Becoming Tess

by H K Thompson

  “OK, well let’s call it a day. Thanks for sitting in, Mark.”

  Inspector McKenzie stood in invitation for Tess to leave the room. Mark accompanied her as she made her exit. He grimaced as a sign of his own helplessness, smiled and shrugged as they reached the common room and left her alone to consider her future. Tomorrow she had her third session with Evelyn Doyle and her real work could continue, she hoped, uninterrupted.

  *

  Ann McKenzie felt a twinge of frustration and weariness that once again Tess had refused to give an account of herself. Her refusal at this point was perhaps more serious. This was the second time that Tess had been implicated in a suspicious death. Peter Archer was right in that respect. This latest turn of events supported Archer’s view that Tess was capable of the most serious of crimes, that it was more than a coincidence that Rachel had died whilst in her care and her brother had died possibly at the time that Tess had been at his cottage with him. But she had always liked Tess Dawson and felt her to be the victim of events rather than a perpetrator.

  It was a great shame that she could not talk to Evelyn about her. An exchange of notes would be invaluable at this juncture, but she knew that she was on her own with this. Now she had to report back to Director Archer, an experience that she felt deeply disinclined to have. After that she would have to contact Alun Davies and give him an account of the interview and write a report for Dyfed-Powys. She found it very hard to get across to other police officers what it was like to be confronted with someone who simply would not talk. Thankfully her responsibility ended with her report. Alun Davies and his Superintendent would have to decide what action they were going to take now. It could well be that they would insist on another interview undertaken by one of their officers. If she were in their position she would.

  Ann McKenzie picked up the small, black digital recorder and admired its compactness and the pleasing feel of it in her hand. She thought about the much larger and clumsy portable tape recorders she had had to use over the years in a situation like this, requiring either some hidden power point located behind large pieces of furniture, or batteries that were always running out. This small and compact machine was discrete, it did not intimidate with a background whirr or sharp, loud and unexpected click. It was sophisticated, light and unobtrusive, and it made her job easier. Some parts of modern technology she could appreciate. It made her think too that, despite all the technology available to the police, the news of Tess Dawson’s brother had taken too many months to filter through. She shrugged at the absurdity of this fact and left the room for her appointment with Peter Archer.

  *

  Peter Archer had made himself available for the duration of the afternoon. He had informed her that he would be spending the time in his office catching up on paperwork and her arrival at any point would be welcome. He looked forward to an update. Approaching his door after a reluctant stroll through the building, Ann McKenzie recalled other reluctant arrivals at doors she didn’t wish to go through. She was remembering that she’d had something of a turbulent time during her second and third years at secondary school and had on several occasions been sent to the headmistress’s office for a reprimand. Nothing she had done had been particularly serious but it had been persistent during this two-year period when she had been dealing with the tumult of adolescence. There had been no guidance at home.

  She knew that she had that spark which meant that she understood early on that she had to escape the mediocre life that could have beckoned and aim for a career, an entry into the professional mainstream. And here she was, standing at the door of Director Archer. She felt herself to be a protective barrier between the vulnerability of those who have not made it and the ruthlessness and self-regard of those who have. She had always had a particular empathy with the underdog. Her spontaneous reflection on her troubled school days was no coincidence as she knocked on Peter Archer’s door.

  “Enter,” he said.

  With a sinking feeling Ann McKenzie opened the door and walked in. Peter Archer was seated behind his desk attending to his backlog of paperwork.

  “Thank you for looking in,” he said. “There is always so much paperwork these days. Our lives are blighted by it, don’t you find? You must have so much of it to do yourself.”

  “May I sit down?” she asked. His lapse in manners brought him abruptly to attention. He felt remiss, caught out.

  “I do beg your pardon.”

  He stood and walked out from behind his desk, proffering a seat on one of the sofas and moving deftly to find his own place opposite her. Ann McKenzie sat and crossed her legs, leaning lightly against the arm.

  “How did your interview with our Tess Dawson go? May I get you a drink? Tea or coffee?”

  Ann McKenzie was longing for a drink but decided to refuse his offer. She needed to regard him as being as tricky as any of her offenders, more tricky than most. She curbed her longing and her thirst and said:

  “No thank you. I have a report to write and time is pressing. But I wanted to let you know the outcome of the interview.”

  He looked expectant, adopting an encouraging expression, and nodded.

  “I’m afraid it was rather as I thought it would be. Tess wouldn’t speak to me. I tried several questions but they came to nothing. I will make my report to Dyfed-Powys Police and I expect that they may want to send one of their own officers to question her. I don’t think they’ll leave it at that. I’m going to strongly recommend, however, that they don’t pursue that course of action at this juncture but wait until Tess has had time to develop her relationship with Evelyn Doyle. You see, I have no doubt that Tess will eventually open up and whatever we want to know about both deaths might then come out. I don’t see any point in keeping on at her. I think that’ll make matters worse. She’s clearly made her mind up. She’s not going to talk to anyone except Mrs Doyle.”

  “Tess Dawson is a most difficult problem,” he interjected with intensity. “This will have to go to the Board. It may mean that she will have to be reassessed. She may no longer be able to stay here. She is testing our tolerance and our guidelines. She is not cooperating.”

  He was flustered and edgy; his face was becoming paler with tension and his right foot twitching as he crossed his right leg over his left in a gesture of unconscious tightening and closing. He could scarcely contain himself but it was not for her to be threatened by Tess’s possible fate at Wellbridge House.

  She replied: “Of course. That’s for the Board to decide. That’s quite separate from what the police have to do. You and the Board will, of course, have to make the appropriate decision in due course. I hope that Tess’s therapy can be allowed to continue. I’ll do my best and recommend what I’ve just indicated to you. That’s my role in this. And now I should go and complete my report. I’ll continue to act, of course, as liaison between Dyfed-Powys and Wellbridge House. Thank you for your time.”

  She stood and held out her hand to shake his. He responded to her unexpected gesture, stretching out his hand awkwardly over the coffee table that sat between them. As they shook hands she looked at him squarely in the face and smiled. He nodded in a sudden jerk of his head and looked away as he turned to move to the door. She walked to the open door and went through it, hearing it close quietly behind her. Her next port of call was her office. After that she would meet with Evelyn Doyle, as they had arranged, at the tea room in Fensham for a late tea and to tell her about her two meetings.

  *

  Evelyn had arrived at the tea room before Ann McKenzie and was immersed in her diary as Ann walked into the cosy room and sat down at her table. When she had arrived ten minutes before, Evelyn had looked around the premises with appreciation. The Fensham Tea Room was a minor institution in the locality. It was always full or nearly full of customers, no matter what the time of day. It had been established for many years but had recently been taken over and refurbished by a very keen and very professional incomer from London who clearly had money to spend
and who had lovingly redecorated and refurnished the timbered interior. There was a new carpet and new floral curtains, new chairs and tables, some of which looked like antiques and added an extra dimension of sophistication to the room.

  What had become a rather tired shadow of its heyday self had been reinvented and rejuvenated by someone with energy and flair. The result was a delight, welcoming and warm. The innovation of a real log fire completed the mellow ambience and assured the feeling of security and comfort of a past era. Evelyn imagined that the atmosphere and style of the room might have existed in the thirties, forties and fifties in the homes of the moneyed middle and upper classes, and it was that incomparable feeling of ease and belonging, of self-assured aplomb, that so many craved in the interminable change and discomfort of today.

  Evelyn looked up with surprise at the appearance of Ann. She had been submerged for a good ten minutes in the names and times and places of her appointments for the following week, mentally preparing which files she would have to look out for each meeting and what route she might take for the ones that were away from her room at the unit. She had been counting the number of actual therapy sessions she had, who they were with, and realising with dismay that meetings far outnumbered the sessions and that the balance between the two was way out of kilter. She had thought for a minute or two about how she could remedy the serious imbalance that had once again crept into her workload and realised that, at the moment, there was nothing she could do about it. There were no meetings that could be cut, no commitments that could be relinquished and certainly no patients that she could let down. It grieved her that she had precious little time for her garden or for her husband and that when she was at home she knew that she was tired and wanted only to sit reading or doze in the conservatory. Any kind of systematic housework had gone by the board weeks ago and the house, she knew, was beginning to look grubby and dog-eared.

  She looked at Ann with a smile and said:

  “Nice to see you. How’s everything going? How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” came the reply. “I’m very glad to be here and having a sit down. I feel tired and it’s only Wednesday. Have you ordered?”

  “No. I’ve been examining my diary. I don’t know how I’m going to fit it all in.”

  “I know the feeling,” Ann said sympathetically.

  Each scrutinised the menu, waved to the waitress as she appeared with her pad and pen and ordered.

  “How did it go with the interview?” Evelyn asked. The question came out in a cautious tone, as she tipped her head slightly to one side and raised an eyebrow in guarded expectation. She was fairly sure what the answer would be.

  “Well, it came to nothing really. I asked my questions and Tess gave no replies. I had no real expectations of it being any different. I’d hoped but I knew that went against everything we know about her. Evelyn, is she talking to you at all?” Ann asked with a small note of desperation and concern in her voice.

  “Off the record, yes she is. A little. It’s a start and I think it will develop as time goes on. I guess that your superiors are going to want to push this further. Can you persuade them to hold off, just for a few weeks? Could you persuade them to follow another line of enquiry rather than Tess? It’s been going on for so long anyway. What do you think?”

  “I’ll do all I can to give you some time but you’ll need to give Peter Archer and the Board something to go on,” Ann replied. “He was impatient and rather angry, I thought. And he was rather inappropriately threatening. He used the Board as a bit of a weapon.”

  “Not nice for you to have to deal with. I thought he’d be like that. As for the Board, they know that Wellbridge is a therapy-based institution. They’re usually very supportive of that, as they should be, and they’re usually on the side of the patients. We should be OK.”

  “Then I think we can buy some time. I think we really do want to get to the bottom of it all. I know I do.”

  “I have to be so careful not to let my curiosity get the better of me. But I know what you mean. We’ll see one way or another. Now where’s the tea and our cakes?”

  They turned their attention to what each of them had been looking forward to all afternoon. Afternoon tea at The Fensham Tea Room went some way to compensating for the stresses and strains of the day.

  Chapter 9

  At 10.50am on Thursday morning Evelyn was seated in the therapy room on the first floor of Wellbridge House awaiting the arrival of Tess Dawson. It was only her fourth session but already, Evelyn thought, so much had happened. She was beginning to think that Tess’s reluctance or difficulty in speaking had originally been the result of trauma.

  Evelyn had also recently considered the possibility that Tess’s silence was now in her own interest, that it may even have become a deliberate strategy. Her preferred theory was that Tess was breaking her silence because she had found a place safe enough to do exactly that. Perhaps of more importance, she had found someone with whom she could talk who would listen and once she had begun her work with Evelyn, she had realised very quickly that therapy offered her an opportunity to begin to remedy what had gone badly wrong in her life. She had begun to see their work together as a way of moving on, even offering the possibility of a future that was radically different from the past. Tess could pursue her therapy as a way of achieving what she needed.

  There was a knock at the door. Evelyn stood and turned in the small room and opened the door to Tess. She looked tired this morning, standing in the doorway, as if she had not slept properly.

  “Come in,” said Evelyn. “Please come straight in in future. No need to knock or wait. I’ll be here.”

  Tess stepped inside the room and took her seat opposite Evelyn’s. Between them was four feet of floor, which was made from old dark brown wooden boards covered in the centre of the room where they sat by a grey and blue well-made, patterned rug. It looked new, as some of the furnishings at Wellbridge House were, unlike the chairs they sat in which were worn at the arms and sagged at the seat. They were comfortable enough, with their high backs, for the fifty minutes they were sat in, but after a day of sessions, which could be as many as six, Evelyn often felt pulled out of shape, as if her back were wrongly located on her hips. She made a mental note to persuade Peter Archer to provide some new, body-friendly therapy chairs.

  Tess sat without moving, looking down at the carpet in her now habitual starting position, as if she found eye contact too intimate. She needed a helping hand to begin, Evelyn thought.

  “This is your space, Tess, to use as you want.” She paused. “You look a little tired this morning,” she said kindly.

  Tess sat impassively. She raised her eyes slowly, taking in a bookcase that stood on the floor, half-hidden behind Evelyn Doyle’s chair. She could see the spines of old paperbacks with their titles cracked and obscured by the bent-back spines handled by careless readers. She would grow familiar with this room. It was painted cream, not the neutral grey of other rooms here, she thought, and the window had cheerful yellow curtains with a muted pattern that she couldn’t make out. By each chair there was a small table, each with a lamp on it. The lamps were switched on because the day was dull and grey and these lights cast a pleasant muffled glow on the room and its occupants.

  At last she looked at Evelyn. “I do feel tired today. I didn’t sleep well again. I think it was after the meeting with the police.” She paused and rubbed her frowning forehead with her left hand. “I want to talk about the meeting.”

  Evelyn Doyle shifted in her chair and rested her left elbow on the arm. She rested her chin on the knuckles of her hand.

  “It was so difficult. I wanted to talk but I knew it would just be about Stephen and how he died and what was I doing there. Was I close to him and how often did I see him? But there’s no point in talking about that. Not for me.”

  “I can tell that you feel strongly about the experience you had with Inspector McKenzie,” Evelyn said.

  “Yes. I do. You see…I
hadn’t seen Stephen for so many years, since I’d lived at home with him and my mother. In those years so much happened. I have to go through the whole story in my head to try and get things straight. I need to get them out of my system.” She paused. “Being sent here means that you’re here to listen and I can do that. That’s true isn’t it?”

  She looked directly at Evelyn, as if for confirmation that what she had pinned her hopes on was in fact real.

  “Yes, that’s why I’m here. Tell me the whole story and then we can try and make sense of things.”

  “I hoped you’d understand. I thought you would.” She paused for several minutes. Then: “I don’t know where to begin.”

  Tess paused again. Evelyn felt that she was half-waiting for a question or a comment, some cue from her that would give Tess a clue about how to find her next step. Evelyn said nothing and waited. Minutes passed.

  “I think I should begin at the beginning. Since I’ve been at the unit, I’ve thought such a lot about the past.” She paused, deep in thought. “I haven’t done that deliberately. Things have just come into my head as if I’ve turned a TV on and I’m watching a programme about me. I should begin in the past, as far back as I can go. I think that’ll help.” She paused again and continued:

  “I was just thinking about what they used to do to me and how that made me who I was. I always felt like a victim to them, like they could do whatever they wanted to me and there was nothing I could do.”

  As she spoke tears welled up in her eyes. After a moment’s hesitation they slid down her face and turned to moist patches on either side of her chin. She raised her hand and with the back of it wiped the moisture from her skin, still looking down to the floor and the patterned rug under her now sightless gaze.

  “You’re remembering something painful,” Evelyn encouraged, risking the possibility that she had got the tears wrong.

  “Yes,” came Tess’s reply. “I am. They tormented me, you know. They made me suffer. I know I didn’t deserve it, but they did it. Over and over again, every day of my life.”