Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  Before she left for the Happy Stay Kirsty called Bernadette in London.

  ‘Thank God it’s you at last,’ Bernie shouted. ‘I’m in a right state here. You must have got the notes last week, when are you going to send it all back?’

  ‘I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet.’

  ‘Holy Jaysus, the editor’s coming here tomorrow to discuss the changes with me and what am I going to tell her?’

  ‘Surely you can fob her off.’

  ‘She’s not that sort of person!’

  ‘Tell her you’re in the middle of doing it but you haven’t quite finished yet.’

  ‘And I’m on telly on Friday. Kirsty, I’m going to look like a right eejit and Dominic’s no help.’

  She wanted reassurance. Well, Kirsty was in no mood to bother. ‘What about the money?’ she said. ‘Me and Avril can’t wait much longer.’

  ‘I’m doing my best, believe me, but they’re fussing around about making you partners; they don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  What is Bernie playing at? ‘Well then, just tell them to pay you, forget the partnership, shut up about us, and then we can split it afterwards.’

  ‘Kirsty, there’s tax, and VAT and different accounts; it’s very involved, it’s not that easy. I only get half now, anyway, the rest doesn’t come till the thing’s published.’

  Kirsty gripped the phone. ‘I don’t believe this, Bernie. You sound as if you’re making excuses. What’s going on? Are you being straight with me?’

  ‘Listen to me, Kirsty.’ It sounded like Bernie was cracking up and yet she seemed so comfortable in her famous role just weeks ago. ‘You’ve dumped me right in it. It’s bloody hell here. I’m trying to make out I’m some kind of intellectual, trying to kid everyone around me, there’s nobody here on my side, nobody to support me, I’m carrying you all on my own, and now you’re accusing me of being a con-artist.’

  ‘It’s not so easy back here, either,’ Kirsty snapped. ‘What with Avril’s brother, and I’ve had an awful visit from Trev…’

  ‘No? What happened?’

  ‘I managed to convince him to leave us all alone.’ Did that sound too glib? Bernie knows Trev better than that from everything Kirsty’s told her.

  ‘Is that right? That’s amazing. Unless he’s got some trick up his sleeve.’

  Kirsty tried to pass this off. ‘That could well be, but there’s pressures on all of us, Bernie, and Avril and I badly need money. The kids arrive later today and I’ve still got no transport.’

  ‘I’ll have another go at them, maybe Rory can work something out.’

  ‘Rory?’

  ‘Candice’s boss. He’s got influence. He knows what he’s doing. He ought to be able to get something done.’

  ‘Well hurry up, for God’s sake,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘And send that manuscript back,’ begged Bernie, ‘quick. You mess me about again and I’m up shit creek. Pray for me.’

  So eager to be reunited with the children she has missed for so long, Kirsty sets off once again for the caravan park. Her few belongings are already there, it didn’t take long to empty her room, and Colonel Parker kindly drove her over in the hotel minibus last night.

  As far as Kirsty had been able to see, Trev had followed a pile of rubble into the ancient mine shaft and now rested twelve feet down on what was probably solid floor. The shaft must have been a blind one. The jerry-built cottage must have been put up with no knowledge of the old workings at a time before planning permission was required—nobody could have bothered much about foundations, either.

  He could call from there as loud as he liked and nobody would hear him; even Kirsty, in the same room, had to strain to hear his muffled words. He’d have no difficulty breathing, and presumably he could sit and rest if he was able to tolerate the uneven floor and the soggy black muck that oozed from it. Kirsty checked her watch. He had been down there eight hours already. He would be frantic by now, hungry and thirsty, cold and uncomfortable, and beside himself with worry over his crazy wife’s intentions. He would soon run out of cigarettes if he hadn’t already. There was no way he could get out on his own—the walls above and surrounding him were smooth, wet circles of rock, too wide to use as a climbing chimney. And the stench of age-old putrefaction was rank and overpowering.

  Jake and Gemma do not run towards her immediately as she’d imagined they would in her dreams. Instead they stand there shyly, clinging to Maddy’s hands, while Avril tries to bring them out. ‘Here’s Mummy! We told you she’d be here soon! Mummy’s been at work.’

  Kirsty, her heart overflowing, kneels down beside them. She looks up at Maddy, ‘At last, at last. I thought this day would never come.’ And slowly Jake unwraps himself and drops onto his mother’s knee, and the old familiar weight of him, this view of his small head from above, the thinness of his ankle where it disappears into his shoes, warms her through like winter sheepskin, and she wants to fold them both up in these feelings for ever.

  ‘Gemma?’ asks Kirsty gently, holding out a spare arm, begging like a mother on a third-world pavement. And the little girl falls silently into the crook of her arm like a conker from an oak tree, round and shiny and perfectly formed. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you both so much.’ Kirsty lets her lips lose themselves in her children’s clean hair, as if grubbing for some precious food she has been deprived of for too long.

  ‘They’re fine,’ Maddy booms from above, her wild grey hair in untidy tangles. ‘They’ve been all round the caravan, tried out their beds, put away their things, learned to boil the kettle and put up the front doorstep.’

  ‘Oh, you just don’t know…’ Kirsty murmurs, drawing a sharp gulp of breath as a keen pain bites through her, while Maddy and Avril watch the reunion with soppy smiles on their faces.

  ‘Gemma was sick on the journey, weren’t you, poor mite?’ says no-nonsense Maddy.

  ‘Oh, Gemma!’ Kirsty gives her a special kiss.

  ‘Yes, inside her Wellington boots. And they’ve brought oodles of things to show you, things they’ve made, pictures of where they’ve been this summer. And Jake can swim, just a few strokes, doggy paddle, but next summer he’ll be playing with the dolphins.’

  ‘I’ve made tea.’ Avril gloats, with the same beaming smile on her face. ‘Pasties and beans and baked potatoes with cheese on top.’

  ‘The dogs are with Maddy’s friend, they’re having a holiday while Maddy’s away,’ Jake exclaims excitedly, and his words begin to tumble out and Kirsty can’t hear enough of them, words she has been deprived of for five long months and all because of that evil bastard languishing in the empty mine.

  She can’t stop trembling.

  They can just about squeeze round the table. It feels as if they’ve always done this, Maddy, Avril, Jake, Gemma and Kirsty, such an easy family, so at home with each other, no fear of the man coming home and cutting the happy pink ribbon around them.

  ‘I don’t think you need worry about my departure,’ Maddy reassures Kirsty heartily, still wearing those terrible worn old tweeds she’d been wearing the last time she’d seen her. ‘I’ll only be at the hotel and I’ll come and see them first thing in the morning. I’m staying over tomorrow night as well in case you have any problems. But they’re both such happy kids, Kirsty, in spite of all they have been through, and that must be due to you. You coped so well in such an impossible situation.’

  ‘I think we got out of it just in time. Jake was beginning to show some signs…’

  Maddy nods fondly. ‘But it’s all over now, my dear. As long as you can go on coping as well as you have been doing.’

  Kirsty looks round the caravan and blesses Avril for what she has accomplished. It’s warm, it’s bright, and with children’s toys scattered around it looks almost homely. ‘Hopefully,’ she sighs, ‘we won’t be here long.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter where you are as long as these two are with you,’ smiles the comforting Maddy. ‘That’s all they want. And it’s high time, I think.
And as long as that frightful husband of yours stays out of your way, one day soon you might be able to sort it all out legally. Get shot of the blighter once and for all.’

  After the children are asleep—and it didn’t take long, they were worn out—Kirsty manages to tear herself away from a silent and marvelling vigil and Avril makes hot chocolate and they both sit down. A single cone of light falls on the table between them, the curtains are drawn and the television flickers with the volume turned down.

  In this light Avril’s shiny face looks extraordinarily young. Her skin is as smooth as a baby’s. Her nervous voice is almost a whisper.

  ‘But you never told me you’d seen Graham.’ Kirsty is astounded by Avril’s fresh news.

  ‘I never told anyone,’ says Avril. ‘I suppose I just couldn’t face the truth.’

  ‘But now you’ve made a statement?’

  ‘Yes, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. But, Kirsty, I feel so disloyal. He is my brother.’

  ‘And you saw him on the golf course? Just before Ed died?’

  ‘I’d arranged to meet Ed,’ Avril lies. ‘I know it seems silly, so early, but it was hard for us to spend any time on our own together, what with work… anyway, we both liked getting up early.’

  ‘And you saw Graham? Are you sure?’

  Avril nods sadly. Her blue eyes are so solemn. The flowers Maddy kindly brought with her sit between them, arranged in a Nescafe coffee jar. ‘I saw Graham in the distance. He was going towards the rough ground where Ed was found dead. I couldn’t believe it was him—what was Graham doing down here? I thought I was mistaken, that perhaps it was a hotel guest out for a morning stroll and about to chat to Ed. Anyway,’ Avril, very pale, warms her hands round her mug for comfort, ‘whoever it was, there wasn’t much point in me and Ed meeting if somebody else was about. We might be interrupted, and I hadn’t much time and we didn’t really want everyone to know our business, so I turned round and went back to the suite and let myself in without disturbing Dom or Bernie.’

  Kirsty, dragged into the tale, feels like a conspirator. Avril is lying. She knows. She can tell. ‘This is awful, Avril,’ she says.

  Avril sighs and goes on, tense and earnest. ‘Mother, of course, is beside herself. She thinks I should have kept quiet for the sake of the family. “As if one murder isn’t enough.” She seems to blame me, as if I’d done it, but at the very least she thinks I’ve joined the rest of the world in clubbing against her.’

  ‘What about your father? He must be finished.’

  Avril’s lips begin to quiver uncontrollably. ‘I can’t bear to think about what all this is doing to Father.’ She lifts her doleful face and stares at Kirsty beseechingly. ‘Kirsty, tell me I’ve done the right thing.’

  Kirsty is forced to move Maddy’s flowers in order to see Avril properly. She is carrying these lies off exceptionally well. And so what if she’s compromised Graham? It’s time she started fighting back. ‘Well, Avril, you did what you had to do. If you really believe you saw Graham there, you had to tell somebody. I mean…’ Kirsty thinks quickly, she mustn’t say the wrong thing, Avril is worryingly close to breaking down completely. ‘I suppose, as he’s already accused of one murder, another can’t make that much difference.’

  ‘But it makes him a serial killer,’ says Avril. ‘They’ll put him away for life.’

  There is a strange shrillness in Avril’s voice. Kirsty looks at her hard and sees a disquieting smugness there.

  Twenty-Three

  SHE BELIEVES THAT SHE convinced Kirsty. She hopes she convinced them all. The flaw in her story—the fact that she fell out with Ed the night before his death and would be unlikely to meet him at dawn the following day—has luckily slipped Kirsty’s fuddled mind. But Avril is soon sick and tired of repeating her story over and over, going through the smallest details and carrying it all, like a film, in her head.

  For a woman who, up until now, has found lying bewildering, Avril lies like a trooper, and there’s no sign of that give-away blush on her face. It makes a change from owning up to something she hasn’t done—owning up for somebody else—well, it’s using the same well-honed skills. If she can fool her sharp-eyed mother, Avril can fool anyone. And the joy that it brings her beggars belief; it’s as good as unscrewing a bolt in her head, she can almost hear the hiss of hot steam as years of frustrated rage rush out and finally disperse, she knows not where, like the other poisons in the stratosphere.

  ‘Your brother denies he went anywhere near the golf course that morning.’ The police are relentless with their questions.

  ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he,’ says Avril.

  ‘He points out that he had no reason to kill Ed Board, unlike Annie Brenner who he allegedly robbed.’

  ‘But he denies that, too.’

  ‘But we’ve got evidence against him on that charge. Whereas there’s nothing to connect him to Ed Board’s death.’

  ‘Except that I saw him.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen your brother for over five years.’

  ‘You don’t forget what your brother looks like.’

  And they write down everything and record every word she is saying.

  ‘He says you fell out when you visited him yesterday. He says this is your way of getting your own back. He used to bully you as a child, can you tell us about that, Avril?’

  ‘I’m sure that happens in lots of families with children of different sexes and with that age gap. It wasn’t any worse in ours.’

  There is always another question. At first she dreaded the next and the next, but now they have started repeating themselves Avril finds the tension exhilarating. It’s like a chess game once you’ve mastered the rules. ‘But Graham was unlike most other lads of his age, I believe. Graham was a hard nut, a screwball, cruel, not the sort of brother it could have been easy to live with. This must have had an effect on you, Avril, and probably a profound one. Your parents’ reaction to you must have been coloured by Graham’s behaviour. Perhaps you resented that?’

  ‘I didn’t like Graham, I didn’t like him at all.’

  ‘He used to hurt you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Can you be more explicit?’

  ‘He used to give me Chinese burns. He used to pull my hair and pinch me. He used to tease me when his friends came round, and call me fat and ugly.’

  ‘And when he was put away, how did you feel about that?’

  ‘I was pleased. Naturally. It meant some peace and quiet in my life at last.’

  ‘And you never went to visit him in Liverpool?’

  ‘No, my parents were against it. But I wouldn’t have gone anyway.’

  ‘So Graham is right. You do bear a grudge.’

  ‘Of course I bear a grudge. Wouldn’t you? He took my favourite doll once, and burnt all the hair off her head with caustic soda. Her scalp came up in plastic blisters. I was so little then I believed she could feel it.’

  Avril notices how the policemen glance at each other now and again, as if they’ve picked up something significant, like the way dentists’ eyes, enlarged by the mirror, move around inside your mouth and stop when they find a filling or some vulnerable, soft, pink place.

  ‘Why did you go and visit Graham yesterday?’

  ‘Because I felt guilty, I felt sorry for Graham, I thought I should give him some support.’

  ‘Rather a sudden change of heart?’

  ‘Not really. He had never been charged with murder before.’

  ‘Some people might think that fact would harden you against him.’

  ‘From all I’ve heard, it sounds as if he didn’t mean it.’

  ‘But you think he meant to kill Ed Board?’

  ‘I don’t know, how could I know? I can’t see into Graham’s head. All I know is that he was there and I recognized him.’

  ‘But you didn’t call out or acknowledge him. The brother you hadn’t seen in years? Don’t you think that’s rather odd?’<
br />
  ‘I was very confused. Graham, here in Cornwall? I thought I must have been mistaken.’

  ‘Ah. But now? With hindsight?’

  ‘Now that I know my brother was in the area, seeing him that morning makes perfect sense.’

  ‘I believe you and Ed Board had something going between you?’

  ‘We were friends.’

  ‘No more than friends?’

  ‘We were close friends.’

  ‘Did you ever have sexual intercourse with Edward Board?’

  ‘No. I am a virgin.’

  And the men’s sharp eyes swivel and snap with significance once again.

  ‘How could you do this to me, Avril?’ sobs Mother, sitting, defeated, on the caravan steps. ‘Oh, how could you?’

  There is elation to be had in this, too. Avril feels no remorse, no sympathy for her grieving mother, no wish to turn back the clock, no shame at the enormity of her lies or the awesome consequences of them. Quite the contrary in fact. She is revelling in her new persona and wonders why it has taken so long for her to discover the thrill of being evil and the acceptance of it as a Godlike state.

  And as for her poor father, well, if he’d stood up for himself and not been walked all over by Mother, Graham, his mean employers, the foreman at the garage, the dustbinmen, his next-door neighbour and any Tom, Dick or Harry who happened to bump into him in the street, Avril might have felt a pang of pity at the sight of his anguished face. But there comes a time in everyone’s life when one ought to put up a fight—Kirsty’s managed it, Avril’s done it—and maybe this terrible catastrophe might be a watershed for him.

  Magdalene has a theory that the devil and God are one and the same. God invented the eternity of hell and only a demon could think up that.

  Magdalene took the veil to hide from the abominations of men.

  Magdalene chose a closed and silent order so she could concentrate on her purity of thought.

  Magdalene slipped out at night through the vast convent kitchens and changed into the casual clothes she hid in a metal box by the gate.

  The understandable media frenzy brings the rat packs of London down to this peaceful Cornish Cove in their droves, to the mortification of Mr Derek, who finds some of them posing as guests, having booked into the Burleston under false pretences.