CHAPTER 11
TRIBUNAL: HEARING AND INQUIRY
It had taken the best part of a year of detailed, nitpicking investigation, apparently, even to as much as set up a preliminary enquiry. She had been told a tribunal was to examine whether or not there were any criminal charges to face or which might be levied on the charity’s trustees or the Church authorities under whose auspices the ‘home’ had been run and managed. Doubts over the levying of criminal charges - after the abuse she had suffered, and witnessed others suffering? It beggared belief!
The Crown Prosecution Service (the CPS) were apparently undecided as to whether any actual offence had been committed, any crime having taken place for them to prosecute; and there had been legal arguments raging over jurisdiction, based on an obscure medieval charter pertaining to UK sovereignty over the island. Meanwhile, reading between the lines the CPS was seemingly being hesitant in taking on the whole Establishment of the Church, not without overwhelming evidence. But the real, physical, evidence uncovered supporting Alice’s version of events and allegations over what had been going on behind those high priory walls, had for all intents and purposes been scant to the point of non existence. And that beggared belief in itself!
But Alice herself had witnessed the efficiency of the cleanup operation prior to the police and social services raid: The workshops and classrooms dismantled, the punishment blocks, whipping stools, enema tables and all other means of physical chastisement, vanished as if having never existed; the girls somehow made to disappear too, vanishing into the ether like so many stage magicians assistants. Only the nuns had remained - all too well personally implicated and loyal to the Church and their mentor’s teachings to ever speak out - and, it had turned out, the Mother Superior, an erudite, eloquent woman who would have no difficulty twisting the truth and whose loyalty was of course beyond question; just as her soul was undoubtedly beyond redemption. The old, twisted Churchman who had sodomised and scourged so many with impunity, having presumably been considered too unstable, too unreliable, by the shady ecumenical powers behind the throne to be allowed to be left behind, had been miraculously spirited away, as he had from at least two other crime-scenes of abuse in the past.
What remained pretty much came down to Alice’s testimony. The other girl found with her - one Gwyneth Tealsdown (her identity had had to be uncovered through some nifty detective work by ‘Missing Persons’, being unable to remember her own surname and referring to herself as ‘Mary’) - had been declared unfit through reasons of impaired mental competence. Denounced as an incorrigible, out of control, persistent runaway with chronic behavioural issues by the woman who was said to be her legal guardian and who had made quite clear she couldn’t afford to have her home, not given Gwyneth’s behavioural history, the sad-eyed young Gwyneth had been duly shipped off to a secure mental hospital ‘for her own protection’.
This too beggared belief! Just as it beggared belief that the mental institution poor husky, throaty Gwyneth had been shipped off to was a charitable trust-run establishment with links to the Church and several high-ranking Church dignitaries listed quite openly as patrons and several other Church officials sitting on the board of directors. And it definitely beggared belief that the only way Alice could have been privy to any and all of these shenanigans - as that old Irish priest would have said, with his ‘thing’ buried deep in her insides - was because she had been sat down and actually told - and in some graphic detail - by the psychiatric counsellor at the ‘halfway house’ she now resided at. There had been a veiled threat there, she felt sure. It had been nothing explicit, but the way the woman had smiled, like an unassailably superior opponent across a chess board, an inescapable two, perhaps three moves away from checkmate, the way she had looked in to her eyes as if appraising the likelihood of some countering move and seeing none, it had made the message as clear as if written across one of her flipcharts or the whiteboard in her office; go too far in spilling the beans, in struggling against the tide and...
Then again: perhaps she had been imagining things - just like they said she sometimes did. But they said that whenever she mentioned Dr Ecclestone’s involvement, saying the good doctor had been questioned and there was no record of her ever having treated Alice, nor of her visiting Alice’s home, nor as much as ever having met “the esteemed” - their words, not Alice’s - Lady Marchment, Alice’s twice-bereaved stepmother who had since reverted to her titled, maiden name.
Of course Alice had brought up the subject of the security cameras her father had had installed, years before his untimely death; surely there would be records there to corroborate her story. But she’d been told that sadly the property was gone now - and the cameras and security system with it. And besides; even before the sale, a long time before, the old recorders had been thrown out and the tapes destroyed as an accompaniment to the changeover to the friendlier, more compact and discreet, digital system and DVD recording. In any case, even had those old VHS tapes still been in existence, had they not been consigned to the incinerator or whatever, the tapes would have been recorded over, reused countless times since the period Alice was talking about. That so much more time had elapsed than she could have imagined, that her own home had been sold from under her by her scheming stepmother, a woman who Alice now felt sure had been complicit in having her boyfriend locked away, branded as a drug dealer, and who had encouraged Alice to become hooked on prescription tranquilizers and sedatives in order to gain control over her and thus her father’s estate, that all this could have befallen her... It all, all of it, beggared belief.
But then; a lot of things about Alice’s life beggared belief nowadays. It beggared belief, for example, that despite technically being now free of the institution she had been obliged to reside at following her release from the clutches of the Church authorities, she was dressed the way she was; and today, of all days. Her outfit consisted of a dowdy institutional slate-grey tweedy skirt, plain light grey shirt-blouse - in some horrid man-made fibre - and thin slate-grey cardigan to match, a pair of ‘sensible’ polished black lace-up shoes completing the ensemble. None of this exactly seemed suited to bolstering her confidence. Only the lack of a stripy tie and a blazer separated today’s outfit from leaning towards being taken for a particularly antiquated example of a private boarding school uniform. But today’s ‘styling values’ hadn’t been by choice - and that beggared belief in itself.
Strictly speaking the skirt was actually in a fine light-weight serge and its panelled A-line flare did give it a slightly more adult feel. But it was dead plain, like a smooth, flat-fronted triangle of fabric - utility-styling, one might say - had a high, deep waistband which reintroduced that juvenile aspect again, and it was an awkward length, being neither one thing or another, hemmed perhaps two inches below the knee. The later point was a subtle thing perhaps, but it made it look as if it were either a calf-length skirt she’d grown out of, or a hand-me-down given her by some older sibling and which she was yet to grow in to. The nylon lining didn’t do her any favours either; the skirt was fully lined and it crackled with static whenever she sat down.
And that gawkily pre-adolescent ill-fitted look carried over to the button-through cardigan. It suffered from that particular type of draping bagginess that only developed after going out of shape over many, many repeated wash cycles. The sleeves fell just a little too long, draping down over her palms nearly to the base of her fingers with her hands by her sides, while steadfastly also refusing to remain rolled over the subtly wear-worn buttoned cuffs of her blouse.
Once clear of the all-day pyjamas and bare feet or hospital examination gown garb that had characterised her time in the care home she’d have liked to have been able to wear her own clothes; she’d certainly expected to; in theory she’d been able to, was able to - in theory. In practice, she didn’t own any of her own clothes, not any longer. It turned out her entire wardrobe had evaporated along with the proceeds from the s
ale of the family home - the manor house, stables and grounds her late father had strived so hard all his life to attain. All of that was gone now.
And she still couldn’t grasp how it was that she was the aggrieved one and yet - around one year on - she still found herself living under what amounted to twenty-four hour supervision. Yes, she was no longer confined to a nursing home, had swapped the clinical white walls and tiles of a psychiatric observation suite, for the chintz and flock wallpaper of a detached, suburban ‘halfway house’. The latter was a very normal, practically anonymous, if expansive, grey-bricked double-fronted property tucked around the back of London’s Muswell Hill, amongst a cluster of other equally unremarkable, properties peopled by very everyday, boringly anonymous grey suburban faces. But normality ended at the door, at least in so far as young Alice was concerned. The other residents seemed to have far more freedom than her, the more compos mentis among them coming and going as they pleased, within reason; the place was supposed to be a first step in reintegrating in to society. As for Alice, however; some unknown hand had taken it upon itself to draw up all manner of additional restrictive stipulations safeguarding her care and rehabilitation; and there didn’t seem to be any rush to achieve the latter.
It was true she had her own room, but it was sited high up in one of the turret-like corners of the building, tucked away at the rear where it overlooked the community tennis courts. There, the accountants, city types and the occasional minor self-starter entrepreneur or computer nerd would play noisily until dusk before then adjourning to the local hostelry, a pub dedicated to the man behind the high lattice mast which towered over the nearby Alexandra Palace like Eiffel’s monument in miniature and which Alice could see from her window.
She could see, also, the white-dressed figures darting about, dancing and scampering in green-soled trainers, their rackets on occasion brandished threateningly, held aloft like sabres across the net. They took it seriously down there. She knew they played noisily because she could see their mouths gaping in time with the effort of the shot, or at each other, fists clenching and faces red. She could read the Alpha-male body language, almost smell the testosterone. What she couldn’t do was join in - that went without saying; that would have meant some sort of individual-determined action on her own part. Nor could she hear the action; it was another of her gripes that beggared belief, that she could not be trusted with an open window lest she ‘do something stupid’ as she’d heard the house staff comment.
The one single window was bolted shut and covered behind its screen of chintz curtains, whenever she drew them back, by thick white diamonds of wire mesh. And she still had no key for her door either, despite always worrying on at them about it. Once her room door was shut - as it was mid-evening, come rain or shine - that was it for the night. The only plus was that at least her room was en suite; it had a little plastic shower cubicle and even a real toilet; there was no humiliatingly exposed commode or under-generous bedpan nowadays!
The tennis courts, though, were the preserve of the local residents who paid for their upkeep anyhow. The tarmac courts were guarded jealously, they were decidedly not for the use of ‘those dome-heads and dog-end munchers’ - as she’d once overheard in the street. By this was meant ‘the nutters’ from the ‘big house on the corner’, as Alice and her fellow residents were oft cruelly referred to in bus-queue whispers. The local school children would rarely bother to whisper their opinions; they wore their hearts on their sleeves, even some of those originating from that posh school up in Highgate Village who Alice always thought should have known better. The crowd up from the doldrums of the inner-city-compressive-school-lands of Wood Green, Turnpike Lane and South Tottenham - grim, economically poor, racially ill-mixed areas full of tension and strife and dangerous young men armed with infinitely more dangerous dogs on chain-link leashes - didn’t know any different; they would whoop and catcall if they saw a small escorted group daring to brave the rigours of Muswell Hill Broadway.
Not that Alice wasn’t allowed out; they couldn’t keep her locked up against her will... not any more. Rarely - and only really of late - she was allowed to go around the shops or to Alexandra park as part of one of those escorted groups; but even then Alice had the extra stipulation of having to stay close to the escort, usually being obliged to hold the escort’s hand like a lost child, adding to her sense of shame and humiliation. Usually, though, her sojourns were in the one-to-one supervisory company of the House Mother or warden. A waddling buxom no-nonsense woman, she kept Alice on a short leash, so to speak, and thought nothing of admonishing Alice in shops or in front of passers-by by loudly announcing to all within earshot how lucky Alice had been to be allowed out of the hospital (substituting the name of a well-known local establishment, even though the place had had nothing to do with Alice) and how easily she could be returned there.
It was the House Mother who, presumably acting under instruction, actively discouraged Alice from mixing too much socially with the other residents, often doling her out housework chores that kept her away from the main body of the group and the social areas. Alice was allowed to view television, although the hours were carefully monitored and limited. But once again the House Mother always seemed to arrange it so that Alice’s allotted slot coincided with a period of the day when the majority of the other residents were out on trips or around the shops and only the three or four really bad ‘thumb-suckers and rockers’ they had in residence were gathered in the TV lounge; and at that time the viewing on offer was invariably sing-along infant fare aimed at toddlers; it was what those particular residents liked, it made them feel reassured. But early evenings, when the others were in, were invariably spent down on her hands and knees or at the kitchen sink, a dull green nylon tabard over her ubiquitous garb of even duller grey skirt, cardigan blouse, thick woolly knee socks and clumpy shoes.
The outfit had become a sort of uniform; all the others wore jeans and tee shirts, things bought with allowances or sent by relatives or taken from home. Alice was in effect a pauper now, as the House Mother rarely failed to remind her. She had no allowance, nor clothes of her own, nor - she had been informed - could her stepmother and legal guardian, Lady Marchment be contacted. Not that Alice would have wanted her stepmother contacted in any case; not being within her stepmother’s perverted grasp was the one saving grace in her current situation. Having sold up, Lady Marchment had moved out of the country, Alice had been told, and in any case was currently spending her time on the move, shuttling from country to country, something to do with some sort of charitable work or project she had become involved with out in Angola.
The upshot of all this was that Alice was dependent on poor-house dole-outs for her clothing, every item from the skin outwards. And the House Mother would pick out every stitch for her; at least for today the coarse, fat woolly socks were gone, and the awful bobbly beige bobble hat, like a small, round, woollen tea cosy she was handed whenever it was deemed cold outside had been left behind. She was glad of the latter - the hat, Alice felt, completed what to many Londoners was the uniform of a typical ‘care-in-the-community’ mental patient. Her hair, well in to its recovery from the institution’s butchery, was now a neat shoulder length at the back and was pulled back in a neat ponytail by a grey scrunchie the House Mother had handed her; it would be allowed to grow no longer; the House Mother would take her own scissors to it to ensure it remained neat, she had been told. The socks had thankfully been superseded for today by a pair of nylons the woman had rustled up from somewhere, old fully fashion tan-coloured things with reinforced heels and darker backseams. The latter had necessitated suspenders of course, and that supporting role had fallen to a horrid flesh-coloured roll-on Playtex girdle. Alice had hated the thing on sight, with its sticky rubbery feel and glossy diamond satin-finish panels that pulled her tummy in as flat as a board, carved her waist inwards under her ribs at the sides, while making her backside seem to stick out conspicuously as if
twice its normal plump size; she hated it, but knew she had little option, not if she didn’t want to turn up wearing socks.
The long-line bra featured self-conscious bullet cups which made her bustline jut out angrily through the misshaped, wrong-sized cardigan like a 1950s sweater girl - only minus the glamour - but once again she had had little choice if she hadn’t wanted to go bra-less. She had in theory had a choice when she had been handed the full-length heavyweight white nylon slip, but by then she was wallowing in brow-beaten defeat - and besides, she was no longer used to arguing back. But now she was regretting having given in without putting up at least some sort of fight; the petticoat or slip was ever so tight around her bottom and thighs and, despite the relative fullness of the skirt, interfered with her gait to the extent of limiting her step; she had to struggle to keep up with her companions. But the thing zipped up the back - and the zipper was extraordinarily stiff - so even if she got to dive in a restroom or toilet it would prove difficult to struggle out of it now; she was locked in it for the duration.
But for the duration of what, exactly - what could she, or should she, say? For instance, where it came to her stepmother’s involvement, it beggared belief that the woman had been able to sell the family home, liquidate her father’s estate - and her, Alice’s, inheritance - and even empty and closedown Alice’s bank account and the trust fund that her father had set up to support her further education and provide her with a living allowance. But Alice had already been advised that it had all been totally legal and aboveboard, the manner in which it had been carried out.
The crux of the matter was that it all - on paper - seemed to be in Alice’s long-term interests; or had been made to appear so. And Alice had then signed - on the very day of her eighteenth birthday - a series of documents which together amounted to an enduring power of attorney, in effect turning over all decisions regarding Alice’s life, future, financial dealings and property to her stepmother and relinquishing all rights to her father’s estate.
Alice Under Discipline, Part 2 Page 18
