Margot's Secrets

by Don Boyd

  Archie called out to her, “Don’t forget your towel and goggles.”

  Margot stopped in her tracks. She went back to the bathroom and took a small, chic mauve back-pack from its hook on the back of the door, checked it peremptorily and slung it onto her back.

  “Have a great day, Archie. Let’s have dinner out tonight.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you at the studio. Maybe Robert might like to join us.”

  “No! I couldn’t face Robert, and anyway, I have to see him this afternoon.”

  “I love you.”

  Archie really did love her. The idea that he had anything to do with Paolo and Tilly’s murder had evaporated overnight.

  Margot staggered down the stairs with her bike trailing behind her, and taking the Olympic roadway down to the Plaça Espanya, she peddled like a demented professional cyclist. As she cruised into the north end of the Barri Gotic, stragglers were leaving the Catedral after morning mass. Yet again, a police car was positioned on the wide pavement area opposite Xavier’s apartment in the Plaça Santa Maria del Pi. More early risers were spilling out of the smaller church set into the corner of the square. Margot padlocked her bike against its railings. She rang the bell of Xavier’s apartment firmly and waited. No response. Perhaps he was still asleep. She rang again. This time she waited about a minute. Was he playing another of his games of control?

  She looked at her watch, she was at the most twenty minutes late. Her third attempt to raise Xavier was prolonged, insistent. Silence. She looked around. She was now internally hysterical, and also a little frightened. The square was empty again except for the police car. She left her bicycle and walked quickly down towards the Calle Ferran where she knew there would be an open café, and then remembered that of course Elvira would be in her bar. She quickly crossed the Plaça Reial and was soon on a stool in front of her friend who couldn’t help noticing her desperation.

  “So early! I will squeeze you some orange juice.”

  The noise of the juicing machine was unbearable. Margot was shaking.

  “I have just been around to Xavier’s house. He said that he would meet me there at seven. He didn’t answer the bell. I rang three times.”

  “He was probably at the police station. Carlos was going to talk to him today, very early. Apparently this Xavier knew Paolo at his school in Scotland and there was some strange reason why he lost his job there. He said something about the results of some voice tests.”

  “How did Carlos find out about Scotland?”

  Margot felt stupid asking this question because, of course, Carlos was an excellent detective. She gulped the juice and drank the strong coffee Elvira had gently pushed towards her.

  “I suppose he looks into everything and everyone. He has a friend at Scotland Yard. He was very interested in what happened at the crematorium yesterday with that girl in the yellow dress. He suspects that your friend Robert might know more than he has been telling him.”

  Elvira left her position behind the bar and sat next to Margot. She took her hand.

  “You must go and talk to Carlos. Tell him everything you told me yesterday.”

  “I know I must, but I can’t. Not yet. I will, I promise. But I have to see Xavier again.”

  Elvira didn’t need to ask her why. Margot’s face told her everything she needed to know.

  The two priests came into the bar.

  “We saw your husband taking someone away earlier this morning,” the older priest said to Elvira, as they made their way to their usual table. “The tall Englishman. He comes to Mass sometimes. He used to come every day with those two kids who were murdered. Always in the evening. He was teaching them Catalan.”

  Paolo spoke Catalan, but the priest wasn’t to know that. This innocent anecdote re-enforced Margot’s conviction. Despite all the indications, it still seemed inconceivable to her that Xavier was a killer, let alone Paolo’s murderer.

  “Apparently, the night watchman who found the bodies has disappeared.”

  This was news to Margot.

  “What night watchman?” she whispered to Elvira.

  “The man who found the bodies and ‘phoned the police very late on Monday night. It’s in the papers. The police are looking for him. He is their first official suspect.”

  Margot’s mobile phone rang. She answered, told her caller to wait a minute and then went up the narrow, art deco spiral staircase to the small balcony, where she sat at a small round wooden table and a bench. She talked in a whisper.

  “Where are you? I can’t talk. I am in a bar… I was twenty minutes late… I am so sorry… But I must see you; I have to see you today, as soon as possible… I can’t now. I have a client… lunch, but I will only have an hour, I have another client in the afternoon.”

  Another ‘phone rang, this time in the bar. Margot looked down from the balcony, almost as a photographer might have, when framing a poignant picture. From her perspective, and this included the mirror image which allowed her see the entire café, the scene below had an abstract, unrealistic atmosphere, little pro-active life. A bubble. And in a strange way she felt safe there. Her sanctuary, no temptations or complications. The two priests had been joined by a couple of older tramps sitting at the bar drinking brandy. Elvira was on the ‘phone and looked pre-occupied. She was the one person in the world who could probably be trusted to keep Margot’s predicament secret, even from Carlos. But imparted secrets can be dangerous. They have the power to change lives, change perception, change behaviour, and alter friendships. Elvira looked up, said farewell to the caller and came upstairs.

  “That was Carlos. He is very worried about you. I have told him nothing but he has interviewed Xavier and Robert. He wouldn’t tell me anything about it, he never does. But he did tell me that he had no evidence. He needs to question you and your husband officially. At the headquarters building. I told him that was stupid and that he should see you in a relaxed place, with Archie. Both of you. And so he asked me to ask you if you would like to come to supper with us tonight instead. I will cook you my famous paella.”

  Elvira looked appealingly at her friend, who burst into tears. Elvira sat down and put her arms around Margot’s shoulders. A man shouted from below in an English accent.

  “Café, por favor!”

  “That’s Hugo’s voice.” Elvira went down immediately.

  Hugo was alone. She gave him a solo. He sat at the bar, slurring his words.

  “You knew my sister, Tilly, didn’t you?” he asked in perfect Spanish.

  “Many girls come here, Hugo.”

  “Domatilla.”

  “I cannot talk about Domatilla, señor. Except that I loved her and Paolo.” Elvira used English.

  “Me too. I didn’t come to ask you anything. She loved this bar.” Hugo sipped his solo. “I saw you at the funeral. Thank you for coming. My girlfriend Emma was Paolo’s half-sister. I have to go to London for Tilly’s funeral.”

  Margot watched all this from the balcony. She wanted to go down to Hugo and hug him, but she knew that she couldn’t without becoming more involved than she could cope with this morning.

  Hugo then began to gabble, almost as if talking to himself, half-monologue.

  “The police finally took me out to the warehouse… Tilly was strange but she was happy. Her art was the most important thing for her. It was all weird but it was so beautiful. Videos… She put them on the Internet. Paolo was always in them. I am in one. She wanted to recreate a famous painting by Goya. She used me and all the other people in our language class. Isobel, the girl in the yellow dress who slapped Xavier… Xavier, our language tutor, used to use paintings as a way to help us to learn the language. Paintings and movies. But mainly paintings. Santa Eulalia. That was his idea. Isobel loved Tilly, too. She blames Xavier for giving them the idea…”

  Elvira continued to wipe the glasses she had been washing.

  “I just can’t believe that they could have been so stupid.”

  He stared at his cup. He op
ened a sugar lump and ate it slowly. The priests were sitting there like frozen statues. This was better than anything they had heard in the confession box that week. One of the drunks was clumsily playing the fruit machine. Margot looked at her watch. Her first client wasn’t due until ten.

  “My husband is the policeman in charge of the case. He is confident that he will find the night watchman who is apparently their suspect.”

  “I don’t think the night watchman did it! Why would he have called the police? I still think that they had decided to die together. Paolo always said that dying would give him the ultimate sexual high.”

  Hugo left his stool and put a few Euros on the counter.

  “I told your husband that.”

  Elvira took the Euros. “Sometimes killers ring the police from the scene of the crime.”

  The drunk at the fruit machine had been listening, too. Hugo laughed and left the bar. Margot waited a minute or so and then went down to Elvira. They hugged without a word and Margot left, leaving the customary ten-Euro note, which Elvira today put into the charity box on the counter. Margot whispered in to her friend’s ear.

  “Ring your husband and tell him that I accept his invitation to supper this evening. Archie and I had plans to go out tonight. I will ring Carlos later. Maybe he can give me a lift? Archie can meet us there.”

  Elvira kissed her again. “Don’t forget to ask Archie.”

  Margot lingered at the door and looked down. When she had gone, Elvira went over to the priests.

  “You have stayed longer than you ever do this morning, monsignors. I am sure that you have a long queue of sinners waiting for you, to confess. All those horrible bankers that have been stealing from our bank accounts.”

  “They can wait today. Our Lord will forgive them in good time!”

  The priests laughed and ordered another café solo each. Elvira rang Carlos.

  “She has promised to see us this evening. Can you pick her up?… Vale… Adios!”

  She watched Margot walk down the street. She had noticed the bags around her eyes and the ashen face when she mentioned Archie.

  Archie. He is going to be devastated. He won’t believe that I could have been so secretive. I tell him everything except the stuff I learn from my clients. Always have. He will be jealous and shocked. Angry. But Elvira is right. I must tell him everything and doing it with Carlos and Elvira there might make it a little easier.

  I wonder, what have I done to earn Elvira’s trust, her unfettered friendship? Ostensibly we have little in common with each other. She loved listening to all my stories, my childhood, about my parents. And in that sense, I told her many things about my lovely, lovely but boring life in La Jolla, stuff I haven’t bothered to tell anybody else. Pointless facts about the kind of ice cream I liked in my milkshakes, the different colours on the walls in my bedroom and the pretty clothes I wore. Frills and velvet. My mother bought patterns from a mail order company which advertised in the LA Times. The latest Paris fashions for children, that she cut out of the haute couture pages in Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar. Always the more upmarket magazines. Mother would then make them up herself – the material was rigorously chosen to match the specifications and she would have at least one or two fittings with me before finalising the sewing and extraneous paraphernalia like the buttons and ribbons which again had to be ‘just right’. Elvira adored all this. She said that her mother wouldn’t have known the difference between haute couture and ‘off the peg’ and saved up to buy the cheapest second hand clothes she could find in the junk stalls which came into the village on market days.

  Archie also bought into the Garden of Eden-like presentation of my life. He said that it gave him comfort and hope although he had always been very suspicious of the so-called American Dream. “Dreams for the rich, nightmares for the poor”. But he loved me to be that perfect woman, and has always had me up on a pedestal. Little did he know what was brewing and bubbling up beneath that Barbie Doll exterior.

  Obviously, much of what I told Elvira, I have also in some way or another talked about in the therapy I had to go through as part of my training. And of course, to Marie-Christine. She had probed and probed to no avail. They had both listened to my childhood memories of the stories I had been told by Uncle Ian, including one in particular about a family of five daughters. When they came home from school they had been ritualistically punished by their grandfather for minor transgressions – forgetting to shine their shoes, or being five minutes late for breakfast. He spanked them with a slipper and then fondled their nubile bodies by way of apology. Their mother had insisted that they watch their sisters going through this process. It was a horrible story and my uncle only told it to me by way of illustration but to a certain extent I shared in his excitement about it. And I felt so bad about that. Ashamed.

  I had read a story in the newspaper about a man who had been arrested for sexual abuse and I wanted him to explain it to me. This was a form of trauma because, although I saw it as past history, I believed that perhaps I had inherited some genes from my ancestral family which would contribute to my personality in such a way as to allow me to identify with their more colourful, more volatile lives and so become more ‘normal’. Marie Christine was sure that his stories were my own substitutes for traditional Freudian influences, and that they were also hiding traumas, fears that I had submerged. Perhaps. Shrinks are notoriously blind to their own problems. As much as I profoundly understood the basis for her enquiries and the patterns of her therapeutic techniques, I found it absolutely impossible to help her conclusively. We went around in circles and she eventually told me that she didn’t feel that there was anything else she could do for me. I didn’t seem to need it. This was a spectacular admission and both a relief and a sadness for me. And how wrong I was; I miss her so much now.

  What seemed to have particularly pre-occupied her was the degree to which I so relentlessly hung onto my seemingly unblemished childhood. I didn’t even allow her to deflate my fantasies about Uncle Ian – her theory was that he had been my first ‘secret’. He had been my ‘secret lover’ and he had in a strange way ‘abused’ me. I was very angry at this and used all my wit and University learnt intellect to fight her on this point. She gave up. “Do you ever feel guilty about this, about your privileges, Margot?” she would ask, incredulously. At first this used to make me worried that I would be ill equipped at dealing with the damaged minds of my clients. I so wanted to ‘help’ them, to give them a little of the kind of pleasure I experienced in my life. I wanted to make my patients’ lives more comfortable, more palatable. I had so little direct personal experience of any abuse, or any ‘messages’ as they are so simplistically called in the analytical environment.

  And so I rationalised my good fortune and decided that all this good without bad had been a positive factor as far as my chosen career was concerned. My vocation. I believed that this clean bill of mental health and a genuine innocence when it came to listening to all the tales from those clients within my research projects at Chicago, and in the hundreds of case studies I read, allowed me to maintain a scientific objectivity which I have always believed was the secret of my success as a psychotherapist.

  Thankfully, I never had much capacity for being judgemental, despite my strict Catholic religious education. I could never have cast that first stone. This, of course, had been at the root of my need to pick an arena to study which would provide a balance for my sanitised upbringing. And so… Familial abuse. Sexual trauma. Rape victims. The study of all these horrors gave me some balance. Good can’t exist without evil. Evil people cannot thrive unless there are good people to destroy, ruin. In traditional Freudian terms, I have to accept that I am a freak. I have no history of any of the symptoms Freud identified as consistent in everybody else’s psychological footprints, I am absolutely sure of this. Even those earliest influences in my case seemed finally harmless. Or so it would seem from those hours and hours Marie-Christine spent in deep analysis, trying to fin
d some trace of what she was convinced had to exist. And her concluding ‘bill of mental health with one rider, of course! Uncle Ian!’

  But then what is going on now? Am I at last resisting the notion that I am a ‘goodie two-shoes’, and educating myself into my darker side, which seems to be a ‘sine qua non’ of human nature? Initiating myself at last into that world everybody has been dealing with and which for some reason has passed me by, deflected by the bubble which I had created in my safe, cerebral life with Archie? Where has the dark side of my psyche been lurking, balancing the freak of nature which seemed to have submerged that side of life out of the bio-chemical make up of my brain cells? Do I now need to make myself deliberately bad? Make myself naughty, make myself normal? No, not needing to but being compulsively forced to. Normal? Xavier’s games are hardly normal.

  And I still want to play with him. Rather in the same way that I liked listening to my uncle Ian’s stories.

  Maybe that is what Elvira has picked up? Maybe she is some sort of personal protective angel? She is a very devout Catholic. She may have recognised instinctively that I was an endangered soul. Whatever it was, she adored listening to my stories of the idyll I had enjoyed as a child, and in that sense I represented a living example of Utopian citizen for her. America presents this image to so many people who know little about what it is really like to live there and be an American. Hollywood movies present fantasies – dreamlike distortions. Good triumphing over evil, threats being demolished. Cathartic exercises designed to woo us into a soporific sense of security about our special way of life. But realistically, we all have skeletons in our cupboards and we are all prey to the same need to join in with the allure of Satan’s temptations. Paolo had loved Dante because he understood that more than most. He indulged it fatally. Is his fate to be my fate, too? I am at last living in the modern equivalent of Dante’s Inferno. And which is Xavier? Beelzebub or Lucifer or Dis or Satan? They all apply.