The Philosophy of Disgrace

by Ann Troup

  As for Baxter’s family, they had a good riddance to bad rubbish attitude. He had left home at sixteen and hadn’t kept contact since. The few people who had known him as an adult that she had managed to track down and talk with had all bought the same story, that he had left his wife for pastures new and no news was good news. One or two people still claimed he owed them money, so they had figured his no show as par for the course. In any case, he had never been a popular man. Watson found it hard to believe that people could live like that, almost completely devoid of contact with others. The only ones who seemed remotely normal were Frances and Peter, who seemed to have successfully distanced themselves from the rest of the family right up until Valerie’s death. From what she could surmise, they had only got involved then because Haines had thought the house would be worth money, and even he was being pretty unhelpful now he’d found out that William Porter might still be alive. She was pretty sure that Rachel knew more than she was letting on too. It seemed a bit convenient that she sparked out every time the questions got awkward. If Ratcliffe wasn’t so smitten with her, he would see that for himself.

  The radio crackled into life, one of the other units had spotted Stella Baxter.

  ‘Come on kid, we’re on!’ Ratcliffe said, launching himself out of the car.

  CHAPTER NINE

  By rights, he shouldn’t be driving, he was knackered and probably more distracted than he would have been if he’d downed a bottle of scotch before getting in the van. Sick of trying to work out how he felt, he had extracted himself from the emotional melee and he was busy trying to work out how many bricks he would need to build a one-story extension on the back of a three-bed semi. Anything to reign in his thoughts! He would have recited his twelve times table out loud, if he thought it might help.

  Memory was playing tricks on him he knew that he had never touched Frances, yet now it had been suggested to him the vision of it kept nudging at him, insistently inviting him to give it credence. Could he have? Did he? Had he blocked it out? No one would lie about such a thing; they had to think it for a reason. Unable to accept that anyone could indict him like that, his mind could only make sense of it by trying to make it real. But it wasn’t, he knew it for a fact. Patsy had been the first and an event in his life that he would always remember, so indelibly was the humiliation of it carved on his psyche. Oh sure, she’d been sympathetic when he’d only managed to last two minutes, but he would never forget the lascivious smile that had gone with it, or the wry sigh of tolerance when she had told him it was OK. No, his mind could play as many tricks as it liked. He had never touched Frances Porter. Not that she hadn’t wanted him to; in fact, he distinctly recalled her calling him a filthy cretin when he turned her down. She had treated him with the utmost contempt ever since. She and Valerie were like peas in a pod.

  To the best of his knowledge, the only child he had ever fathered was Amy. Although the marriage to Patsy had only come about because she’d claimed to be pregnant, no wonder his mother had been so ready to believe the Porters. Patsy’s baby had never materialised, a miscarriage she had claimed, and he’d pitied her at the time, married a month and losing a baby. Hindsight had often made him question, whether there had ever been a baby at all, or whether she’d just wanted a ring on her finger as an excuse to leave home. Her mother had been as vile a harridan as Valerie had, the only difference was that Patsy’s mum had resorted to more profanity and wore shorter skirts. They had both been a bitch that was for sure.

  He had known, the day she died that she was going to leave him. That knowledge had been one of the things that had sealed his fate that day, that and being stupid enough to pull the knife out of her. The papers had called it a crime of passion, but he’d be hard pressed to remember any passion in their relationship. From the day they got married, she had treated him like a recalcitrant dog. Her affair with Roy Baxter had probably started at the reception, but Roy had been his boss and back then, he hadn’t had the balls to challenge it. In fact, if he had been capable of being entirely honest at that age, he’d been relieved when she’d told him she was leaving. She had let him off the hook. Not that anyone had wanted to believe that, the knife in the hand had obstructed any objective views! Patsy had been beautiful, no doubt about that, and he’d been in awe of her, mistaking it for love, but not for long. Not everything that glitters is gold.

  There was only one woman he loved and he had brought her nothing but misery. He didn’t even want to imagine what it must have been like for her all these years, believing what she’d been told. Even thinking about it, made him want to scream, and roar, and break the world. It must have been like ten kinds of hell. She would have blamed herself, sucked up the responsibility of it and worn it like a hair shirt. The whole woebegone Miss Havisham set up suddenly made sense. It was her idea of penance. Change nothing, affect nothing. He had spent all these years feeling so sorry for himself, so hard done by, so hurt and it had all been misplaced.

  Why had she believed them? Why had she listened to a word Valerie said?

  An image of Rachel sprang into his mind; she had her back to him, her flesh bare, and the light from the bedside lamp washing over her skin, highlighting the scars left there by Valerie’s weapon of choice, a thin leather belt. Of course she had believed it, she would have been too afraid not to.

  The only time in his life he had ever felt capable of cold blooded murder was the day he had first set eyes on those marks. If Valerie had been stood in front of him in that moment he swore he would have ripped her heart out with his bare hands and spat in the hole he’d left.

  He had not long come out of prison, a few weeks at most, paroled to his mother’s house. On his way back from his weekly visit to his Parole Officer, it had started to rain, so heavily that he’d had to shelter in an alley. As he waited for the downpour to ease, he’d spotted Rachel, running up the road with her boyfriend in tow. He hadn’t taken to the boyfriend, had him down as an obnoxious little shit the first time he’d clapped eyes on him. The kid had been yelling at Rachel to hurry up, dragging her along the road, yanking at her arm. She’d stumbled, gone down on her knees, and the asshole had lost the plot with her. Hauling her to her feet, he had screamed obscenities into her face and had shaken her like a rag doll. She had started to seize, he saw her head go back and her body stiffen, the guy dropped her, right into the gutter, still bawling at her. He’s started to move then, instinct taking over, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with her having a fit, when she’d been a little kid he’d often been the one who’d had to see her through it. Then the boy had looked around him, checking, and had kicked her, landing his heavy boot right in her ribs.

  Something primal kicked in inside Charlie’s head, ten years in prison, an ingrained abhorrence of injustice, whatever, it took over and propelled him across the street, balled his hand into a fist and sent it smashing into that pompous, spotty, arrogant little face. The kid had gone down like a sack of shit, and Charlie had warned him, fist an inch from his busted nose that if he ever went near Rachel again, he, Charlie Jones, convicted killer would personally rip his head off and crap down the hole. The kid had threatened him with the police. Charlie had simply said ‘Bring it on Kid, I’ve already done one stretch for murder, another won’t make much difference.’ If it hadn’t been so damned wet from the rain, he would have sworn that the kid pissed himself. All those long boring days inside with not much else to do other than fool around in the prison gym had made him twice the man he had been, in every sense. The kid had been scared shitless.

  Rachel had been a mess, she had cracked her head on the kerb when she fell, and was covered in muck and god knows what. She was fuzzy after the fit, and he’d more or less had to carry her back to his mum’s house. Delia had been out at the time, so he’d had no choice but to try to sort her out himself. He probably should have taken her to A&E, but reality had kicked in again and he had started to feel a bit panicky about hitting the kid and the prospect of being arrested again. R
achel had been in shock, teeth chattering, unable to speak, unable to look at him properly. He’d run her a bath, she was filthy and freezing, her clothes soaked. She sat in there for an age, probably would have stayed in there if he hadn’t knocked on the door with a towel and some dry clothes. He’d given her an old T-shirt and a pair of jogging trousers of his own; somehow, his mother’s frilly dressing gown hadn’t seemed appropriate at the time.

  When she’d come out of the bathroom, he’d asked her to show him where the kid had kicked her. She was moving awkwardly and he reckoned she had a busted rib. She’d sat on the edge of his bed and lifted up the top. Purple spots of bruising had already started to pepper her skin. He’d told her they should strap her ribs, so he’d dosed her with Paracetomol and ripped up and old sheet for long bandages. He’d had to strap his own ribs a few times over the years, so he knew what he was doing. She couldn’t hold the top up, it hurt too much, so he’d helped her to ease it off, looking away as she blushed and tried to cover her breasts. He’d told her to turn around and lift her arm. It was then that he first saw the scars.

  His mother had written to him, ages ago and told him the Valerie had hit her, but he thought she’d been exaggerating. The marks were old, but still red and raised where they hadn’t healed well. He’d touched one and she’d flinched away from him, gasping in pain from her injured ribs. He’d strapped her up, and helped her put the T shirt back on, then he’d made her get into the bed, and had brought her a cup of tea.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ he’d asked.

  Rachel had looked at the wall when she answered, her damp hair hanging in strands, covering her face. ‘Because I wouldn’t shut up about you. I kept telling them you hadn’t hurt Patsy, but no one would listen. She said if I didn’t shut up about it she would shut me up, so she got the belt.’

  ‘But the scars, she must have nearly killed you.’

  She hadn’t said anything for a minute. She’d just sipped at her tea. ‘She rubbed salt in, they got infected.’

  He hadn’t been able to believe what he’d heard. The thought of the pain she must have been in made him feel nauseous. All because she’d defended him when nobody else would. He remembered wanting to cry at that moment, and she’d seen, and told him she was sorry, the irony of it had made him laugh. Then she’d put her arm round him and laid her head on his shoulder, and he’d pulled her onto his lap and started to rock her because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  It had begun there. On that day. When he’d first realised she wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  Nothing had happened between them, not then anyway. But he’d thought about it, when they were led on his single bed, her curled up against him, sleeping, her face tensing every now and again with the passing flicker of bad dreams. It was a woman’s body that he held, but he couldn’t shake off the memories of the little girl. It made him feel bad, perverse. Warped even, and he’d wondered if the years inside had twisted him in some way. Lik the essence of immorality that pervaded the prison air had seeped into his being and left him diseased.

  When she’d woken he’d fed her toast and made her drink more tea, and had wanted to know about the boyfriend.

  ‘Mother likes him, she approves. His father is a bank manager.’ She’d said, as if it explained everything. They had met in the shop, where Rachel had been working with Stella since leaving school. He’d been OK at first, given her an excuse to be away from the house sometimes.

  Charlie had wanted to know when the violence had started.

  ‘You know me, I get things wrong, I annoy people.’ She’d said with a shrug, as if it were normal to be oppressed by bullies, to be beaten up.

  What had she got wrong that day?

  She wouldn’t agree to sell Lila’s flat and hand over the money, the boy, Simon, had asked her to marry him and she’d said no. Everybody had been annoyed.

  He had liked Lila, not least because she had always been kind to Rachel. The only person in the family that had ever given her a break, in fact. Lila had died a month before, of a number of cancers that she had kept a secret until they had finally consumed her. She had lived a vivacious single life, well away from her extended family. She had never settled for marriage, preferring the company and support of other women’s husbands. Given her background, Charlie didn’t blame her. He didn’t think she had ever worked; there had been some kind of trust fund, which had given her independence and a flat, paid for, in Bayswater. When she died, leaving everything to Rachel, it turned out had she owned the whole building, and had conducted her fiscal affairs with the kind of business acumen that through some genetic fluke had completely bypassed her brother, William. Rachel had become a wealthy woman overnight. Valerie had nearly succumbed to an apoplectic fit when she heard the news, and had immediately challenged the will, but it was watertight. Lilian Porter had had the last laugh.

  Valerie had given Rachel an ultimatum; sell the property and release the money to the family, or leave. Rachel had chosen to leave. Simon had sided with Valerie, had made his move, even bought a ring. He hadn’t been a lad who took rejection well, and that day had been dragging Rachel back to her mother’s house to ‘talk some sense into her’. He had never coped well with her epilepsy, and had called her a retard. She hadn’t argued with him, Rachel didn’t do arguments, but she had stuck to her guns about her intentions.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ He’d asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I could cope with London. There are too many people, it scares me. I don’t really know what to do.’

  He’d told her she could stay with him and his mother until she’d made her mind up. Anyway, Delia was out most of the time. She’d met a bloke, Howard, and was half shacked up with him in his three-bed semi across town. So she’d stayed. He’d let her have his room, sleeping instead in his mother’s garish boudoir, under her pink nylon sheets, with the smell of her perfume preventing restful sleep. At least he’d blamed his insomnia on that, though the truth was his nights were dominated by thoughts of the girl in the next room. He would lie there every night, hemmed in by Delia’s kitsch paraphernalia. A row of sinister looking china dolls peering at him like some toy town jury, their little chubby china fingers finger’s pointing towards him, glass goggle eyes full of accusation.

  The memory of them made him shudder. He had never once, in all her years, bought Amy a doll.

  Looking back, he saw that he and Rachel had been the same back then, two prisoners released into a world they weren’t equipped for. They had naturally gravitated towards each other finding comforting traits of institutionalised behaviour that felt less gauche, less insane if they stuck together. Nights in front of the TV, eating food that came from tins, drinking copious amounts of tea, going to bed at half past ten. Lights out. Neither of them went out unless they had to, Rachel almost never. She didn’t want anyone to know where she was. Charlie stayed home because he didn’t really know where else to be, though his parole officer was pushing him to look for work.

  They existed like that for a couple of weeks. Rachel had bought new clothes, ordered from Delia’s catalogue, paid for with Lila’s money, but mostly she slopped about the house in his old clothes. She had said that it was like wearing a comfort blanket, and he had been secretly chuffed, though he told her she looked like a reject from a concentration camp in his oversized shirts.

  Things got near the knuckle one night when they had been watching some ridiculous old horror film. Like bookends, they had sat either end of the sofa, nursing mugs of tea, sharing a packet of custard creams. As the atmosphere of the film grew more, and she had edged her way towards him, curled into a tight ball, and she had watched the film from almost behind him, clinging to his arm and peering out from time to time, cringing and squealing at the images on the screen. Eventually, he had turned round very slowly, and had scared her half witless by yelling ‘Boo! Reducing her to a screaming heap of hysterical laughter. She’d clung to him, tears streaming out of her eyes, and h
e’d been about to kiss her, had her face in his hands, an inch away from giving in.

  Then his mother had walked through the front door and they had sprung apart, but she hadn’t missed the look on his face or the blush on hers. She’d frowned at him and cornered him in the kitchen after Rachel had gone to bed.

  ‘What’s going on with you and her, then?’ She had demanded. ‘While the cats away the mice will play?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid mum, nothing’s going on. We were just having a laugh, watching a film, that’s all.’

  ‘Hmmmn. I believe you, thousand wouldn’t.’ She’d said.

  She stayed home that night and he was relegated to the sofa. At least there were no accusatory eyes to disturb his peace. But the cushion he laid his head on smelled of Rachel, and that was enough to make for a very uncomfortable night.

  His mother left again the next day, the lure of her social life greater than the pull of her conscience. ‘Watch yourself; she’s half your age.’ She’d said in the hallway as she was putting on her coat.

  ‘Not quite mum, she’s a grown woman.’

  Delia had looked at him for a long moment, a concerned frown creasing her brow. Then she had shrugged. ‘It’s your funeral’. She’d said finally.