The White Room

by Martyn Waites

  Jack shook his head. ‘I’m really sorry, Joanne. I honestly can’t say yet. All I can say is it’s something I have to get cleared up. Once that’s done we’ll be fine. You’ll be able to come back in about a week or so.’

  A week?’ Joanne’s anger was building. ‘What the hell is going on, Jack? What have you got into?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. But I have to get this sorted out.’ He felt his head begin to throb. ‘I can’t rest until I do.’

  They looked each other in the eye. Jack felt points of contact dissolving. He didn’t want that to happen.

  ‘Joanne, sit down. Come on, sit next to me.’

  Joanne moved, reluctantly at first, until she was sitting next to him. She kept separate from him, her body still rigid with anger.

  ‘Joanne …’

  ‘We’ve never had secrets from each other, Jack.’

  ‘And we haven’t now …’ His eyes dropped again. ‘It’s just something I have to find out. It might be serious, it might not. But it’s best not to take chances.’

  He stretched out his hand, touched her shoulder.

  ‘Please, Joanne. Please trust me on this. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Please. I’m only asking you to go away because I don’t want you dragged into it. I care about you both.’

  She sighed. The anger began to dissipate from her body.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But when we come back, I want to know everything, right?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Good.’

  They made love that night, tenderly, gently. As if they were both badly bruised and scarred and didn’t want to add to each other’s hurt.

  The library door was unlocked, opened. Jack was the first one in.

  Up to the reference library, looking for the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. 1956.

  It took him about an hour, but he found it. The account of the attack on Kenny and Johnny Bell. The description of Brian Mooney.

  And a photo.

  It was a head-and-shoulder shot. A cut-down mugshot. Features blurred and indistinct, just able to make out the staring eyes, the snarling lip, the attempted Elvis quiff.

  Jack imagined glasses. Longer hair, brushed forward. The anger controlled and directed behind a forced smile.

  It could have been him.

  It could have well been him.

  The house felt strange without them. Like the life itself had been sucked out of it.

  Jack put on the fire, subdued the lights. But it wasn’t the same.

  Joanne had taken the car, driven herself and Isaac to a remote bed and breakfast in the Lake District. Joanne had told Isaac it was a surprise holiday, jollying him along as if it was a big adventure, but her eyes when they met Jack’s told a different story.

  Isaac was sad Jack wasn’t going, but Joanne told him: ‘Daddy’s got a bit of work to do. We’ll see him soon.’

  Then goodbyes.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ said Joanne.

  ‘I love you,’ said Jack. ‘Once this is out of the way, we’ll be happy for the rest of our lives.’

  They drove off.

  Jack stood up. He didn’t want to sit on the sofa without Joanne. He didn’t feel comfortable.

  He walked into the bathroom, thinking about Ben Marshall / Brian Mooney. About identity. About how image changed personality.

  He looked in the mirror, saw a middle-aged man who was lucky enough to look younger. To feel younger. A father. A lover. A good man.

  To do what he was going to do, to be successful, he would have to change.

  He looked at his hair; saw the white poking through beneath the black. He needed his roots done. He looked closer.

  No.

  He found some scissors. And began cutting.

  Half an hour later he was done. Black hair carpeted the bathroom floor like a falling of inverse snow. His head was now covered in short, white stubble. It accentuated his features, made his cheekbones prominent, his eyes sunken and hollow.

  Like the soldier he once was.

  All he needed was the dark clothes.

  He felt his attitude change with the look. His resolve strengthen.

  He thought of the tumour. Fuck remission: it was time to cut the cancer out.

  It was time to pay a visit to Johnny Bell.

  Hate and rage. Rage and hate. Sometimes Mae felt like they were her only true friends.

  They were with her constantly, talking and listening to her. There were others, too, that she didn’t see that often: suspicion, depression, self-pity. And fear. She used to see a lot of fear. They were inseparable at one time. But fear didn’t come round much any more. They had very little time for each other. It was just a phase she was going through. Now hate was all the rage. And vice versa.

  ‘This’ll be your room here,’ her grandmother had said, pointing into a tiny boxroom that hardly had space for a single bed.

  The room smelled strongly of damp and stale air. Like it had been sealed up for years. The bedding looked old, seemed festering with mildew. The wallpaper peeling. Mae’s grandmother looked at the girl. She seemed to be suggesting that the room and Mae were made for each other.

  Mae entered, placed her small bag of meagre possessions on the bed.

  ‘When can I go home?’ she said.

  Her grandmother looked away as she began to reply, as if she had more important things to busy herself with. ‘Don’t know yet. When your mother’s well again.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Oh, God, girl, I don’t know. Stop askin’ questions. This is your room. Just be thankful you’ve got a roof over your head.’

  She turned, went noisily downstairs.

  Mae sat slowly on the bed, felt the cold of the blankets even through her clothes. She stared at the peeling wallpaper, at the old, brown-stained pattern, tried to imagine it ever looking new and bright. Failed. Not in this house. Never in this house.

  She had come in from playing with Eileen one night to find the police in her house. They told Mae there had been an accident and her mother was in hospital. Very seriously injured.

  Mae had looked around, thought of the house without her mother in it and laughed. Long and loud.

  The police had looked at her strangely. The words ‘delayed shock’ had been mentioned, nods given.

  They told her she would have to stay somewhere else. She said Bert’s name. But Bert wouldn’t have her. Didn’t want anything to do with her. So it was the grandparents.

  Her heart was heavy at the thought. Her granddad.

  Rage and hate. And fear made a reappearance.

  And after her grandma had left her sitting on the bed, her granddad came to visit.

  Made sure he locked the door first.

  Mae hardly went to school. She hated the teachers, how small and dumb they made her feel. So she would persuade Eileen to play truant with her. The teachers didn’t complain. Mae felt they were pleased to be rid of her.

  She liked Eileen. Or liked having her around. Because Eileen never complained, always laughed and smiled, always went along with whatever Mae wanted her to do.

  And because of Eileen, Mae felt she could do things she wouldn’t have dared on her own. Mae felt there was nothing she couldn’t do.

  Rage and hate. Hate and rage.

  Eileen gave tacit encouragement. Legitimized Mae’s actions.

  One day, when they should have been at school, they watched three little girls skipping over a rope outside on the street. They were singing a skipping song as they jumped, taking turns to operate the rope and do the skipping. Their mothers had sent them out in clean, pressed frocks. They were laughing, enjoying themselves.

  Mae hated them.

  She felt that hatred rise within her, turn to inarticulate rage.

  ‘Watch this,’ she said to Eileen.

  Mae walked across the street to where the girls were playing, caught the eye of the girl about to jump. She stopped, looked, smiled.


  And Mae was on her.

  Hands about her throat, snarling words through gritted teeth.

  ‘I could kill you, you know. I could kill you …’

  The little girl’s face began to turn blue.

  Mae stopped and stood up, shaking.

  The little girl climbed slowly to her feet and ran home, crying. Mae watched her go, then rejoined Eileen and kept on walking down the street.

  Eileen gave out her usual simple-minded smile.

  But Mae was laughing. Not joyous, humorous laughing: hateful, raging laughing.

  After that, Mae was often to be found hurting and hitting little children. Sometimes she got into trouble with the parents, sometimes not. She didn’t care. Afterwards, she would feel so powerful inside, she felt nothing could touch her.

  But something could.

  Her granddad paid regular visits to her room. Mae was used to that; she could put up with it, send her mind somewhere else. At least it was just him. At least there weren’t other men hurting her in the white room with the crucifixes. That was something.

  But there was still her granddad. And she didn’t want to put up with it any more. She wanted him to stop.

  She found a pair of scissors in a kitchen drawer, secretly pocketed them and waited with them in her hands, on her bed, waited for him to enter the room that night.

  He did. And she attacked, blades pointing in front of her, aiming for his heart, his veins, his eyes, anything. Everything.

  She got in one good blow, felt metal slide beneath skin, before he swatted her back on to the bed, disarmed her and held her there. He was too strong for her. He laughed.

  ‘You want it rough, do you?’ His eyes glittered, lit by cruel, sickly light. ‘Good. I like a bit of rough.’

  And he was rough with her. Very rough.

  Afterwards, Mae sat on the bed, blankets covering her naked body, staring at the door, shivering.

  Rage and hate, her only true friends, coursed through her.

  She refused to allow in suspicion, depression, self-pity or fear.

  She refused to cry. She refused to be weak. She spotted the scissors on the floor, light glinting off the blades.

  She picked them up, caressed them, kissed them. Saw her granddad’s blood on them, held them close.

  Rage and hate. Her only true friends.

  Now she had a third.

  Jack slipped the key into the lock, turned it. The door swung inwardly open.

  Breaking into a seventh-floor flat in the Elms. He knew how to slip in undetected. He knew where to find a duplicate key. He smiled to himself. He should know. He had built the block.

  He paused before entering. Just another Wednesday. May 1967. Spring. A time of renewal. Jack, breathing heavily, keeping his shaking hands under control, hoped it would be a time of renewal for him too. Hoped he could do what he had to do then get on with the rest of his life.

  He had phoned Ben Marshall the previous day, spent a long weekend building himself up to it. Practising what he would say, riffing on every permutation of conversation in his head. He had imagined every possible outcome, too, believing that if he imagined something bad, worked through it in his mind, planned it out, it couldn’t come true.

  Whatever he could imagine wouldn’t happen.

  It became his mantra.

  He had got through to Ben Marshall eventually, endured his false, bonhomie-riddled tones as he told him he wanted to see him. Had some things to discuss.

  Jack made the date and the time. Johnny’s flat. Six p.m. Ben agreed. Jack put the phone down, sweating. He hadn’t expected it to go so smoothly.

  Then he had to prepare. Think himself back into being a soldier again. He worked out. Shocked at how much his muscles had atrophied with disuse. He needed some back-up. Insurance.

  He had an old army acquaintance who ran a gun club in Darras Hall. Jack paid him a visit, enrolled for membership. This acquaintance also bought and sold handguns. Jack knew what he wanted, zeroed in on a Second World War Enfield. Hadn’t seen one since 1945.

  Since Belsen.

  Paperwork and licence were rushed through for old times’ sake. Jack bought rounds, practised on the range. It all came back to him. Like riding a bike.

  Imagined Ben Marshall in his sights. Johnny Bell.

  Felt like a soldier again.

  He slipped the Enfield from the back of the waistband of his black jeans, cocked it, entered the flat feeling a dull throb in his head. He had got there early, knowing Johnny would still be at work. He planned to wait.

  To be ready.

  He closed the door behind him, noting it was reinforced steel. A paranoid’s front door.

  The smell hit him first. Not just stale air and sweat, but also rancid meat. He looked into the kitchen. It was a mess. In among the wilful clutter was a half-carcass of some unidentified animal, being feasted on by flies and maggots.

  Jack almost retched but swallowed it down. He walked into the living room. And stopped dead.

  Joanne had told him Johnny had a Nazi fixation, had decorated his flat with Nazi regalia. But this was like the Fourth Reich.

  The Nazi stuff was there: a huge swastika flag dominated one wall. Before it, a table turned shrine by Nazi objects: a gold swastika lectern, on it a gold-leaf copy of Mein Kampf, beside it a huge photo of Hitler saluting. And other stuff, all marked by eagles and swastikas. On the other walls around the room: photos, magazine clippings, newspaper articles of Nazi-related activities, some yellowing, some more recent. The Searchlight trial. Attacks on Jewish homes and cemeteries. National Front mobilization.

  And, if that wasn’t enough, other images, mostly in black, white and smudgy grey, showed gay S & M porn, men hurting each other, taking sexual pleasure from agony. The pictures became more extreme: dismemberment, disease-ridden bodies, violent death, torture, autopsy.

  The Fourth Reich. Built on sex and death.

  Jack felt physically sick. Almost like he was back in Belsen again.

  This was the past that had to be destroyed. To build the future. This was the past he thought had been destroyed.

  He heard a noise, turned. Saw a blur before him.

  He raised his gun.

  Too late.

  A pain in his head. A firework explosion behind his eyes.

  And then darkness.

  Mae was bored. She was always bored these days. But this was more than boredom. There was something behind it, building, pushing, threatening to break through. She and Eileen were taking another day off school. Watching the little kids play. Mae put her hand in her coat pocket, felt the scissors. Ran her finger carefully along the blade. Drew comfort from it.

  The little kids were running around in the rubble of a half-demolished street. Playing chasy while the workmen destroyed the past, built the future.

  They had called repeatedly for the two girls to come and join them. Eileen had wanted to, but Mae had refused. Eileen had mutely consented to Mae’s wishes.

  The kids called again to the girls.

  Mae was going to say something, shout out what they could do with their play offer, but …

  Something building, pushing, threatening to break through.

  She ran her fingers along the edge of the scissors blade. Drew comfort from it.

  One of the boys called again.

  ‘Howay, youse two. Come an’ play wi’ wuh.’

  Mae stood up. ‘All right, then.’

  She crossed the road, Eileen following excitedly. She stood among the small children in the rubble.

  Mae Blacklock, Queen of the Outcasts.

  ‘What we gonna play?’ the same boy, Trevor, asked.

  He had curly brown hair and a ready smile. He was four at the most, Mae thought, and popular with both children and adults. Sparky personality, infectious good humour. Mae looked at him, felt something curdle in her stomach, felt that pressure again.

  ‘We’ll play …’ said Mae, looking among the kids, ‘hide and seek. We’ll count, you hide.’<
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  The three children immediately ran away. Mae covered her eyes, watched from between her fingers.

  ‘One … two … three … four …’

  The children ran and hid. From behind her fingers, Mae tracked Trevor’s progress. He ran to a half-wrecked house, went inside it.

  ‘… ninety eight … ninety nine … a hundred. Comin’, ready or not!’

  She set off over the rubble, making for the house with Trevor in it.

  Something threatening to break through.

  She entered the house, started to creep around. She heard a movement from upstairs; a creaking floorboard, a little boy’s giggle.

  Felt her two old friends in her heart.

  She made her way slowly up the half-destroyed staircase, tried room after doorless room. She found him. He opened his mouth to speak, but she put her finger to her lips.

  ‘Ssh,’ she said.

  Trevor closed his mouth. Mae continued to walk slowly towards him. He stood still.

  ‘This is still part of the game,’ she said. ‘We’re still playing.’

  He looked at her, frowning in puzzlement.

  ‘Lie down,’ she said, ‘on the floor.’

  His face still showing puzzlement, the little boy did as bid.

  ‘Now,’ said Mae, ‘you have to lie as still as possible, right?’

  The little boy nodded.

  ‘Like you’re a statue. Or you’re dead.’

  Trevor lay still, wanting to please the older girl.

  Mae looked at him, directly into his eyes. Her stomach writhed and coiled like snakes in a snake pit. Little stars appeared before her eyes. She tried to blink them away. She felt light-headed, giddy, shaking with power. She had never felt so strong before. She smiled. She loved it.

  And slid her hands around his throat.

  Trevor looked surprised, put his own hands over Mae’s, made to pull them off.

  ‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘Just lie still. Don’t move. This is a game. This is all a game.’

  Mae kept staring at him, looking deep into his eyes. Trying to see something in them, beyond them.

  ‘You’re scarin’ me, Mae. Stop lookin’ at us like that.’

  Mae smiled at him. Blinked back the stars from her eyes. He slackened his grip, replaced his arms at his sides.

  Mae felt her breath coming in fast gasps. She was shaking, quivering. A dark joyousness spread within her, like black ink injected into muscle.