Buffet for Unwelcome Guests

by Christianna Brand

  They picked up these dreadful expressions from the television. ‘You mean he’d been drinking?’

  ‘He was on hash. On hashish. Of course, I didn’t know. I couldn’t understand him. He kept talking about some awful place, some sort of dance place, you know, where sailors went with women, awful women, and everyone was on hash or something, even on the hard stuff; Simon told me that, he said lots of them were “on the hard stuff”. He said he’d take me there, he wanted to take me there. I believe in the end,’ said Daffy carefully, ‘he almost thought he had taken me there, he was in a sort of dream, a sort of nightmare, he thought he was there, he thought I was one of those—those women…’ She broke off, shuddering and whimpering; looking into their white, stricken faces, searching for any sign of doubt. But there was none. Simon could protest and deny but would be obliged to admit that he had been under the influence of an unfamiliar drug—he was far too stupid and honest not to tell the truth; and might, in the end, even be brought to half believe her story himself. No one in that place was likely to have taken any notice of them; let alone to admit to having stood by and watched her, so young and obviously unaccustomed, being taken out to be raped and beaten up by the man even they called The Butcher.

  ‘We were going to the folk-singing café—you know, you all sit round and have coffee and listen to the singing. Well, we did go and we were sitting at the back of the cafe, away from the stage, and suddenly the man next to Simon passed him a cigarette and Simon said “Thank you” and smoked it and then he said had the man got any more that he wouldn’t mind selling him, because he’d run out; and the man said, “It’ll cost you bread, man,” but, of course, that can mean only “you’ll have to pay for them”. At least, that’s what I thought; but anyway, he sold Simon a few loose ones and Simon was smoking away and he seemed to go a bit dreamy, not to say zombie, but of course I thought it was only the music. But on the way home, we went and sat on the bench like I told you, Daddy…’

  ‘She didn’t want to go,’ he said quickly to her mother.

  ‘It wouldn’t matter, darling, if you did,’ said her mother, gently. ‘I mean, just sitting on a bench in the moonlight, just…’ You could see her thinking that one mustn’t be square and narrow-minded, things had changed these days. ‘Just doing a bit of necking, darling.’

  Honestly, thought Daffy, they were so naive it was almost sickening. She said: ‘Oh, yes, I know, Mummy; but actually I was tired. I wanted to come home. And then he—he was so strange and insistent and then he started trying to kiss me and then—then…’

  ‘Oh, Daphne, he didn’t—?’ Her mother sat staring at her, one hand fisted against her mouth as though to plug in the little moaning, whimpering sounds that would force their way out. Her father was silent and his silence was worse than the whimpering.

  Into that frightening silence, she began to gabble; and with the gabbling, memories came flooding back. ‘Then he… I fought and struggled…’ Real memories, genuinely terrifying, genuinely vile, the shock and horror of that onslaught by a man savage with drink, and frustration of a perverted passion. The earlier passages of her acquiescence were passed over: the rest, with genuine sobbings and bleatings, blurted out in a genuine sickness of frightened and disgusted recollection. The thin summer coat had all this time remained wrapped about her. Now she stood up and let it fall.

  That slender white body like a lily, swaying within its ragged enfolding leaf of the little green dress: livid weals scoring the delicate skin, throat, arms, breast, great patches of red which tomorrow would be purple bruises, dried blood where filthy nails had scratched: marks of teeth on a soft round shoulder… The mother gave one horror-stricken glance and fell back, half fainting, into her corner of the sofa. The father said, in a high, harsh, scraping voice: ‘Daffy. You must answer. Did he? Did Simon—’

  If any investigation arose, it could be proved all too surely that here was no dear little virgo intacta. She collapsed, sobbing afresh. ‘Oh, Daddy, please! Don’t ask me.’

  But he repeated it, sick, dull, with that horrible grey-blue look on his face, though now, thanks to the medicine, the flush had died down. ‘I must ask you, Daffy. Did he…? Dear God!—Daffy, did Simon succeed in—raping you?’

  She lifted her head and looked back into his face; the small flower-face looking back into the haggard thin face with that blue-grey, ash-grey skin. She bit on an already bleeding lip and turned away her head.

  A simple man: with a serious heart condition, perhaps with but little time left to live. A man with one passion, with one hope, one idea, one total, blinding perfection of happiness in his life—so young, so fresh, untouched by the dirty world about her, so starry innocent—his golden girl, his golden Daffodil… A gentle man who for the rest of his life had retained the symbol of the hideous years of enforced ungentleness: his old Army revolver. He went to it now: went with a sort of automatism, turned back to that symbol of the red rage that had in those bad days consumed him at the sight of friends and comrades lying shattered into hideous stillness at the hands of the enemy; the red rage that then—as now again it must—had borne him on the only wings that would carry him to the duty that must be done: the wings of an unthinking, revengeful fury. Like an automaton, he loaded the gun with a single shot, left the house, walked the short distance to his brother’s home: stood in the darkness outside the white painted door and called out, sharp and harsh, hardly knowing that he lifted his voice: ‘Simon! Come out here!’

  The front door opened. Framed in the light from the hall, still reeling a little, shocked, sickened by the memories which, with a terrifying clarity, were now returning, the boy stood there and looked out into the night. Looked out and saw where the stream of light caught the barrel of the revolver in a black gleam: and cried out: ‘It wasn’t my fault, Uncle John! She made me take her there.’

  Like a man deaf and dumb, he lifted the gun, took aim at the boy’s left breast and fired; and stood quietly aside through the ensuing uproar till the police came to take him away.

  And so the Golden Daffodil—the press had latched on to her pet name in one minute flat—was on all the front pages. Only, Mummy—true to form—had fought off the reporters and photographers and there was always the same photograph and it was an awful thing—taken quite early on the following morning when she was still drenched in tears about poor Simon being dead and poor Daddy being in prison; no make-up, hair in the most frightful mess because, of course, there’d been no time to go to Freesia’s to get it done; face patched with bruises, and still in one’s dressing-gown, though fortunately the lovely new one that had been Mummy’s last birthday present. And things were quite dicey. Policemen kept coming and asking her questions—or policewomen, rather: it was all so delicately handled that really it almost made Daffy giggle—though of course it was too awful about Daddy and Simon. Mummy made her stay in bed and she lay propped up on pillows and wanly lived again through the recital of Simon’s attack and Daddy’s reaction to what she had told him about it. That all went all right, went fine, and after all now at least Simon could never contradict her. But after that…

  First Maureen and Lindy turned up. Allowed to visit her after anxious telephone calls between the Mums. ‘You won’t—well, tell them anything about all that, darling? They might not understand. Of course they’re older than you are, but still…

  So it all had to be told in whispers; not about the Blue Bar, of course, best to keep that entirely to oneself—it was quite rivetting enough just pinned on to poor Simon (who ever would have thought that proper little cousin of Daffy’s would have had such kinky ideas?). But when she mentioned Mardon’s bench, Maureen responded immediately: ‘You can’t have been on that bench, because we were. We were there half the night with the Frazer boys.’

  She didn’t think of the come-back quick enough. She drew a red herring. ‘I didn’t know you even knew the Frazer boys.’

  ‘Good lord, Daffy, Maureen and Roddy Frazer have been having it off for weeks. Haven’t
you, Maureen?’

  ‘He’s terrific,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Eddie’s not too bad,’ said Lindy. ‘But inexperienced.’ She wouldn’t have bothered with him, she added, but they wanted to make up a foursome.

  ‘I went with him once and I thought he was absolutely dreary.’

  ‘Oh, well, we know your standards, Daffy,’ said Lindy laughing:

  ‘But anyway, why all this drama with your cousin, Simon? Why not just let him?’ And she laughed again and said that heaven knew, kinky or not, Daffy hadn’t exactly had anything to lose by it.

  ‘He happens to be dead,’ said Daffy stiffly; drawing the subject ever further from the bench by the river.

  ‘Oh, well, yes we know that, darling; and of course it’s too frightful. And about your father and all that. My God, it’s frightful!’

  ‘Why on earth did you have to go and tell your father, Daph?’

  ‘He caught me sneaking in. I was in such a mess, I had to say something. And anyway, I was pretty steamed up. I did have an awful time. I mean, look at these bruises.’

  ‘I can’t see why you should struggle? Why not just let him get on with it?’

  ‘Well, good heavens, he was like a sex maniac! He’d been smoking all evening and heaven knows what this pusher at the bar, well I mean in the café, had sold him. He was stoned clean, he just did his nut. Of course I couldn’t tell my parents I’d let him. I had to say he’d forced me.’

  ‘Good lord—poor Simon!’

  ‘Yes, but he did knock me about. Of course it’s awful about Daddy shooting him, but still he did knock me about.’

  ‘All the same, Daphne, it wasn’t on that bench outside Mardon’s,’ said Maureen, coming back to cases. ‘Because we were there ourselves.’

  ‘I didn’t say the bench outside Mardon’s. I said it wasn’t the one outside Mardon’s. The one we went to was the one further down, by the warehouse. You know I always go to the warehouse one, at least I always used to with Tom.’

  ‘What’s Tom going to say about all this poor-little-raped-virgin stuff, when it comes out?’

  ‘For that matter, Daffy, what’s everyone going to say? I mean, everyone knows about you.’

  ‘Well, then everyone will just have to shut up, won’t they?’ said Daffy. She gave them that sly little sideways glance of hers, the meaningful glance that had finally blackmailed poor Simon into giving way and taking her to the Blue Bar. ‘Otherwise I might start talking in self-defence. I mean, if they knew how everyone at school was doing it, not to mention the pot and all the rest of it—if they knew the temptations I’d had and the example that had been set me by—by older girls than me: well, I wouldn’t be so much to blame, would I? So everyone had better just shut up, hadn’t they? And I didn’t say I was down by the river near Mardon’s, I said “we were on that bench, not the Mardon’s one but the other bench”. Or would you like to get up in court when they’re trying my father for murder and say that you know I wasn’t at the Mardon’s bench because you were there yourselves all night, having it off with a couple of boys?’

  ‘My God, that young Daphne, she’s a cool one!’ said Maureen to Linda as they hastily went away. (All the same, she had said she’d been outside Mardon’s.)

  Daphne herself was not too pleased with the way she had handled it. She should have thought of that threat earlier. Because one day she was going to have to face Daddy and she’d definitely told Daddy that she’d been by the Mardon’s bench; and he’d commented that that wasn’t on the way home—he wouldn’t forget that, you couldn’t just slur it over with him. Had Mummy heard? No, she hadn’t come downstairs by then. So only Daddy would know. A thought flicked through her mind and flicked out again. If Daddy knew she’d told one lie, would he begin to wonder if, after all, Simon had been innocent?

  If Daddy should give her away! If everyone got to know that she’d gone to that place, that she’d been with that sailor, that she’d lied about poor Simon and lied and lied and lied… If all the newspapers, cooing now about poor little innocent-injured Golden Daffodil—if they knew that she was just a sexy trollop who could give lessons to any of the boys at school and had given lessons to most of them! If they knew that she’d let Daddy go off and murder Simon—murder him!—was letting Daddy now face the rest of his life in prison, all because of her lies… And Mummy, poor Mummy, having to live on, with all the family knowing that Daddy had killed Simon, her own cousin, his own nephew, his own brother’s son—had actually shot and killed him: because of her lies…! If Daddy were ever to give her away!

  But he wouldn’t. How could he ever harm her, his Golden Daffodil? He’d die to protect her. Daddy would die for her.

  And it wasn’t only Maureen and Lindy. Now a man came forward and told the police that he’d recognised her picture in the paper as that of a girl he’d seen that night at the Blue Bar, a disreputable haunt of sailors in the bad part of town.

  The police had informed the solicitor who was looking after Daddy’s defence and he came to see her. Could this man’s story possibly be true?

  ‘Of course not,’ said Daffy, opening the large blue eyes. ‘I never even heard of such a place.’

  ‘You were at the folk-singing café all through the evening?’

  ‘Yes, till we went home by the river. Of course we were.’

  ‘Did you see anyone who might confirm that?’

  ‘What, you mean at the café? No, we didn’t see anyone we knew. We were near the back and they keep the lights very low because of the singing.’

  ‘One man did speak to you?’

  ‘Yes, but he was a pusher. He wouldn’t come forward, would he?’

  No flies on little Miss Jones, reflected the solicitor. He suggested: ‘Your cousin, however, had wanted to take you to some place like this bar? You told your father so.’

  ‘Oh, yes, but…’ She thought it all out rapidly. It was getting rather scarey. ‘Perhaps the man saw Simon there on some other night,’ she suggested, ‘and just mixed up the nights. He used to take other girls there—or anyway to some place.’

  ‘It was your picture the man recognised.’

  ‘He couldn’t from the papers, that was the most awful thing. He probably recognised Simon’s and remembered seeing him there on some other night with some other girl and then associated the other girl with me.’ It sounded pretty good, but it wouldn’t deceive Daddy; Daddy would think it too much of a coincidence, after all she’d told him about Simon wanting to take her to just such a place. And the thought flicked in and out again. If Daddy realised that all along Simon had been innocent of any assault on her—would he really stand by her still? Would he let Simon be blamed for the rest of his life—well, for the rest of his death, then: wouldn’t that seem even worse to Daddy?—that Simon was dead and unable to defend himself, that all Simon’s family, Daddy’s own family, his brothers and sisters and Granny and everyone—should live on, believing that dead Simon had been so vile, when all the time he’d been innocent? Of course she could admit to having been to the Blue Bar—to having allowed Simon to inveigle her to that awful place and then been ashamed to admit it; it need make no difference to the story of his subsequent attack on the river bank. But then if more people came forward, if people remembered how she’d gone off with the sailor of her own accord—indeed against Simon’s rather woozy protestations. Nothing to do but deny it; deny it all.

  ‘Don’t tell Daddy about it,’ she said. ‘It simply isn’t true that the man could have seen me there; it would only upset him.’

  It upset the solicitor also. He thought to himself: ‘If this damn’ little bitch has been lying all this time!’ But it was necessary to take the story to her father.

  The sad, grey man caged up in the prison hospital awaiting his trial said at once: ‘Of course it isn’t true.’

  ‘The man’s very sure. He says he remarked at the time how ill-suited they were to such a place.’

  ‘No, no, he wanted to take her—’ But that didn’t make sense. A
thought, a memory, came to his mind, terrifying in its intensity. But he thrust it aside. ‘Surely this—mistake of this man’s needn’t come out in court?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. They were obliged to inform us. But it’s no good to the prosecution. You’re pleading guilty, so that’s all there is to it. And for the defence—’

  ‘I don’t want any defence. I’ve told you. I killed the boy for what he did to my child. I don’t want any defence.’

  ‘It’s just a matter of mitigating circumstances. But anyway,’ said the lawyer, ‘this wouldn’t help us either, so I think we’ll just drop the whole matter.’ Hardly a mitigating circumstance if the boy turned out to have been shot for something he had never done.

  The lawyer went away. But the memory came back. That cry, only half heard, all unattended to. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Uncle John. She made me take her there.’ Dear God! If Simon had been innocent after all!

  Goodness, the photographers outside the court! It was like being a film star. And of course her hair was done now and Freesia, quite thrilled, had made a special job of it and it looked terrific. And the bruises on her face had faded. Pity she couldn’t have used her proper make-up but it would be best, they’d said, to appear very young and fresh and innocent, not to say generally gormless: so that Daddy couldn’t be blamed too much for what he’d done. And, indeed, in the witness box she looked like a flower, the light shining down from the canopy above on the careful halo of golden hair: the golden, Golden Daffodil.

  Your name is Daphne Jones? Of such and such an address? And you are sixteen years of age…?

  Only sixteen years of age.

  Only sixteen; and had been with every boy in the top form at school, with or without drugs for extra kicks.