The Butcher's Daughter

by Jane E James

  They didn’t see me watching them. Daniel or my father. Having caught me out in the past listening in to his grown-up conversations, Father should have known better. But he didn’t glance my way. Not once. And I heard enough of their conversation to be on my guard. Having watched them through a small gap in the door, they might have had their backs to me, but I could see their blurred elongated faces reflected in the blood-splattered walls.

  I cannot comprehend the meaning behind their words but I do know that they frighten me, these two men. Who would have thought that Daniel would square up to my father like that. Answering back and pushing his hand away. Even more of a mystery is the fact that my father allowed it. And what did my father mean when he told Daniel that I didn’t know anything? What don’t I know? Could they have been referring to my mother?

  As for that man, Bob Black, I remember him from the first time I was taken to the slaughterhouse, when they found me hiding in the pigpen, covered in blood and straw, screaming “The animals don’t want to die!” Like most men, my father included, Bob Black is cruel. But more than that—I remember him looking at me in a way that wasn’t natural. I might only have been seven at the time but I sensed there was something wrong with him, even then. Deep down, I’m sure my father felt the same. I once overheard him tell my mother that the only thing stopping Bob’s wife from leaving the house was Bob himself.

  But if Bob Black is the bogeyman, where does that leave the likes of my father and Daniel who are equally dangerous? I no longer feel safe in Little Downey. There is a mystery here that I have never been able to solve. It has everything to do with the cliff-top suicides. I sense this with all my heart, but I cannot run away, because there is my mother to consider. Jed and Merry too. What will happen to them if I disappear? Who will look out for them?

  On that thought, I realise that the gypsy camp is where I have been heading all along. Subconsciously or not, I am drawn to this place and them.

  I hear Merry before I see her. The sound of her splashing about in the water is what makes me glance towards the ocean, rather than the caravan. The sight of her hopping about in the freezing water brings a smile to my face, but it drops away again when I realise she is not wearing any clothes. Holidaymakers don’t come here anymore, preferring the welcoming family-friendly resorts dotted further along the coastal path, which means she is in no danger of being spotted by anyone else. But I can’t help feeling shocked and embarrassed. Berating myself for being such a prude, I am about to make a quick exit and pretend I haven’t seen her when she calls out to me.

  ‘Don’t mind me!’ she shouts. ‘My body doesn’t know what it is to be ashamed.’

  As she wades through the water, more of her body is exposed. By the time she is on dry land and striding unashamedly towards me, I hardly know where to look. Noticing a frayed towel on the sand, I pick it up and hand it to her, but she shakes her head.

  ‘I’m going straight back in. I just wanted to say hello. It’s hot, isn’t it.’

  I try my hardest not to peer at her body, but she is so perfect it is impossible not to. She is the first young naked person I have seen. Those crazy enough to wander around starkers at Thornhaugh were old and infirm and I did not wilt in their presence as I am doing hers. I see that she is troubled by dark body hair as I am but does not appear bothered by it. The tuft of black hair between her legs is like my own, but unlike me, she has proper women’s breasts. Being as flat chested as a boy, I long to touch hers; to find out what they feel like. When she smiles at me from underneath a tumble of long wet hair, I get the feeling she knows what I am thinking, and I feel my face flush.

  I am sure my face turns even redder when Jed comes out of the caravan carrying the baby in one arm and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with his free hand. He pauses when he sees me, and I think he is about to go back inside, but instead makes his way over; his dog trotting obediently behind him. This time, I thrust the towel at Merry.

  ‘It’s Jed,’ I hiss.

  She glances over at her brother and shrugs. ‘Jed’s seen me naked plenty of times.’ Nevertheless, she wraps the towel around her, more to please me than anything else, I suspect. ‘We are not a family for secrets,’ she tells me, raising an eyebrow and I know that she is once again referring to the ghost that is my mother.

  I watch her walk over to Jed and take the baby from him. She immediately clicks her tongue at it, much like a bird. There is something possessive about the way she holds her baby. I suspect she doesn’t let it out of her sight often.

  ‘There, there, little one. Mummy’s here,’ she coos.

  Looking dishevelled and unwashed, as if he had just this minute woken up, Jed is more gorgeous than ever, but I purposefully ignore him, in case he still isn’t speaking to me. If we are to be friends again then the first move must come from him. In the meantime, I pretend to show an interest in the baby, who has the same dark skin and hair as its mother and uncle. I think it is a girl, but I do not know for sure. I don’t know much about babies, but I can tell this is a particularly beautiful one. When Merry flicks her wet hair to the side, I notice a prominent strawberry-shaped mark on her back.

  ‘You’re looking at my birthmark. The baby has one too. See.’ Merry flips the baby over and sure enough there on its back is the same mark in miniature. I have never seen anything like this before and wonder if Jed has one too.

  Sensing that he is looking at me, I feel my skin burn. Only when I am sure he is no longer looking do I risk glancing his way; in time to see the remains of a smirk vanish from his face.

  ‘Are you coming in for a dip?’

  He isn’t looking at me when he says this, so I can be forgiven for thinking he is addressing his sister. It is only when Merry gives me a push that I dare to think otherwise.

  ‘Me? Oh no, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he mutters, making it sound as if the loss is all mine.

  My eyes don’t know what to do with themselves when he undresses in front of me. Taunting me with the same knowing smile I have seen on his sister’s face, I watch him kick off his jeans, then remove his cotton boxers. I will not, must not, look at what is between his legs. It wouldn’t be seemly. I ignore the pointed way he is looking at my clothes; daring me to join him. Behind me, Merry laughs, and I fire her a look of contempt. Her face tells me she is enjoying my discomfort but, in the end, she decides to take pity on me.

  ‘Don’t be shy, Natalie.’

  Because I feel as if my shameful secret is there on my face for all to see, I do not answer straight away. I rub my scarred arms, visible to no one, not even myself, because as usual they are hidden beneath the sleeves of my shirt. For the first time, I hate the cutting and the fact that the scars are preventing me from doing something I desperately want to do. Merry is wrong about me being shy. With Jed, I don’t think I would be. With Daniel, yes, most definitely, but the thought of him touching me fills me with disgust. I am ashamed, humiliated even, to have ever considered him as a potential suitor. Jed is a different matter. I would give anything to join him in the water. But what would he say if he saw my scars? Or Merry, for that matter? Would they view me differently?

  ‘I can’t. I have scars,’ I finally admit.

  ‘Nobody will mind about that. Go on.’

  Again, she gives me a push. There is nothing but kindness and sincerity on her face, and not a jot of pity either. My whispered confession has not made her recoil in horror. Can I assume then that her brother will feel the same? When I turn around to look for Jed, I see that he is already at the water’s edge and that the dog isn’t far behind.

  ‘Last chance!’ Jed shouts, throwing me a wave.

  I know all about last chances. Dr Moses issued me with the most important one of all when I left Thornhaugh—the threat of being permanently sectioned.

  The House By The Sea

  It is dusk and the gentlest of breezes fans my face as I climb the sandy path up to the house by the sea. My step is lighter than it was when I fi
rst set out for my walk and the smell of the sea in my hair is a reminder of the good time I had on the beach this afternoon. Carrying my wet clothes in one hand, I go barefoot in the sand, naked beneath the over-sized shirt that Jed has leant me. The damp material clings to my skin and my body has never felt so alive; nor have I ever walked so tall or felt so majestic. The sense of liberation I am feeling is both new and exhilarating. I wouldn’t swap it for anything.

  When I catch sight of my father messing about with a metal dustbin by the side of the house, lurking in the shadows as always, I immediately feel self-conscious. Reassuring myself that there is no way he can know what I have been thinking, where I have been or who I have been doing it with, I pull down my shirt and claw a hand through my tangled hair. Being in my father’s presence has the power to bring me back down to earth until I am an anxious-to-please child again.

  Making my way over to him, I remember that I was supposed to ask Merry what she meant the other day when she told me not to mind my father, that his bark was worse than his bite. There is no point in demanding answers from my father. He would ignore me as he always does. Nonetheless, the mystery has been eating me up and I had every intention of raising this with her as when I saw her again, but as soon as I was among them, I forgot all about it. Easy enough to do when Jed is around. When I am with him, there is no heartache, no killing and, best of all, no ghosts. I may only have known them a short while but Merry and Jed are my people in a way that the villagers in Little Downey have never been.

  ‘What are you doing, Father?’ I ask nervously, in case he can see right through me.

  ‘Rats.’ A grunt, nothing more. He doesn’t even turn to look at me.

  Silently, I watch him. An angry vein protrudes prominently on the side of his right eye as if he is thinking too hard. You and me, both, I want to say to him, but I do not, because deep down, I suspect I do not ask my father about Merry because I fear the truth as much as he does. We Powers, we like to think we speak the truth and shame the devil, but the truth of the matter is, we run from it like the cowards we are.

  ‘Rats?’ I ask in confusion. What sort of answer is that?

  Knowing better than to expect a rational reply, I join him at the dustbin, going down on my knees so we are side by side. I get the impression that we may have kneeled together like this before, only in prayer, but as soon as the memory stirs, it is cruelly whipped away again. Was my father ever kind to me? Sometimes I think so. Other times I’m not so sure. Just because you want to believe he is capable of loving you, doesn’t make it true, Natalie.

  When I finally investigate the dustbin, I am shocked to discover there are two large rats inside, each squaring up to the other and viciously baring its teeth. I may have made a Sunday School promise to love all of God’s creatures but rats are another matter.

  ‘Ugh.’ I immediately recoil from them. Nasty, horrid creatures they might be, but I don’t want them to come to any harm.

  ‘What are you going to do to them?’ I demand.

  ‘Me? Nothing.’ My father shrugs innocently, as if surprised by my question. He scratches his stubbly chin and frowns at me, as if I should already know this—

  ‘Put two alpha males like this together and they end up eating each other. The surviving one gets a taste for its own kind and ends up killing all the other rats.’

  My father spits into the dustbin and his phlegm hits one of the rats square on the nose, making it squeal noisily in protest.

  ‘End of rat problem,’ he states, dusting his hands together.

  ‘Is that another one of Frank’s laws?’ I ask suspiciously.

  ‘It’s nature’s law,’ he replies, appearing puzzled by my ignorance.

  Chapter 28

  Time stands still in Little Downey. Nowhere more so than the house by the sea, which has seen too many deaths to care about the living. I am sitting at the kitchen table, pondering how many have been lost to the cliff edge in the last twenty years. Twenty? Thirty? More than that? Is anyone keeping count? For the first time, I ask myself if the suicides are real. They could be a cover up for other missing people—a conspiracy of sorts. And why not? If they issued a fake death certificate for my mother, and I assume that they did, then how many others has this happened to?

  In a place as isolated as this, where nobody is in a rush to involve doctors, policemen or any other authority, it is entirely possible that they, the villagers, could get away with something like this. But why? And if the suicides never took place, then where are these missing people? What has the village done to them? Are they dead or very much alive, like my mother? Perhaps they are kept at Thornhaugh as I was. At this stage, I am not ruling anything out. Sighing with frustration, I realise I don’t have any answers. All I know is living where we do, and how we do, can turn the shortest day into the longest, but the nights are worse.

  Another long lonely night stretches in front of me. Already it is 9pm and soon it will be dark. I look at the congealing plates of food on the table and ignore the hunger pains in my belly. I must face facts. He isn’t coming. So I get to my feet and scrape the greasy plate of fried eggs, sausages and beans into the bin. My father is in the pub again. He’s never away from the place; claiming the food I serve up isn’t worth hurrying home for. I do not disagree, as despite being famished, I have no appetite for my own meal of scrambled egg either. Unlike my mother, who was known for her culinary skills, I am not much of a cook.

  As I put the crockery away, I am reminded of Merry and the fact that she seemed to know her way around this kitchen remarkably well. It was as if she had been in it many times before, knew it intimately even. Just because I didn’t question her or my father about this doesn’t mean I am not deeply curious. Absently, I wonder what my mother would think of another woman being in her kitchen. I shudder at the answer, because I know she would not like it any more than I would. Pausing at the window, my hands gripping the sink, I imagine her out there, alone in the dark. She could be watching me right now through the bars of the whitewashed building.

  That’s when I see the rat. Even from here, I can tell it has been in a fight because its fur is stained with blood. I wonder if it is one of the two in the dustbin. The rat washes itself clean and doesn’t appear in any hurry, which suggests it is master of its own surroundings. An alpha male. Fascinated, I watch it stop to sniff the air, as if it senses danger, before leaping onto one of the barred windows of the whitewashed building.

  I jump back in alarm when a hand unexpectedly shoots out of the bars to grab it. Squealing in protest, the rat sinks its teeth into its attacker’s flesh, but it gets squeezed so hard, black blood erupts from its mouth. Tearing my eyes away from this gruesome spectacle, I tell myself that what I am seeing is not real. It can’t be. It would be impossible for me to hear the sickening sound of the rat’s bones being crushed from all the way in here. This is nothing but a psychotic imagining, the kind Dr Moses likes to warn me about. If he was here, he would no doubt go on to explain that the defenceless rat somehow represents my poor mother and that the eating of any kind of flesh awakens a primal fear in me, instilled at an early age.

  I was just thinking about her, so I suppose he could be right. The fact is, I am always thinking about her, but at the same time I am intent on pushing her away. I want to go to my mother, of course I do, but I am afraid. Of so many things. Will she know me? Would my approaching her put her in even more danger? If the villagers and my father find out I know their secret, they could hide her elsewhere, where I may never find her again. I don’t want to be responsible for them doing something even more terrible to her.

  A noise behind me, the scurrying of a real rat perhaps, not an illusory one, breaks my concentration. God forbid, it is not one of my father’s cannibal rats. Add to that, the sudden dipping of the yellow lights above my head and I am immediately on edge. A power cut is the last thing I need. I don’t think my nerves could stand it. Reaching automatically for the drawer where the candles and matches are kept, I w
ish again that my father was home.

  I picture him propped up at the bar in The Black Bull, getting drunker by the pint, no doubt angry with me as usual, when is he not? I dare not think about what he would do if he found out I had spent the afternoon with the gypsy. He would be furious. Much more so than when he found out I had been out with Daniel. It occurs to me that I am not a good daughter to my father any more than he is a good parent to me. I have wilfully disobeyed him, and I should be trying to please him, not antagonise him. No wonder he is driven to such bad temper. Sadly, there is no suggestion of him softening with age. I imagine that the other pub goers will be avoiding him as he glowers at them over his black ale, bristling for a fight to take his mind off the fact that his only daughter is a disappointment to him.

  The Black Bull

  Frank

  ‘Why don’t you go home, Frank?’

  Frank drags his bloodshot eyes out of his pint and glances at the plump woman behind the bar who dares address him when no one else will. As usual, she has too much flesh on display. Rather than peer down her crinkled cleavage, he stares into a pair of bright blue eyes that, on a sober day, perfectly match his own. Like most of the regulars here, he has known Barbara, or little Babs Owen as she was once known, since childhood. Except she is not so little now. The thought makes him chuckle, but this trickles away to nothing when he recognises the harsh blue irises of her eyes have paled with pity.

  ‘I came here for drink. Not advice,’ Frank grumbles, wiping away a dribble of beer from his chin and frowning at the lack of it in his glass.

  ‘Have it your own way.’ Barbara sighs, putting a fresh pint in front of him.

  Somewhere in the back of his drink-addled mind, Frank owns up to the fact that he is in more of a foul mood than usual. Who can blame him? He’s got a lot on his mind. That’s why he drinks— to forget. Sometimes it works. Other times, not. Tonight is one of those nights when he can’t shake off the past. The only thing he has managed to forget so far is the number of pints he’s downed; not enough obviously, as he’s still sober enough to make out one or two of the regulars breaking from their game of darts to turn their shifty eyes on him. Knocking back his beer, Frank stares them down. Everybody would be better off if they minded their own goddamned business.