by Anton Palmer
A big part of her was thrilled by the prospect of her first date. Butterflies flitted pleasantly in her belly. She was excited about being taken out. About not having to sit at home alone, reading, doing her housework or laundry.
Another part of her – a smaller, but steadily growing part of her - was anxious. Anxious about talking with a good-looking man. What could they talk about except the bank…what else did they have in common? And why would a man like Marcus want to go out with her in the first place? She was boring. She didn’t drink, didn’t really socialise. She just went to work and then went home. It wasn’t as if she dressed up to the nines in tight outfits, high heels and face plastered in make-up to turn a man’s head.
Her breasts?
Paraphrasing Mandy, she had ‘breasts to die for’. Was that what attracted Marcus? Her breasts? If so, that meant he found her attractive in a…sexual way.
She gasped at the sudden realisation.
What if he wanted more than just dinner with her?
She’d heard enough of the women’s talk at work. How they had gone out on dates with men they barely knew and a few hours later were back at their houses…having sex…or indeed, some of the women, apparently, couldn’t even wait that long and within half an hour of meeting their date were…doing it…in a pub or restaurant toilet, or in the back seat of a vehicle in some dingy corner of a car-park.
The butterflies were strangled in flight as her gut twisted itself in knots.
What if he wanted to have sex with her? She couldn’t – they weren’t married! But what if he forced the issue? Victoria felt suddenly sick. Her vision swam and she momentarily drifted towards the edge of the road, her nearside front wheel clipping the kerb. She breathed, hard and deep, to calm herself down. If it became clear that Marcus wanted more than just dinner, she would just tell him that it was the wrong time of the month. That she had the curse - the curse which stemmed from the Original Sin…
***
At seven on the dot the doorbell rang.
Victoria stood up from the sofa and breathed slowly, composing herself before opening the front door. Marcus stood in the doorway, beaming at her, a beautiful bouquet of red roses thrust towards her.
“For you, my lady.” He gave a theatrical gesture that was half-bow and half-curtsey as he presented the flowers to her. Victoria felt herself blush. She had never been given flowers before. She took the proffered bouquet and held them to her nose, inhaling the blooms’ delicate scent.
“Thankyou. They’re beautiful. Umm…should I just go and put them in some water?” Marcus quickly checked his watch. “They’ll be fine for a few hours. I’ve got a table booked for seven fifteen. Just leave them on the floor for now…we can put them in water later.”
Later? Was he already making plans for later?
Victoria had no time to dwell on her worries as Marcus took her hand and led her towards his car parked on the road at the end of the drive. The silver Mercedes gleamed as if it had been washed and polished only minutes ago and Victoria felt a rush of excitement at the thought of being driven in such a beautiful machine. Marcus blipped his key fob, the indicator lights on all four corners of the vehicle flashing orange for a second, then opened the passenger door for her.
She slid into the black leather seat, feeling completely out of place in her grey dress and sensible flat shoes.
What was she doing in a car like this? With a man like Marcus?
The urge to clamber back out and run into the safety of her home suddenly hit her, but as she turned to get out, Marcus shut the door. She watched, helpless as he strutted around the front of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. He started the engine which purred quietly to itself, not like her rattle-trap of a car.
“Seatbelt…”
Victoria pulled her belt into place and Marcus accelerated away into town.
***
Victoria perused the menu - it was French. Her gaze travelled up and down, taking in every detail of the painstakingly-flowery typeface, the grain of the expensive looking cream paper on which it was printed. She had done some French at school but she was never particularly adept at languages and those lessons seemed a long way off now. A few words looked vaguely familiar…Poisson – fish? She felt her pulse beginning to race, heat rising in her face at the thought of the impending embarrassment when she had to admit to Marcus that she couldn’t understand the menu.
As if on cue, the waiter appeared at the table, ready to take their order.
“Monsieur…madam…”
Marcus looked at his date, waiting for her to indicate her choices.
“Umm…” Victoria felt herself burning up, “the fish?”
Marcus scanned the menu. “There are several fish dishes, Victoria…which one did you want?”
She pushed her menu towards him and jabbed her index finger at the one word she knew, barely able to look him in the eye.
“Ah…” exclaimed Marcus, “a good choice. No starter?”
Victoria shook her head, staring at the snow-white table cloth.
Marcus grabbed her hand across the table, forcing her to look up at him. “Don’t worry about it, Victoria. I barely speak a word of the language myself.” He stroked the back of her hand with his fingers and she smiled.
Suddenly removing his hand from hers, Marcus held the menu in front of him and addressed the waiter, fluently.
“Oui, monsieur.” The waiter tipped his head towards Marcus and headed off to the kitchen.
14
Victoria watched through the front door as the ambulance pulled away, its sirens conspicuously silent. There was no need for her to go with them, the paramedics had told her. Her father had been pronounced dead, they would take his body to the local hospital in case an autopsy was required. The authorities would be in touch as soon as possible to let her know when they would be releasing the body.
Closing the door softly, she turned and leaned back against it, the realisation that her father was gone slowly starting to sink in…
She was free!
She thought of her ‘discipline’ hanging from its hook in the basement. No longer would she be forced to flog herself raw just because her father demanded it. Any future indiscretions were now between herself and God, and she alone would be the judge of how or when she should be punished.
In a semi-daze she slowly crept upstairs and entered her father’s bedroom. She allowed her gaze to wander around the room. All seemed deathly quiet and empty now that the two paramedics had left, taking her father’s still warm corpse with them. The remnants of his masturbation session were still on the rumpled bed – the semen spattered flashlight and her underwear. The paramedics had spotted the items when they had first entered the room, glances exchanged between them, but neither of the men had mentioned it to Victoria as she stood behind them, trembling - shocked and stunned.
Victoria stepped further into the once forbidden room. She moved slowly and cautiously, the knowledge of her father’s demise doing little to soften the fear she felt just being in this room – as if she expected her father to catch her at any moment and subject her to another basement flogging. As she walked around the bed, she caught sight of the box.
Her father’s ‘secret box’.
Around two feet long by one foot wide and about eight inches deep, it was crafted of dark, polished wood with a dull and scratched brass lock on the front. It lay open on the bedroom floor and Victoria was immediately curious to see why her father had been so protective of it, why he had put the fear of God into her as a young child that she must never look inside it. She crouched down and, with clammy, shaking hands, begin to delicately sort through its illicit contents.
There were photographs. Polaroid’s. Dozens of them, some clearly quite old, the colours faded, others that seemed brighter and more recent. As she plucked out a handful at random, she suddenly gasped, sweat beading on her brow and a heavy nausea filling her gut like ice-cold lead as she realised what, or rather who, was the
subject of all the pictures.
It was her! Every picture was of her.
But these weren’t the normal snapshots that families up and down the land filled their albums with. These were no holiday memories. No Christmas or birthday mementos. Every photograph showed Victoria naked or almost naked.
One of the oldest looking ones, its colours washed out, showed her as a youngster, possibly around four or five, spread-eagled on a bed with her bent legs parted. Another showed her as an eleven or twelve year old, her chest showing the first swellings of her developing breasts. A confusion of rage and disgust filled her mind, the force of these emotions spilling over into her arms which shook and quivered with every hate-filled breath that filled her lungs. She quickly grabbed another from the box. It took a second for her to fully register what she was looking at: the photograph was quite dark and had been taken while she was asleep. Her long nightdress was hitched up around her waist to expose her ‘lady-parts’. A dark triangle of pubic hair was clearly visible against her pale skin.
Taking a deep breath, Victoria put the photographs to one side and continued her search of the box. A white paper bag, folded over neatly at the open end, caught her attention. She lifted it out warily, part of her not wanting to know what else her father had in the box, another part needing to know what other depravities he had nurtured. The bag felt light in her hands, the contents soft. She unfolded the end and tipped the contents onto the floor. More of her underwear; a pair of girl’s knickers with a penguin on the front that she vaguely remembered from when she around five or six. As she handled the garment it felt crisp under her fingers and she dropped the item in disgust as she realised what the crusty yellow stains in the gusset were. A bra caught her eye and she lifted it gingerly by the strap – this was her first ever bra, its cups ridiculously small compared to what she wore now. Another pair of panties – Victoria placed her hand into the paper bag, like a mitten, to pick the garment up, unwilling to touch it with her bare skin. These panties were bigger, no picture on the front - the crotch heavily stained a rusty-brown and, with a mix of horror and shame, she threw the garment onto the floor. Tears welled in her eyes as she recalled the day of her first period - her shock and fear when she went to the toilet and discovered the dark blood soaking into her underwear. She’d balled up the offending garment in her hands and buried it in the dustbin. Her father must have seen her and retrieved it for his ‘collection’.
A dark brown leather wallet was the next item to come out of the box. Longer than a normal wallet, it felt heavier than it should. Victoria unfastened the catch and gasped incredulously as the contents were revealed. A piece of yellowed paper fell out. Victoria examined it – it appeared to be a page from a medical text-book – the diagrams and the snatches of text that caught her eye, confirming the page contained instructions for performing a caesarean section. The leather wallet itself contained a number of gleaming steel scalpels, the edges of the blades glinting wickedly sharp.
Why had her father had these? He was a handyman not a surgeon.
Another paper bag rested at the bottom of the box. Brown and smaller than the previous bag, this one was folded into a square. Wiping her eyes, Victoria opened it and peered inside. More photographs. She turned her face away, not wanting to see any more pictures of herself, but felt her gaze being dragged back, curiosity getting the better of her. She reached inside and pulled the contents out. There were half a dozen pictures – Polaroids again – and Victoria let out a sigh of relief when she saw that this time, she was not the subject.
The first photo showed a woman’s face. Victoria guessed her to be in her mid-twenties. She was smiling, but it looked forced, a haunted look in her eyes betraying her real emotions. Victoria studied the woman some more…
Was this her mother?
She had never seen a picture of her mother. Her father told her that he destroyed them all after she died, that he was too overcome with grief to keep them. The more she looked at the woman’s face, the more certain she was that this was her mother. The eyes and nose definitely bore a resemblance to her own. Victoria put the photograph to one side and looked at the next, desperate to see more of the mother she had never known.
Her gut turned to ice as soon as her vision focused on the next picture. It was the same woman: but this time she was naked and hanging by the wrists from the chains in the basement. The chains that Victoria was all too familiar with. She discarded the picture quickly to look at the next: the woman was still chained. Her back was turned to the camera, blood running down her flesh as far as her buttocks. Next photo: her mother again, clothed and smiling. This time the smile looked genuine and, as Victoria peered closer, she could see the reason why – the swell of her mother’s pregnant belly clearly starting to show under her floral dress. Victoria flipped to the next picture: her mother was naked, lying down. She looked as if she were sleeping. Victoria’s eyes were immediately drawn to the baby laid on her chest, its tiny body wrapped in a blanket. Tears of joy filled her eyes as she continued to stare at this memento of herself and her mother together, the salty drops beginning to blur her vision. She hurriedly wiped her eyes, desperate to see the picture again and felt the corners of her mouth start to smile as the picture came back into focus.
The smile was cut dead in its tracks as a scream erupted from her throat. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it before. So focussed on the image of her new-born self, lying across her mother’s breasts, she hadn’t spotted the woman’s gore splattered thighs, the dark pool on the mattress between them…
Victoria screamed again as she saw the gaping wound in her mother’s abdomen. The flesh sagging on either side of the rent, revealing shiny dark wetness. She broke down in tears, wails of grief bouncing off the bedroom walls as she realised that in the one and only photograph she had of herself and her mother, her mother was dead.
She dropped the picture to the floor and rose to her feet – she had seen enough. As she stood, the last photograph caught her eye. Despite wanting to be out of the bedroom she couldn’t leave without looking at this last picture and bent down to retrieve it. The image was the final nail in the coffin of the truth that Victoria had believed her whole life. She brought the picture closer to her face, her eyes boring into it as if trying to change the scene etched on the photographic-paper by strength of will, by the sheer power of not wanting to believe what she was seeing: her mother’s body, lying at the bottom of a shallow grave. A grave that she could tell by the familiar brickwork behind it, was in the basement of this very house.
15
“So, what are your plans for the future, Victoria?”
Marcus had just finished telling Victoria of his five year strategy to banking domination. Between mouthfuls of her food – which she was relieved to find tasted fantastic – she listened patiently, nodding her head at appropriate intervals as Marcus described, in jargon strewn detail, every facet of his ambitions; promotion to head office in six months; head-hunted by a bigger and better company within a year or two; luxury holidays; expensive cars…
But now he wanted to know her plans. Her big ambitions.
Victoria felt herself blushing as Marcus sipped at his wine, his eyes fixed on hers as he awaited a response. Her embarrassed silence seemed to be stretching into an eternity, her cheeks burning hotter. She knew she had to say something.
“I’ve never really thought about it.” She stammered. “I enjoy my job…I guess promotion to a more senior role might be nice at some point…” She let the sentence drift off and smiled, trying to gauge his thoughts.
“But what about ambitions?” Marcus leant towards her, “Personal goals - rather than work. “
Victoria felt her heart sink a little as she realised she wasn’t off the hook just yet. She took a swallow of her water and decided that she’d probably already blown her chances with her first answer, so had nothing to lose by just being honest – no matter how ridiculous she thought it might sound to a man like him. “Children.”
She blurted the word out.
“I’m sorry?” She saw Marcus’s eyes widen in surprise.
“Children. I want children. I want to be a mother.”
“Well…” Marcus sipped his wine again, “I guess most women want that, don’t they?”
“But I never knew my mother, Marcus. She died when I was born and my father…well, I suppose he loved me, in his own particular way…”
Marcus snorted, “Well that’s something we have in common.”
“How do you mean?” Victoria’s face brightened at this first interaction between them that wasn’t just banal small talk or practiced pleasantries.
“It’s nothing…just my mother,” he waved his hand as if to waft his remark away, “please continue.”
“Well…that’s it really. I just want to have children…to love…and…love me back.” She looked down at the tablecloth, feeling self-conscious, waiting for some sort of derisory comment. Instead she felt Marcus grab her hand as he stretched across the table towards her. He gently stroked her fingers with his own and gazed into her eyes.
“To want nothing more than to fulfil the role which nature – or God- created you for, to nurture and love children, is a wonderful and beautiful ambition, Victoria. As are you…” Victoria’s heart fluttered like a flock of delirious birds as Marcus pulled her hand towards him and kissed it.
***
Marcus turned the engine off and stepped around the car to open the passenger door. Victoria grasped his proffered hand and allowed him to assist her as she climbed out, secretly delighted to feel her slender fingers in his masculine grip once more. She stood in front of him, her heart hammering behind her ribs with a stomach-churning mix of excitement and dread: was this point when the evening was about turn sour?
