The Under Ground (Strong Women Book 4)

by Sarah Till

  John Baxter appeared at the window, smiling broadly. I wondered if he was a closet schizophrenic as the last time I had seen him he had almost pushed me over in an effort to escape me. The door burst open and he stood aside. I could smell the familiar gardenia in the hallway and the customary dread returned.

  “Jinny! How lovely. Come in.”

  He reminded me of Basil Fawlty as he made an exaggerated swooping movement to guide my steps.

  “John. How are you?”

  It seemed a reasonable question under the sad circumstances of his wife dying, but I couldn’t help but inflect it with sarcasm. He walked into the lounge in front of me.

  “I’m coping, Jinny, coping. I’ve been kept busy with all the things that needed seeing to. Like Tom over there.”

  I craned my neck to see a huge chocolate Labrador settle on a bed in the corner, his head on what appeared to be my mother’s cardigan.

  “Does he miss her?”

  John sighed.

  “We all do, Jinny. We all do. She will be sorely missed by everyone here. The police were here this morning filling me in on their suspicions. Better be careful, Jinny. They think you’re next.”

  The sharpness of my surroundings that cut into my deepest memories and the sorrow I felt at the way things had worked out between my mother and I managed to blur the tone of John’s words. I couldn’t tell if he was being nasty or if he was actually concerned and trying to discuss it with me.

  “They have nothing concrete yet, John. So I’m not unduly worried. It’s just a line of enquiry that they are following. Nothing concrete.”

  John guffawed.

  “I know, but it is likely that some kind of fundamentalist would take offence at what a good woman like Sally was trying to say. She was very eloquent in those letters.”

  He handed me a large pile of press cuttings. Although I knew they were the letters my mother had written to the newspaper, I was afraid to read them. I was terrified that she had used intentionally provocative language and that, in fact, someone had taken offence and murdered her. I scanned them quickly, not really reading them. “Thanks, John. I expect she meant well.”

  John nodded vigorously.

  “Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. She was a good woman. More recently, anyway. I have to say I was surprised by the change in her. Cup of tea?”

  I nodded as he went into the dining room and through to the kitchen. What did he mean, the change in her? I checked myself. I just needed to get this over with, not enter into an amateur detective guise and hunt for fruitless clues. I looked round the room and felt a little irked that all the pictures of my father were gone. Of course they were. She had remarried. There were several pictures of her and John. Mum had blonde hair and pink skin, quite unlike her earlier brassy blondness, more of a golden blonde. There was a picture of Jupiter and a large oil painting of Shiralee. No pictures of me. I snorted my derision and looked out of the window. I remembered all the times I had sat here with my father, looking out on to the road, waiting for Santa or the tooth fairy. This would most likely be the very last time I would be able to do that. No one had prepared me for this moment when I would have to imagine someone else living in my parents’ home. Everything was the same, yet the cooking smells were different, the curtains were tied back a different way, the grass cut in a line instead of the smooth turf dad liked. Small things that were only just noticeable but added up all the same. I sighed and tried to take my mind off this by wondering what Ellis was up to. Even this was ridiculously futile, as all thoughts of Ellis took me back to the funeral and to my ever-increasing worries over the state of our relationship.

  John returned from the kitchen more quickly than I would have expected and sat down again.

  “Mother’s going to make us some tea. She’s moved in with me for a while.”

  His expression was challenging and I knew he wanted a reaction from me.

  “Moved in? Won’t you be moving out next week?”

  I got straight to the point, despite his change in stance as he leaned forward.

  “All in good time, Jinny. Did I tell you what we planned to do with the farm? Steve and I are going to build a centre of excellence. We are going to bring young, disadvantaged people here for training. Of course, we couldn’t secure funding as that would mean we’d have to take the riffraff. We want to be selective. So, Sally’s kind donation will see us through. She was one-hundred percent in favour of it, you know.”

  I smiled. “So, what are the aims of your centre? I only ask because I’m currently involved with the Joseph Emmanuel who seems to have the same aims. To help disadvantaged young people. Well, all disadvantaged people, really. I’m working on a prayer project for them right now.”

  I somehow thought that mentioning prayers might persuade John Baxter that I wasn’t, in fact, the spawn of the devil, then checked myself on this validatory step. John sniffed loudly.

  “Joseph Emmanuel. Oh, yes. I know of them. They are like us in one sense. They operate on a bequeathment system, as do we after recent events. The main difference is that we accept only white people into our centre. Only white British people who are brothers and sisters in worship. They become part of the family, part of our family. Whereas Joseph Emmanuel are unconcerned about the purity of Britain and allow, in fact encourage, all sorts of foreigners to benefit from the money good British people have earned and bequeathed, we are investing it back into the church and into Britain.”

  I swallowed hard. John was beginning to sound like he was propagating the Arian race in my mother’s back garden. I decided I would make an excuse to go upstairs and investigate how the house had changed, carefully avoiding any further racist conversation with John. Then I would get what I came for and leave. He was clearly masterminding some kind of cult, and I wanted no part of it. I beamed brightly.

  “Just nipping to the loo.”

  He smiled and I rushed for the stairs. Nothing had changed. The carpets, curtains and wallpaper were all the same. Even the olive bathroom suite remained. It was like stepping back in time. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, the same mirror that had reflected my growing from a child to an adolescent to a woman and sighed heavily. It was no use. I would have to leave for the last time. I went quietly back downstairs. John Baxter stood in the same spot by the window that I’d occupied earlier. For a long moment, I thought a trick of the light had transformed him into a carbon copy of my father. Profile on, his mouth and nose were identical and he stood with the same half stoop. He turned and broke the spell.

  “Ah, Jinny, just in time for tea.”

  I could hear the tinkle of china in the distance and broached the crucial question.

  “OK, John. I need to go soon. What was it that you wanted me to sort out? What was there to collect? Are there some clothes or ornaments? I was going to suggest selling the house fully furnished, but obviously you’ll want to keep some personal items that you bought together?”

  I looked around for an example but there were no signs that John Baxter had bought anything; the furniture and artwork were the choice of my father. I had expected John to turn nasty after I’d brought up the house sale again, but he continued to smile.

  “Right, Jinny. Let’s clear a few things up.” I heard footsteps from the kitchen and a woman, who I supposed was John’s mother appeared. She placed the tray on the table and looked at me without smiling. I scanned her round face, her brown mid-length hair, her stocky frame and an alarm rang somewhere in the back of my mind. “This is my mother, Sandra. But I think you’ve already met.”

  I felt puzzled.

  “I don’t think so. Do we know each other?”

  The woman remained silent and John sniggered.

  “Think, Jinny, think. Way back. Have a good look at her.”

  Sandra certainly seemed familiar. I wondered if she had been a friend of my mother’s, maybe that’s how she and John met. Or someone I knew from the village. I had definitely seen her before but couldn’t work out where.<
br />
  “I can’t...”

  John was on the edge of his chair, gleefully enjoying every minute.

  “Oh, come on, Jinny, you can do better than that. Surely you remember Sandra Reid?”

  The name snuck up through the acres of my memories and I recalled sitting at the top of the stairs in this very house and listening to another screaming argument. My mother, full of Valium and whiskey, was almost psychotic. She repeated the words over and over again. Sandra Reid. It clicked together, as I recalled the woman at my father’s funeral, a slightly younger version of the woman in front of me now, blonde and mournful. The eyes were the same, blue and empty.

  “My father’s mistress.” John was laughing, and Sandra poured the tea. I took the cup she offered automatically and sipped it quickly. I was shocked to the core but felt curious about her. She was the unknown entity, the bane of my mother’s life and the reason for all her deceit. I sipped the tea as John laughed. Then, suddenly, like a wave that washed the grit of the years from my eyes, it hit me. “You’re my brother.”

  John fell silent and they both stared at me.

  “Yes.”

  I felt sick.

  “You were married to my mother. And you’re my brother.”

  John nodded.

  “Right again.”

  I stood to leave but felt dizzy. John clasped his hands between his knees and rocked backwards and forwards. I calculated the shock value of what I had just realised and sat back down.

  “Why? Did you know? Was it all on purpose?”

  John laughed loudly now and Sandra smiled.

  “Of course it was planned, you stupid bitch. We planned it for years. After he left us, when Sally confined herself to the wheelchair, we were on the poverty line. He told Mum he would leave Sally and marry her. But she came up trumps, didn’t she? Threatening suicide and conning everyone she was a cripple, just so he wouldn’t leave her? We lived in a hovel for years, Mum married someone she hated just so we could have his income. But he didn’t last long. Then we were told Dad had died and left us nothing. Not a penny. We waited and waited for him for years, and he never came. I put myself through education to look after Mum, and now I work in security on the tube. I’ve been watching you, Jinny, in your little imaginary underground life. Sitting in your own little comfortable world every day. So different from my life. All the time I was growing up, going to work every day, me and Mum were struggling alone. All the time he was here with you and her, playing happy families and pretending we didn’t exist.

  I interjected.

  “I wouldn’t call it happy families. They were miserable and she was sleeping with my husband. What about all the church stuff? Surely you can’t think this is right. it’s hardly Godly, is it?”

  John became serious.

  “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain. I’ve been steered to this by the righteous word. I deserve what’s rightfully mine and I am claiming my inheritance. Nothing wrong with that.” He looked at Sandra who shook her head in the negative. “I’ll build a castle so strong that the biggest army will never penetrate it and train my soldiers to fight against the idol worshipers.”

  I felt almost too drained to speak but squeezed out the words.

  “But did she know? Was she part of it?”

  My words were slightly slurred and I felt a hazy warmth envelope me. I felt the urgent need to know if she had been party to this, if she had knowingly contributed to this plan, but was also confused; surely she would never tolerate Sandra Reid in the same house as her? John smiled serenely.

  “So, Jinny, I seduced her. I seduced her and married her. It wasn’t difficult, as she was a needy, dangerous woman and I offered her salvation and respectability. So, Mum and me would get what we always deserved; this house and his money. He owed it to us. So did she. And so do you.”

  I struggled for the words I needed to say.

  “Did she know? Did she know you were my father’s son?”

  My vision was wavering and John was almost hysterical with glee.

  “Not until the end. She never suspected anything. I went away on business, you might say, and Mum came here to keep her company. She dropped some poison in her tea, but Sally had a strong constitution and she rallied. So, she finished the job just to be sure.”

  I tried to move but my body was limp. My voice sounded what was in my mind.

  “Poison in the tea...”

  Sandra leaned forward.

  “Just a little Valium, dear. Just so you won’t know what’s going on. Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon.”

  I watched helplessly as they removed the tea tray. My mind moved over my children and Ellis, surveying the people I loved and wondering how they would cope with this. I mused that the police would be surprised when they realised this was no terror plot, then realised that John Baxter had propagated this notion from the start. The tube. The couple being escorted off the train. The ammonia in the backpack – he had ample chance to tamper with the boy's luggage. He could have even been on the platform, or on the train. The police's insistence that John was innocent. It all fitted together now.

  Then suddenly nothing.

  Suzzy loves Robert 4 eva

  The cold tiles burned into my back, a relief from the heat my body felt. I could feel my shoulders propped against something hard and my nose somehow sensed an acrid aroma. I worked to prise my eyelids open and caught a screen of grey, with small squiggles of curly writing in front of me. My whole being was limp and lifeless and the slow, slow messages I sent to my brain were not pursuing their race through the axons and neurones to their rightful place. I tried to move but nothing happened. My eyes forced themselves shut and I retreated into a scenario where a set of colourful balls rushed down my veins and crashed into technicolour goals. My brain felt like it was compressed into my skull and in an attempt to escape, it seemed to release tingle after tingle of mild electric shock. Actually, if it wasn’t for the contortion of my body, roughly lying on a tile floor, I could enjoy this feeling.

  I retraced my last thought and checked my position. Pins and needles coursed through my legs as feeling returned and finally my brain acknowledged pain. Searing, endless pain through my whole body. I managed to blink and focussed for a second on the grey matter in front of me.

  Suzzy loves Robert 4 eva.

  I wondered for what seemed an aeon who Suzzy was and why she had written this on the inside of my eyelids. Suddenly, I felt my body fall. My head hit the white tiles and I felt a trickle of blood seep from my eyebrow. I mused about how it would hurt if my legs didn’t hurt so much. I summoned all my limited strength and opened my eyes once more. The greyness had gone and I could see the tiles now, white tiles meeting a horizon of blue paint, the fresco broken with copper pipes and patches of dirt. My mind involuntarily tutted and wondered how someone could leave a bathroom so dirty. A bathroom. I was in a bathroom. Why was I in a bathroom?

  A cloud of numbness came and went. I vaguely remembered a bathroom and drew up the blinds again. Now I was slightly more aware of my body and could feel a shudder in the ground below me. A rumble that came and went, like a recurrent earthquake. My senses reached for something. I was on the brink of something important but the excitement of it drained me. I rested again for a million years then retraced my thinking on the dirty bathroom. The whole place shook and I heard a loud bang. Then footsteps. I tried to move, but my numb body would only twitch and groan to itself. I stared at the dirty wall and in a moment it came to life with the passing of two huge shoes. The clickety-click of the heels on the tiles reminded me of a typewriter and my mind stole off into a tangent of millions of typewriters, all typing the word ’help’ in unison.

  “Help.”

  I managed to say it. And again.

  “Help.”

  I opened my eyes and my gaze was met by the most beautiful set of bright blue eyes I had ever seen. The long lashes whipped against each other with every blink. I spent time attempting to blink in unison before I re
membered to say it again.

  “Help.”

  I heard voices now on the edge of my consciousness.

  “Mummy, there's a lady in there. She’s on the floor, looking at me.”

  A short pause, then a more distant, higher up voice.

  “Don’t be silly, Charlotte. The toilet is out of order. See the sign, Out. Of. Order.”

  Their footsteps faded.

  “But, Mummy. The lady. She said help. Mummy.”

  The footsteps returned and I heard a rustle. Mascaraed lashes blinked at me and I noted the mauve eyeshadow and smudged concealer.

  “Help.”

  She stared at me then was gone.

  “Ambulance. Ambulance, please. There’s a woman collapsed in the toilet at Victoria station. Yes, she’s conscious.”

  “Only just!” I joked with the lights that played around my line of vision, moving in and out in a kaleidoscope of brightness. “Help.”

  I heard the last ’help’ in the distance and my mouth tasted the word and spat it out in a bubble of transparent sound that floated before my eyes. Making its path through the bright lights, it collided with the woman’s ears. Here she was again. Her eyes blinking at me.

  “Don’t move. I’ve called an ambulance. They’ll be here soon.”

  Her line of vision moved to my left and her brow furrowed. I couldn’t move my head, only my eyes, and they wouldn’t rotate far enough to see what she was looking at. Her voice wafted to me on the waves of air I could see washing up on my shore.

  “Bloody junkies. C’mon, Charlotte. We’ll wait outside. She’s a fucking junkie.”

  Time moved on and the swirling of my mind occupied me. I saw Lynus and Kevin shaking hands, making a deal with the devil. I saw John Baxter and Sandra lining up my children and Swiss Steve outside the farm and shooting them dead. I felt fear hurtle its javelin through my ecstasy, piercing the perfectly conical trees of connections of my imagination and allowing the reality of what had happened to seep through the gaps.