by Phil Rickman
Wrong word, Jane thought, in terror. Wrong word.
30
Affliction
IT WAS THE way she looked at him.
Lol came in from the scullery.
She was waiting for him in the kitchen. Merrily. Little and dark and not girlish. This quietness around her.
The way she looked at him made him feel sick. The black-eyed dog was with her, like a shadow.
He’d listened to the detective dealing out the questions in a clipped and unsympathetic way that was surely all wrong for getting information out of a kid like Jane. Maybe, wherever the detective had come from, the teenagers she was used to questioning were hard and sullen, you had to be heavy with them. Lol thought Jane had been incredible, the way she’d handled it. So young, so much together.
And then the heavy one.
How well do you know Laurence Robinson? The question coming over like a missile, making him cringe into the corner of the doorway, a greasy, steel hinge biting into his forehead.
‘OK,’ Merrily said coldly, ‘sit down, Mr Robinson.’
He went and sat in the chair vacated by Jane and then wished he hadn’t; she was looking at him like he was caressing some item of the girl’s underwear.
‘She told you, right?’ Asking the question, but he couldn’t look at her. ‘The policewoman.’
‘Told me what?’
‘About Tracy Cooke.’
Merrily sat down opposite him, in a self-conscious way which showed she was forcing herself to do this, as an ordained church-person, a licensed member of the soul-police. He remembered the way his parents’ minister had spoken to him, youngish guy called Gregory Wallace, meeting him at the door of the family home, informing him, on their behalf, that he was no longer welcome here. Suggesting he might care to join a church. Some other church, in some other town. Ask for God’s help with his affliction.
‘See, the way you’re looking at me, Mrs Watkins, it’s like you really ought to be handing me over to the police. Only, because you’re a priest, you’re going to give me a chance to unburden myself to you first. And then you’ll persuade me to do the right thing and give myself up. That about it?’
‘Whatever you think is appropriate. For a priest.’
‘I don’t think any of it’s appropriate. But you don’t ever get away from it.’ He met her eyes again. ‘Now you’re thinking, would he have had time to sneak out of his sleeping bag, go and do whatever he did to Colette Cassidy and slink back before it got light?’
‘I thought that about twenty minutes ago. It seemed unlikely.’
‘But possible.’
‘Yes.’
He blinked it away. Weeping would be like confirmation. The sex-offender breaks down.
‘OK, then.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll leave and you call the police. Or I’ll just go back to the cottage and wait for them, and I’ve never been here. I won’t tell them I’ve been here. If I could ask you one last favour ... Is it possible you could look after Ethel? Not for ever, obviously. If you could tell Lucy, she’ll take her. Or sort something out. That’s if they ... you know ... if they take me away’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Merrily closed her eyes in utter weariness. ‘Can’t you say anything without going round in circles? Tell me about this ... Tracy.’
‘Cooke,’ Lol said. ‘Tracy Cooke.’
The rain had stopped, but left a wind behind. Jane turned away from the vicarage, all of a dither. The bright light in the top window had gone out. The window was quite black now. It had not been a real light, had it?
No more real than the little lights in the orchard.
She had to think about all this, decide what was real.
The market square was full of strange vehicles, including two police cars and a red car with an aerial on top – local radio, and they weren’t here for the opening of the Ledwardine Festival. Was Colette news? A girl who disappears during her sixteenth birthday party. Yes, it was, wasn’t it?
And the festival was happening all around it. People rushing about: Dermot Child and Lloyd Powell and Uncle Ted – serious-faced people who should be smiling, making jokes, under the bunting and the fancy new lanterns. In front of the market hall, a little stage was going up, with a van like Dr Samedi’s, only with permanent loud speakers on top.
Welcome to de carn-i-val.
The whole atmosphere was so weird. Like Ledwardine was inside one of those round glass ornaments and somebody was shaking it hard and everything was swirling around and when the village was eventually put down, when it all came to rest, nothing was going to be the same.
In the little globes, it was always snow that was swirled. Here it was apple blossom: specks of it everywhere, carried in on the wind, very white under the summerless, grey sky.
The orb had been shaken and the orchard was back in the village.
The thought made Jane quiver. She felt she had to cling to one of the pillars of the market hall or she’d be blown away in the blossom. Again.
Above her a new poster had gone up for Dermot Child’s choral work.
Old Cider ... feel the red earth move.
Lol talked. It seemed very hard for him, but if it was an act, he was bloody good. If it was an act then everything else about him was false. He talked like he himself was hearing all this aloud for the first time.
And Merrily, willing Jane not to come back until this was over, found herself constructing a story around the faltering fragments, filling in what was unsaid.
This Tracy Cooke was nearly fifteen at the time. She had a friend called Kath Hurley, who was sixteen, though you wouldn’t have known. You’d have guessed Kath was about twenty-five, and Tracy would have worn a lot of make-up trying to keep up. Merrily tried not to cast Jane and Colette in the roles; it was not appropriate.
Tracy and Kath were rock fans from Banbury in Oxfordshire. They went to a lot of gigs. Afterwards, they – Kath particularly – liked to talk to the musicians, if they were accessible. One night they went into Oxford, to one of the colleges, to see a band called Hazey Jane play this quite gentle, mostly acoustic music that wasn’t all that fashionable at the time, and the audience wasn’t very big, so it was easy for Kath and Tracy to get talking to the guys in the band.
Karl, who played bass and piano, was very extrovert and generous, and he said, would the girls like to come back to their hotel, have dinner? Dinner was what he said. Very sophisticated. That would have been the clincher for Tracy and Kath.
Turned out that only two of them were staying at the hotel – Karl himself and the singer, Lol – who was the one Kath really fancied, though he looked very young.
But Karl, who was in charge of this situation, he fancied Kath, who was the best looking, and so he made sure that Lol was sitting next to Tracy in the hotel, which was really just a pub with spare rooms. And when Karl and Kath went to the bar, Karl nudged her and laughed a lot as he got the barman to put vodka, lots of it, in Lol and Tracy’s drinks. Karl, at some stage, said they would have dinner ‘sent up’, and Kath thought, yeah, fair enough, and so they went into their separate rooms and fucked, natch.
Which would have been OK. Which would have been fine ... if Karl hadn’t said after a while to Kath that maybe they should invite Tracy and Lol to join them, bring a little variation into the proceedings. And Kath, who – as Karl told him later, by way of consolation – had fancied Lol in the first place, said, yeah, why not?
And so Karl pulls on his briefs and strolls along to Lol’s room. Not locked, of course, hotel rooms often weren’t in those days, particularly a place this economical. Karl finds Lol and Tracy sleeping like the babies they were, and, being the considerate guy he is, he doesn’t like to wake them up, he just squeezes himself in on Tracy’s side.
‘You were asleep all this time?’ Merrily said. ‘He didn’t wake you up?’
‘I was ... drunk,’ Lol admitted. ‘Not used to it. You know what that’s like.’
‘Yeah,’ Merrily said. ‘So does Jane.’ He worr
ied her again then, the way he winced. But she said, ‘Go on.’
Karl, of course, is not sleepy, and one thing leads to another, and about five minutes later little Tracy wakes up almost suffocating, with her nose in this big, hairy chest and these big, sweaty hands easing her thighs apart.
Tracy goes berserk. Tracy has, presumably, just made love with gentle, hesitant Lol. Tracy is hysterical with shock and terror.
Guests in neighbouring rooms are awakened. One marches down to reception and demands that the licensee calls the police, and when they arrive they find a tearful Tracy over by the window, wrapped in one of the curtains, and the defendant-to-be, Laurence Robinson, 20, drunkenly fumbling some clothes on.
There is no one else in the room.
Questioned by police, Kathleen Hurley, 16, of Riverdale Drive, Banbury, insists that Karl Windling spent the entire night with her, and no, they didn’t get much sleep which is how she knows he didn’t slip away.
In the face of blanket denials, further investigation simply isn’t worth the manpower. The police go with what they’ve got, which is Laurence Iain Robinson. The parents of Tracy Cooke insisting the prosecution should go ahead, as their daughter’s reputation as a decent, modest person is on the line and these bloody pop people think they can get away with anything. Tracy tries to speak up for Lol; nobody listens.
Jane wandered into the mews. Cassidy’s Country Kitchen was open as usual, and doing good business, although, not surprisingly, there was no sign of the proprietors.
Ledwardine Lore, however, was shut. Jane watched three obvious tourists walk up to the door and push and shake the handle and then walk away, shrugging. Business-wise, this could have been Lucy’s best day for ages. Wherever she’d gone on her moped, it was obviously terribly important. Even the lights were out behind the Closed sign. Only a pale glimmering of fairy wings in the window.
Fairies. Yes, Lucy had said, people saw fairies with gossamer wings, fairies very much like these. It was how they were traditionally perceived, and how people liked to think of them. Like very tiny angels. Which was what they were. Tiny angels. But neither fairies nor angels were, in reality, like these images. And yet they were. It was complicated, Lucy said, and yet very, very simple. Simple as blossom, as lights in an apple tree.
‘Excuse me.’ At the mouth of the mews, a plump, twenty-something woman stepped out in front of Jane. ‘I’m with BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester. I don’t suppose you know Colette Cassidy, do you?’
She looked a bit harassed. She wore a black velvet hat and had a small recorder with a microphone.
‘Sure,’ Jane said.
‘Thank God. Could I ask you a few things about her?’
‘OK.’
‘Terrific’ The microphone had a blobby thing on the end. ‘Be with you in a couple of seconds. Sorry, your name is?’
‘Jane W— Wilkins.’ It was OK talking about Colette, but she didn’t fancy any vicar’s daughter stuff.
‘OK, Jane ... So, were you at the party?’
‘Yeah.’ The microphone about six inches from her nose.
‘I gather it was fairly lively.’
‘No,’ Jane said. ‘Not really.’
‘No?’
‘It was quite dull, actually. People were just dancing and stuff. And drinking Coke.’
‘Why did they all come outside?’
‘Fresh air, I suppose.’
‘Oh. I understood there was some dancing going on out here.’
‘No, not really. People were just kind of wandering off. It was no big deal’
‘Wasn’t Colette trying to ... you know ... get them going?’
‘No, she’s not like that. She’s very quiet. I don’t think she really wanted a party. It was just kind of expected. Normally, she liked, er, reading. And going for walks. Very interested in wildlife and, er, flowers. That sort of thing.’
‘So what do you think’s happened to her?’
‘Well, knowing Colette, she probably went off somewhere with a friend to get away from it all. For cocoa or something. Stayed the night.’
‘Oh.’ The reporter switched off her machine. ‘Well. Thanks, Jane.’ Turned and walked off towards the radio car on the square. ‘Thanks a fucking bunch,’ Jane heard.
Merrily tried to remember if she’d read about it at the time, but as Hazey Jane were hardly famous, it probably hadn’t been widely reported.
‘They said I was very lucky,’ Lol said. ‘It could easily have been rape.’
‘It was rape, surely?’ Merrily said. ‘And how on earth did he persuade that girl not to give evidence, if this was her friend?’
Lol was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know. I imagine he threw her around a bit and gave her some money. Karl thinks on his feet, even when he’s stoned.’
‘So you were alone in the dock. What did you get?’
‘Probation.’ He was looking down at the table.
She could see him fighting the tears. Eighteen years ago, and the wound was still wide open and oozing. Did she believe this? If it was true, it was hardly shocking when you considered that the alleged victim was not so much younger than the alleged criminal and probably emotionally more mature.
‘I mean, I did it,’ Lol said. ‘I pleaded guilty. I had sex with an under-age girl. It was enough. In the eyes of God ... as they say’
‘Who say?’
‘My parents. Well, they’re dead now. It was what they said at the time. Well, they didn’t actually say it because neither of them ever spoke to me again. Only their minister. He spoke for them. And for God. As you priests do.’
‘What denomination was this?’
‘I can’t remember. Big pink building, with posters outside.’
Merrily smiled.
‘They’d caught religion in middle age. It just pushed everything else out. I was like a lodger by then. The old pictures of me as a kid all gone. Replaced by pictures of Jesus.’
‘Only child?’
He nodded. ‘But I’d stopped being their son in any real sense when I wouldn’t go to their church. After they threw me out, they had my room ... cleansed.’
Merrily said, ‘Lucy Devenish know about this?’
‘Some. After that, I went a bit ...’
Gigging doesn’t come easy when your last public appearance was in court. When your parents have thrown you out – spawn of Satan – and you’re living in one room over a fish and chip shop in Swindon. And your music is stuck in a time warp and you keep dwelling on Nick Drake who was afraid of playing live and so never built up a following, so his records didn’t sell and the black depression set in – the ‘Black-Eyed Dog’ at the door, like the ‘Hellhound on my Trail’ of the 1930s blues singer Robert Johnson who was so shy they had to record him facing the wall and died at twenty-six, just like Nick Drake. And you’re getting more and more confused and taking pills and you get it into your head that there’s some dark virus in the music, passed from Johnson to Drake and maybe other people in between, and now it’s in you.
The band fizzles out, as bands do. You’re living alone in one room and a toilet. One day, Dennis Clarke, the drummer, comes to see you.
Suburban Dennis is appalled at the way you’re living, the stuff you’re taking, your hair unwashed, your eyes way back in your head where it’s always night. And your current girlfriend, who picked you up in a pub, is nearly old enough to be your mother, almost certainly on the game, and she takes your money and brings you drugs. You’re ill and she’s making you worse.
The truth of it was blindingly obvious to Merrily.
‘You were afraid of young girls, weren’t you? You were probably even afraid of girls your own age in case they turned out to be younger than they said they were, right? You felt safe with this woman.’
Lol shrugged.
‘Are you still afraid of them, Lol? Were you afraid of Jane? Even though you came into the house with her last night? Went up to her room?’
Lol’s fist tightened.
It was this Dennis who realized Lol had had a breakdown. Dennis who got him into the hospital. Dennis and a mate of his who was a doctor. Voluntary, of course. Lol was a voluntary patient. No kicking and screaming, no straitjackets. On the other hand, no analysis. No therapy that you couldn’t swallow with a glass of water. But he was glad of the rest.
And time passed.
‘How long?’
‘Yeah, I know, I know. It’s very easy for people on the outside to say you should have got yourself out. But you get very ... grateful. It’s to do with people helping you. Stopping people helping you, that’s the hard bit. Saying, no, I don’t want help, I don’t need your help. I’m all right, piss off. It was like Karl – he helped me get through the court thing.’
‘How did he do that, Lol?’
Lol sighed. ‘He gave me stuff to make it so that it didn’t matter.’
‘Or so you didn’t have second thoughts about implicating him. Was that how you got started? Was it heroin?’
‘No. I don’t know what it was. Well, I do. But that doesn’t matter. It wasn’t addiction, just reliance. That’s different. I think. But the more you took, the less it mattered, sure. In hospital, they call it your medication.’
‘God.’
‘Can we skip the hospital? I did get out eventually. People helped. Dennis again. Then this sound-engineer we once worked with, Prof Levin, who was an alcoholic, nice guy, he put me in touch with Gary Kennedy, who was looking for a lyricist. So things looked up, money came in, quite a lot. Things were better.’
And then there was Alison. Alison was a friend of one of the nurses at the hospital, who’d become a friend of Lol’s and kept in touch. Alison was the first girlfriend he’d had in a long, long time who was younger than him. So Alison was progress. She also made Lol realize he wasn’t such a young person any more, and where had it gone, his youth?
Missing years. You never make up for missing years. But he’d made it through to the other side of something. Unlike Nick Drake and Robert Johnson, he had not died, although there’d been a period when the thought of it hadn’t frightened him too much.
