by H K Thompson
His voice got higher and higher as he descended into the world of a child, hurt, indignant, furious at the injustice of it all.
“I’ll live my life as I want to live it and you and she can mind your own fucking business. Clear off! I can see you judging me. Go on, clear off!”
Within a few brief moments he had reached the end of his tether. It had taken one look on Tess’s face to send him into a hostile and desperate tirade. Tess could only stand and look at him, anxious by this time that he might lash out at her. She was thrown into her own fantasy world of violence done to her, of being exposed and defenceless in the face of her brother’s disturbed mind and the aggression that invariably came with it. She felt something in Stephen that she had felt in herself, many times. It was the inconsolability of a wronged child who was unable to make sense of a senseless world. She knew that any attempt she might make to offer comfort or reassurance would be rebuffed. She was already at the mercy of Stephen’s scarcely controlled fury and fragmentation.
She realised that it was worse than she’d thought. Her anxiety about coming here had been vindicated. She found herself thinking about how she was going to get out. Even in his reduced state she thought that he was strong enough, even physically stronger than her. To find herself thinking such a thing, considering the situation on such a physical level, made her realise just how afraid she was. She had to find ways to appease him, to calm him down and then make her retreat. She heard him telling her to clear off but he stood squarely in the doorway, and his body was telling her that he would not let her leave, not before he had harmed her.
“How can I go when you’re standing in the doorway?” she said.
She had found her voice at the bottom of a deep hole that was opening up inside her. She had come back at him, had not been paralysed by his threatening demeanour. That fact surprised her and she felt herself stand taller and look him in the eye.
“Stephen, if you’re thinking of harming me then please don’t. I haven’t come here to judge you, I’ve come here to find out how you are. And yes, I am shocked at the state of you and your home. I hadn’t expected that.” Then she took a risk and said: “How did you come to be this way? What’s happened to you?”
She looked him in the eyes as she spoke, not flinching or averting her gaze from his bloodshot eyes, or his sneer, or his frown, or from the tension he held in his body as he lent forward as if ready to attack. She was emboldened by her own sudden fearlessness, the clarity of her mind as she spoke. She felt unexpectedly elated at her triumph, at her ability to stand her ground in the confrontation that Stephen had created in his attempt to bully her and fill her with terror, his old trick. She experienced a growing belief in herself and her ability to stand up to her would-be tormentor. She stood her ground.
She was aware that she was in the presence of someone volatile and unpredictable, that she must not let her guard down. Her brother still stood in the doorway that offered her an exit. She felt afraid and she was beginning to grow anxious as the minutes went by and Stephen’s face registered a series of ticks and grimaces over which he appeared to have no control. The sight began to disturb Tess and she felt a defensive tension overtake her body. Her instincts were taking control. In a flash Stephen had her by the neck. She’d not expected his lunge and her only defence was the preparatory tension that caused her to raise her arms to parry his attempted grasp. He had one hand round her neck but he was wrong-footed, he had not expected her counter-attack. She pushed him over onto the floor. He was weaker than she had expected and she had been too quick. He rolled on the floor and hit his head on the corner of the old beige Esse, not hard, but it surprised him and he was stunned for a moment.
It took Tess only that one moment to find the door and launch herself through it, down the dark hallway, to the front door. There she grabbed the handle and wrenched it open with all her strength. It scraped violently on the rough flagstone floor and she was out through the gap in a second, turning left up the track, not looking back, just running with all the speed she could muster. She could hear nothing behind her, no following footfalls, just her own breath and the sound of her own feet on the potholed, rough surface, making for the road and her way back to safety. As she reached the road she began to take stock of herself. Her neck felt hot where he had grabbed it, the skin sore, and she became aware of a pain on her left cheekbone. She had not registered a blow but her face hurt now and she was beginning to shake in the aftermath.
She stopped when she reached the road and breathed deeply. She breathed slowly to calm herself down, looking back down the drive in case Stephen was in pursuit, but there was no sign of him. There was no sign of life. She turned right down the Glasnant Road, still shaking, gently rubbing her face and feeling the hot place on her neck. There was only the sound of her own heart racing and her own lungs gasping and a ringing in her ears. As she walked down the road she began to hear the sounds around her, the baa-ing of sheep, a bird, perhaps, rustling in the hedge, the breeze in the trees that she felt cool on her face. Her whole body began to slow and she registered a curious burning sensation and smell in her nose.
By the time she reached the outskirts of the town her body was feeling calmer but her mind was a whirl of half-formed thoughts, her emotions in turmoil. The sudden and intense violence of her brother had left its mark. She knew it would take days, perhaps longer, to get over his attack. She felt tears well in her eyes and stream down her face. They were sudden but welcome, as she began to release the trauma of her brother’s violence.
*
“Violence is a terribly shocking thing, Evelyn. You can’t really understand what it’s like until you’ve experienced it. When Stephen went for me it came so suddenly I hardly had time to register what was happening. It was so intense, the momentum was unimaginable. It felt as if he would kill me and if I hadn’t managed to unbalance him he would have. I’m sure of that now. I was at the time and it made me giddy with fear. If I’d frozen with that fear instead of fighting back, I wouldn’t have stood a chance. He would have beaten me to a pulp with all that tension inside him. I had no doubt about that. I don’t know how I found it in myself to fight. That was a surprise. I hadn’t expected to be able to do that.
But I was aware before it happened, the second before the attack, that I wasn’t afraid of him. I was afraid of what he might do but not of him. I knew, don’t ask me how, that he couldn’t reach me anymore, not reach me where it mattered. I don’t know how I knew that, I just did. The shock afterwards was adrenaline, not that I had been hurt by him, although I was physically. But I wasn’t hurt emotionally. I was untouched, just my body going through the process of winding down after the emergency. When I cried coming down the hill it wasn’t because I was upset by him, just that my body was releasing shock from the actual moment of the violence.
I realised that he hadn’t touched me where it mattered. And I felt triumphant, I felt as if I’d overcome something in me that had always made me vulnerable to him and to my mother. They had always been able to hurt me. When I realised that I wasn’t touched, I felt elated and proud of myself. I felt invulnerable to them. I had an intense sensation of being in charge, of myself, of my life, of everything that would happen in the future. Up until that moment things had happened to me and I had always been reacting to those things as if I believed I wasn’t able to cope with them or deal with them. I’d believed that everyone had power over me and I’d lived my life from that awful, helpless place. When I threw my brother onto the floor, when I got the better of him something changed in me. I proved something to myself, that I had some power.”
Tess looked intently at Evelyn, sitting facing her in the consulting room. There was winter gloom outside the window, rain tapping against the panes. Christmas was only a week away and this was the last session they would have before the break. Evelyn thought briefly that she was looking forward to two full weeks off over Christmas and New Year and, given what Tess was saying, this could be a natural break in
the therapy. Tess had come to a point where her world had shifted on its axis. The encounter with Stephen Dawson sounded shocking and frightening but as she told the story Evelyn was pleased, pleased about Tess’s new-found confidence and about how she was able to understand the importance of what had happened in the cottage amongst the detritus of Stephen Dawson’s life.
Whatever the meeting between Tess and Stephen in West Wales had meant to Tess, one thing was for sure: her appearance at the police station with Rachel’s body had come directly out of what had happened in her violent encounter with her brother.
Evelyn formulated an intervention. She wanted to demonstrate to Tess that she understood the depth of what she was talking about. She said:
“What you found in this frightening experience with your brother was not what you expected. You surprised yourself because you were able to transcend the fearful person you had always been up until that moment. That gave you confidence. It was a personal triumph that you are right to be proud of.”
Tess looked at Evelyn for several minutes and then said:
“Thank you. I did feel like a different person because of it.”
“We must stop now. As I’ve said, we won’t meet again until 4th January. Same time, same place. Have a really peaceful Christmas. You’ve done well.”
Chapter 14
Christmas turned out to be a quiet affair at Wellbridge House. The residents cooked the Christmas lunch and cleared up, exchanging conversation, giggling at times but, underneath it all, looking forward to life returning to normal. Even television was not as diverting as it usually was. For Tess, there was not much to watch except loud and gaudy shows, and mediocre Christmas specials. Some of the residents watched the repeats stations whenever they could corner the set, and became occupied in endless episodes of their favourite detective programmes, which they had seen before. It was better than nothing and, interspersed with walks in the freezing weather, time passed quickly and pleasantly enough. What Tess had enjoyed most was walking outside in some of the coldest weather she had ever experienced. On Boxing Day she walked in four inches of snow that had fallen on Christmas Day evening. Few would brave the temperature and the freezing northeast wind that swept in across the fields.
The gardens were extensive. They’d remained intact when the building had been bought and given over to the unit, except for some grazing pasture beyond the ha-ha at the front of the house. The main gardens extended to the edge of the lawn and there were well-tended herbaceous borders, some established specimen trees, and a beautiful Cedar of Lebanon that extended its long sweeping branches towards the north walls of the house.
Beyond the lawn, which was timber fenced, lay an orchard with well-kept fruit trees. It was here that green woodpeckers could be spotted and heard throughout the year, their distinctive waffling call sounding through the garden. Beyond the orchard was a pond. At some time astilbes had been planted around the perimeter and in the summer their pink, red and white fronds stood out along the water’s edge. There were rushes and water lilies. It was a pretty sight for Tess and her fondness for the garden was rapidly developing her interest in gardening. She found sitting by the pond in the good weather satisfying and calming and when it rained she spent time watching the drops leave their circles on the surface of the water. Their slow expansion and final disappearance held her attention and emptied her mind of all other preoccupations. This was one of her favourite meditations.
Beyond the main garden, orchard and pond, woodland extended to the perimeter walls of the grounds. Every so often an outside firm came in to clear fallen timber and coppice the trees. Apparently, that happened every three or four years and the time was coming round again for the work to be carried out. The woodland was looking overgrown and was out of bounds to the residents. It provided too much cover for anyone intent on leaving, climbing the brick wall and disappearing into the lanes and, eventually, the small towns, villages and farms that might give them a hiding place and transport links. Interestingly enough, that had never happened. No one in the history of the unit had ever attempted escape. Tess had only ever been to the wood with Mark and Judith, once, on a walk when he had shown them the extent of the Wellbridge House estate because he knew they were interested.
To the south side of the house lay the vegetable garden that provided a large part of the kitchen’s supply of fruit and vegetables. The soft fruit grew in old but well-maintained fruit cages to keep off the many pigeons, blackbirds and magpies that lived in the woods and fields surrounding the property. There was a substantial greenhouse, painted white, and the extensive potting shed and sunroom with its sloping glass reaching down to the red brick base. It was here that Tess had spent many hours potting, thinking and healing, sitting in the warmth of the sun between working in the raised beds, planting, tending, harvesting throughout the part-season she had been there. Although she had never been a serious gardener before, the work had come naturally to her and, as her confidence and knowledge grew, she had taken on an increasing role in the cultivation of Wellbridge’s food. In a short time the gardener, Ted, had handed over particular tasks to her, knowing that she would do them and not need constant supervision.
During the two-week break that meant the suspension of her sessions with Evelyn, Tess spent time out in the garden, wishing that the gap was shorter and that she could resume her story. At the back of her mind she knew that the Board would be meeting to discuss her case and her continued tenure at the unit. If there was one thing that gave her anxiety it was the thought that her residence would be curtailed and that she would have her sessions forcibly and prematurely ended. She was approaching the point in her work with Evelyn when her story about Stephen and her visit to West Wales would begin to reach its conclusion. The problem was the Director. She felt his hostility and disapproval every time she passed him in a corridor or encountered him (rarely) on the staircase. There was nothing she could do but hope that she reached the denouement of her narrative before the Board met and the Director persuaded them that she must leave and be sent to a different establishment, one that didn’t indulge what he believed was her attention-seeking. She knew he was wrong about that.
*
Evelyn Doyle’s Christmas and New Year provided her with much-needed respite from her increasingly intense life, and quality time with Paul and friends. In the last few years the demands of institutional work had meant that the amount of paperwork and administration – records, reports, letters, emails, phone calls, meetings – had left her feeling as though she were fitting in the point of her work, her actual face-to-face sessions with her patients. She knew that this was a bad state of affairs, that her work with her patients was beginning to suffer and that she was also beginning to suffer. She felt as if she were spending her days running, from one location to the next, from one session to the next, from one meeting to the next. Her feet seemed to touch the ground less and less and she was bringing work home with her, something that she had always said she wouldn’t do.
She wasn’t yet at the point of rethinking her life or making decisions about changing what she did, although she had been close to it lately. She had taken two weeks off so that she could find enough space inside herself to have time to think it all through, without the pressures of the working week filling in all the spaces. She had spent the first two days at home, scarcely stirring from the sofa around which she had set up her console of amenities and distractions on the large coffee table: magazines, the novel she had been reading for the past three months, her cup of tea or coffee, the remote controls for the television, her radio and TV magazine, her digital radio, the phone to call her friends and family, a bar of dark chilli chocolate, a tin of biscuits. She amused herself with the thought of how organised she had been in gathering all her pleasures and comforts around her, within her reach.
She sat with her feet up and luxuriated in having nothing that she was compelling herself to do, emptying her mind of the million and one self-imposed orders that drove her d
ays at work and at home, where there were always things to be done. After she had read the paper, something she never had time to do on a weekday, she felt sleepy by lunchtime. For the last two days she had inhibited the voice in her that said she should make some soup for lunch, which meant going out to shop for vegetables. Instead she had opened a tin of tomato soup on both days, something she found herself disapproving of, and made do with what was in the house: some bread which was dry but toasted well, and some cheese in the fridge which she put on the toast and placed under the grill. She ate the soup and cheese on toast at her console, dropping crumbs on the floor and promising to vacuum them up later. Housework was, in truth, a long way from her mind.
She had sat on the sofa on the second day of her holiday and thought long and hard about her life. She was on her own until Christmas Eve. She had thought her usual thoughts about the pressures of work and reflected on how work had changed for the worst in the time she had been doing it. She counted up the years to twenty-five then twenty-six and realised how time was flying and how she enjoyed the work less than she had.
As she finished her tomato soup and cheese on toast for the second time in two days she sat back on the sofa and pressed the recliner button. She let her mind wander around the edges of her life. She found herself recalling images of the sculpture studio that she used to go to at the local further education college and reflected with dismay that her attendance there had come to an end over three years ago. It had been squeezed out by lack of time and lack of energy. She had found the brain-hand relationship a welcome change from the intellectual and emotional world that she lived in for most of the time. Following a line or curved plane, bringing the subject matter into relationship with clay, the earthy stuff with which she moulded and shaped a likeness, was a different reality.
Evelyn knew that there was something that happened to her soul when she took clay in her hands, when she built the armature that would give shape to and support the clay, when she laid the clay in layers until something resembling a head appeared and when she wrestled with the shaping and the capturing, and the moments of triumph and of defeat as the clay cooperated or refused to do what she wanted it to. She had experienced the moment when a likeness emerged, suddenly and almost inexplicably, when the proportions were right, when an angle was right, when the curved plane of part of a face matched in a likeness, however fleeting sometimes, the face she was attempting to capture. There was something incomparable in that moment, something that could not be quantified because the endeavour was about something entirely other. It was the stillest and quietest moment of life, when all that could be done was to smile.
