The Proper Procedure and Other Stories

by Theodore Dalrymple

  The first time he hit her was when she told him that she was pregnant. This was about three months after they had met. She had thought he would be pleased – was not a baby both a sign and a seal of love? – but he called her a whore and a bitch. He obviously thought that her pregnancy was a plot to entangle him and extract money from him; but if she thought that, she had another think coming to her. He wasn’t a fool.

  Not that he moved out altogether; indeed, he apologised to her. But his visits and overnight stays became fewer and farther between. When he did come, the sight of her pregnancy enraged him, as if it had nothing to do with him and another man had made her pregnant. He slapped her a few times and punched her, usually on the arms so that the bruises could be covered up, but once he aimed a kick at her stomach and she thought she would miscarry, but she didn’t. He always apologised after he hit her, but told her it was her fault because he wasn’t ready to settle down and he felt pressured. Then he would buy her some flowers, and fool around while presenting them to her to make her laugh. Virginia was angry, guilty, afraid and charmed.

  Once she tried not to let him in when he arrived, but he broke in by a window (the flat was on the ground floor) and was then more aggressive than usual, putting his hand round her neck and accusing her of being a prostitute. She never tried to stop him again, and wasn’t even sure whether she wanted to.

  Dwayne was a little better after the baby was born and even evinced some pride in his offspring.

  ‘He’ll be the heavyweight champion,’ he said, chucking the baby, now at Dwayne’s insistence called Evander, under the chin.

  One day, on visiting Evander and conferring on him a pair of bootees as if in fulfilment once and for all of an onerous contractual obligation, he let slip that Evander was his fifth child, two other boys and two girls. Perhaps that explained why he did not contribute very much to Evander’s upkeep. He couldn’t, at least not without giving everything else up.

  Although he played with Evander whenever he came to Virginia’s, he grew angry if Waylene was there as well. He considered Waylene to be evidence of Virginia’s infidelity before she met him; and clearly pointed to the possibility of current and future infidelity. The existence of Waylene therefore provoked his jealousy; he suspected Virginia of making assignation after assignation. Where she was concerned, no human contact was innocent: the only possible guarantee of her fidelity was complete isolation. He cut her telephone wire, and regularly checked whom she phoned on her mobile. Any unexplained number was turned into a casus belli, a justification for punching her or dragging her across the room. If she dressed well he called her a slut; if she let herself go he dragged her to the glass and forced her to contemplate her slovenliness while he jeered at her.

  Sometimes he would send her out to the nearest shop to bring him something he said he needed, and tell her that he expected her back in ten minutes. As soon as she had gone, he would put his watch forward to make sure that she returned late: and lateness was another casus belli, so he would beat her with a rising tide of indignation against her. The more he hit her, the angrier he grew.

  In between times, however, and immediately afterwards, he would call her by his pet name for her, Angel, and would make prolonged love to her. He would apologise to her, become tearful, promise it would never happen again, and say that perhaps there was something wrong with him: though adding that she should try harder not to provoke him.

  Irregular as his visits now were, Virginia thought about him constantly, all the time: how to please him, how not to anger or provoke him. He usually arrived very hungry and wanted a hot meal straight away. He couldn’t wait, and yet everything had to be freshly prepared. Either she made him wait too long, or he didn’t like what she gave him, calling it leftovers, and even hurling it at the wall in disgust. Her failure to provide him with what he wanted was further evidence of her infidelity: being too busy elsewhere, she didn’t have the time to give him what he wanted.

  Virginia confided in her mother a couple of times, but the first time her mother replied that she had told Virginia from the very beginning that Dwayne was no good but that she hadn’t wanted to listen, and the second time that she had made her bed and now had to lie on it.

  Whatever Virginia did, Dwayne was not to be propitiated. Everything was evidence of her guilt in his eyes. Sometimes he passed her in the street in his car, without letting her see him, and demanded afterwards to know where she had been, what for, and to whom she had spoken. It was as though he already knew everything, and Virginia began to feel that she was being followed and spied upon all the time. If someone smiled or laughed in the street, she assumed it was at her. She imagined that everyone around her was watching her and reporting to Dwayne: though, as she told herself, she couldn’t understand why, because she wasn’t doing anything.

  The more she tried to please Dwayne, the angrier and more bad-tempered he became.

  ‘You’re hiding something,’ he said. ‘Just tell me what it is, and then we can start again.’

  ‘There ain’t nothing,’ Virginia protested, half-wondering now if it was true.

  For a short time Dwayne would be reasonable, even understanding.

  ‘Just tell me what it is,’ he said, ‘and then we can forget it. It’ll be just like it was at the beginning.’

  When Virginia denied that there was anything to hide, however, Dwayne lost his temper completely. His eyes stared and became glassy, as if they had lost the power of sight; his movements became stilted, as if no longer fully under his control, but rather a manifestation of a clockwork mechanism; his speech became an emphatic monotone. When he was like this, he began to strangle her.

  Her head would swim, she would start to feel faint; then, at the last minute, he would stop.

  ‘I’m sorry, Angel,’ he would say, coming to himself. ‘But this time you pushed me too far.’

  Then he would either dash out to get some flowers or suggest they had dinner by candlelight at a restaurant. When Virginia said that they couldn’t leave Evander on his own, Dwayne pointed out that he was fast asleep and he never woke in the night. It would only be for a short time, comparatively speaking, and no harm would be done; and so Virginia agreed, in case he started to think that she had made another assignation for the night.

  Virginia was sometimes tempted to take Dwayne’s offer seriously, and make a new start by confessing. But what could she confess to? She couldn’t think of anything. It was ages since she had socialised with anyone other than Dwayne, and he would hardly be satisfied with a confession that she had said ‘Good morning’ to Mr Patel who ran the local shop.

  Perhaps she should confess that she had found Big Nigga, the rap star, attractive when she saw him on the television. But that was some time ago, before Dwayne smashed the screen because, he said, she was taking too much visual interest in the young hero of a soap opera. In the end, she decided not to confess because there was nothing that would have satisfied Dwayne; he was not the kind of man to be fobbed off.

  The happy moments between them were fewer and fewer. But where, or to whom, could Virginia turn? Although she had always despised it, she tried the church: the First Holy Apostolic Pentecostal Church of Christ, Redeemer, a large conical brick structure with an aluminium crown of thorns at its apex, whose pastor was the founder-bishop, the Most Reverend Clyde Divine (whether that was his real name, no one knew). During the services, members of the congregation, mostly middle-aged or elderly women, stood up suddenly, crying Hallelujah! or Praise be! and starting to talk loud gibberish, some about smiting the Gideonites, until everyone joined in and the roof was raised.

  At first Virginia was inclined to laugh at so many old ladies like her mother, all in broad-brimmed hats and gloves, sobbing with emotion; but then, strangely enough, she began to feel the emotion herself, weakly at first and then coming like a warm flood through her whole mind and body. Yes, Jesus was her saviour and he loved her. She knew it now. She had let Jesus into her heart.

  Afte
r the service was over, and everyone had returned to normal, the Most Reverend Divine, an avuncular man of about fifty whose head was sprinkled with white curls, came to speak to Virginia. He picked her out for his attention because he had never seen her in the church before.

  ‘Welcome, sister, welcome,’ he said. ‘It’s your first time in the House of the Lord, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Praise the Lord,’ he said.

  He was so kind, with a kindness so practised that it seemed spontaneous, that she wanted to confide in him at once. Her chance came when he invited her to the church’s Bible study meetings on Thursday evenings.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Virginia.

  ‘Why not?’ asked the Most Reverend Divine. ‘What could be more important than studying the Lord’s word?’

  Virginia told him about Dwayne. Irregular as he was in his visits, Thursday was the night he most commonly came, and there would be hell to pay if she were not there to look after him. She burst into tears: she didn’t know what to do and was at her wit’s end.

  The Most Reverend Divine knew just what to do. He told Virginia to get down on her knees with him and pray. If she allowed God into her heart and kept Him there, he would surely answer her and tell her what to do. So they prayed together, the Most Reverend Divine imploring Almighty God to show this, his humble sinning repentant servant Virginia McStephen, how to rid herself of this unrighteous man in thrall to Satan.

  The Most Reverend Divine was right: God did tell Virginia what to do. She went home with a light heart and a clear head.

  Next Thursday evening, Virginia prepared for Dwayne’s arrival. She filled two very large saucepans with water and put them on to boil. She also took two large frying pans and filled them with oil preparatory to heating. Someone observing her thought she might have been preparing for a large number of guests.

  Then she took up a position behind the front door and waited. Great purpose is patient and she was patient; eventually her patience had its reward. She heard a scratching at the lock in the front door. It continued for a little while, like a mouse at a skirting board, as Dwayne’s key searched for the keyhole. He was probably a little uncoordinated because of the cannabis and cocaine. He wasn’t what you would call a heavy user, at least by comparison with his friends, but he seldom went without: he took enough to demonstrate that he was not a coward or a passive cog in the system. He, like everyone else, was his own man.

  After a brief struggle, Dwayne found the keyhole and turned the key to enter. He stepped in, the whites of his eyes inflamed with drugs and incipient anger. He was in a belligerent mood and was looking for a justification for pleasurable rage.

  Virginia sprang out from behind the door. In her right hand she held a long sharp knife. Her mind was clear and, with heroic concentration and determination she recalled what she had once heard, that an upward thrust of a knife was far more dangerous than a downward one, and she let this be her guide. The Lord was with her because she got it right: the knife went in, right under the ribs, as smoothly as if she had practised a hundred times. It couldn’t have been better.

  Dwayne, normally so quick to anger, managed only a mild inquiry.

  ‘What the…?’

  Then he uttered a strangled, gurgling sound, fortunately not loud enough to arouse the neighbours. He slid to the ground. Its work done, Virginia cast the knife aside. It slithered down the linoleum on the hallway floor, spraying drops of blood and leaving a smear that the forensic scientists would later enjoy interpreting.

  But Virginia did not rest on her laurels. She put into action the second part of the Lord’s plan for Dwayne. She went to the stove and set the heat under the oil. She knew it would heat very quickly. In the meantime, she took the saucepans of boiling water and poured them over Dwayne, who was lying still in the hallway, breathing fast but very shallow. He moved a little under the torrent of scalding water, but not to any purpose, and let out a faint groan. He took no evasive action at all when she poured the spitting fat over him.

  The Lord’s plan had worked perfectly. A few minutes later, having taken a brief rest on her sofa, Virginia went out of her flat’s front door and, in the entrance to the whole block, began to sing and dance. Her song was tuneless and her dance was nothing but a jig.

  ‘Hallelujah! Praise be! I am the angel of the Lord.’

  She repeated it over and over again. Her voice rang out through the buildings and some of the windows trembled. To begin with no one took any notice; screams were not unusual in the building. But when it continued, someone stuck his head out of his front door and shouted ‘Shut up, you bitch!’ When this had no effect, he shouted it again and then threatened to smash her head in if she didn’t shut up. But then a group of people from the other flats began to gather round her and one of them went to her flat, whose door was open, and found the dead Dwayne. She screamed, and came out of the flat with her hand over her mouth, unable to speak further. Then she began to sob.

  Virginia was still performing her jig.

  ‘Hallelujah! Praise be! I am the Angel of the Lord!’

  In custody, Virginia continued to sing and dance, as one incapable of her own distress. At first the policemen in the station were amused, but the holding cells acted as an echo chamber, and a little madness goes a long way.

  The police surgeon said that she was mad and ought to go to hospital, but the hospital said that she was too dangerous for them to handle, and so the magistrate had no alternative but to remand to prison the singing and dancing defendant in the dock.

  She was sent at once to the prison hospital. Doctors came to see her, both for the prosecution and the defence, but she made no distinction between them. She answered all their questions irrelevantly, incoherently and distractedly, listening for inspiration from the air and suddenly getting up from her chair and singing and dancing in a state of religious exaltation. It was difficult at times to make out what she was saying, but her refrain was clear:

  ‘Hallelujah! Praise be! I am the Angel of the Lord!’

  She ate little and slept less. She had to be kept separate from the other prisoners whose sleep she had disturbed with her nocturnal chanting, and who would have cured her insomnia with a good beating. Their threats, snarled through their cell doors at night, had no effect on her. They banged on their pipes and stamped on the floor: but still Virginia kept it up.

  When she was taken to court, Virginia hardly seemed to notice the change in her surroundings. The ceremonial passed her by: the judge in his wig and red robes tried at first to be polite and reasonable with her, but soon grew irritated by the restless noisy figure in the dock. He ordered her to be taken away and tried in her absence: her lawyer having pleaded not guilty on her behalf. The facts of the case were not in dispute, nor was her madness: the judge ordered her to be detained in hospital until it was safe to release her.

  The hospital was full of locked doors and barred windows, which was why it was called secure. Most of the patients were young men who had killed someone while mad, drunk or under the influence of cannabis, or all three. They each had their own room in which they played their agitating music at maximum volume to drown out that of all their peers, or as if they had all gone deaf. Occasionally a fight would break out between them for no obvious or discoverable reason, when one of them would overturn a table or a chair with a crash, and try to use the furniture as a weapon. Usually the nurses, dressed almost indistinguishably from the patients, would intervene before other than minor injuries could be inflicted.

  Mostly, though, a tense calm reigned. The medicines the patients had to take made them stiff, and as unblinking as zombies. They seemed to be in a state of suspended animation, halfway between activity and inertia, and if they spoke it was in a monotone. When they watched television in the day room, whose screen flickered as eternally as the flame in the tomb of an unknown soldier, it was without interest, though their eyes flickered slightly if there was a scene of violence.

 
Virginia didn’t like the hospital. She didn’t like the young men, and the few women were even worse. Mostly they had killed their babies or set fire to where they were living, with or without fatal results. They could hardly speak two words without swearing, and their voices, being less monotonous than the men’s, were full of rage. They had funny haircuts and rings through their noses. You had to be careful that your eye did not meet theirs. They called that blazing or eyeballing.

  A very strange thing happened to Virginia immediately on her arrival in hospital: she stopped singing and dancing altogether. She claimed no longer to be the Angel of the Lord. The staff of the hospital found it difficult to believe that she had really changed, waiting for her to relapse and suspecting that her calm was a ruse or a deception. They attributed the change to shrewdness, an instinctive understanding that she would never get out if she expressed what was really on her mind. The door to her room had a judas-window, and sometimes she would notice that an eye from outside was applied to it. When she was in the shower, a nurse would manufacture a reason to enter and ask her a question of a kind to which she already knew the answer, so that she was patently spying on her. But there was nothing to observe, and the nurse always felt cheated of her prey.

  Over and over again she was asked the same strange questions: whether she thought anyone was against her, whether, when she was on her own, anyone was talking to her, whether she had a special mission from God. However many times she answered no, they didn’t seem to believe her. Once she overheard two nurses talking about her, and one of them said that she had what she called insight, that was to say she was being crafty and not revealing what she really heard and thought.

  But Virginia remained patient, always did what she was told, was polite and avoided altercations, and so in the end the staff had reluctantly to admit that there was nothing wrong with her. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to start the long process of release.

  At first she was accompanied on short walks in the hospital grounds by a nurse on either side of her, as if she had lost the power to walk unaided; before long, she was accompanied by only one nurse. The great day came when she was allowed out in the grounds on her own, and then for longer and longer periods. Finally, she was allowed out of the hospital altogether, first with two nurses, then with one, and lastly with none. All went well, and she was sent out for a whole weekend, on condition that she returned at the specified time – which she did.