The Tintagel Secret

by Sarah Till

  He told me that the most important stories we will ever hear are those we tell ourselves. His belly laugh had echoed through the caves when I said that I didn't have a story. He'd told me I did, but I just couldn't hear it because it was drowned out by sadness and pain, and the stories particular to mothers. I snort now, wondering what his face would be like when I tell him about Emma and the last few weeks. I'd remembered what he said about the stories we tell ourselves and scrunched my eyes up as I tried to drown out the white noise of the world to find my own sorry tale. He's told me that there's a fine balance between doing what you really want to do and being happy and doing what other people wanted you to do and being unhappy. We'd celebrated being on the right side of this by clinking together to plastic picnic glasses we found on the beach and sipping the fizzy water I had liberated from the skip earlier that day. He told me we had found the route to happiness. He was probably right, but I didn't think I was there yet. I didn't tell him, but after months of scrunching up my eyes and listening carefully to the story I told myself, it was still desperately sad, still full of my children and my family, and scolding myself for not being brave.

  Yet now, as I rush down the road, I'm happier than I have been for a long time. So happy that I forget about the whole village thinking I am a murderer. Julia's yellow posters are still everywhere. They look tacky and worn now, the harsh sea wind has eaten their corners and spat them out in bushes and fences, yellow scraps flapping everywhere. Some of them have been vandalised, with drawings of stick people having sex and someone had drawn a stick dog having a poo. I'm just wondering if this is a serious addition because someone is concerned or some kind of a joke, when I'm confronted by Julia. She steps out of the garden of a house on the main street and stands in my path. Her eyes are heavy with dark circles and red rimmed, and she looks very pale and thin. She's silent for a moment, and I glance at a bottle in her hand. Suddenly, she walks around Macy and starts to throw water from the bottle at me. I cover my head with my hands and she looks round as her husband approached.

  'Fucking hell, Julia. Stop it. Just stop it.'

  Her eyes are wild and I can see tiny globules of spit land on his face as she talks.

  'I won't stop it. I won't. She needs to be cleansed. Murderer! You murdered your own child. You'll never be forgiven for that. And what about the others? Once a murderer, always a murderer. Oh no. And you have the cheek to come back here and walk past my home. Unclean!'

  She throws the rest of the water at me before he gets hold of her. I try to explain as they tussle.

  'I'm going to meet a friend. I haven't been formerly charged with anything, Julia. My baby was dead. Dead. Isn't that enough? Haven't I gone through enough pain for you to understand what's happened to me? I was fifteen, for God's sake. I would never have killed her. You don't know my family and what they're like.'

  He's holding her tightly now, a little too tightly, and she's shielding her eyes from me.

  'You're the Devil, Lizzie Nelson. A witch sent here to defile this village. You're a graven image yourself, everything you touch turns to shit. Shit!' I see her searching for something worse, and finally her she dredges it up and dons a manic smile. 'Yes. That's it. I've got it. You're Morgana, aren't you? You're her. That's it Stuart, she's Morgana. Her brother thought she was and she is. That's why she's here. She's come back...'

  He's dragging her inside the house now, concerned neighbours looking on. Their pitying looks, usually reserved for me, now hang over Julia. I wait for a while, her words echoing through me. Morgana? Will it never end? Why would she say that? And somewhere deep inside me, deep in the memories of my childhood, a voice that was placed there by a story tells me 'Yes, yes, of course, anything is possible, maybe you are? Maybe.'

  I hurry along, muttering my argument to myself. I know that it's not rational, I know that it's the past, but sometimes that voice is louder than the others; it's telling me that there I things I don't know, powers I'm not aware of, and if I'm not a good girl then I'll be punished. Morgana was bad. She was a witch, a whore, a force of evil to Arthur's goodness. So, does it not equate that I could be Morgana? Hadn't I buried my baby? Didn't my son detest me, for reasons I cannot fathom? Does he know? I start to walk faster as I reach the shops. Poor Julia. She looked positively unhinged, and it's my fault.

  As I walk along I try to think who she reminds me of. That look of madness tinged with fury, I'd seen it before somewhere. It reminds me of what happens when people don't get their own way, when they suddenly feel powerless. It's that point where reality tips over into a fantasy world of manipulation and narcissism, and the story turns bad. I stare at the sky to block out the stares as I rush towards the beach and suddenly I realise who it is, who's passion turned to madness; it was my father.

  I even remember the day it happened. He'd come in from work early and found me and my sister there, but Mum out. We were used to it. She would come in at four thirty every day, smiling widely. My brothers were at college at this point, so they, like Dad, never knew she wasn't there. I'd asked her once why she didn't pick us up from school any more, and why she was always out. She giggled and hugged me.

  'Top Secret, love. You know. Like your Dad always says. Top Secret. That's the way he wants it, that's the way he'll have it.'

  She threw me an exaggerated wink which was lost on my teenage self, but now I know she was closing a door on us, weaving together a new life that she could slowly design, day by day, whilst dad was out at work. I knew that she felt guilty, because in the mornings she would bite her bottom lip and push a sixpence into my hand.

  'Elizabeth, get your sisters from school. Don't forget! And hold their hands all the way home.' She'd feel under my shirt for the key on a string around my neck. 'And don't tell your Dad. Top Secret? OK?'

  I'd nodded, but the weight of responsibility weighed heavily on me. I could never walk home with possible friends or go to after school clubs. I could never stay behind for homework classes, or sport lessons. I would run the Short distance to my sister's primary school and wait for them, two pretty blonde girls, dainty, just like mum, and I'd bring them home and make them toast. I'd use the sixpence to buy jam and sweets for us, and we'd sit at the Formica tale and play house. I was the mother. It seems, now, that I have been a perpetual mother. After a while, she would add to my responsibility.

  'Will you put tea on, Elizabeth? Peel the carrots and the potatoes and put a light in the oven so the meat will cook. Don't forget, love, or there'll be no tea. And then you know what will happen, don't you? And, don't forget, Top Secret.'

  That wink again, a conspirator sign that I had sole responsibility for safeguarding the whole family from my father's temper. On the day he came home early I suspected that I had failed. My heart pumped extra fast as I heard his car pull up, then stop on the pavement outside. The car door slammed, then he was behind me in the kitchen. My sisters, who had been drawing, sat open mouthed as he thrust his hands in his pockets.

  'What's this then?'

  I stooped to push a large casserole dish in the over and pushed the potato peelings in some newspaper. I lit the stove and heaved the hugs pan of spuds onto the ring. Then I turned to face him.

  'Mum's just popped out.'

  He sat beside my sisters. I willed them not to speak, to keep the Top Secret, but Kim was shaking.

  'Right. You seem to know what you're doing. Does this a lot, does she?'

  I stared at him, his hand twitching now on the table. The tool of his violence that had shaped the family into something silent filled with fear. It was too late. Kim blurted it out. Clouds of steam filled the kitchen as she spilled it out.

  'She's out at work, Dad, Lizzie picks us up now, she never does it. Lizzie cooks our tea. Lizzie plays at Mum with us while Mum's at work.'

  He never took his eyes off me. I stabbed the potatoes, even though I knew they are still hard.

  'Work, Lizzie? Is that where she is?'

  I toggled between the truth and an outright
lie, hoping Mum will back me up, and decided on my version of this muddled tale, all that I know.

  'She never told me she was at work. That's what I told them coz I couldn't think of anything else.'

  'How long's this been going on?'

  My fear grew as his fingers tapped on the table, making the crayons roll off the edge.

  'About three years. Since I started seniors.'

  His eyes ask me why I didn't tell him, but he doesn't even bother to ask. I see the change in front of my eyes, his square, proud shoulders sag and instead of anger, I see rage, edged by a haunted look. He got up and left. I knew he had walked because I never heard the slam of the car door. Twenty minutes later I stabbed the overcooked potatoes again and they crumbled, at almost exactly the same point that my parent's marriage disintegrated. I heard them come in and shut the front room door. There were shouts and screams and I could hear Dad crying. Eventually Mum ran upstairs and, when I went in to see if he was ready for his tea, he sat, still in his coat, hugging an empty whiskey bottle. He eyed me suspiciously, his face contorted and manic.

  'Tea. Ha. Fucking tea. You were in on this, you little witch. You knew all about this. You and her. She can take you with her when she goes. But leave the grail. Leave it.'

  I expected it to be all over the next day, but it just got worse, and Mum's increased absence meant that I was the brunt of his anger. And she didn't take me with her. In between her dreaming, her painting and her fucking, she had forgotten about us. But Dad hadn't, and although he never mentioned her, he became increasingly erratic, knocking together his own world from his passion for Arthurian legends, until they became real; the only thing he had to grasp hold of outside a whiskey bottle.

  His madness and his violence held me in a closed trap, where I wanted to tell the world what was going on inside our home, on the bright terracotta tiles and the busy wallpaper, but I was too scared. Instead, I endured the games, the sitting round the kitchen table as he insisted we were knights, maidens and witches. John and Joseph played along, oiled with whiskey, and Kim and Ann were too scared not too. Joseph joined the army, but John stayed, used to his home comforts, playing a cat and mouse game with me as I protected my sisters from his drunken groping. It was all still Top Secret, something we hid at school with our bright smile sand quiet ways, but, by the year we went on holiday and Mum left, he was a different person. He hadn't got what he wanted, she had chosen her lover, and Dad was destroyed. Just like Julia.

  I find myself sitting on the wall of the Sword in the Stone car park, its shabby sign pointing me toward the sea. I feel the tears on my face and wonder if the tide is receding, finally pulling the water from behind my barriers. I know that Jer is on the beach, and that the curtains on the main street are twitching, people either pitying or hating, or wondering if I had murdered my baby, was I capable of murdering those women. But I'm suddenly mortified with grief. Grief for my mother and father, grief for my little sisters, and guilt for whatever came after for them. Grief for Andrew and Stan, for them having an only partially present mother and wife, my heart was in a shallow grave in Tintagel.

  I look around and suddenly feel a little disappointed in the town. As if to chase away Julia's words, their tentacles creeping through me and making me think the legends are real, the ragged signposts and jaded knight statues make me sad. The Round Table key rings and the Camelot Hotel are worse; any self-respecting Arthurian enthusiast would realise immediately that Camelot was nowhere near Tintagel. No. This place has gone off at a tangent, a manufactured collage of everything Arthur, designed to draw in tourists and collect their money. Only those who gathered on the beach, in the caves under the bowels of the castle, knew the real stories. If any stories can be real.

  The clichéd products and neglected Arthur related signs added to the fake feel to my surroundings. I'd believed in this at one point, hanging on every possible suggestion that Merlin, Arthur and Morgana had once walked these paths. My father's passion turned to madness had supported this in my mind until it was real. And someone else had believed him enough to come here and kill. Imprinted between a harsh slap and cruel words were the uttering that made these characters real in my life. I believed. The magic that they could apparently conjure was as convincing as it was ludicrous. He could pull a sword from a stone? She could shape shift? They were superheroes at a time where I needed magic in my life. I believed. But as we returned here over and over again, as our family fragmented and my father forced us to become the characters of his legends or face the belt buckle, I came to realise that there was no magic. There was no shape shifting. John knew exactly what he was doing. It was all so clear now. Somewhere inside I had been hedging my bets, never quite giving up on the belief that anything could be possible, even if I hadn't witnessed it. Never speaking the notion that there was no magic. Top Secret. Top Secret. Even from my own story, I couldn't even admit to myself that it was all fiction; just a story someone, somewhere, long ago, made up. Even now it seems strange to realise that it's not true – how can it be? If there were magic here, or anywhere, wouldn't it have saved Emma, and helped me when I needed it most? And isn't magic supposed to be good, not evil? Whoever has come here searching for the fragment of gold that I've hidden for years doesn't really believe either, it's pure greed. Who would be that greedy that they would threaten to kill, risk being caught and stay around for something that, after all, might just be a myth? I turn and look through a gap between the shops, the sand whirling in the air. I can make out two shapes, one of them Jer, the other one touching his shoulder. The she walks away. No. The magic isn't here. No one will find it here. It's a relief and a torture at the same time, as I realise that no matter what conclusion I come to now I'm still in danger.

  I dry my tears eventually and move on. Macy rattles down the steep steps to the beach and I see him astride daisy, further up the beach. I'm a little apprehensive, because I'll have to tell him about Emma, and I don't know if he'll understand. He's probably heard about the murders and I don't know if he'll understand my part in it when I tell him. I don't know if I really understand. Daisy's petrol tank is gleaming in the sharp sunlight and I struggle over the wet sand and rocks until I am near him. He doesn't turn around and I wonder if he has heard Macy's wheels. Right at the last moment, he turns to face me. I breathe in sharply. Jer's face is haggard, sunken and pale. I leave Macy and walk up to him, my hand reaching up to his withered cheek. He smiles and we nod at each other.

  CHAPTER 25

  I go back and fetch Macy, and we walk up the beach to the caves. Jer struggles with Daisy and I can see his sinewy arms stain at every step. Finally, we manage the high path and sit inside the lips of our special place. His boots look huge on his skinny legs and his eyes are milky. I stare at him, but he's looking out at the sea, smoking a roll-up. After a rest, he gets up and gathers some wood and lights a small fire at the cave entrance.

  'Keep the bears away, that will.'

  I smile at him afraid to ask him how he's been. So I start with me.

  'I've has some problems since I saw you last. With Andrew. And with...'

  He unscrews a bit of newspaper he was just about to throw on the fire, and the words dance in front of me, the closest I've come to the story that connects me to the world.

  'Eye. So I see, Elizabeth. So I see. Keep you in prison, did they?'

  'No. I don't even know if I'll be charged yet. My solicitor says it all depends on whether the baby was dead at birth.'

  He coughs.

  'And was she?'

  I nod.

  'She never moved, Jer. Never moved. Never cried. She was warm, but she'd just been inside me. Then when I woke up, she was cold. I buried her and got on with my life. I'm sorry.'

  He's laughing now. Loud, echoing, belly laughs, that make me jump.

  'Sorry? Don't apologise to me, Elizabeth. It's not your fault she died, is it? Why are you saying sorry?'

  I think for a moment. Since my outburst in courts I've made a habit of sayi
ng sorry continuous, not out loud, but over and over in my head. As if I was rehearsing for something. Maybe this.

  'I'm saying sorry because of the position I know I'm putting people in. Inconveniencing them. Making them do stuff. Like the police and the undertakers, having to deal with all this. And me. And Emma. And Julia, who's gone a bit funny, by the way. I just seem to have caused a lot of trouble. Even Andrew, who I went to see, to try to make it up with him, he turned me away. Every time I want to do something, it all turns out wrong, like I haven't thought it through.'

  He nods.

  'Maybe you haven't. Maybe you can't. After all, who can tell what someone else is thinking? You just have to take your chances, sometimes. And maybe you're not such a good judge of character.'

  I stare at him now, a little annoyed.

  'How do you mean?'

  'Well, you always seem to see the best in people. Like that fucking son of yours.' I visibly prickle at this and Jer laughs. 'See, still defending him in your mind, aren't you? But isn't it down to him you are in this situation? And even if it isn't, how has he helped you out of it?'

  I know he's right.

  'Mmm. The problem is, he's got married and had children. I'm their grandmother and I want to see them. He won't let me. And I don't think this is going to impress him, either.'

  I finger the news report, catching snippets of the sentences and I sigh. Jer shakes his head.

  'That's not the only thing that's been going on around here, is it?'