‘Are you ready, Miss Farewell?’
‘I’m on the loo,’ I shouted.
Was it worth it? I probed with my nail one more time and out slid a nail file which I quickly slipped into my dressing-gown pocket.
Later, in bed, I thought: No way would it get through the cuff, but what about the wire? I’d left it in the dressing gown, which was hanging on the back of the door.
I slept without too much difficulty, probably because of the sedatives, and dreamt that I was back in Latchvale and that it was Dr Kent, the clinic and my prison that were a dream. When I woke, I couldn’t understand why the cuff was still there and the moment of realisation was awful. I wanted to scream, but something stopped me. I had to cry though, and wept into my pillow again. It was a relief when the door gave its familiar rattle and Dr Kent came in.
I stopped crying, but lay with my head still buried in the pillow.
‘Are you all right, Miss Farewell? What’s the matter?’ My head came up in a flash.
‘What d’you bloody think is the matter?’
‘I’ve brought you some coffee.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘I’ll leave it on the table.’
‘It’s drugged, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve added a mild sedative, yes. In the circumstances, it can only help you.’
‘Letting me go would be even more help.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment. I’d like to examine you now, please.’
I thought very hard about resisting, but the prospect of being manhandled by Cal was too much.
‘I want to use the loo first,’ I said, by way of token resistance.
‘I’d be grateful if you could hang on for a few moments,’ she said. ‘A full bladder’s better for the scan.’
It was the ‘I’d be grateful’ that really banged it home to me just how impotent I was. I submitted, but my throat swelled and my eyes pricked and tears trickled down my face again. And again, a look of genuine compassion filled her own eyes for a moment.
‘I really will try to be quick,’ she said, although we both knew that wasn’t the reason I was crying.
After she’d taken my blood pressure and temperature, she brought the scanner in again, applied gel and studied the screen as she moved the sensor over my abdomen.
‘Dr Kent—’
‘Please don’t talk while I’m doing this.’ Her face was totally absorbed by the screen. It was her very absorption that had made me speak.
‘I beg you, please tell me what you’re doing to me.’
Her head came up and she snapped. ‘Will you please let me do this.’
The suddenness shocked me and I didn’t say any more.
After she’d gone, I used the chamber pot, then drank the coffee she’d left. I did so out of helplessness. It did seem to make me feel slightly better. I didn’t eat much breakfast, perhaps because I had eaten so much the day before. In the bath, the feeling of detachment, of being able to observe myself stole over me again, but a dull misery was all there was to see.
Back in my room, I tried some Beethoven, but it seemed an irrelevance. I lay on my bed, got up again, paced the room. I couldn’t face the thought of a video and Tess just didn’t hold me the way it had yesterday.
I tried to remember what I’d read about prisoners like Terry Waite. They’d kept themselves thinking, about the tiny things going on around them, about what they’d do when they were free, about anything.
But there was nothing going on around me, except a blackbird singing somewhere outside. I tried to concentrate on it, but it must have flown away. Or had I imagined it?
What would I do when I was free? A binge? A holiday with my mother?
Perhaps. But what I wanted most of all was just to walk the streets of Latchvale again being me, Jo Farewell, with no pretences, no stratagems. Shops, some new clothes, a hair-do…and then to hear the solid snick of my own front door closing behind me when I got home. When I got…
The fuzziness in my head became a jangle, expanding, overflowing, surging along my nerves until my joints, my very fingertips seemed to scream with static electricity. I jumped up, strode over to the exercise bike and pedalled furiously for as long as I could, which wasn’t very long, then lay on my bed again, panting.
Music; Mozart’s Fortieth again, turned right up until my eardrums hurt in an effort to drown everything else out. Diddle dee, diddle dee, diddle dee dee…I didn’t hear the door, just became aware of Kent’s presence as she walked across the room and turned the music down.
‘Would you like some lunch?’ she asked.
‘No thank you.’
‘Not hungry?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t eat much breakfast.’
‘No.’
She regarded me thoughtfully.
‘Would you like to talk?’
‘What about?’
‘Anything you like.’
‘There’s only one thing I want to talk to you about.’
‘We could talk about you, your life. We could talk about Mr Jones, if you like.’
I didn’t say anything. The music played softly.
‘You’re fond of him, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘It’s a professional relationship.’
‘He may be that kind of professional, but you aren’t. Is he married?’
‘Yes. And he has a son,’ I added defiantly.
She smiled quickly. ‘He had me completely fooled, you know. I’ve seen plenty of infertile men and I could have sworn he had all the hallmarks.’
‘As you said, he’s a professional.’
‘I could also see that you were genuinely fond of him, although I couldn’t understand why at the time.’
‘You can now?’
‘Oh yes, he’s a very clever and resourceful man. Does his wife know how you feel?’
‘I—I think so, but she’s—’
‘She’s—?’ Dr Kent prompted.
I realised she’d drawn me into talking to her and how much I needed to talk to someone. Did it matter if I talked to her?
‘She knows he’d never leave her now they have a son.’
‘Would he have before?’
‘I…don’t know.’
‘Would you want him to?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘If he were to, it wouldn’t work, you know.’
‘No, probably not,’ I agreed.
She considered me a moment. ‘How did you meet him?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not really.’
‘You didn’t like him, did you, Dr Kent?’
‘Not very much, no.’
I swallowed. ‘He probably saved my life.’
‘I wondered if it was something like that,’ she said softly.
‘It’s not hero worship or anything like that,’ I said quickly.
‘I didn’t think it was,’ she said equably. She would have made a good counsellor because I found myself telling her about the serial killer in Latchvale hospital and how Tom had become involved, while the other part of me wondered whether she’d slipped some sort of truth drug in with the sedative.
You’re playing her game, this other part of me warned. I couldn’t see how.
‘He seems a rather ruthless young man,’ she said when I’d finished. ‘But I can understand why you found him attractive.’
‘How d’ you mean, ruthless?’
‘He deliberately put you at risk. Used you, in fact.’
‘He had no choice, not if he was to find the killer.’ •
My other self smiled sardonically: That’s not what you said at the time. At the time I’d hated him for it.
‘So the end justified the means?’ Dr Kent said.
‘Ye-es. No, it wasn’t like that.’
She shrugged. ‘Perhaps not.’
‘You don’t like men, do you, Dr Kent?’ I said in an effort to take the initiative from her.
�
�Certainly there are a great many men I don’t like. You do like them, I take it?’
‘Yes, but that wasn’t what I meant. I meant males, maleness, not just numbers of men.’
‘The great majority of men use women,’ she said, ‘and that’s why I don’t like the great majority of them.’
‘It works both ways, surely?’
‘We’re all equal now, you mean?’ She leant forward. ‘Because we’re in what some men are pleased to call the post-feminist era. That, my dear, is a confidence trick. Men still rule the roost.’
‘But we’ve had a woman prime minister for God’s sake!’
‘Yes. But the few women who do make it to the top do so by being like those men, aping them, dancing to their tune.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She swallowed and took a breath. ‘Our political system, our industrial system, our very family life has been evolved by the male, for the male. So those women who do succeed have to pretend to be men. Women won’t, cannot be fulfilled until they have altered these basic systems to reflect female interests.’
‘I simply don’t understand what you mean, Dr Kent.’
‘No, perhaps not,’ she said, sinking back. ‘Try looking at it in another way. Look at the men in your life, look at them and their careers, look hard and honestly and then tell me that they didn’t use you. Do it now if you like.’
‘I can’t, not on the spur of the moment.’
‘I expect you are already.’
She was right, I was…Alan, whom I’d thought I’d marry one day. We’d been together nearly two years. Oh, he’d cried when he ended it, I could see his eyes glistening now, but he’d still left me for another woman—a doctor, like him. Whom he’d married.
And then there was Stephen…
‘It works both ways,’ I said firmly.
‘Your expression belies your words,’ she said. ‘And yet you’d still get married, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes, to the right man.’ As soon as the words came out. I could have bitten my tongue.
She smiled. ‘Mr Right, in fact?’
‘Have you ever been married, Dr Kent?’ I demanded harshly. ‘Have you ever had a sexual relationship with a man?’
Her face froze. ‘Yes.’
Her eyes slewed away from me as the most terrifying bleakness flooded her face. I was too shocked to say anything more and after a moment, her face composed once more, she got up from the chair.
‘I’ll bring you your lunch,’ she said, and quickly left the room.
23
What on earth could have made her react like that? Failed marriage? No. Failed relationship? Was she, in Tom’s delicate phraseology, nothing hut a suppressed dyke? No, I somehow didn’t think so.
Might that not be wishful thinking? my other self observed wryly. At times like this, my other self seemed to take on a personality of its own, like an evil little sprite or homunculus inside me.
No, my impression of her being sexless, like the Walking Madonna, was probably nearer the truth.
Rape, then? Much more likely—women who have been raped never feel quite the same about men again.
At this moment, she came back in, holding a tray.
‘Your lunch.’
‘Thank you.’
I studied her covertly as she put the tray on the table. Her face was devoid of any expression, although her eyes had briefly met mine when she spoke. Her body seemed relaxed—it was as though our conversation hadn’t taken place. It was iron self-control. She left the room silently.
Curiously, our talk had left me feeling better and I ate most of my lunch (pizza and salad) thinking as I did about the things she’d said.
Were women used by men generally? Most top jobs were held by men (although not in nursing!), but was this due to women being used? Perhaps, in that woman often subsumed their ambition in motherhood, but to an extent, that was a matter of choice. Was this what she was getting at—better facilities for mothers in top jobs? An image flickered of a lady MP getting to her feet to speak in the House of Commons with a baby clamped to her breast. No, she had meant more than that. There was a division between the sexes in certain jobs: nursing, for instance, mostly female; the army, mostly male; politics, ditto. Was this what she’d been getting at?
As though on cue, she came in to collect the tray.
‘Ah, your appetite’s returned.’ She studied me briefly as though wanting to know why. ‘I’m glad about that.’
After she’d gone, I found myself thinking about the men in my life again, there had been others besides Alan and Stephen.
Had they used me?
No: at least not sexually, that would have been mutual. Wouldn’t it?
Looking back, it did seem to me that they’d all, at least sub-consciously, assumed that their careers were more important than mine, even when the relationship hadn’t been that serious. Or was I imagining it? Was Dr Kent getting to me?
I gave it up and went over to the exercise bike. This time, I took it slowly, emptying my mind of everything except the stretching of the muscles in my legs and feet, and when at last I’d had enough, I lay on my back on the bed, feeling my whole body relax. The blackbird outside was singing again.
Later, I watched Educating Rita and after she’d cleared away dinner (turkey escalopes), Dr Kent surprised me by suggesting a game of chess. She’d noticed Tom and me playing, she said. I thought it best to agree.
I’ve heard it said that men play chess deliberately, whereas women play by intuition. I wouldn’t know about that, but every move she made was with the utmost deliberation and I soon realised that I had absolutely no chance of beating her. After two games, I told her there wasn’t much point in continuing.
She said, ‘Well, it wouldn’t have done for me to have patronised you by allowing you to win, would it?’
‘Of course not,’ I said awkwardly, wondering at the clumsy way she expressed herself sometimes. I added, ‘It would have been interesting to see you and Tom play.’
‘Is he good?’
‘He always beats me. Well, usually.’
‘A lot of it is psychology, you know.’ She leant back, looking at me steadily. ‘Which of us d’you think would win?’
‘Oh, you would.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re…you’re more patient, more self-contained.’
Her eyes were still, grey pools. She said. ‘You must have wondered why I reacted the way I did earlier.’
‘It’s not really any of my—’
‘I’m going to tell you.’
You’re not going like it, my sprite, my homunculus warned.
‘When I was a child, Catcott Manor was my home, I grew up there in the forties and fifties. I see from your expression that you were already aware of that.’
I cleared my throat. ‘Yes. Tom and his boss—er—looked into your background.’
‘Did they?’ Her voice didn’t express much interest. ‘There were complications at my birth and I was an only child. Nevertheless, I had a happy enough childhood until I was ten, when my mother died.’ She drew in a breath then released it. ‘Daddy was very kind and said that we were all we had left now, and that we had to look after each other. Comfort each other. He took me to his bed with him. At first, I thought it was a new kind of game and by the time I realised what he was doing to me, it was too late. Too late.’
I suppose I’d been expecting something of the kind, but I still felt sick. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Dr Kent. But—’
‘All I could do was to endure and work hard at school so that I could become qualified and escape.’
‘But couldn’t you have reported him?’
‘This was the fifties, Miss Farewell, and child abuse hadn’t been invented. Besides, Daddy was the local squire, a pillar of the community.’
‘But couldn’t you have told someone at school, one of your teachers?’
‘I did. They went to my father who told them that I was over-imaginative and neur
otic. He beat me as soon as they’d gone.’
‘Didn’t anyone notice?’
‘He beat me on the body where it didn’t show, and put the fear of Satan into me so that I never said another word to anyone.’
I touched my lips with the tip of my tongue. ‘Weren’t there any relatives you could have spoken to?’
‘There was only his sister, my aunt. She was fond of me, but this would have been outside her imagination. She’d have assumed I was mad, or evil. But my aunt did have her uses.’ The tiniest smile touched her lips. ‘When I was a bit older, I told her I wanted to become a doctor, but that my father was against it. She had no trouble in believing that, and was able to coerce him into letting me try. Daddy tried to sabotage my studies, of course, but with my aunt’s help, I made it.’
‘So you did manage to escape.’ It sounded fatuous as I said it, but it was all I could think of to say.
‘Obviously.’ Her eyes never left my face.
‘I’m appalled by your story, Dr Kent. But why have you told me?’
‘Because I wanted you to know. Besides, you must have realised something of the kind after this afternoon.’
‘I…realised there had to be a reason for your hatred of men.’
‘It’s not that I hate men, Miss Farewell, I merely understand them. My experiences have made me aware of how all of them have this same congenital flaw, this absolute need to dominate women.’
‘You really think all men are like that?’
Her eyes gleamed. ‘I know all men are like that.’
‘But what about the women who abuse boys?’
‘You will find, invariably, that such women have themselves been abused by a man, usually their father. So it is merely another form of male abuse.’
She was mad, although I could understand why. I said carefully, ‘I don’t think my own father was like that.’
‘Were your parents happily married?’
‘Yes, they were.’
‘And your father died first?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded. ‘Marriage is the device whereby the worst of male impulses are kept in check. It has evolved over the centuries for that purpose. But as soon as the marriage breaks down, or the influence of the mother is removed in some other way, then the male will revert.’
Deliver Them From Evil Page 17
