You will not be able to sell this house and you will only receive a small weekly allowance to live on. You see, you will never be free of me. I will be here watching over you both for the rest of your days.’

  “We were so angry. We had waited so long. All we wanted was for Henry to return and we would finally be happy.”

  “What did you do?” Steve asks.

  No one notices the hot rush of air that has blown into the room except me. They are all engrossed in Victoria’s story and don’t notice Penelope and Greta return from their shopping trip. I can see Penelope standing in the doorway with an open mouth and teary eyes. She is shaking her head at her sister. Her face is saying: “No, don’t, don’t say it.”

  Victoria’s face is expressionless, like she is reading the lines from a book.

  “So we killed him.”

  Steve’s mouth drops open and he stares wide-eyed at Victoria. A few moments pass before he can speak. He didn’t see this coming and neither did I.

  “You killed him? How?”

  I can tell he does not believe her.

  “I was so angry. I could see myself moving but it was like it wasn’t really me, as if I had snapped in half and a part of me was still standing at the foot of his bed, trembling. I went to my room and took our angry tablets from the bureau and returned to his room. One by one I started to shove them down his throat. He struggled and Penelope held his mouth open for me until we made him swallow every single angry tablet we had left. He started to choke and his face turned red and then purple. When we were finished we stood over him and looked into his open eyes, hoping he could still see us.”

  An air of tension settles in the room. No one speaks, not even Steve who is wearing a strange expression that I cannot read.

  “Penelope, would you like to tell us the rest?” Steve asks, without turning around.

  Penelope walks slowly into the room and takes the seat on the far side of her sister. She suddenly looks smaller as though the secret she had made Victoria keep for all these years has taken the air from her. Her mouth is trembling and tears are falling down her powdered face.

  “It was all because of me, you see. It started with me and ended with Victoria and I doing – what we – did. When we were in India, William, a second cousin of my mother’s, took an interest in me. I saw him at garden parties from time to time. I was seventeen and he was an officer and although he was quite a few years older than me, he was very handsome and well educated. One day he asked if he might have permission to call on me. I asked him not to speak to Daddy just yet. I wanted to try to make peace first before William approached him formally. Daddy didn’t care for Mother’s family even though they were quite well off. I waited until the following evening. I played all of his favourite pieces on the piano but when I raised the subject he went insane. We moved abruptly and I was no longer allowed out unescorted. I never saw William again and I never knew what happened to him. That’s when Daddy started to . . .”

  Steve leans forward to touch Penelope’s arm. He knows she cannot finish the sentence but she pulls back, afraid, lost in that terrible time of her life.

  “I didn’t tell Victoria about William or about Daddy. She was too young to understand at the time and I wanted to protect her but now I know I should have told her. I should have warned her not to fall in love, that he would never allow it. Bu
t I didn’t and so we found ourselves all those years later standing over his body, neither of us feeling any remorse for what we had done. He ruined all that was good about us. When we were sure he was dead, we called the cook in and told her to fetch the doctor back. When he arrived, he told us he was sorry for our loss. Daddy had told him that when he died, he didn’t want us to be returned to the hospital. The doctor thought this was a sign of his devotion to us but we knew what it meant. He wanted us where his evil spirit could watch and control us.”

  My mother looks very concerned. I know she is thinking that the women are mentally ill, even if they don’t realise it themselves.

  Steve doesn’t react.

  “After the funeral, we wrote to Henry and when the war was over he came to Australia with his wife. Needless to say, we ignored Daddy’s insistence that Henry not return to the house. But nothing was going to be as we had dreamt. Henry was drinking heavily and when he did spend time with us, he argued with us for money that we didn’t have. Sometimes . . . we were very afraid of him. He didn’t like being at the house and rarely stayed for long. It frightened him the same as it did us. It was big and dark and we could feel Daddy in every corner. Sometimes we would hear our door handle turning in the middle of the night. We changed rooms but still it was there. We knew we were not imagining it. Two people cannot imagine the same thing, can they?

  “The servants eventually left and Penelope and I tried to look after the house, something we had no skills for. We were always afraid. Daddy was right. We would never be free. Despite his death, nothing really changed. He was still there, watching us, controlling us. We didn’t dress as we – or at least Victoria didn’t dress as she had always wanted. I didn’t play the music that I loved. In fact I stopped playing piano altogether. It brought too many bad memories back. We didn’t go anywhere that he would have disapproved of. We had never lived on our own before. Henry called less and less and eventually he moved to Sydney with his wife and little Henry. When Henry died, a part of us died with him. Our hope died. That’s what it was.

  The house fell into disrepair. We lived alone at that house for many years because we had nowhere else to go. We didn’t know how to fend for ourselves. The doctor, worried about our health, sent a social worker to check on us. She was a nice lady and the second time she called she had a doctor with her, a psychiatrist. He was shocked at how unwell we were. We – really did imagine all sorts of things or so they told us. Mostly I think they were real things – caused by the ghost of our father. The psychiatrist met with a team of people to decide what was best for us. Some of those doctors had been at the hospital. They decided that we should come here to live and things have been better for us but still, it is not the life we had been waiting for and hoping for. It seems that we will never have that life.”

  “What happened to James?” Mina, who had been sitting quietly under the window suddenly asks, taking the words out of all of our mouths. I know she is hoping that he and Victoria were reunited, a happier ending than her own.

  Victoria puts her hand to her neck and runs her thin fingers over the brooch.

  “He died there . . . in India,” Victoria says sadly. “I never saw him again and I never knew . . . I’ll never know what might have been. I don’t know if he ever found out what happened to us.”

  Steve touches her wrinkled hand and smiles sadly at her. He stops the recorder and I think I am the only one who sees him erasing the tape. No one speaks.

  “Ladies, do you still think that your father is watching you? Even here, in this nursing home?” he asks.

  Victoria looks to her sister but the years spent in the psychiatric hospital have taught the women not to answer such questions. Both women look into their laps. Their refusal to answer tells me that the sisters believe their father’s ghost is watching them but I know they are wrong because I have never seen him and I see everything. Like Martin, the ladies’ conscience and not their dead father is haunting them. My mother beckons for Steve to come over to her. As he approaches, Greta and Tina also join them. Henry follows and within seconds all five people are standing outside the Penance Room looking in at the sisters who are now sitting staring into each other’s faces, perhaps wondering where they will go from here.

  My mother speaks first.

  “Oh, I didn’t realise the extent of their delusions.”

  Nobody speaks and for a few seconds I wonder if no one is going to take my mother’s point of view, that there was no point in reporting the sister’s confession to the police, that they have suffered enough.

  Greta is the first to speak. “Oh yeah, imagine the poor souls believing all this time that they killed him. Blimey!”

  Tina chews on her lip. “What did your grandfather die of, Henry?” she asks with a look of fear in her eyes.

  Henry moves his eyes around the group and wets his lips. “He died of pneumonia. I’m – I’m sure – yes – that’s what it says on his death certificate,” he says with a worried expression. “Perhaps they’re imagining that they poisoned him. I don’t think they could do such a thing. I really don’t.”

  No one knows what to say. I can see their eyes dart from one to the other.

  “Well, are they delusional?” Kora asks. “Do they want to think they finally took revenge but he actually did die of pneumonia?”

  “We’ll never know,” Greta says. “And does it really matter now anyway? Look at them! If they did do it, they’ve paid the price.”

  “So we’re agreed then?” my mother asks. “That due to the women’s mental illness, they are imagining that they took revenge on the man that tormented them their entire lives?”

  One by one people start nodding, even Steve who I know is wondering about the women’s salvation. I look at my mother and I am proud of her.

  When Steve returns to the room he walks over to the sisters and sits beside them. He is considering the women’s penance.

  “Could you do something for me?” he asks with those brilliant eyes.

  They nod simultaneously.

  “You said you learnt to speak French. Do you still remember it?”

  Penelope and Victoria look at each other.

  “We think so,” they say in unison.

  “Every day, I want you to speak with Iren. Talk to her, ask her how she is. Will do you that?”

  “We will,” Victoria replies through watery eyes.

  Steve smiles and grips both their hands tightly. Then he gets up and walks slowly out the door.

  Out of the corner of his eye he spots Wilfred looking at him. He has been watching the scene with the sisters and I cannot read the expression on his face. Steve looks directly at him and the two stare at each other. I understand Wilfred’s look now. He is afraid. He has seen Steve get the sisters to give details of a crime they committed a long time ago, something that they could have taken with them to the grave. He looks away and stares out of the window at the setting sun, then returns to his seat and faces away from the group. It is his time and he knows it is long overdue.

  I slip out of the house and make my way to Maria’s, anxious to tell her about the sisters’ story but when I get there I can see that she has been crying. I sit down beside her on her street corner and blow out some air. I know her well by now and she doesn’t want me to ask her what’s wrong. Nor will she want to hear my stories of happy endings. She is still waiting for hers. Together we sit and watch a real estate agent talk to her grandfather outside the rundown shop. He is waving his hands around, pointing at the bright yellow and red sign and smiling in an exaggerated way.

  She sighs and I slip my hand inside hers. She squeezes it and together we sit in silence watching a scene that will change her life once again.

  Chapter 21

  When Kora arrives back from visiting Jeff at the hospital, my mother is waiting to fill her in on the news. My father is home from working late at the mine. They are sitting quietly on the porch and Father is drinking a beer and listening to the sound of the cicadas
, something he says he loves to do. I move to the side of the house and watch them speak from a safe distance. Kora gets herself lemonade and together they talk about Victoria and Penelope and what a dreadful life they have had. My father starts to joke with Kora about Jeff. Father says Scottish people love joking around but Kora doesn’t and my mother knows that Father’s comments will annoy her sister.

  “Well, how is the nurse–patient romance coming along, Kora? I hope you’re not giving that bloke bed baths?”

  Kora frowns and ignores him. She directs her conversation to my mother.

  “He’s having another test tomorrow. His headache hasn’t gone and they’re worried about concussion.”

  “Did you see Jimmy Young?”

  “Yeah, mate. Would you believe the old sod’s looking better? Said a few words today. He even thanked me for bringing stuff in to him. His daughter arrived when I was there. Remember Lorna?”

  My mother nods. “Yes – she lives a good distance away now.”

  “Married some bloke out the way. She’s got three small ones. Anyway, she thought I was there because he was one of our residents but he introduced me as . . .” tears spring to Kora’s eyes and I can see her swallow, “as . . . Jeff’s girlfriend . . .”

  My mother reaches forward and touches her shoulder. “I’m so pleased, Kora. I knew he’d come around. He’s been impressed with how good you have been to Jeff and to him since the accident.”

  My father knows how to spoil the moment but only because he doesn’t enjoy sentimental talk and always tries to lighten the atmosphere. The only time I see my father sad is when he is drunk. It is the time he thinks most about me and about what might have been.