True Murder

by Yaba Badoe

  Racing through the house, she had collected Peter’s most prized possessions: his books, his maps, the rows upon rows of vinyl LPs that he’d accumulated over the years. I saw Isobel amassing his possessions with the unerring instinct of a woman who knows how to inflict retribution. She assembled his maps, and, grazing her fingers over their surface, appreciating their value and beauty, she ripped page after page, revelling in the violation of Peter’s property. I saw her tossing his books on the study floor, and when she had selected the best of them, she took down the one possession that meant the most to Peter: his Paul Nash landscape.

  I tried to scream. I tried to tell Isobel to stop, but the only noise that came out of my mouth was a frightened gasp. The past, replaying itself in my mind, brooked no intrusion. I was captive to what had happened. I watched Isobel pick up a pair of scissors from Peter’s desk, and, lunging at the painting, she punctured the canvas. It was strong, but she was determined. She slashed it apart. And with every swipe at the picture, every puncture and laceration she made, pounding pain invaded my body and bound me tighter to Isobel, until her tears, falling between slashes of fury, became my own.

  When she had finished, she threw what was left of the painting with Peter’s other treasures on the floor. Then, almost as an afterthought, she ran upstairs, coming down again with the best of his suits, his shirts, his sweaters. She bundled everything into a wheelbarrow, rolling it down the incline of the hill to the bottom lawn. There, by Mr Furzey’s compost heap, she unloaded Peter’s belongings, doused them liberally with paraffin and dropped a single match on top of the pile. The fire caught immediately, cowling Isobel’s face in flames.

  I didn’t want to see any more. Holding my throbbing head, I shook it, trying to break free, trying to rid myself of Isobel’s anguish. I wanted my mother. I screamed, squeezing my eyes shut, but Mama didn’t come to me. She didn’t surface behind my eyelids as she usually did. Instead, I heard Malone and Leboeuf shouting: ‘Get the hell out of here, kid!’

  I opened my eyes. Peter and Isobel were still fighting. Waves of virulent hatred flowed between them, splashing over Polly and closing in on me. I backed away. The vile substance was lapping at my feet when the house shuddered awake. The house was heaving, its foundations swaying in a surreal dance it seemed only I could feel. The others weren’t aware of the tremors, the floorboards screeching, splintering to swallow us whole.

  ‘You’d better go, kid!’

  I turned and ran for my life. I heard Polly following.

  I fled from the house into the drive and the raging storm. Rain fell like stones on my head, and flashes of lightning lit up the path so that I felt disembodied, suspended between the present and the past, in the twilight world of a dream.

  I have always hated thunderstorms, the heavens unleashed in fury, yet I felt safer outside, away from the Venuses. I ran stumbling against great swathes of rain towards the Gatehouse and Miss Edith, propelled by an inner fear I was unable to name. I couldn’t fight it. Malone and Leboeuf were right. I had to get away from Graylings.

  ‘Aj! Come back, Aj!’ Polly was calling me. I turned to look at her. She was momentarily visible in a flash of light, huddled up wet, a changeling in the storm.

  I ran on, struggling against the wind. It threw me over twice, and twice I got up with gravel stuck to my palms. The terror inside me was stronger than the elements. I battled against wind and rain, until finally I was at Miss Edith’s door.

  I shouted her name, I pounded the knocker. I yelled, ‘They’re fighting! They’re fighting. Let me in. Let me in.’

  After what seemed an age, the door opened and I fell inside. Miss Edith was brandishing her umbrella. She looked aghast, and then, because Polly must have arrived at the door as well, she exclaimed: ‘What’s happened to you both? Polly, come in at once.’

  Miss Edith rubbed us down. She made us hot chocolate and wrapped us in a large eiderdown. In between the rub, the drink and the eiderdown, she tried to make sense of what I was telling her. Fear had rendered me incoherent. Eventually, Polly explained what had happened.

  ‘She set fire to his painting,’ she said. ‘She burnt his favourite things, his Dylan LPs and everything, because he doesn’t want her.’

  Miss Edith was silent. She was chewing her bottom lip. ‘I see,’ she said tersely.

  ‘And then Aj ran away and I came after her.’

  I believe Polly felt responsible for me, but perhaps her parents’ behaviour had frightened her as well. It was hard to tell; for it seemed, back then, that if the world were to fall apart, Polly would somehow survive.

  ‘I see,’ Miss Edith repeated.

  She went into the hall and used the telephone. When she returned she said we were to spend the night at the Gatehouse. The Venuses were all right, but under the circumstances they thought it best we stay put.

  Polly was silent. The facade of bored apathy, which I had come to know well, closed over her face again. ‘Fine,’ she mumbled. ‘We’ll stay here while they get their act together. Are you sure it’s OK?’

  Miss Edith assured us, a little wearily, that though she rarely had guests staying the night, she didn’t mind having us around.

  I hadn’t stopped trembling. I was still shaken by what I’d seen; however, I needed to hear the sound of my voice, to be sure that I was where I thought I was in order to feel safe again, so I asked: ‘Do you mind having us around when we ask questions?’

  Miss Edith gave a snort of laughter. ‘Well, perhaps we’ll call a truce on the questions, shall we?’

  I looked at her carefully. A veil seemed to have lifted off her face, and her features were clearer, more transparent. She was familiar, but different somehow. Like Isobel, she was changing.

  We agreed not to ask any more questions, and that night Polly and I slept in Miss Edith’s guest-room, the dogs at our feet.

  15

  PETER RETURNED TO London the next day. It was clear that Isobel didn’t want him around. She wasn’t speaking to him; apart from a perfunctory ‘hallo’ to Polly and me when we cut ourselves slabs of bread for breakfast the following morning, she kept her own counsel. Even when Polly mentioned that her periods had started, Isobel didn’t seem interested. Instead, I saw a glint of what might have been frustration darkening her eyes.

  Peter didn’t want to stay in his wife’s house a moment longer than was necessary. He had apologised for his behaviour the night before when he picked us up from the Gatehouse. Thanking Miss Edith for looking after us, he explained that his temper had got the better of him. It wouldn’t happen again because he was moving out. A removal van was coming later that day for what remained of his belongings. He would follow it home to London.

  Polly placed her cheek against Peter’s denim shirt. We were between Graylings and the Gatehouse, between our refuge and a house that filled me with a growing sense of foreboding. I’d witnessed enough the night before to know that Isobel’s state of mind was precarious. Moreover, her presence frightened me. What I’d experienced through her – the deadly cocktail of desire and hatred that had leaked into my mouth with her breath – was almost more than I could bear. I was flailing, trying to keep both feet on the ground to prevent the quivering underneath seizing my ankles and dragging me down.

  ‘Will I see you again soon, Daddy?’

  ‘Sooner than you think, kitten,’ Peter answered, cradling Polly’s head.

  A question hurtled out of my mouth before I could think: ‘Can I go back to London with you, Peter? Please can I leave with you?’

  After my experience of Isobel, the bleeding of her veins into mine, I knew I shouldn’t remain in close proximity to her. I couldn’t allow what had happened to occur again. I couldn’t be in the house with Isobel without Peter.

  ‘Yes, Daddy. Can we go back to London with you?’

  Peter smiled at us in a way that only adults smile at children: firm in his belief that having thought the matter through, having weighed up the pros and cons, listing them carefully eithe
r side of a column on a clean sheet of paper, he was convinced of his case. ‘Listen, girls, you have to stay here with Isobel,’ he said. ‘I have to go back to London to work and I need both of you to watch out for her.’

  ‘Why do you ask us to do what you can’t do, Daddy? You saw what happened to Aj last night. You saw how Isobel freaked her out. She doesn’t like her any more.’

  ‘That may be so,’ Peter conceded. ‘But don’t forget I played a part in last night’s spectacle as well. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to stay here for the rest of the holidays. You’ve only a fortnight left.’

  He chuckled, trying to make light of our predicament, but Polly and I were not amused. She scowled, while I looked away. His hand behind my neck, Peter made me look at him:

  ‘Will you keep an eye on Isobel for me, little one?’

  I had been in a similar position before, so I understood how errant fathers, unable to take responsibility for their disintegrating wives, pass their burden on to their daughters. My father had asked me repeatedly to look after my mother, and now Peter was asking me to take care of Isobel. I nodded, disheartened at being manoeuvred into such an invidious position again. I would do my best, I mumbled, realising that as far as the adults around us were concerned, Polly and I would have to look out for each other. Peter was going to be no help whatsoever.

  Indeed, throughout the course of the morning, his mood growing lighter, despondency giving way to sudden flashes of pleasure, Peter appeared to be as carefree as Polly and I had been on the last day of term. He may have lost his most treasured possessions but in a single, devastating act of revenge, Isobel had set him free; relieving him, I presume, of the burden of guilt he’d shouldered for years.

  Helping him fold up the clothes Isobel had left unscathed – the oldest of his shirts, a couple of pairs of faded jeans and his underwear – I was aware that Peter kept smiling at himself. Watching the changing expressions of his face – amusement, sudden glimmers of surprise – I concluded that wading through the wreckage of his dressing-room was an enlightening experience. It looked as if a whirlwind had passed through it; a tornado with a virulent hatred of everything he stood for.

  Looking around him once again, Peter shrugged off the havoc Isobel had wreaked on his clothes: the suits with a single trouser leg amputated, the Second World War bomber jacket spray-painted purple. ‘Who’d have thought that behind the charade of a loving wife lurked a creature every bit as vicious and brutal as I am? Anyone with the nerve to pull a stunt like this is going to come up trumps in the end. Good luck to her!’

  Polly, infected by Peter’s good humour, translated her father’s words to me: ‘What Daddy means, Aj, is that you can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl; right, Daddy?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, kitten, though your mother’s pedigree isn’t what’s normally thought of as trailer trash.’

  Neither of them seemed to appreciate the seriousness of the situation. They didn’t seem to realise that Isobel wasn’t herself, that what Peter was doing was as bad, if not worse, than what Hansel and Gretel’s father had done when their mother died. Having wanted Peter as my father only two nights previously, I decided that, along with woodcutters and international lawyers, foreign correspondents were lamentable parents.

  ‘You mean a leopard never changes its spots?’ I growled.

  ‘You got it, kid. In the end, what’s inside finds a way out. Isn’t that so, Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, Polly.’

  We followed Peter into his study with cardboard boxes for his remaining books. All his music had gone, melted into globules of plastic on Isobel’s bonfire. Peter picked up a discarded fragment of his painting and we followed his gaze to the gap on the wall. We started packing his books, while he continued staring at the blank space. He may have been able to shrug off the loss of his clothes; clothes could be replaced. I knew that his music was different: the Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Maria Callas, the Dylan LPs he’d collected over the years, the coveted jazz labels he’d tracked down in America. And the picture . . . The picture was in a league of its own. Its destruction hurt him deeply. I could see that it would hurt him for a long time to come, just as Isobel had intended.

  ‘Don’t worry, Daddy. I’m going to paint a picture for your boat,’ said Polly.

  ‘And one of these days,’ I added, ‘I’m going to make something very beautiful for you.’

  Peter thanked us for our kind intentions, our desire to soothe his pain with the promise of future gifts. ‘She’s going to survive,’ he said again of Isobel. ‘She’s tough as nails when it comes down to it. She’ll get through this, I know she will.’

  I’m not sure if he was trying to reassure himself or us. As Peter stared at the empty space on the wall, his good humour, which had grated on me in his dressing-room upstairs, left him. The gravity of Isobel’s revenge, the sheer audacity and power of her anger, seemed to hold him transfixed. He looked wretched; bereft of the life-line that had held him to his father.

  ‘It’s people that matter, not things,’ he said, repeating his father’s words. ‘It’s time to move on, children. It’s time I started afresh.’

  We spent the rest of the morning packing and labelling Peter’s boxes. When the removal van arrived, we helped him carry his belongings outside. I was wondering how long it would have taken Isobel to burn every single item Peter possessed (too long, I decided), when she emerged from her subterranean life into the drive.

  The stench of decaying violets no longer clung to Isobel’s body. Her odour was sexual, confident, heavy with musk; and her face cleared of anger reminded me of what she’d looked like when I first met her. She seemed her old self again. I hoped she was over the worst. Having sustained her rage, directing it at Peter, she appeared calmer; secure in her claim over the man she’d once loved.

  ‘Since you’re leaving us, Peter,’ she stated coldly, ‘I’m assuming full responsibility for Polly. You’ll see her only if I agree. And should you want to challenge me in any way, I’ll meet you in court.’

  Peter chose to ignore her. He wasn’t prepared to inflame her displeasure again. He gave instructions to the driver of the removal van and then, kissing Polly and me goodbye, drove off in his Renault.

  With Peter gone, I was left with the conundrum of how best to watch out for a woman whose presence troubled me. I’m not sure if I was more frightened of Isobel or myself. What I did know was that I didn’t want to return to the emotional terrain she’d dragged me into, where my feelings were not my own, but hers. I resolved to observe Isobel from a distance, the better to protect myself.

  While I taught Polly a Ghanaian game outside, a game of clapping and shouting and leaping, one foot in front of the other, I noticed Isobel sitting on a kitchen windowsill with a sketch pad on her knee. In her right hand she held a pencil, in her left an apple. She took a bite of the apple. She was eating again; a welcome sign of recovery. When she had finished the apple, she ate another. Then, after devouring a thick slice of toast, Isobel hastily turned a page and looked up at what we were doing. Gripping the pencil, concentrating on the task in hand, she began to draw us.

  Polly, wearing the pearl necklace Peter had given her, seemed oblivious to her mother. She wanted to beat me at ampae. The pearls leapt up and down with Polly swinging in time to her laughter. They danced, winking provocatively. Opening the window, Isobel called out: ‘Darling, please give that necklace to me. It’s going to fall apart if you treat it like that.’

  Polly fingered the pearls. ‘Peter said I should look after it.’

  ‘The way you looked after Nana’s necklace?’

  ‘I’m older now. I’m a woman, Isobel, and I’m certainly not going to lose this necklace. I said as much to Peter.’

  ‘If you were half the woman that you think you are, you’d know better! You shouldn’t be playing in jewellery. Come on, darling, give it to me.’

  Staring sullenly at her mother, P
olly grabbed me by the hand, and then, racing across the lawn, we lost sight of Isobel.

  Later that evening, Polly and I ambled home from walking Candy and Fudge to find Theo back from France. In our absence, Isobel had collected him from the station. His return appeared to have lifted her spirits. She was cooking again: a welcoming meal for her son.

  He had brought back delicacies from the Continent: thick rolls of salami and varieties of cheese. He had also carted back several bottles of sparkling wine and fruit syrup to drink with them: blackberry, blackcurrant, strawberry and peach. He and Isobel had already started drinking, and when he offered me a taste of his glass I liked it immediately. It was like a potent fruit drop.

  For Polly and me, he had brought Asterix annuals: to help us with our French, he said with a straight face. When Polly raised an eyebrow, he laughed, quickly producing a poster he had found in Paris of Bela Lugosi, the first Hollywood Dracula. Polly adored it. For me, Theo had bought a faded strip of kente cloth he’d come across in a flea market: woven prisms of blue, green and gold which, when new, must have been as vivid as the bottles of syrup on the table. I wound the strip around my wrist beside Peter’s bangle.

  Taking a sip of her drink, Isobel smiled at her daughter. ‘Polly, you need a hair cut,’ she said firmly.

  Immediately, the warmth of Theo’s homecoming was dissipated in the ensuing battle between mother and daughter. I backed away. The tension between them bound itself into a knot in my chest so that I couldn’t breathe. I turned my back to them, hoping that if I didn’t see the hostility on their faces, the tightness inside me would ease.

  I held on to the windowsill where I had seen Isobel drawing that afternoon. In a corner was a ball of discarded paper. I teased it open, hoping to drown the crescendo of voices by concentrating on something new. But the knot tightened as the paper revealed a picture of Polly drawn by her mother: a drawing that made the poster of Dracula appear angelic.