He scorned children of his own age, playing together and running around laughing and joking. He had no time for such stupidity when there were insects to crush and creatures to maim.
The fleeting memory began to take on substance as details started coalescing together.
He remembered how he’d discovered early on that enjoyment for him came in different forms. He developed a knack for finding ways to inflict cruelty, pain and fear. And he developed a taste for masochism. He liked nothing more than savouring the moment when an animal was close to breathing its last breath. That helplessness, that submission to the inevitable. It made him wretched with agony, dying as he was to just stamp out whatever pathetic life was quivering before him. But he learned his own pleasure intensified immeasurably if he could push through the pain barrier and wait. Watch and wait.
He prided himself on his restraint. Others, he felt sure, would simply smash the life out of something. He, on the other hand, would hold back. Let the moment linger. Refuse to put any living thing out of its misery. He rationalised it to himself as evidence of his superiority as a human being.
He remembered coming across his Ma in the early days. Weeping to herself, a large white handkerchief sodden wet. Mumbling to herself about Jack. Whoever Jack was.
Occasionally he would catch a word or two between the tears.
‘Prison’, ‘life’, ‘murder’ and ‘bastard’ seemed to be the ones she said the most.
Growing up with just a Ma and no Da was just normal for Joe and his sister. It wasn’t till he was 10 that their Ma had sat them down and told them the story of their father. How he’d been a bad man. How he’d hurt people. How he wasn’t right in the head.
She said he was somewhere safe now, where he couldn’t do harm to anyone anymore.
Joe had found the story moderately interesting but to his surprise his sister started crying alongside his Ma. What is it with these crybaby girls? But he was smart enough not to mock. He did his usual thing and acted his little heart out, giving them both the biggest hug he could muster.
Ma smiled at him with that lopsided smile she did sometimes when she was happy about something one of her children did. And there she was, little Sweetie, looking at him too with that tearful half-smile; was she trying to be all grown-up and okay even though she was upset?
God, he hated the pair of them.
Wandering down the street now, he mused on what he would think of his father, if he’d ever met him. Fuck him. Bastard.
His Ma had told him more of the details as he got older and he found himself hungry for the details of what he’d done. She never told him enough, always kept him hanging. He wanted to know more about the victims, who they were, where they lived, how old they were.
Once, she was telling him what Jack had been like when she first met him. Joe was patiently waiting for her to meander through the boring bits, aching to hear more about the times she’d realised her husband had had secrets.
She never told him very much, but as he got into his teens, occasionally there was a detail about a rope or a knife. Fire. Even these little snippets riveted Joe, captivating his imagination. He found himself wishing he could have seen what his father had done. Tasted it.
And he started feeling twinges of raw, animal arousal when he pictured what might have happened.
He liked it.
He liked knowing he was getting hard right there in front of his Ma as she started crying again. Occasionally, when she sank into her hanky with deep, jagged tears, he would touch himself, pinching hard through his trousers to heighten his desire. He didn’t care she was so close, might see. His obsession, his need for that physical force pressing against his cock took over everything.
He mastered the art of waiting. And as the years went by, decided this would be his signature. He vowed to restrain himself from release for as long as humanly possible, and resist the temptation of consummation.
He would taste the fear in his accomplices, knowing that they didn’t know his signature. Knowing they didn’t know he would prolong the moment. Knowing they didn’t know he didn’t care.
Petals
It was another rainy lunchtime and she couldn’t wait to race to the library and reread the poem she had found last night. Sitting there on her bed, dusky twilight making shadow shapes on the walls, stillness and magic were in the air, and words were dancing in front of her, captivating her.
Her new friend was unlocking new worlds and helping her uncover new truths about life, and about herself.
This one was about a little girl. Naturally, she indulged the urge to place herself in the story, hearing it speak to her.
The bell went after a dreary double maths and Gracie swiftly packed her things up into her satchel.
She had brought sandwiches from home today. Nothing special, just some spam and pickle. And there was a red apple for afters.
Ignoring the throng of youth pushing behind and in front of her, she found her own calmness and wordlessly moved to the quiet place where she could be alone.
She pulled open the heavy, wooden door and felt the warmness and stillness wash over her. Heading over to her favourite spot in the corner under a small window with a small stained glass pane at the top, she settled down eagerly.
Splashes of green, blue, red and yellow illuminated the table from the light behind the window. There must be a sunny lull in the rain, she thought to herself.
Satchel down, book pulled out, sandwiches abandoned – for now – in the bottom of the old leather folds, she opened up the pages and flickered through until she alighted on the right spot.
At first, she read the poem all the way through again, slowly taking in the word shapes and soundscapes as she went. The imagery coming to life with a lightness that came naturally to her.
And layered beneath the imagery was a rich depth of meaning you could glimpse from the surface but would need time and thought properly to uncover.
She felt a slow burning of pleasure as she glowed in her endeavour.
The phrases each earned their place – there was both not too much and not too little. So a brevity, then, but nothing stilted or staccato. The pacing seemed to vary like different footsteps across different areas of the poem, perhaps mirroring the journey of the girl. Her journey that day as well as her life journey. Skipping along one moment and taking her time the next. Stopping completely when she felt like it.
And there was something profoundly comforting about the core of the poem. Something reassuring and calming and embracing.
She set about reading it a second time, savouring each line carefully and allowing the mind shapes to subliminally guide her.
Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.
She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around …
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.
Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.
It’s not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.
It’s this dress that she’ll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.
There was something about the way Rilke wrote that called out to her, spoke to her. She realised that she probably only half understood the many textures and intricacies that lay within his words. But like a puzzle that needed solving, the verse asked her to delve deeper, to discover what she could.
She pondered the dream-like state of the girl, and the inventions and
fictions of her movements. The rhythms rising and falling; racing and rushing here, hesitating and stopping there; moments of bravery and openness and others of tight closing in.
There was a sense of daring and discovery but also a reticence and a knowingness about some distant truth.
It lingered on today but it spoke of a whole life to be lived.
Gracie paused on the phrase ‘sweet surrender’ and wondered what that part could mean. Sweet suggested something nice and tender. But surrender was about giving up. Submission perhaps.
And the girl’s future seemed to take shape as a thorny road, bristling with spikes and traps and horrors and risks. It seemed curiously at odds with the carefree frolicking of her childhood. But on rereading from the top once more, she saw that even through the girl’s frolics there were restraints and halts and ferments.
The red dress seemed to be the anchor and the link. The comfort and the memory. The talisman. The Secret Key of her life.
Gracie’s eyes were staring into space, past the stained glass colour sploshes and into her own world of memory.
The last stanza’s emphasis on memory: ‘It’s this dress that she’ll remember,’ echoed that wonderful last stanza in the Wordsworth one.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
She wondered what the equivalent of the red dress, or the daffodils, would be for her. She didn’t really have an item of clothing that carried memories or comfort like the dress in the poem, and at home she had very few possessions. She thought about her bedroom. There was a bookshelf stuffed with books. There was baby Victoria. There was an old, much loved knitted rabbit wearing a pale blue jacket, its long, floppy ears rather grubby round the tips; its fluffy bobtail somewhat scruffy and worn over the years. Samson, she had called him, when she was little.
There was a small box where she kept secrets. But none of the secrets were all that special at first glance. Or at least, she didn’t think anyone else would think they were special.
There was a particularly shiny black stone that she had found in the woods once. It had a white, zigzag stripe across its back and it gleamed prettily in the light.
There was a funny little twig object Billy had given her a couple of years ago. He had fashioned it into a childish sculpture, mounting a teak-coloured acorn on the end of the twig. It was hardly a thing of beauty, but it meant something to her because he had made it for her.
There was also a gold crucifix with a long, fine chain that had once belonged to her mother. It was crafted from very thin gold and had an engraved, slightly raised flourish around the edges, a medieval-style decoration which made it look old fashioned, like something out of a fairy tale. But the chain was far too long for Gracie so she had never worn it. Plus, she had been worried about what would happen if the chain broke or if she lost it.
Nestled against these small mementoes were a couple of curls of rose petals. They were rather brown and wrinkly now, but you could still smell the musty rosiness if you breathed in deeply. She didn’t know why she didn’t just throw them away, it seemed so pointless keeping them! But they took her back to a special day when she was just five.
Thinking about it now, it must have been just a short time before he entered their lives.
It had been a perfect spring day. Sunshine and smiles. The laughter of a mother and child at play.
It was one of Gracie’s first precious memories, what happened that day.
She recalled it had been at the end of a joyous afternoon of running around and inventing stories. They had made pictures in the dirt with a pointy branch. Created a den in the woods with leaves for a canopy. Pretended she was a princess who had to go to sleep for a thousand years (the beautiful queen would come and rouse her with soft stroke of her forehead and a heavenly kiss on her cheek). Played at making cakes and holding a tea party for invisible friends.
One of those perfect, perfect days.
An exhausted Gracie was going to sleep well that night, her head filled with dreams of cakes and princesses.
As they packed up in the woods, her Ma pointed out the white rose bushes that populated the edges of the clearing. They were in full bloom, heavy scented heads bobbing about in the breeze.
Bumble bees and butterflies were hovering around them, diving into their centres to play.
The flowers looked like neat little pompoms and had a delicious, musky scent.
‘Those roses always remind me of you, pet,’ she said, softly, eyes smiling.
‘Why?’ Gracie was puzzled, but quite pleased at the same time. The logic of childhood didn’t pause long to ponder such things.
‘Well, they’ve got a special name, they’re called Little White Pet. And that’s how I think of you, Gracie, you’re my Little White Pet.’
And she had collected a pool of petals into her hands and given them to Gracie to hold. The chubby little fingers took them eagerly, and she stroked them softly. In the late afternoon light she looked like an angel. Golden, silky curls collecting on her shoulders and pale milky skin whitely reflecting the powder creaminess of the flowers around her. The lovely scent hovered between them in the magic moment before dusk settled.
Then they had walked back home together, contented.
So the worn, papery shards were fragile browned wisps of memory. An afternoon of happiness captured in a couple of curls of muskiness.
But not quite the stuff of a talisman.
It occurred to her that perhaps her talisman wasn’t a thing as such, but a moment of awakening.
She refocused on the book and flickered back to an earlier page. The extract which explored the fear of the inexplicable, taken from a letter Rilke had written.
She scanned the words, settling on the last few phrases:
So you must not be frightened
If a sadness rises up before you
Larger than any you have ever seen.
If a restiveness like light and cloud shadows
Passes over your hands and over all you do
You must think that something is happening with you,
That life has not forgotten you,
That it holds you in its hand;
It will not let you fall.
This was it! She cried out in delight, momentarily forgetting the pious setting of her exclamation. Fortunately, as always, she was the only pupil in the library, so there was no danger of disturbing anyone else. Just Miss Weaver, the old librarian, a bird-like, skinny woman whose voice rasped and whose bustling busybodyness pecked and scratched around the piles of books hardly anyone bothered to read.
‘It will not let you fall,’ Gracie murmured the last line, beaming to herself.
She decided that this piece of writing would be the talisman of her life. Her Secret Key. Her red dress. Her daffodils.
Politics
The accomplices began to add up over time, and he understood that the violent lust that ached in him varied in potency depending on how long he spent watching and waiting.
It was always about intimidating his victim, breathing in their fear, their incomprehension. In the case of a female accomplice, he had the added frisson of sexual discovery, the anticipation of what she looked like weighing down like a physical pull in his crotch. It added a layer of thrill that he didn’t experience with the males.
But with the men, he had the added frisson of feeling bounteous in his virility, impressively forcing them, however apparently strong, to cower and tremble in his presence. The fear he would provoke in them gave him a different edge to the sexual excitement.
Either way, it was immensely satisfying and he couldn’t wait till the next high.
And then, something happened.
He reached an unwelcome hiatus in his activity.
He’d entrap
ped a particularly smug-looking political activist. The type with weedy hair and a whiny voice. Pockmarks of acne still denting his face, even though he was by now well into his twenties.
There was something so intensely, revoltingly smug about the little mongrel, Joe spent weeks planning his contract with him.
He’d first come across him in a pub. Joe had been sitting nursing some drinks on his own, smoke swirling around him and the bitterness of the ale doing its job, alcohol throbbing in his head.
Lost in his own silence, he suddenly became aware of the whinging mewlings of a hectoring new convert.
He looked up in the direction of the noise and saw a young man holding court over a group of older, working folk.
The young man was suited and booted in a cheap grey flannel. Tie skewed on, greasy face poking out of an outsize shirt collar.
He had slightly too-long hair and he was bleating on about workers’ rights like a student on a rally.
He went on … and on … and on …
Joe’s head began to hurt.
He tuned in now and then to catch phrases here and there … ‘the power of the people’ … ‘harnessing the good of the common man’ … ‘standing up for what you believe in’ … ‘putting up a fight’ …
He stared at him, coldly.
He would give him power. And he would give him fight. The fight of his puny little life.
At this, the smirk crept across his face and a dark pallor sank into quiet resolution, setting his jaw.
He established soon enough that the young politician would come to this pub several times a week, canvassing support and meeting his would-be constituents.
He’d wander into shops, lurk in markets and pounce on housewives out doing their shops.
Sometimes, he would go directly to the estuary and talk to the fishermen, untroubled whether he was interrupting their work.
On other occasions, he would pick out three or four factories to target, and spend hours talking to people, handing out leaflets bearing a photo of his ugly mug.
Seas of Snow Page 17