Shape of Snakes

by Walters, Minette

  In the end I mentioned a vicar's wife I knew who drove to clifftops whenever the pressures of life became too much and screamed her frustrations to the heavens. I suggested my mother had a go. She refused. It wasn't her sort of thing, she told me. Nor could she understand why a vicar's wife would want to do something so common. What sort of woman was she?

  "Eccentric," I murmured, as I watched the seagulls float effortlessly over the sea like fragments of tissue paper. "Very thin and gaunt.. . hates being married to a vicar ... likes her booze ... fancies being a lap dancer... looks like a vulture."

  "That explains it then," said my mother.

  "What?"

  'The screaming. Thin people are always more high-strung than fat ones."

  It sounded reasonable, but then much of what my mother said sounded reasonable. Whether it was true or not was another matter. I decided she was being snide because she was plump and I was thin but, for once, I chose to ignore the bait. "I've been wondering if it works," I said idly. "My screams are always silent ones that circle 'round my head for days until they run out of steam and die naturally."

  "It's pure affectation to scream at all. You should learn to deal with your problems quietly instead of making a song and dance about them." I gave a weary sigh as I thought to myself that that was precisely what I had done, and she cast me a suspicious glance. "I suppose that's why you brought me here? So you can scream at me?"

  "Not at you," I corrected her. "At the wind."

  "You'll only embarrass yourself," she said. "Someone's bound to appear up the path at the wrong moment."

  "Perhaps that's the point," I murmured reflectively. "A double whammy. Physical and mental adrenaline all in one shot." I watched a dinghy, full of divers in wetsuits, motor out of the bay and head toward the southwest. "Would it embarrass you?"

  "Not in the least." She perched her behind on the edge of a rock. "If I wasn't embarrassed twenty years ago when you were behaving like a madwoman then I'm hardly likely to start now."

  She has a short memory, I thought, as I lowered myself to the ground to sit cross-legged in front of her. Her embarrassment had been colossal. I concentrated my attention on a clump of pink thrift that had rooted itself tenaciously in a crevice. "I wasn't mad, Ma, I was exhausted. We were kept awake night after night by the phone ringing nonstop, and even when we changed our number the calls just kept on coming. If we took the damn thing off the hook, we had mud thrown against our windows or constant hammering on the front door. We were both suffering from sleep deprivation, both behaving like zombies, yet for some reason you decided that everything Sam told you was true while everything I said was a lie."

  She examined the distant horizon where the blue of the sea met the blue of the sky, and I remembered her telling me once that the difference between a woman and a lady was that a woman spoke without thinking while a lady always considered what she was about to say. "You screamed and yelled about rats in your downstairs lavatory," she said at last. "Are you saying that wasn't true? You poured gallons of bleach down the loo in order to kill them, then became hysterical because you said they'd moved into the sitting room."

  "I'm not denying I said some strange things, but they weren't lies. I kept hearing scratching sounds and I could only think of rats."

  "Sam didn't hear them."

  "He most certainly did," I contradicted her. "If he told you he didn't, he was lying."

  "Why would he want to?"

  I thought back. "For a lot of very complicated reasons ... mostly, I imagine, because he didn't like me much at the time and thought that everything was my fault. He said I was making the noises myself to get attention and was damned if he was going to pander to any more of my childishness."

  She frowned. "I remember him saying he called in the rat catcher to try to persuade you it was all in your imagination."

  I shook my head. "It was me who called in the rat catcher, and for exactly the opposite reason. I wanted proof that there were rats."

  "And were there?"

  "No. The man said there was no evidence of rodent infestation, no nests, no indication that any food had been eaten, and no droppings. He also said that if we had rats then our neighbors would be complaining as well." I ran my finger lightly over the thrift and watched the pink heads shiver. "The next day Sam phoned you to tell you I was going 'round the bend and he wanted a divorce."

  She didn't say anything for several moments, and I raised my head to look at her. There was a perplexed expression on her face. "Well, I'm completely lost. If you and Sam both heard it but it wasn't rats and it wasn't you, then what was it?"

  "I think it might have been cats," I said.

  "Oh, for goodness' sake!" she declared crossly. "How could there be cats in your house without your noticing?"

  "Not in," I said, "under. It took me a long time to work it out because I didn't know the first thing about building houses. I couldn't even change a plug when I married, let alone get to grips with the importance of underfloor ventilation."

  Her mouth thinned immediately. "I suppose that's a sly dig at me and your father."

  "No," I said with an inward sigh, "just a fact."

  "What does it have to do with cats?"

  "Houses have holes in their walls below ground level to allow a free flow of air under the floorboards. It prevents the wood from becoming rotten. They're usually constructed out of airbricks, but the houses in Graham Road were built in the 1880s and in those days they used wrought-iron grills to make a design feature out of them. Before he left, the rat catcher mentioned that one of ours was missing from the back of the house. It happened all the time, he said, because there was quite a market for them in architectural salvage. It wasn't a problem because someone had wedged a metal bootscraper over the hole, but he suggested we get it replaced at some stage if we didn't want trouble in the future. He kept calling it a ventilation grill, and I assumed he was talking about something that was attached to the extractor fan in the upstairs bathroom because that was the only ventilation I knew about."

  I fell silent and she made an impatient gesture with her hand, as if to say, "Get on with it."

  "I wasn't very with it at the time-all I wanted was confirmation that rats existed-so it went in one ear and out the other because whatever was missing didn't seem to stop the extractor fan working. Then, one day in Sydney, I watched our neighbor's Jack Russell dig a hole in the flower bed beside our house and vanish through a hole into the crawl space beneath the house, and I realized the rat catcher had probably been talking about underfloor ventilation. He was telling me we had a hole in our back wall at ground level, and probably quite a sizeable one if a wrought-iron grill had been hacked out."

  "And because of that you think cats got in?"

  "Yes."

  "Didn't you say the rat catcher said it wasn't a problem because a boot scraper was wedged over the hole?"

  "Yes."

  "Then how did they get in?"

  "I think someone carried them down the alleyway at the back of our house, pushed them in and covered the hole afterward."

  She gave a snort of incredulity. "That's too absurd. The rat catcher would have heard them. They'd have been yowling their heads off. And why cats? Why not dogs? You said it was a Jack Russell that went into your crawl space in Sydney."

  "Because Annie's house was full of cats."

  "Now you really are being ridiculous! The woman had been dead for weeks by that time. They can't possibly have been hers."

  "I'm not suggesting they were," I said, "just that cats are more likely than dogs in the circumstances. My guess is they were pushed in under our floorboards to die because there was no convenient cat flap in our back door. If there had been, I think I'd have found them dying in my kitchen. I called out the gas board twice because 1 thought I could smell gas, but each time they said there was nothing wrong. One of the men said it smelled like a dead mouse, but I said it couldn't be because we didn't have any."

  I could feel the wei
ght of her disbelief bearing down on my bent head. "You'd have known if something had died. The smell of death is terrible."

  "Only when it's warm. This happened in winter-a particularly cold winter-and we had fitted carpets over all the floors."

  "But-" She broke off to marshal her thoughts. "Why didn't you hear them? Tomcats make a terrible noise when they yowl."

  "It depends what was done to them first." I shook my head. "In any case, I think they must have died of hypothermia very quickly."

  Another pause. "What on earth could be done to a cat to stop it crying?"

  I hunched my shoulders as I thought of the chilling research I'd done on the subject. "At a guess, they had superglue pumped into their mouths and eyes and Elastoplast wrapped tightly 'round their faces so they couldn't see, eat, drink or cry. Then they were pushed under our house to try to scratch their way out with the only things left to them ... their claws."

  My mother drew a disgusted breath, although whether her disgust was leveled at me for making the suggestion or at the suggestion itself, I couldn't tell. "What sort of people would do a thing like that?"

  I reached into my pocket for a copy of the police report describing the entry into Annie's house the day after her death and passed it across to her. "The same people who tortured cats for Annie's benefit," I said. "The only difference is, they pushed the wretched creatures through her cat flap so she could see what was happening to them."

  She glanced at the report but didn't read it. "Why? What was the point?"

  "Any reason you like. Sometimes I think it was done to cause fear, other times I think it was done for pleasure." I turned my face to the wind. "In a perverted sort of way, I ought to feel flattered. I think the assumption was I was cleverer than Annie and could work out for myself that animals were dying in dreadful agony under my house. And the fact that I wasn't ... and didn't ... must have been a disappointment."

  If my mother asked me why once, she asked it a hundred times on our journey home. Why hadn't Annie gone to the police? Why hadn't Annie phoned the RSPCA? Why would anyone feel confident about tormenting me in the same way they'd tormented Annie? Why weren't they afraid I'd go to the police? Why hadn't I gone to the police? Why would anyone want to reinforce my suspicions about Annie's death? Why risk getting Sam involved? Why risk getting the rat catcher involved? Why hadn't I questioned the RSPCA findings at the inquest? Why...? Why...? Why...?

  Was she finally beginning to understand how betrayed I'd felt when she hadn't believed me at the time? Or was I being cynical in my absolute conviction that it was only her recognition of my father's tireless support of me that had shamed her into asking any questions at all?

  In any case, I had few answers for her, other than to say no one believes a madwoman. "But why assume there was a logical thought process at work," I asked her finally, "when whoever tortured the cats was clearly unbalanced?" It was done for the pleasure of inflicting pain, not because it was possible to predict how Mad Annie or I would react to having mutilated animals left on our doorsteps.

  Family correspondence-dated 1999

  CURRAN HOUSE

  Whitehay Road

  Torquay

  Devon

  Monday

  Darling,

  Just a quick note to thank you and Sam for the weekend. It was good to see the boys again, although I do think you should persuade them to have their hair cut. Your father and I both liked the house, despite its dilapidation, and feel it would be sensible to make an offer for it. Sam is clearly at a loose end at the moment (country life doesn't really suit him, does it?) and a renovation project would keep him occupied. You can always sell it afterward if and when he manages to find a job.

  With regard to what we talked about yesterday: I have since had a word with our local RSPCA inspector. He tells me stories like yours are not unusual and that cruelty to cats is more common than anyone realizes. He gave me some horrific examples-cats tied in sacks to be used as footballs; claws pulled out with pliers; and fur doused in gasoline and set alight. Apparently the favorite sport is to use them as target practice for air-guns and crossbows.

  He's given me the name of a solicitor down here whose wife runs a rescue home for abused animals, and suggests we consult him with a view to a prosecution. I said I was sure you had some idea of who was responsible and, while he is not optimistic of a successful prosecution twenty years after the event, he believes it may be worth a try, particularly as the RSPCA inspector involved at the time is still alive and able to give evidence. Let me know what you'd like me to do.

  All my love,

  Ma

  PS I know she's barking up the wrong tree but do give her credit for trying. She's very "down" at the moment because she feels we ganged up on her and can't understand why. I said she should have expected it-i.e., what goes around comes around-but she doesn't want to be reminded of how she ganged up on you all those years ago. It would be tactful, my dear, to avoid saying "I told you so," however strong the temptation. I would think less of you if you did!

  Dad

  X X X

  *11*

  Portland Peninsula was under assault from a blustery southwest wind the following Wednesday when Sam and I drove up from Chesil Beach in search of the sculpture park. Given the choice, I'd rather have gone on my own. There was too much that still needed explaining-my more-than-passing interest in Danny, for example-but I balked at telling Sam his presence would only exacerbate the problem when, like my mother, his way of making up for past indifference was a belated wish to be involved.

  I had made a halfhearted attempt the previous day to talk about the three weeks at the end of January and beginning of February '79 that I spent alone on Graham Road, but my habit of silence was so ingrained that I gave it up after a few minutes. I found I couldn't talk about fear without becoming cruel, and I couldn't become cruel without turning on Sam because he had abandoned me when I needed him most. In the end, as so often in my life, I took the fatalistic view that whatever would be would be. Sam was a grown man. If he couldn't learn to live with the truth, irrespective of how it was revealed to him, then nothing I did or said would make a difference.

  The Isle of Portland, a tilted slab of limestone four miles long and one mile wide, forms a natural breakwater between Lyme Bay to the west and the sweep of sheltered water between Weymouth and the Isle of Purbeck to the east. Its precipitous cliffs rise out of the sea to a high point of nearly five hundred feet, with only the hardiest of vegetation surviving the mercurial English weather. As Sam and I wound our way up its spine, I thought how bleak it was, and how unsurprising that successive governments had claimed it both as a fortress against foreign invasion and as a colony for prisoners.

  In 1847 the Admiralty had employed convict labor awaiting transportation to Australia to construct a mighty harbor on Portland's eastern shores, which remained the preserve of the Ministry of Defense until the government abandoned it in the early 1990s. It seemed fitting somehow, in view of the convicted men who had toiled to create the anchorage, that the most prominent feature in Portland harbor that Wednesday was a gray prison ship that had been imported from America some four years previously to deal with the chronic overcrowding in Her Majesty's inland gaols.

  "Is Michael Percy being held there?" Sam asked me.

  "No. He's in the adult prison here on the island. It's called the Verne. It's off to our left somewhere." I pointed to a sprawling Victorian building ahead of us which dominated the skyline. "That's the young offenders' institution. It was built to house the convicts who worked on the harbor."

  "Good God! How many prisons are there?"

  "Three, including the ship." I laughed at his expression. "I don't think it means Dorset's a hive of criminal activity," I said, "just that desolate lumps of rock make good holding pens for society's rejects. Think of Alcatraz."

  "So what did Michael do?"

  I thought back to the press cuttings of his trial which had arrived toward the end of 1993. "Wen
t into a village post office in leathers and a crash helmet, and pistol-whipped an elderly customer until the postmaster agreed to open his security door and hand over what was in his till."

  Sam whistled. "A bit of a bastard then?"

  "It depends on your viewpoint. Wendy Stanhope would say it was his mother's fault for letting him run out of control. Her name was Sharon Percy. She's the blonde you saw in the pub occasionally."

  He made a wry face. "The prostitute? She used to haunt the flaming place looking for customers. She tried to hit on me and Jock once so I gave her a piece of my mind. Jock was furious with me afterward. He said Libby was giving him a hard time, and he'd have been up for it like a shot if I hadn't queered his pitch."

  "Mm. Well, at a guess he was double-bluffing you in case you got suspicious about her approach. According to Libby, he was paying out thirty quid a week to Sharon for most of '78. They didn't bother to keep it much of a secret either, except from the people who mattered ... like you and me and his long-suffering wife." I watched him out of the corner of my eye. "Paul and Julia Charles worked out what was going on because Paul saw Jock coming out of Sharon's house one evening and put two and two together."

  He threw me a startled glance. "You're joking!"

  "No. She charged twenty for straight sex. thirty for a blow job, and Jock visited her every Tuesday for months." I was amused. "You can work out for yourself which service he was getting."

  "Shit!" He sounded so shocked that I wondered if "Tuesday" had registered as the day Annie died, and if he was now trying to remember the details of the alibi he'd given Jock. "Who told you?"

  "Libby."

  "When?"

  "A year or so after we left. It all came out in court when Jock decided to contest the divorce settlement. Libby hired a hotshot solicitor who demanded an explanation for the Ł30 withdrawals from the joint bank account every Tuesday, along with an explanation for the numerous other bank accounts he'd set up without Libby's knowledge. He wasn't very good at hiding his peccadillos and the judge took him to the cleaners for it." I pointed to a sign for Tout Quarry. "I think this is where we need to turn off."