Beyond All Evil

by June Thomson

‘What about the hospital?’ I said. ‘My injection?’

  ‘Do you really have to go?’ he said in a wheedling tone.

  ‘Yessss! I have to go every day.’

  Ash chatted with his mother and his sister while I bathed and fed Paul. Then I showered and dressed as quickly as I could. Each movement was torture.

  When I emerged from the bedroom, Ash said, ‘You’re ready, then. We’ve been waiting.’

  His voice was heavy with impatience.

  As we all headed to the car, he said again, ‘Do you really need to go to the hospital?’

  I’d had enough of this!

  ‘Take me there, now!’

  Ash exhaled loudly, started the car, and we drove the short journey to the hospital. They waited while I went inside. When I returned Ash was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

  ‘Are we finally ready to go?’ he asked.

  Neither of the women spoke. I felt two inches tall. The next few hours were a torturous trail around every shop in the mall. By the time Ash’s sister announced it was time for her to leave for the airport I was almost on my knees. I was wincing with pain as I said goodbye to her and watched as she disappeared through the departure gate. I turned to Ash and begged him to take me home.

  ‘Mum, first,’ he said.

  I was too ill to argue. I fell into the car and held on to Paul’s baby seat. The journey to the flat seemed to take forever. When we arrived, Ash didn’t move. He watched me struggle with Paul and his pram.

  ‘You might have made more of an effort for my sister,’ he said over his shoulder.

  ‘Ash, just leave me alone,’ I replied wearily.

  By the time I got into my flat, my clothes were soaked with sweat. I managed to undress Paul, get him into bed and strip off my wet clothes. I threw on a dressing gown and took our clothes to the washing machine. As I bent low to throw in the soiled garments, the stitches on my caesarean scar ruptured.

  I screamed as gouts of blood spurted from the wound. The world went black. Before I sank into unconsciousness I heard myself pray, ‘Don’t let me die.’ When I revived I found that I was lying on the floor. I could only have blacked out for a few seconds. I began shouting for help and I was crawling towards the front door when my neighbour burst in. Thank God for thin walls and for not locking the door after I had struggled in with Paul.

  ‘Giselle! What’s happened?’ she shouted.

  ‘Ambulance, get an ambulance!’ I told her.

  She ran to the phone and punched 999. She disappeared, returning with a towel.

  ‘Hold this! Tight!’ she said, thrusting it into my stomach. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’

  ‘Call Katie,’ I said, struggling to stay conscious.

  I drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness, hearing only parts of her hurried conversation with my sister. Katie was visiting Ma. She was in the next block. She would probably get here before the ambulance. She’ll look after Paul, I thought, before I drifted away again.

  The white towel had turned red by the time two paramedics and Katie arrived simultaneously.

  Katie ran to me.

  ‘I’m all right! See to Paul,’ I told her.

  I felt anything but all right, but my greatest anxiety was for my son.

  ‘Caesarean?’ one of the paramedics asked me. I nodded.

  ‘Relax, we’ll get you sorted.’

  Katie reappeared, holding Paul. She was angry.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.

  ‘Ash’s sister was visiting. I’ve been trailing round Braehead.’

  ‘This is his fault!’ she said.

  Katie didn’t know the half of it. I was too tired and too sick to explain.

  ‘Do you want me to phone him?’

  ‘No!’ I told her. ‘What’s the point?’

  The ambulance wailed through the city. At the hospital I was rushed into a treatment room. I was still semi-conscious, almost unaware of the doctors and nurses. Later, when the panic was over, one of the doctors arrived at my bedside.

  ‘Just as well we got you when we did or it might have turned out very differently,’ he said. ‘There was a nasty infection in your wound. We’ve managed to bring it under control.’

  ‘Am I going to be all right?’ I croaked.

  My throat was dry.

  ‘Absolutely!’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine, now. We just have to keep an eye on you for a while. Is there anyone we can phone? Your husband?’

  ‘My family know where I am,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Fine,’ said the doctor. ‘You’ll be with us until the antibiotics kick in. I’ll be back in the morning.’

  I couldn’t sleep. Paul was safe with Katie, but I fretted. The endless night eventually passed and the doctor returned.

  ‘I don’t want to stay. Can I go home?’ I begged.

  ‘We’d really like to keep you in.’

  He saw my disappointment.

  ‘You’re only going to lie there and worry, aren’t you?’

  My eyes answered.

  The doctor looked at my chart and said, ‘Tell you what. Give it a few more hours and we’ll see.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘If I let you go, you must promise to rest?’

  I would have promised to sell my soul to be at home.

  ‘Okay, let’s look at it later and, if there’s an improvement, we’ll phone your husband,’ he said.

  ‘No! My sister! Call my sister,’ I told him.

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  Four hours later he returned, and I stitched a smile on my face that I hoped would persuade him that I was on the mend.

  He took my pulse and checked the chart.

  ‘Antibiotics seem to be working,’ he said.

  ‘Can I go home?’ I pleaded.

  ‘I’ll make the call,’ he said.

  An hour later, Katie picked me up. We must have looked like a doddering old couple making their slow and painful progress to the car park. I was so relieved when I walked through my front door and I heard Ma’s voice saying, ‘Here she is!’

  She was holding Paul.

  ‘Hello baby, I’ve missed you,’ I told him.

  Ma and Katie were reluctant to leave, but I was feeling better already and I ushered them back to their own homes after they had elicited my assurance that I would phone them immediately if I needed help. I was on my own when Ash marched in through the door.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded to know.

  ‘Hospital,’ I said. ‘My stitches burst.’

  He looked at me intently.

  ‘Where have you been, really?’ he said.

  ‘The hospital,’ I repeated.

  ‘You haven’t been there.’

  I was aghast.

  ‘You weren’t very nice to my sister, you know.’

  ‘I nearly died being nice to your sister.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘The wound!’

  I opened my dressing gown, revealing the bandage covering my scar. He was placated but there was no apology for his appalling insensitivity.

  ‘Let me see my son,’ he said.

  ‘He’s in there,’ I told him.

  I could hear Ash talking to the baby.

  Ash’s ‘conversation’ with Paul was interrupted by that damned ringing of his mobile. He emerged from the bedroom. I made up my mind in an instant.

  ‘Go home to your mother,’ I told him.

  It was the first time I had stood up to the situation. It was a turning point. I could not end our marriage, or throw him out of my life. We had a son. We were bound together and, for now, I would make the best of it.

  ‘See you tomorrow?’ he said.

  Chapter 12

  A Deeper, Darker Place

  ‘While Rab’s morbid jealousy caused him to lash out with escalating violence, Ash’s character was just as black but he – mostly – kept it hidden.’

  Ian Stephen

&
nbsp; June: Rab took his dark games to an even deeper level.

  ‘In there!’ he said.

  Rab had a fistful of my hair, propelling me along the hall to the bathroom.

  ‘No Rab, please,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Fucking get in there!’ His grip tightened.

  Behind us, the door to the living room was closed. Television sounds, muffled, distant. I managed to turn my head. Rab’s face. Dead eyes. Was that a smile? A grimace? What did it matter? This was now Rab’s new ‘game’ – yet another means of torture and control.

  ‘They’ll hear!’ I beseeched.

  ‘Keep your fucking mouth shut, then.’

  His voice was cold and hard. He hadn’t been drinking. He battered me when he was drunk; he raped me when he was sober. The drunken Rab would at some point lapse into a stupor and there would be respite. The sober Rab was in control of himself and me, and there was no mercy. I put up my hand against the jamb of the door, a pathetic attempt to halt the inevitable. Rab booted open the bathroom door and hurled me against the sink. My hands shot upwards, grabbing at the window ledge. The door slammed shut and I heard the sharp snap of the lock.

  ‘Stay quiet,’ I told myself. ‘Please God, don’t let my children wake, don’t let them hear this.’

  Michelle, who was three years old now, was no longer my only consideration. She had only been 16 months old when I gave birth to Shaun. Since the arrival of our second child, normal sex no longer seemed to be enough for Rab. These ‘episodes’ came out of the blue, every few months. There was no pattern to them. He would arrive home from work, usually after I had put the children to bed. Without a word, he would grab my hair and march me to the bathroom, the only room in the house with a lock. With his children sleeping, only I could see Rab for the monster he was. Michelle and Shaun were, mercifully, sleeping now.

  I had earlier lifted them from in front of the television. I allowed Michelle to be mesmerised by cartoons for half an hour before bed. Shaun was only eight months old and didn’t understand what was going on, but he loved the music and his eyes delighted in the bright colours on the screen. The cartoons were still playing. The sound was a dull throb through the wall. The crazy music and wild screams of the characters were an incongruous accompaniment to what was unfolding in this confined space.

  Rab knew my fears, my desperation to protect the children, and he played on it. My unease only heightened his ‘pleasure’.

  ‘Take off your clothes!’ he demanded.

  I hesitated.

  ‘Take them off! Or I’ll rip them off.’

  He took hold of my hair, dragging my face to within inches of his own. I was trapped. In the beginning I had struggled, but I learned that resistance was futile and it only prolonged the inevitable.

  ‘Do it!’ he said, and released me.

  I undressed, the shame of it burning my face. It was over quickly and he left. I slid down the wall, hunkered in the corner and gathered my clothes about me like a shield. I knew, cowed as I was, terrified, battered and devoid of confidence, that I could not put up with much more of this. I left the bathroom and tiptoed down the hall, past the closed door of the living room.

  Rab was in there. I could hear him laughing at the cartoons.

  Giselle: I thought I knew this man, and then the mask slipped.

  ‘Look at me!’ Ash roared.

  I had never heard this voice before.

  ‘Speak to me!’

  I looked straight at him. He was furious. His features were contorted. I had never seen this face before.

  ‘Do … not … ignore … me!’ he snarled, drawing back his right hand. I watched his arm arc in slow motion and then with lightning speed his hand struck my face. I fell onto the cushions of the sofa.

  ‘Now, see to the baby!’ he said, turning on his heel and heading for the door.

  Paul was lying beside me on the sofa. He was crying, a sound that would ordinarily have had me picking him up immediately. I could not move. I was stunned. I had never before in my life been struck by anyone; not by my father, my mother or even at school. I grew up in a world where violence against women was anathema. Now it had happened! The mummy’s boy, the pious Christian, the obsequious Uriah Heep, who was forever in awe of authority, had done what no other human being had ever done. I was more shocked by his action than the force of his blow.

  The slam of the front door brought me to my senses and I reached for Paul. I held him close and soothed him. I stood, catching sight of my reflection in the mirror over the mantel. It revealed a red weal on my cheek in the shape of Ash’s hand. I paced the floor, shushing my son. He was getting heavier. He had been weighed that morning at the health centre. My routine visit to the baby clinic had begun the chain of events that had just ended with Ash assaulting me. How had it come to this?

  The weather had been bright and clear when I left the flat with Paul in his pram. I was striding along towards the health centre which was in sight when I heard the toot of a car horn. I had been lost in thought and the sound made me jump. Ash had pulled up at the kerb.

  ‘Where are you going with the baby?’ he asked.

  ‘The health centre,’ I said, nodding at the building.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘No, just to check his weight.’

  ‘Want a lift?’

  ‘No, I’m almost there. See you later.’

  I made to walk on and he said, ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

  I kept going. ‘Ash, it’s just there.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘It’s fine. You don’t have to!’

  I went into the clinic. It didn’t take long for the nurse to confirm that Paul was a fine, healthy boy. When I left, Ash was waiting.

  ‘What did they say?’

  I smiled.

  ‘Your boy’s blossoming.’

  ‘Get in,’ Ash said.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Ash. I’ve been stuck in the house. I want some fresh air.’

  Ash drove off. I was within yards of my building when I saw his parked car. He was leaning on the driver’s door.

  ‘He’s my son, too,’ he said in a cold voice. ‘Give him to me!’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Of course he’s your son,’ I said, mystified.

  Before I could say more, Ash snatched Paul from the pram.

  ‘Ash!’ I said.

  He ignored me.

  ‘Ash! Give him to me.’

  I tried to take the baby but Ash was too strong. He pulled open the car door and strapped a howling Paul into the baby seat.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I said.

  He slammed the door shut. I stood helpless as Ash drove away. I screamed but there was no one to hear me. I made a frantic effort to stay calm. It never occurred to me to phone the police and I didn’t even consider the possibility that Ash would harm Paul. The only thing I could think to do was to race home and call Ash on his mobile. It went to voicemail. I paced the floor, eventually throwing myself down onto the sofa, where I spent the longest hour of my life. Then I heard the front door open. Ash marched into the living with a screaming Paul in his arms. He laid him on the sofa.

  ‘Take care of the baby,’ he ordered me.

  I experienced relief and anger in equal measure. I couldn’t look at Ash, couldn’t speak to him. I turned away from him in defiance.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said.

  When I did, it happened. The mask of the charmer slipped away so easily.

  What lay beneath it was ugly.

  June: I started to believe there was only one way out.

  ‘If you try to leave me, I’ll kill you.’

  I believed every syllable of Rab’s threat. There was no emotion or anger in his voice. He might have been telling me the time or asking me what was for tea. It was said quietly so that Michelle and Shaun would not hear. They were playing a few feet from us, laughing and carefree. In spite of the 16-month age gap between them, Shaun was developing much faster than his sister. In fac
t, he was overtaking her in many ways. Michelle struggled to sit properly, and her speech and interaction with people were markedly different from her gregarious brother.

  A mother knows when something is not right with her child. No matter what, she was adorable, a child possessed of a wonderful innocence. There was no point in expressing my fears to Rab. He may have been their father, but he played little part in their early lives. It was I who read to them, played with them and nurtured them. Rab was the classic good provider. He believed his role was to put food on the table. He never failed in that duty. Even monsters can be hard-working. Rab was distracted by Michelle’s shrieks and, when he turned back to me, he still had the cold look in his eyes.

  ‘Remember,’ he said. ‘Remember what I’ve said.’

  I had pre-empted Rab’s threat to kill me just the day before, when I tried to take my own life by swallowing painkillers. The most recent rape episode had sent me to a dark place. I wanted to pack my bags, take the children and leave, but it was as if Rab could read my mind. He was watching me like a hawk. I was at his mercy, utterly and completely alone. I began to believe that death was my only way out. I reasoned that Linda would look after Michelle and Shaun if I wasn’t there.

  And so, the day before his threat, I awoke to the noise of children playing outside, a sound which, until then, had always filled me with happiness and a sense of contentment. I don’t know why but on that day the sound deepened my depression. Something snapped. As the day wore on, all I could think of were Rab’s taunts and the wicked things he had done to me. I accepted that there was no one to help, no escape. The only power I had was to end it.

  A plan took shape. I fed Shaun and Michelle.

  ‘Give Mummy a smile,’ I told them.

  Shaun shouted ‘Doggie!’ and waggled a toy in my face. Michelle laughed.

  ‘C’mon,’ I said.

  I gathered Michelle in my arms and Shaun toddled behind me. We went next door to my neighbour. When her door opened, I made a monumental effort to smile.

  ‘Can you watch them for me?’ I asked. ‘For an hour or so? There’s something I need to do.’

  My neighbour welcomed in the children.

  ‘No problem,’ she said cheerily.

  I hugged Michelle and Shaun, kissing them for what I believed would be the last time. The door closed on them and I retraced my steps into the house, which seemed so still and quiet, but for the phantom echo of my children’s laughter. I walked into the kitchen and opened a drawer. Two bottles of painkillers were hidden at the back. They had been there for weeks, out of sight of Rab and the children. I struggled with the caps on the bottles but I soon had a mound of pills on the table. I ran a glass of water and began swallowing them, one after the other.