by Ruth Dugdall
She hesitates, “We’re not here to talk about me, Alice.”
I look again at the photo. The girl looks about the same age I was when my world shattered. Cate hands me the smeared glass of water, and turns to her computer. I note the slight dilation of her pupils as she realises what she left on the screen. Her notes of our meeting yesterday, which I’ve read. I’m a fast reader, all those essays I’ve marked over the years. She moves her mouse, and the screen blanks.
I sip water, still looking at the photo. Cate touches the frame again, turning the picture further out of my line of vision. “I’d like to ask about the degree to which you and David Jenkins planned his death. There was obviously a great deal of premeditation?”
I let there be a pause, and remember the choice she gave me when we last met. The option of talking to her, to avoid prison. But I don’t want her victory to be so easy, and keep silent for a moment longer. Her eyes flicker with uncertainty. She doesn’t yet know if I will talk.
I say eventually, “Yes. There was.”
Glad of the drink, I lean back in the low chair, and Cate swivels so she faces me, but at an angle. The desk is against the wall so there is no barrier between us, except for any words that might get in the way. She lifts her pen to the paper. It’s my prompt to begin. And I’ve made a decision. I decide I have no choice; I decide to talk, but in my own way, choosing my own place to begin.
Cate Austin asks too many questions, and I must be careful. Soon she’ll ask about the cutting of flesh, the tasting. It’s difficult to explain, easier for me to go further back, to another story. She needs to understand where I come from, why love is so fragile. I’ll tell my story, and hope that she understands. My freedom depends on it.
I tell her this:
Although there was a lot to think about before Smith’s death, I was concerned about my parents. I thought it must be possible to prepare them in some way, as carefully as the situation would allow. If I could speak with them, before the event, then it would surely help them cope when Smith was dead and I was in the media limelight.
It was April last year, just after Mother’s Day but before Easter. I’d known Smith for two months. In just two more he would be dead.
I didn’t want my parents discovering our conspiracy from some media headline. To find out from a newspaper article that their daughter had assisted a suicide would be horrible, and I hoped to ready them. I knew they would never understand the passion to which Smith and I aspired. The act we were planning would seize the perfect moment, the most exquisite high. Forever captured. My parents lived their ordinary lives without extreme emotion, in a space that had no warmth. No love was left, yet they remained, like two indifferent animals in the same cage. Had they never thought of escape? Had neither of them imagined an alternative?
My love affair with Smith would be beyond their comprehension. Just as I had always been. If they’d taken just the slightest nip of time to understand… but that was how they lived. Change is hard. And they lived their lives between emotions, in the safety of hearts stabilised by beta-blockers.
I chose a different way. What was happening between Smith and myself, our evolving symmetry, was more real than art, than books, than all I knew before he came to me. Smith was my answer. Our journey was just beginning but even then I was practical, pulled down by the weight of tedious detail. And one of these was the pressing issue of my parents’ inevitable discovery. I had to pre-warn them.
They rarely occupied the same room and I was forced to speak with them separately. I started with my father. This was the interview I dreaded least. It was a Sunday, and we’d just eaten lunch. For as long as I can remember Dad has eaten meals on a tray in the front room, watching TV. After Mum cleared my plate away, I left the kitchen and went in to him. As I opened the door he looked up, a piece of greasy beef on his fork and a drop of gravy fell onto his shirt. I was glad I didn’t eat meat. Sights like this had turned me vegetarian long before I developed a moral conscience.
“Alright, love? What’s up?”
He assumed that I was there for a reason and I wondered if there had ever been a time when I’d have joined him just for his company, if it had ever been that easy between us. I doubted it.
He watched me as I seated myself in the chair across from his own, the beef still dangling in mid-air. On the TV men in crash helmets and fast cars swooped around a track, the room filled with the whine of revving exhausts.
My mouth was full of gravel. I didn’t know where to begin.
Facts don’t change. What does alter is your perspective on them. What Smith and I were planning would sound, to others, bizarre, brutal. Even murderous. But I needed to portray it for what it was, not how others would interpret it. It was an act of love. Not that I was going to tell Dad that I would help Smith to die, of course. That would be going too far. But I needed to prepare him, somehow.
We both watched the cars screaming around the track, until I sensed Dad’s eyes on me. He swallowed his last mouthful and, clattering his knife and fork on the plate indicating his meal was done, placed the tray on the floor for Mum to collect later, and swallowed again. “Is everything alright at work, Alice?”
Work? It was so many miles from my thoughts that the word jolted me. “Fine. Why do you ask?”
“You just seem a bit distracted.” He was looking back at the screen, but he fingered the remote control, nudging down the volume a tad.
“I guess I am. But not about work. I’ve met someone.”
“Oh. A man?”
Well what did he think? “Yes, Dad. A man.”
He made a sound as if the beef was still caught in his throat. “Serious, is it?” He was staring at the screen as if that would answer him and I wanted to grab the control and throw it at his head.
“Yes, Dad, I think so. He’s very special.”
“Blimey! Will you look at that… ” A red Ferrari had crashed into a crowd barrier, sending spectators dashing for safety.
“The thing is, it’s not like a normal relationship. We don’t plan for the future… Marriage, children, it’s not like that… ”
The driver was being dragged from his smashed-up car, a hand to his crash helmet, as if that was what hurt. Dad looked away from the injured man. “Don’t you want kids, then? Does your mother know?”
“It’s not that I don’t want children, but we don’t have the luxury of time. You see, he’s dying… ”
“Dying!” His jaw dropped, exposing his stained lower teeth. Then his eyes widened, “He’s not got AIDS, has he?”
“No, Dad. God, you always think of things like that.”
“Well, how do you know these days? They don’t wear a sign, you know.”
“It’s not AIDS. But it is terminal.” I watched him cave back into his worn armchair, a pained look on his face as if it was him that had crashed through the barrier.
“Well, that’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it? Finally meeting a bloke and he’s sick. Cancer, is it?”
I hadn’t mentioned a specific disease but I didn’t contradict him. It was easier for him to assume illness. It would make death more acceptable.
“Will we get to meet him?”
I shook my head. “I think it’s best you don’t. Under the circumstances.”
“No point, I suppose. Well, it’s a shame, but there’s plenty more fish in the sea, love. I’m sorry, though. You’ve never had any luck when it came to blokes, have you?” He pressed the remote control, drowning out his own words.
We watched as the injured driver was strapped to a stretcher by paramedics, and managed to give the camera a thumbs up. “He was lucky,” said Dad.
Mum had finished washing up and was bleaching the worktops. The kitchen smelled like a swimming pool. When I stepped towards her she held up a hand. “Don’t come in, Alice. I’ve just mopped the floor.” Her feet were in plastic bags, the type you see in operating theatres, blue with elastic around the ankle like over-sized bootees.
“Mum, can we
talk?”
“Hmm? Of course, love. Can you ask your father if he wants a cup of tea?”
I watched as she wiped the kettle, her face stretched in the chrome as she filled it too full, and then reached for her large teapot. There was always too much tea.
I returned from the lounge with Dad’s tray. “He said yes please,” I said, but she had already poured him a cup which, clattering in its china saucer, she carried through to him. The habitual order of daily living. Why did she always ask if he wanted tea, when he never refused? I shuddered, grateful that I would never be caught up in this Groundhog Day. I heard Dad say, ‘Ta’ and the lounge door being pulled to. The plastic bootees crunched back toward me. I braced myself.
“Sugar?” I hadn’t taken sugar in my drinks since I was a teenager. She waited for my reply, her fingers lighting on a spoon propped in a mountain of white crystals. I shook my head, taking the cup and raising it to my lips, the strong tannins of Coop’s own label coating my mouth. Mum was still in the kitchen, walking on water, while I perched on the stool by the door. The tacky stool made the small square of Formica a ‘breakfast bar’ and it was where my mother took all her meals. She was squelching around in her blue bootees, wiping away crumbs that I couldn’t see, her own tea untouched.
“How old were you when you first met Dad?” I asked, as a way to introduce the subject.
“Nineteen. It was a friend’s party and he came right over, asked me if I wanted to go to the Locarno with him. I liked dancing then. We both did. I never understand why you don’t go dancing. You wouldn’t be able to stop me, if I was still young.” She shuffled in her plastic shoes, a weary smile on her face, then looked at me in reproach, as if it was me who had aged her. Would it have been different if they’d had their own child, flesh from their flesh? Perhaps many children, three, four… I wondered then, not for the first time, if my separate genetic identity caused the gulf. Or do all children become strangers to their parents?
“As it happens, I did go to a dance last week. In the village hall.” I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t actually danced, that I’d left early to visit the allotment because Smith had a test for me.
“Really?” She was suspicious, “How come?”
“I’ve got a new boyfriend, Mum.” I was surprised at how proud I sounded. I don’t know what made me use such a twee expression, boyfriend, like I was a teenager, giving in to my mother’s language.
Her smile came quickly, falling on me like the sun. “Oh, Alice, have you? Someone nice?”
Another inane question. I bit away the temptation of sarcasm. “Yes.”
“Well, what does he do?”
“He’s an actuary.”
“A what-ary?”
“Actuary. He works out statistics for an insurance firm in London.”
“Insurance, eh? That’ll come in handy. And is he nice looking?”
“Average, I guess.” Mum looked disappointed. “But I think he’s lovely.” I felt myself blush, and Mum padded over, the floor squeaking beneath her plastic shoe-covers. She put her hand over mine; it was dry and rough.
“And is it serious?”
“Yes. Very.” It was no lie.
“So, when do we get to meet him?”
“The thing is Mum, I’m not sure you should. You see, he’s not very well.” I thought of my conversation with Dad, of his assumption of disease. “He’s got cancer.”
“Cancer? Oh, Alice. Where?”
I hadn’t anticipated that and panicked. “The stomach. There’s nothing that can be done. He hasn’t got much longer.” Mum reached up to envelop me in her arms, and I was smothered by Lily of the Valley. My chin rested down on her shoulder, my face itchy on the lemon wool of her jumper.
“How long has he got?” Mum sounded like she was crying, but I couldn’t see her face. I thought about Smith, about how far we had already come. How far we still had to go.
“Not long.”
Cate Austin looks up from her notepad, “So you prepared your parents by telling them David was terminally ill with cancer. It would still be a terrible shock for them to discover your involvement in his death.”
“Miss Austin, I’m beginning to feel a bit unwell.” I can feel a numbing sensation above my brow which tells me the headache is coming, the dizziness already making me unsteady. It’s gone five o’clock, and I’m tired. Tired of my own voice, my own memories.
She reluctantly closes her notepad and reaches for her diary. “I think we should have another meeting on Monday morning, as the court hearing is less than two weeks away. Can you come here again?”
I shudder. “I’ve a better idea. Why don’t you meet me at the university? They’ve allowed me to keep my office and if you come early I could show you something of interest.”
“Oh?” She looks at me expectantly.
“You’re interested in getting to know me, and I think much of what you wish to know would be revealed if you saw me lecture.”
She frowns. “I thought you’d been suspended from teaching?”
“And indeed I have. But some lectures are recorded for assessment purposes. I’d like to show you a recording of a lecture I give each year, for the English Literature students. It’s an introduction to Keats, and I think it will help you to understand what happened between myself and Smith.”
“I’m sure it would go over my head. Romantic poetry was never something I studied.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Austin. I won’t be testing you on it afterwards.”
We look at each other, acknowledging that the real test is far subtler. Cate turns to a fresh sheet in her pad and writes down the directions to the lecture hall, then leads me back to the waiting room, now empty but still smelling of fags and booze. I sniff the stale air, stumbling slightly as the dizziness intensifies. I’m not well.
“You’re wrong, you know.”
“About what?”
“What was typed on the computer screen. About it being significant that I was adopted. You’re way off the mark, you can do better than that.” I turn and walk out of the waiting room, into the car park, knowing she is staring after me.
Eight
1977
Matty knew she could never tell anyone her secret, especially not her mother. It was so much easier to keep silent. Far too easy in a large house where company could always be avoided. Though not in the early morning. During the day she was at school, and then she was in her bedroom studying until tea time. Her mother was never at home doing things that other women seemed to do, not like the smiley women on TV ads who cooked and cleaned and cooed over children. Matty’s mother had ‘help’ with those kind of things. Whatever it was that demanded her time, the calls and visits and charity galas, it was never Matty. And her father worked hard, came home late, so dinner was eaten in silence, her mother reading newsletters or her diary, and Matty staring down at her plate. It was easy to be silent when no-one spoke to you.
The body is not the same as the mouth. It has a language of its own, and even though Matty’s had conspired with her for seven months, it wanted its say. The school broke the silence. Mr Ferris had been keeping a watchful eye on Matty’s growing breasts and he spoke to the Head of Department, who passed it on to the Head of Year who decided not to speak to Matty herself but to write to her mother, a formal invitation to come up to the school for a meeting the next day. The letter was amongst the invites and minutes of rotary meetings and her mother read it, threw it aside and demanded, “Why do they want to see me, Matilde? As if I haven’t got enough to do.” Matty prayed her mother wouldn’t have time, that she would be too busy to go. She knew the meeting could only be about one thing. She’d seen Miss Russell, the PE teacher, watching her in the showers. Even when she was dressed, Matty’s skirt was too tight. Mr Ferris had been watching her too, and last week she saw Miss Russell talking with him in the playground, glancing her way. Her sin was showing.
The following evening Matty arrived home from school and waited in her bedroom, knowin
g her mother would even then be learning her secret. Matty tried to read but going over the same sentence again and again, tense for the onslaught that would surely come when her mother walked through the door. She dreaded the key in the door, her mother’s shrill voice calling up the stairs.
It never happened.
Matty discovered that her mother was adept at silence and hidden secrets, and dinner was served at usual. Her father had already called to say he would be late, so mother and daughter sat together, although Matty had no appetite.
Her mother’s expression was the same as always, a formal mask of biscuit and petal, just as she held her body in a stiff control. She wondered how her mother learned to keep so still, to hold a secret so firmly inside. Her mother was chairing their dinner, managing the agenda, like so much charity business. “Well,” she said, after the soup, calmly cutting into her chicken, “you’ve certainly got us in a predicament. We need to think of how we set about rectifying this, Matilde. I don’t suppose you’ve been to a doctor?”
