Beyond All Evil

by June Thomson

  I sat back and waited to die.

  As the pills took effect, I was seized by the realisation that my children might be brought to the house and see their mother lying dead. I had to get out. The pills disorientated me but I managed to stand. I knew where to go. I stumbled out of the back door and across a field to a lonely place my children could not reach.

  I would die here.

  I lay on the grass, resting my head against the cool earth. Wild flowers swayed in the breeze. I closed my eyes and prayed for my pain to end.

  Then the dream began.

  Rab was standing over me, hurling imprecations, demanding that I come back. He must love you, a voice told me. He must love you, it repeated. He doesn’t want you to go. He needs you.

  ‘I can’t come back,’ I told the voice. ‘It’s too much, I’m so tired.’

  I felt as if strong hands had taken hold of me, hoisting me to my feet and shaking me violently.

  ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’

  It was Rab’s voice.

  ‘Rab,’ I slurred, as I felt my feet leave the ground.

  I floated forward.

  ‘Leave me. I want to sleep.’

  The farmer’s field swam into focus. I wasn’t dreaming. Rab had found me. I was being dragged through a topsy-turvy landscape. The trees were enormous, the grass alive at my feet.

  ‘Bastard!’ I heard Rab say. ‘What the fuck are you doing to me?’

  Big hands shaking me like a rag doll. No words of sympathy. No kindnesses. Just fury.

  We were at the house.

  ‘Gerrin’ there!’

  He threw me through the door onto my hands and knees. He grabbed my hair. My head snapped back. I was propelled towards the kitchen sink. I saw his hand reach out and turn on the tap. Water rebounded from the sink onto my face. I closed my eyes.

  ‘Stop!’ I begged.

  ‘Put your fingers down your throat!’ he shouted.

  I couldn’t feel my arms.

  ‘Make yourself sick!’ he ordered, pulling back my head.

  My arm weighed a ton but somehow I managed to obey. My stomach erupted and I choked, gasping for air.

  ‘Stupid fuck!’ he said. ‘You stupid fuck! I’ll kill you if you show me up.’

  I laughed. Black humour. I had tried to save him the bother of killing me and still he was angry. There was no pleasing some people. I laughed again.

  ‘Why didn’t you just leave me?’ I gasped.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the world swam into focus. I was slumped on the kitchen floor. I could hear Rab on the phone. Respectful voice. Snatches of conversation. ‘Paracetamol’, ‘Accident’, ‘Taken by mistake’, ‘Didn’t realise she’d taken too many.’

  Rab was calling a doctor.

  He returned, his face black with anger, and sat at the table. I pushed myself off the floor and leant against the cabinet under the sink. Every part of me was sore. My hair was soaking, my eyes hot, my throat burning. Rab didn’t speak. He was made from stone. I didn’t dare say a word. He was galvanised by a knock on the door. He leapt to his feet.

  ‘Gerrup!’ he shouted over his shoulder, making no attempt to help me.

  I struggled to the chair in which he had been sitting, resting my elbows on the table and dropping my head into my hands. Voices in the hall. Rab appeared, followed by a doctor I did not know. A locum?

  ‘Mrs Thomson,’ he said.

  Doctor’s voice. ‘What’s happened, then?’

  Before I could speak, Rab said, ‘She had a bad headache and before she realised what she’d done, she took too many painkillers.’

  ‘Mrs Thomson?’

  Concern with a question mark.

  ‘How many did you take?’

  Rab was looking over the doctor’s shoulder, his eyes boring into mine.

  ‘A few,’ I said. ‘I brought them up.’

  Rab interjected, ‘She’s been sick so there’s no need for hospital, or anything.’

  The doctor pulled back my eyelids and then took hold of my wrist.

  ‘You’re pale,’ he said quietly. ‘But your pulse is normal. Are you sure everything is all right?’

  Rab tensed.

  ‘No, no, my silly fault. Didn’t realise how many I’d taken.’

  The pill bottles were gone. Rab must have removed them.

  ‘We have to be careful. How many did you take?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘About half a dozen,’ Rab said quickly.

  ‘Did you lose consciousness?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘No!’ Rab said. ‘She just felt sick.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all you took?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Just a few,’ I said. ‘It was a mistake. Felt a bit ill. I’m feeling better now.’

  ‘Maybe we should get you to hospital, to be on the safe side,’ the doctor said.

  ‘June hates hospitals,’ Rab said.

  I took his lead. ‘I’m fine, honestly, don’t want to be a nuisance.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’ The doctor’s voice trailed off.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘There’s no need for hospital.’

  ‘Well, you might feel a bit nauseous for a while. Get yourself into bed, have a rest,’ the doctor said, his hand reaching for the handle of his medical bag.

  He hoisted the bag from the table and said to Rab, ‘Look after her, Mr Thomson.’

  ‘Oh, I will, doctor. Don’t you worry about that,’ Rab replied.

  He was smiling. His wolf’s grin.

  Giselle: I had a way out now, but could I take it?

  I couldn’t erase the memory of Ash’s angry, snarling face.

  The phone calls had begun less than an hour after he struck me. I ignored them, allowing them to go to voicemail. The phone would ring all night, the messages piling up – whining apologies, expressions of remorse and regret. I listened to them but I did not call back.

  In the days that followed, the shrill ring of my mobile would become the soundtrack of my life. It was always the same number on the screen. Ash left message after contrite message. The physical sting of his blow to my face had diminished, but the psychological effect lingered. I was not inclined to forgive. In fact, if I had told my father and my brothers what Ash had done I would have feared for his safety. But I did not tell anyone. Yet another secret kept from my family.

  When I failed to respond to his calls he appeared at the flat. I had applied the deadlock. His key was useless. I stood on the other side of the door, listening to his plaintive entreaties.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he would say. ‘I’m under so much pressure. I’m so, so sorry. Forgive me!’

  When that did not move me, he would walk away on leaden feet. Minutes later my phone would ring. Ash would be downstairs in his car. I knew that at some point I would have to speak to him but I was not ready to offer him a way back. I held out for another week. I was putting Paul to bed when the phone rang yet again. This time I answered. There would be no peace otherwise.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said coldly.

  ‘Giselle!’ he said, surprised and grateful that I had answered.

  ‘What do you want, Ash?’ I repeated.

  ‘Oh, Giselle, can you forgive me? I don’t know what came over me. I’m under so much pressure.’

  I laughed. A hollow sound.

  ‘What kind of pressure, Ash? I don’t put you under pressure. You come and go as you please. You use me. And now you’ve hit me. I won’t have that.’

  ‘I’ll never do it again,’ he whined. ‘I miss you and the baby so much. Please, please, let me come back. It’ll be different. Mum still says she’ll go into a home, so we can be together. I promise we’ll get a nice house and everything will be all right.’

  The familiar litany of empty promises.

  In spite of it, I felt myself weaken.

  ‘I don’t want a nice house. I – we – have a nice house. This is good enough. I don’t want your mum to go into a home. I just want to be normal.
’

  I could hear the whine in my own voice and I hated myself for it.

  ‘All I ever wanted was for us to be an ordinary family,’ I told him.

  ‘We will be, I promise,’ Ash said. ‘Give me another chance.’

  And like a fool, I did.

  Chapter 13

  If Only ... (June)

  ‘Rab had stripped June … of everything.’

  Ian Stephen

  June: If I could not kill myself, there was only one other option.

  Rab lay on the couch in a drunken stupor. He was snoring, each laboured breath reeking of alcohol. He was still in his working clothes, which smelled of lime and sweat. His strong arms and grimy hands were crossed on his chest. He looked at peace, but even in repose his face was still cruel. I knew from experience that he wouldn’t waken for some time, long enough for me to kill him.

  I shook. From fear? No, from the weight of the shotgun that I held inches from his face. The gun swayed. It was so heavy. I prayed for the courage to pull the trigger. Icy beads of sweat trickled down my back. I looked at the man who controlled my every waking moment. The vibrant, independent girl I had once been was long gone, replaced by this broken woman. I had become an empty shell. Rab had rendered me useless and made me mortally afraid.

  I had pledged in church to spend the rest of my life with this creature, but so much had happened since I stood before the altar in my borrowed wedding dress. His sneering voice and hard fists had battered my promises to death, broken me and killed my spirit. He had never once told me he loved me but I had seen much evidence of hatred. The beatings. The rapes. Not even the knowledge that he had fathered my children was going to save him.

  They were in bed. I had read them their favourite stories and kissed their sleepy heads. I hoped they would not wake when I killed their father.

  Now, it was just me and Rab.

  The house was silent. I had taken the keys from his pocket. The smallest opened the padlock on the door of the metal gun cabinet. Rab’s shotgun sat upright. A box of cartridges lay beneath it. He had once shown them to me, taunting me about what he would do with them if I left him. They were red and smooth, almost like lipstick cases, but I had witnessed the damage they could inflict on the animals Rab shot.

  It was now his turn.

  I had been calm when I left my children. I was still calm when I selected the gun. I walked downstairs to the living room, hearing Rab’s snores before I reached the door. When he had returned from work he finished the remains of a bottle of rum. In a normal household that would have merited a tongue-lashing from any wife. I knew better. I could tell, from his footsteps and from the way he swaggered into the house, whether or not I was destined for a beating. I had learned never to meet his gaze when he was angry. A dim memory from my childhood reading warned me that in the animal kingdom the prey must never look into the eyes of the predator.

  And Rab was a predator.

  He had trapped me. My children were hostages, too. They depended on me; my son and my innocent, trusting Michelle. I had sacrificed myself on the altar to Rab’s cruelty. The sacrifice had now become too much to bear. I was relieved he had fallen into a drunken sleep. While he slept, my face would not be slapped. I would not be punched in the kidneys. I would not be violated.

  I moved as if in a trance. Closer. Closer. The barrel almost touched his head. A voice, deep within me, said that this was madness. It was shouted down by the suffering me, the one who knew only fear. His eyes were closed. Even in sleep he exerted incredible power over me. My finger hooked the trigger. One squeeze, and it would be over. He did not stir, unaware of how close death was.

  Do it now!

  I couldn’t! Tears of rage flowed. I was ashamed of my weakness. I couldn’t pull the trigger, and I knew I never could. How many times in the coming years would I be haunted by the memory of my weakness, when I could not find the strength to do what had to be done, to send him to hell where he belonged? If I had known that, one day, he would rob me of my children, I would have sacrificed my life that night to save them. I would have killed him in a heartbeat and gladly spent the rest of my life behind bars. But I didn’t know. How could I?

  As I lowered the gun, I caught sight of my reflection in the dark window. I saw a dishevelled, unhinged caricature. Rab continued to sleep. He was right. I was useless, too weak to stop him, even with a loaded gun in my hands.

  If only I had known … if only.

  Chapter 14

  This Child of Mine

  ‘Rab believed the family could not survive without him at its head; Ash regarded his son as a possession.’

  Ian Stephen

  June: I couldn’t die. I couldn’t kill him – and now I had three children to think about.

  ‘She’s a beautiful child,’ the doctor said.

  Unspoken words hung in the air. There was something he wanted to tell us. I knew that I would learn nothing that I did not already know.

  Rab was another matter.

  The doctor, sitting behind his desk, offered a beatific smile to Michelle. Her eyes danced with delight. She held out her hands to him. It made him laugh. She chortled in response. Michelle was always on the cusp of laughter. She wore a permanent smile. She was the happiest of children, innocent, kind, gentle and loving – a perfect human being aged five and three quarters who had yet to learn to speak properly. She badly wanted to. In fact, the only time the smile deserted her was when she was frustrated by her inability to communicate.

  I had long since accepted what the doctors had told us. She had learning difficulties. She was disabled and she always would be. There was no cure. Rab would not accept that. He would point to Shaun and our new baby son Ross, and say, ‘Look, there’s nothing wrong with them.’

  There wasn’t. The newest addition to our family was perfectly healthy and developing normally, just like his older brother. Shaun might have been 16 months younger than Michelle but he was her physical and intellectual superior. He had walked, learned to talk and was toilet-trained well within the normal parameters. Michelle could do none of these things properly. She behaved like a toddler instead of a five-year-old.

  The doctor said, ‘She will require specialist care for the rest of her life.’

  I could feel Rab tensing. His face was dark with anger. Until that moment we – or at least Rab – had entertained the hope, however slim, that Michelle’s condition was ‘curable’. He had insisted that we take her to doctor after doctor, therapist after therapist. They had all concluded that she would forever be a child.

  ‘In the simplest terms,’ the doctor said, ‘the messages from her brain are not being transmitted to her body.’

  This was the end of the line. Rab had to accept the inevitable, no matter how unpalatable it was to him. I had no problem with facing reality.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Rab said through gritted teeth.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Rab!’ I said quietly, laying my hand on his arm.

  He pushed it away.

  ‘There has to be something that can be done,’ he said angrily. ‘She isn’t damaged!’

  The doctor stared at him. ‘Your child isn’t damaged, Mr Thomson; she has special needs.’

  I had heard Rab use many horrible, unrepeatable words for people who were ‘damaged’. The thought of applying them to a child he had fathered appalled him. It was as if our little girl were an affront to him.

  My Michelle was a joy. She might have been trapped in childhood, but she would do no harm, commit no wrongs and she would be driven only by love. I knew Rab loved her, but the truth was he was embarrassed by her. He would feel that embarrassment more keenly as she got older, even though she would make great ‘progress’.

  Before too long, she would be baby-talking and her speech would continue to improve, even though anyone listening to her would recognise that she had learning difficulties. She could talk with ease to other ‘children’. She was, after all, one of them. Rab
could not understand or accept that his daughter’s physical age had no meaning. She would always behave with the joyful abandon of an infant. My Michelle had no sense of propriety.

  When she got older, she would bound up to strangers, embrace them and demand to know what they were going to have for tea. She would stroke their clothes and compliment them.

  ‘That’s a lovely jumper,’ she would say to one. ‘I like your hair,’ she would tell another. ‘I don’t like your hair,’ she would tell someone else.

  The immediate and natural reaction of people was to look askance, but they were soon captivated by her exuberance. It was impossible to be annoyed or insulted by her.

  Rab hated it, of course. If she strayed from us, he ordered me to ‘get a grip’ of her.

  ‘That’s no way to behave,’ he would say.

  As she grew and the child became a young woman, Michelle would not change. She would race to play areas to join the other ‘children’ on the swings and roundabout. She towered head and shoulders above them.

  ‘She’s too big for that,’ Rab would snarl.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ I would say.

  He was watchful, discomfited, always looking for the reaction of other parents.

  Rab was ashamed of his precious but imperfect daughter.

  Giselle: I didn’t seem to matter – all Ash wanted was his perfect son.

  ‘You are my perfect boy,’ Ash said.

  If there were ever a father more proud or protective of his son, then I had yet to meet him – even though I couldn’t look at him in the same light since I had allowed him back into my life. I call it a life, but it was in fact a limbo that I had been unable to escape. His assault had made me wary. I convinced myself it would not be repeated, but a thin thread of uncertainty now ran through everything. The uncertainty dissipated only when I watched him with our son.