Seas of Snow

by Kerensa Jennings

  It didn’t take him long to win the trust of the locals. He’d prepared well, raiding a number of washing lines on the way down and picking up a selection of trousers and shirts, a sweater and a coat. Everyone he met found the young man charming, handsome and beguiling. Drawing on the stories he’d heard in the tumbledown pub, he would tell his tales of being undercover in Germany, on a special mission for the army. Camping out day and night, alone, spying on the enemy and feeding back intelligence to HQ. His story was so de­­liciously far-fetched, he enjoyed embellishing it every time, safe in the knowledge anyone who had been in Germany on a spying mission wouldn’t be talking about it. The beauty of this story was that no one could contradict him, and he didn’t have to know any details.

  It worked.

  A job offer followed, and within a month of leaving prison, Joe had somewhere to live, an income and a nicely turned out appearance.

  Nobody would have guessed he had managed to escape the War completely, living it out as he did in one of the most violent institutions Her Majesty could offer.

  The job was back on the construction sites – he was happy with that. Physical labour was something he enjoyed, and apart from anything else it kept him fit and strong. And he would need his strength to continue his true life’s work.

  He was aware of the stirrings deep in his being, stirrings which wanted him to start slaking the thirst he had been nursing these last six years.

  He decided to start where he had left off. Almost.

  Not with the politician, the one before the politician. His sister.

  He let his new group of buddies know that he was going to be away for a couple of days on family business, but that he’d be back by early next week.

  He found that bit of paper with the address on, slung on his long, dark coat, and set off on his way.

  He amused himself as he travelled, thinking about that night he had managed to track her down.

  It was just after Christmas, 1939.

  He knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again. A moment or two later, skipping steps inside revealed he had found his quarry.

  She opened the door brightly, not for a moment expecting what she saw.

  By now, she had been living in May Close for a little while.

  The snow outside made the place look picture postcard pretty. Not a scrap of colour anywhere, all winter whiteness.

  A warm glow spilled out from her home into the evening air.

  And her, looking fresh and rosy, wrapped in a yellow ­cardigan over a yellow and white woollen dress.

  She stopped, dead, staring at him, unbelieving. She may have let out a squeal.

  ‘I brought you presents,’ Joe said, grinning softly, his voice tracing silky tones in the cold, December air. His breath hung in icy traces between them. ‘I remember how much you like presents …’

  He pulled out the head of a sparrow from one pocket and the paw of a rabbit from the other.

  She retched, nausea overcoming every fibre of her being.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she hissed, looking around the Close for signs of life. It was teatime so everyone was inside, no doubt eating. She wished Peter was still around. She winced, painfully, at the memory of their recent parting. He would have come to help …

  ‘What are you going to do about it? Eh, little sister?’ he sneered. Again, the icy breath seemed to hang there like a physical presence.

  He hurled the sparrow and the paw into her hallway forcefully.

  Outraged, she turned to him.

  ‘You have no right to be here. Go away!’

  He ignored her, pushing past her and making his way into her house.

  ‘Joe, I’m warning you, go away – there are people here – they will help me …’

  By now her pleading was beginning to sound a little empty. All the other little houses were closed tightly for the night, no outward signs of life, no one rushing to her rescue.

  And the one person she needed right now was the other side of the earth, fighting a different battle …

  Just a few weeks ago, she couldn’t have been happier. Now everything was going wrong …

  He closed the door behind him.

  ‘You thought you’d run away, did you? Ma always used to call you Sweetie, didn’t she? Well, what do you think of this, Sweetie? I’ve tracked you down and I will never let you be free. You will never escape, never.’

  All the way there, his yearning for submission had been growing in him like an ache. He knew that it was the easiest thing in the world to frighten his sister, and she would be even more anxious when she realised what he had in store for her.

  He imagined the quiver of her skin and the fear in her eye.

  She held no sexual attraction for him whatsoever. She was about as appealing to him as any of his male accomplices. It was the experience more than the gender, age or physicality of a person for Joe. But for this to really hurt her – for her to really comprehend that he never intended setting her free – he needed to show her. And he needed her submission more than any other he had craved over the last few years. It was the denouement of her story. Her destiny.

  So this would be the night he would consummate for the first time. He had been planning it for months, in his mind. Knowing that when he did hunt her down, she would bitterly regret running away in the first place.

  So as the months passed, his longing for conquest grew. His desire and arousal were almost unbearable at times. The idea of her coming to that point of needing his release would be unimaginably sweet. He would harden and throb at the thought of it.

  You will be mine, little Sweetie, and you’ll learn you can’t choose your life.

  He turned the lock in the door and pushed her onto the floor, scattering some papers away.

  She pushed him off, but where he was strong and muscular, she was petite and lithe.

  He ripped her clothing off – first the cardigan and then the dress. He took particular delight in pulling apart where the buttons tugged over her breast and her hip, exposing her nakedness. Her childlike vulnerability.

  She lay there, helpless, him shoved on top of her. This contract lacked the elegance and the measured pace of some of his previous experiences, but his anger towards her defiance drove him to an insanity he had rarely felt.

  A few weeks later, it would be the same defiance he would see in the politician that would spark his murderous response.

  Today, it wasn’t murder he was about to commit. It was rape.

  Outside, the snow fell softly, like fragile clumps of fairy dust, glistening in the night air. There was a slow languor to the Close. Cosy flickers of warmth could be seen at the window edges and under doorways.

  Silence hung in branches, on pathways and between houses.

  Pure white frothed over the landscape, like a bubble bath. Seas of snow flowed over the Close, snugly enveloping every nook and cranny.

  An hour later, the man left number 29 and the snowflakes quietly covered his footsteps.

  Inside, the woman was bleeding and hurting and crying.

  She had taken delivery of the message.

  Fears

  And now, all these years later, he was on his way back. Sweetie had had a lucky escape. He had intended intimidating her and violating her regularly. But the bloody politician had put paid to that.

  Now it was April, 1946. War was over, and his new life was just beginning. He had landed on his feet better than anything he could have imagined.

  So now it was time to start appeasing his appetites.

  He trudged down the old pathways of the Close, scarcely recognising the place. Last time it had been bathed in soft whiteness. This time, an explosion of yellow daffodils decorated the lawns and crocuses bloomed in white and purple abundance. There was the budding beginning of white roses outside one of the houses …

  This time he hadn’t brought any presents, apart from himself.

  The long, dark coat was keeping out the chill of the spring air and he remembered w
ith satisfaction that the stubble on his face would give him a more menacing air than usual. He was also aware that he had built up the strength in his muscles during his time inside and that he looked even more imposing than before.

  Vanity was one of his many vices, and he luxuriated in his own physicality.

  He knocked on the door. A familiar skipping to the door. And a look of horror on her face. This time, she let out the squeal of an animal caught in a ripping, metal trap, pure terror in her eyes.

  ‘Now play nice, Sweetie, play nice …’ he coaxed her, gently.

  She couldn’t help but glance up the stairs to the little girl who had wombled out onto the landing and was clutching the banister with a chubby hand.

  He saw where she was looking, and followed her gaze.

  His breath caught as he saw a froth of angel hair damply curling onto the shoulders of the prettiest little thing he had ever seen.

  ‘Well, Sweetie, aren’t you going to introduce us?’ he ­whispered to his sister.

  ‘This is my daughter, Gracie,’ she murmured, a thousand fears constricting her throat.

  ‘Gracie, come and meet your uncle!’ she called up.

  The five-year-old toddled down the stairs, wrapped up in her rough peach towel.

  She was about as sweet and precious and lovely as an angel.

  Joe leered at his sister, silently communicating some wordless threat about her daughter.

  ‘Give your Uncle Joe a kiss, pet,’ he said, bending down to this lemon-scented child.

  He swooped her up, a tiny towelled-up bundle, and his raspy, scratchy stubble itched her skin.

  It was the beginning of a whole new chapter in the story …

  Later that night after Gracie had been despatched to bed, Joe asked where her father was, said he didn’t know Sweetie had got married. So who was the lucky chap, then?

  Gracie’s Ma didn’t know what to say.

  This was the first time in years she had laid eyes on the man who had forced his way into her home, and into her body. She could barely stand to look at him. His body and his breath stank of cigarettes and beer. His presence revolted her. And now she had a greater concern than just protecting herself. She thought about lovely, lovely Gracie and wondered what new tortures Joe had up his sleeve.

  She had known he had been imprisoned, but she thought for 10 years, not six. Oh God, she prayed, deep in her being, make him go, please …

  She thought of that last time they had been in this living room together. Thought of the endless happy memories she had experienced with her beautiful daughter since.

  Thought of the violence he had brought into her life. Thought how he had violated her … there … in her most private of places … just a few days after Peter had come to say goodbye. Had come to see her, to be with her.

  The truth was she didn’t know who the father was. It could have been either of them. She hoped, dearly, that it was Peter. But she didn’t know.

  So now, with Joe asking, she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know whether it would be better or worse for Gracie if he thought he was the father. She just didn’t know. So she said so.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she hesitated. Then added, quickly, ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘When was she born?’ he asked her, peering intently and wondering at her nervousness. He was also thinking about the last time he was here, just after Christmas, all those years ago.

  ‘September 4th, 1940,’ she replied.

  Joe worked it out carefully in his head. December to September, Gracie’s birthday.

  He sat in stunned silence. So that angel of sweetness was his own flesh and blood.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  ‘Well, you know I’ve got my eye on her now, too, Sweetie. I’ll never leave either of you alone. You will never escape. I will always find you … Always.’

  Gracie’s Ma hung her head in powerlessness. She had no idea what to do. She couldn’t move again – he would only find her. And anyway, Peter had only just returned from the War – her other reason for living was right here, in this Close. And then there was Gracie’s friendship with Billy. Perhaps Peter would be able to help her come up with a plan.

  Perhaps they should go to the police?

  While she was musing on this, Joe pushed her to the floor and walloped her across the face.

  ‘I’m going to stay for a few days. This time. You get to cook for your big brother and give him a place to stay. And I’ll be back, very soon. And if you tell a soul, believe you me, you would rather you didn’t. Let’s just say you know what I am capable of, and put it this way, Ma is getting fucking irritating in her old age.’

  Joe was enjoying her discomfort, and could see the old fears mingling with new fears, dancing in her eyes. He felt the familiar hardening in his trousers as that old feeling of conquest flooded through him.

  Gracie’s Ma tenderly stroked her left cheek, still stinging from his touch.

  ‘And as for that peachy daughter of yours … Well, Sweetie, we wouldn’t want anything bad to happen now, would we. Remember those presents I left you when we were growing up?’

  She nodded silently, recoiling at the memory and seized with terror for what this could mean for her Ma, and for Gracie.

  The first of hundreds of purple bruises began to bloom.

  And a dead weight hung in her heart.

  Ramblings

  Gracie couldn’t have been more excited about the plan she and Billy had devised. Just a couple more months, then they would be free, forever.

  A lightness skipped in her heart and her eyes began to shine once more with optimism. She was wallowing in that feeling of liberation, rereading that passage she had come across the other day.

  Don’t observe yourself too closely. Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in everything that now meets you.

  She wondered what the bit meant about your past having a share in everything that now meets you, and decided that because you had to ‘simply let it happen’, whatever lay in the past wasn’t your fault, so you shouldn’t carry the blame for it. Whatever dreadful crime she may have committed unwittingly in the past was something she should stop fretting about. Any moral blame buried deep in her story was something that could be quietly forgotten. Was evil born or made? She had no idea, but she had a heartfelt conviction that she was good, really.

  And the important thing was to concentrate on the future, to make plans!

  For some reason, she turned to the little box on her dressing table and took out the crucifix. She decided that even though the chain was unbearably fragile, it would be a good idea to start wearing it, to get her through these last few months.

  Perhaps God would be able to find her and look after her more easily if she wore his special sign.

  She clasped it around her neck, and glanced at the mirror. It looked pretty. It hung quite low so she would probably wear it underneath her dresses, she thought, but she felt safer somehow.

  The days were getting darker and colder. And with each new dawn, Gracie would count off the time to their departure. They had planned it would be the beginning of March. It was December now.

  Even this house had begun to feel more like a home again. Her mother was singing in the mornings, and had started to smile more, started to give her daughter hugs and kisses again.

  Endless weeks had drifted by where she had merely stared into space, shame hovering like a veil around her.

  But it had been months and months since Joe had visited, and with each passing day her Ma was becoming more like her old self.

  She had even started taking rides out with Mr Harper again. He’d stopped coming for a while, which Gracie’s Ma got cross about. Gracie just assumed he had lots of things he had to do in his own home – after all he had three children. But her Ma had been getting cross about anything and everyth
ing. Gracie wondered whether it was guilt, eating into her.

  When Gracie was feeling less than generous, she would blame her Ma for their situation. It was perfectly straight­forward to go to the police and report what was happening. She couldn’t fathom why she didn’t just do that.

  She had heard about children being taken away to Dr ­Barnardo’s if there were bad people in their life, so she half thought perhaps her Ma didn’t want her to be taken away. But she still thought they should do what was morally right. And clearly the morally right thing to do would be to tell on him.

  Gracie leafed through the book again and spotted the red dress poem. She smiled and remembered how clever she had felt, making mind shapes and joining the dots to understand what it all meant.

  Today, she felt inspired again to write her own poem. It would be something to capture her excitement about escaping, but without giving anything away in case someone accidentally read it.

  She wanted to find a metaphor that would work, or a clever turn of phrase.

  She picked up her diary and saw with relish how packed it was already. She had decided the other day that she would bring it completely up to date – the chronicle of Gracie Scott, in time for their departure. So it was brimming with memories and snatches of conversations and sketches for poems and lists upon lists upon lists.

  She wondered if she would find any inspiration for her escape poem in her diary.

  She reread large chunks of it. Her ramblings were a bit all over the place, but they were always sincere.

  ‘Billy is obviously my best friend, but my overall best friend is Mam. Sometimes she is grumpy and cross. In fact over the last few years she seems always to be grumpy and cross. But I know that underneath the grumpiness there’s a soft and lovely person who loves me and wants to be loved back.

  ‘I worry about her so much. Everyone else either has or has had a husband. Other women in the Close and some of the mothers at school have lost their husbands in the War, but it seems as if Mam has never had anyone to love her other than me. I’m not sure it’s enough for a grown-up.