Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  ‘Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,’ says Mother.

  And as Kirsty reminds Avril constantly in their close and intimate conversations, Graham has ruined her life, Graham is the cause of her low self-esteem and the reason for her comfort eating, the reason for ending up doing business studies. ‘You wouldn’t be fat if it wasn’t for him and I don’t know why you should feel slightly concerned.’

  But Avril cannot abandon Graham, and not for any noble reasons. She is pulled mawkishly towards him, to her he has the ghoulish fascination of a fatal accident. Her victim is down and blooded. A perfect time for attack. The torturer is helpless—that person who gave her such grief in her childhood, who moulded her weakness and insecurities as simply as if she were Plasticine, Plasticine gone old and brown, still warm from a vicious little hand. That brute is now at her mercy, safe behind stone walls and iron bars. She is compelled by some overwhelming urge inside her to go and visit him, to triumph at last, to mock, to enjoy.

  ‘That slob deserves all he gets, and the rest,’ says Kirsty.

  Damn Graham. Damn him.

  Sitting in the bus on the way to the prison Avril casts her mind back, finding it hard to remember exactly what he looks like, she hasn’t seen him for so many years. Her clearest memories are of the time when she was around ten years old and Graham was fifteen and well off the rails.

  He was hiding under her bed one night when she went up to get undressed. She was naked before she heard him snorting in that particular way he had with a sneer in the snort, and a mockery. She leapt back in embarrassed dismay, scrambling to find a nightie or anything with which to cover herself.

  ‘You fat sow,’ said Graham, wriggling out, as large as a man, not a schoolboy who might be playing such classroom pranks. ‘Come on, jumbo, let’s have a look.’

  ‘Get out, Graham,’ Avril screamed, but he came at her and wrestled her nightdress from her hands and held her arms behind her back, all the time sneering and jeering at her new breasts, which were early, nobody else in the class had breasts or that suggestion of hair down there which Avril was trying her best to deny. Ugly, horrible, wiggles of hair which she dreaded the others might see when they were changing for swimming; they made enough fun of her as it was.

  ‘Get out, Graham,’ she screamed at the top of her voice, then pushed him with all her strength so that he fell back on the bed. She fled from the room out onto the landing and dashed into Graham’s bedroom because that was the only door that was open.

  ‘Mother! Mother!’ shouted Graham, hanging down over the banisters while Avril, an Everton towel round her waist, tried to barricade his bedroom door. ‘Get this tramp out of my room! This is the third time she’s forced her way in there and I’m fed up with trying to tell her—’

  ‘What on earth’s going on now, Graham? Why can’t you two manage to get on together for one second? We’re in the middle of Eastenders.’

  ‘I don’t like to touch her, Mother, not when she’s in this mood. I’m not going to lay myself wide open to her spiteful lies.’

  ‘Mum, Mum,’ cried Avril, cowering behind Graham’s door.

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake…’ and then the sound of Mother’s nimble tread as she came, annoyed, up the stairs.

  ‘The last time she did this Nick was here.’

  ‘Did what, Graham?’ said Mother.

  ‘Pushed her way in stark naked. I didn’t know what to say. Tell her, Mother, for God’s sake. She must be a bloody nympho.’

  ‘Avril, Avril, what on earth is the meaning of this?’

  Avril squeezed herself round the door, sobbing violently now that she was safe. But Mother grabbed her arm and held it in a vicelike grip. ‘Avril, what are you doing in your brother’s bedroom?’

  Avril gulped, ‘I ran in, I had to get away—’

  ‘But why not the bathroom, Avril?’

  Avril stared, wet-eyed, along the passage. The bathroom had seemed an impossible distance when she was running so blindly, while Graham’s door was wide open.

  Mother asked in horrified tones, ‘Is what Graham’s saying true?’

  And on Mother’s face was the same disgust and revulsion as Graham had shown at the sight of Avril’s naked body.

  ‘Graham was hiding under my bed,’ Avril said tonelessly.

  ‘Graham is fifteen years old, Avril, and not likely to be messing about playing such infantile games.’

  ‘But he was…’

  ‘That’s right, Mother, believe Avril, you always do.’ Graham shrugged nonchalantly.

  ‘But why, Avril? Why?’ Mother’s voice was cold and unreasonable. ‘And Graham says this isn’t the first time! Why do you need to flaunt your body, and you a budding woman?’

  Avril nearly puked with disgust she so hated that phrase. Budding—that’s exactly what her horrid new breasts were doing, and woman, that is what she was turning into. A smelly, bloody, bulging vessel into which men would push their penises and through which babies would come with awful agony because of Eve.

  A boiling sense of injustice gave Avril the courage to shout fiercely, ‘You’re filthy, both of you, with your filthy, filthy minds and your filthy, filthy words.’

  Mother’s slap left a hand print on the top of Avril’s leg that lasted for four days.

  And that was just one example of the way Graham used to get her in trouble. There were many, many more.

  Kirsty is right. He does deserve all he gets, and the rest.

  Avril’s bus arrives at the prison and she gets out surreptitiously, not wanting to be identified as a visitor with somebody close inside.

  As she queues with the other beleaguered-looking passengers, as they tick her name off the list, Avril still isn’t sure what she’s doing here, what she hopes to achieve by this visit. All she can feel is a hot joy inside her, mixed with a sickly fear. The more uncongenial the prison surroundings, the happier Avril feels in this violent schizophrenic place. Vengeance is almost hers. She revels in this novel release of malevolent spite. If she had felt outrage before she had never acknowledged those feelings till now, not even to herself.

  And yet, another, softer part of her needs to see Graham once more—the real Graham, not the memory—so she can put him behind her for good. He had cast such a dark cloud on her childhood, hanging over everything: birthday parties, family outings, the most innocent childish games in the garden. He had caused much of the mental distress that had turned Mother melancholy, although whose fault it was to start with was impossible to tell.

  He looks like all the others in his faded blue jeans and T-shirt.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Graham,’ she says.

  ‘Good to see me inside, you mean.’ His voice is as ugly as his eyes.

  Avril sits down awkwardly, casting her eyes round the room at her fellow visitors looking uncomfortable at their own square, metal tables. Well, she didn’t expect a loving reunion but…

  ‘You bleeding cow,’ growls Graham, one elbow on the table and his fist clenched tight, as if he’s about to take part in an arm-wrestling contest. ‘All you needed to fucking well do was tell the bleeders I was with you.’

  She struggles to conquer her weakness, to say something quickly, to fend off this familiar shock of unexpected, hostile attack. ‘I was so surprised I couldn’t think. I mean, I didn’t even know you were down here.’

  ‘You retard. You’ve done it for me now. You, Avril, just you. If it wasn’t for you I could have got off.’ And he flicks open a packet of cigarettes and leaves one hanging at a petulant angle between his sneering lips. Avril remembers him smoking like this when he was in junior school, trying to be big.

  She can’t help her next question. ‘You did it, didn’t you, Graham? You killed that old woman.’

  ‘Don’t talk shit,’ he answers savagely.

  ‘You probably killed Ed Board as well. They’re saying you might have done it.’ Avril rambles on, aware that she’s always done this when face to face with her brothe
r, so afraid that a pause might be the signal for further abuse. ‘I was quite friendly with Ed Board; he was teaching me to play golf—’

  ‘What did you come here for, Avril? To gloat? You can go back home like a good girl now and tell Mummy that her darling son has fucked up good and proper this time.’

  ‘I don’t think Mother cares any more,’ says Avril casually, ‘and, by the way, Fluffy has been missing for a whole week now and we’re beginning to think she might be dead.’

  Graham laughs. A laugh she well remembers. A cruel, mocking laugh. He once put a kitten’s eye out with a sparkler. She is pleased to see he’s sweating, and his eyes are a little wary, perhaps he is as sorry as she.

  ‘It’s funny.’ Avril chats on again as if she is at some garden fête or one of Mother’s coffee mornings. There are screws in the room and Graham can’t hurt her, no, he can’t touch her any more. ‘You’re just the same as I remember, but it’s not a disguise, is it? Hiding some frightened child? I’d begun to think it was something like that because people aren’t born evil. Oh yes,’ Avril laughs gaily while Graham sits opposite in surly silence. There is something disturbing about the sound of her own shrill laughter, but she hasn’t the time to ponder on this. ‘Silly. I used to make excuses. I used to think it was my fault.’ Her expression suddenly changes and she stares at her brother with cold dislike. ‘But you were born evil, weren’t you, Graham? You were never badly wounded, deprived, lonely or neglected, you are the one they call sinner in church, and I never knew who they meant until now. I always suspected it might be me.’

  ‘You are so full of crap,’ says Graham. ‘Why don’t you sod off, dumping me in the shit then coming here pushing your sick ideas.’

  ‘I think I might just do that,’ says Avril, picking up her neat black handbag. ‘Is there any message you’d like me to give to Mother or Father?’

  ‘Drop dead, cunt,’ says Graham.

  ‘Is there anything you need?’

  ‘Just piss off,’ says Graham, lighting his cigarette at last, with a lighter in the shape of a naked woman, the flame spouting out of her fanny.

  Avril nods to the screws as she goes, amazed at the lightness of spirit she feels. Strong. Exuberant. Even her step has a swing to it, the swing of a thinner person, and her eyes are bright and seductive. She half expected she might feel depressed, visiting her brother in such a place, seeing him vulnerable and alone. Not so. Hah!

  It is half-past four, so she still has time before catching the last bus to the Happy Stay, which only operates during the season. She steps inside the first cop shop she passes and smiles at the sergeant on the desk. ‘I would like to make a statement,’ she says. ‘I know it’s something I ought to have done the moment I first suspected, but there’s family to consider, and then I wasn’t a hundred per cent certain…’

  ‘If you’ll wait in here, Miss, I will fetch somebody who knows about the case.’

  So Avril sits in the stark little room rehearsing her story. It is essential she gets this right. Magdalene was a professional; she never messed up or went off half cock. Revenge was what Magdalene excelled at, and it’s high time Avril Stott took her revenge on the devil who killed the little child within her.

  Twenty-One

  THIS LID IS BOUND to blow.

  The rusty screws are just too tight to hold this build-up of steam. And this is what Bernadette’s head feels like as the pace hots up, as contracts fly across the world and the tabloids continue to photograph her and treat her as their own little darling.

  Sexy, topical, brilliant, and one in the eye for the literate.

  Candice is far from happy with this. ‘It is a question of image. That crude picture in the Mirror—’

  ‘I know what you’re going to say and you’re wrong. It was a tasteful picture of me, under the willow in a punt on the water—’

  ‘With your boobs hanging out and a pen behind your ear. You really have got to stop these games or your work won’t be taken seriously. You might be the flavour of the month—poor little genius, the phenomenon crap—but this fame is fragile stuff, while the book is enduring, a true work of art. And to see you with your legs round that oar—’

  ‘I got paid, didn’t I?’ Bernie wheels round. ‘How else am I supposed to live while I hang around waiting for this legal stuff?’

  ‘Bernie, sweetie,’ sighs Candice tiredly, ‘I do understand, but you must be patient for a little while longer. You just don’t have enough experience of this media frenzy to foresee all the consequences. But we’re all concerned about the effect your sordid performances might be having on Magdalene.’

  And worse, Kirsty and Avril, not to be outdone, are trying to cash in on her act. She spent hours trying to explain how quickly money gets gobbled up in London, how high the cost of living is, how clothes and accessories are so essential if they want her to take advantage of this unexpected publicity. And when all’s said and done what they’re talking about is a couple of tabloid features with pics, one modelling shoot for Woman’s Day, and she had to give the dress back after, a souped-up life story for Young and Chic and a list of her favourite food for Valentine.

  Dominic keeps nagging her to take financial advice: ‘You’ll have to sort it out once these advances arrive,’ he goes on boringly, ‘you can’t just put that kind of money into a shopping account. Everything’s got to be tied up legally, for tax purposes you need a business with proper accountants and administrators, and this crazy partnership plan has to go out the window.’

  Don’t say they are holding back with the money because they’re worried about Avril and Kirsty. They couldn’t do that, could they? Wouldn’t it be illegal?

  They—Coburn and Watts, her publishers; the American agents and the main film company—think her deranged to even consider sharing her fortune with two nobodies who happened to be around when this prodigy was busy at work. She is too young and inexperienced to handle such huge sums herself; she must be under the influence of two more powerful characters.

  Dominic rants on most of all. ‘It’s absolutely absurd that they should hold you to this promise; you made it in the heat of the moment when nobody had any idea what sort of reception the book would get.’ Dominic strides back and forth across the opulent Chinese rug in the drawing room at Arundle Muse after a particularly unpleasant row. Now he stops in front of Bernie, his hands behind his back like Prince Philip. ‘Why the hell don’t you do what Candice and I advise? Give them a couple of thousand each and call it quits. Nobody could expect any more.’

  OK, to them it looks as if this is freakish behaviour, but they don’t know the half of it. She needs Avril and Kirsty. One look at the list of ‘suggested changes’ made by that shrewd old Clementine Davaine, a list she sent, ‘because I’m away in the States for a week, but when I come back we must get together and discuss these ideas,’ made Bernie puke.

  Candice Love, normally supportive, had no sympathy when Bernie complained, ‘It’s my book and I like it exactly how it is. Why must I make these changes?’

  ‘I know, Bernie, I know,’ soothed Candice, making Bernie sound like an overindulged child. ‘And you don’t have to do anything you feel strongly about, but I can assure you that Clementine knows exactly what she’s doing, and that these improvements she is suggesting will be well worth following in the end.’

  So Bernadette needs Kirsty, Kirsty being the only one who can manage these changes convincingly. And if Kirsty’s involved then so is Avril.

  ‘Every single word counts,’ said Candice alarmingly.

  ‘But I can’t use a computer, I can’t even type,’ wailed Bernie. ‘I relied on Avril; she did all that.’

  ‘Well then, we must find you a secretary,’ said Candice Love easily. ‘We’ll ask her to start on Monday.’

  God, oh God.

  Most threatening of all, and coming up fast on the calendar, is the tacky quiz show she agreed to take part in, directly contravening Candice’s advice.

  Bernie’s dream is to get
on TV.

  ‘But have you ever watched that farce?’ Candice was appalled when she heard. ‘Have you see the goons they get on it? Celebrities no-one’s heard of, has-been and no-hopers making spectacles of themselves in front of an audience of morons.’

  ‘They’ll pay me.’

  ‘They’d have to. No-one would appear on that flop for nothing.’

  ‘But I looked it up. It gets high ratings.’

  ‘God, I don’t believe this,’ said Candice.

  The worrying thing about this venture is that Bernie will have to take part. It will no longer be a case of getting by with a flash of her Irish smile and a shake of her curly black hair. More will now be demanded of her—not much, but some.

  ‘Well, you can’t just sit there saying nothing.’ These days Dominic seems to enjoy making her feel worse. ‘You won’t get your fee for a start.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it.’

  ‘You’ll look like an idiot.’

  ‘Oh gee, thanks.’

  ‘It’s a quiz show,’ he tells her contemptuously, ‘there’ll be questions and answers. OK, the standard is abysmal, but have you honestly considered how you are going to win one point?’

  ‘If other dickheads can, why can’t I?’

  ‘Because, when it comes to general knowledge, or any knowledge for that matter, you are seriously out of the race.’

  Bernie seethes with bitterness. ‘So how come writers of books need to have knowledge? They use their imaginations, don’t they? That’s how I did mine anyway. Everyone’s different. People might find it intriguing that an author can be thick as shit.’

  ‘But you don’t sound thick in Magdalene. You sound almost… wise.’

  Dominic can’t get his head round this. He looks at her hard. Suspecting something? Suspecting she can’t write a postcard without a dozen spelling mistakes? ‘Take Candice’s advice and cancel,’ he tells her, still staring.