by Gwyn GB
Katherine knocks on the front door for a second time, trying to peer through the frosted glass.
Her mobile rings again - Margaret. She might as well answer; looks like nobody is home.
‘Hi,’ she quickly says.
‘Katherine where are you?’
‘I’m at Anne’s mother’s.’
‘Oh shit. Have you spoken to her?’
‘No, I’ve literally just knocked on the door. I’m not sure if she’s in.’
‘Kath, I told you we need to talk.’
Katherine hears some movement from inside the house. ‘Hang on, I think she’s here… Look I’ve got to go Margaret, we’ll talk later.’
‘Kath. No. Stop. Listen to me now. There’s something you don’t know, something we weren’t told at the time.’
‘What? What do you mean?’ Through the door’s frosted glass Katherine can see a dark shape beginning to appear.
‘Kath...oh God. Look I told you it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t honestly…’ The dark shape grows to person size. ‘It was her dad. It was what he was doing to her, that’s what all the rumours are about.’
‘What? Rumours? What do you mean?’ Katherine’s voice is hushed, urgent.
‘I’m pretty sure he was abusing her.’
Her sister’s words crash into her ear just as there comes the clinking of a chain being drawn back on the door.
‘Pretty sure?’ Katherine questions in shock.
‘Well, I’m sure Kath, I’m certain he was.’ Katherine can tell by the earnestness of Margaret’s voice she means it.
‘I’ve got to go,’ is all she can say and she ends the phone call, switching it off as the front door slowly opens. Shock pulses through Katherine’s body making her legs feel weak. Her mind has gone completely blank.
‘Mrs West?’ She manages to say in a voice that doesn’t seem to be her own. In front of her is what can only be described as a shrivelled woman. Her hair is thin and white and she looks incongruous in a pink paisley dress that sings of the first blush of youth, not the dying old lady within. It’s hard for Katherine to recognise this dried-up person as the animated blur of her memories, but there is just enough familiarity about her to know this is indeed Anne’s mother.
‘Yes?’ She replies.
‘Hello Mrs West, it’s Katherine, Katherine Gaudin, Anne’s friend.’ Immediately her face flickers and she nods.
‘Oh Katherine, yes, yes of course. I thought I recognised your face. You got my letter.’
‘Yes, I hope you don’t mind me just turning up like this, I should have called.’
‘Mind? No of course not dear. Of course not, I don’t mind anything nowadays. Not enough time for minding. Come in, come in. I can’t stand long, so come along inside and sit down.’
Katherine walks in almost as though she’s having an out of body experience. The shock of Margaret’s words. The shock of seeing Anne’s mother after all this time and the shock of walking into the home of her friend for the first time in over thirty years, gives the whole experience a sense of the surreal.
‘I’ve got cancer,’ Anne’s mother is saying as she leads Katherine into the stuffy sitting room. ‘Riddled with it. Doctor says it won’t be long.’ Katherine doesn’t detect any sadness in her voice, on the contrary it’s almost a tone of looking forward to the final outcome.
They walk into a room that hasn’t changed since the seventies. Gaudy sofas and tired, faded wallpaper. A fake wood burning gas fire, almost childish in appearance, takes centre stage. Anne’s mother flops into an armchair right beside it, which in turn sits directly in front of an old television. ‘Just give me a moment, will you?’ She says breathlessly and leans back closing her eyes, her whole body heaving with the effort of breathing.
Katherine sits down on a small green sofa, moving a pile of old Jersey Evening Posts to make room. The arms of the sofa are adorned with dirty white linen lace covers, yellowed with age and with the smoking Kathy remembers Elizabeth West being a slave to. Its nicotine residue coating everything in the room.
She no longer knows what to say, not now, not after what Margaret just told her. Anne’s mother sits, eyes still closed, trying to catch what little breath she has left. Kathy looks at her hands clenching the arms of the chair, like the clawed feet of a bird-of-prey, all bone. Her skin is baking paper that’s spent too long in the oven: thin, brittle, no flesh beneath and yellowed: mottled with black, purple and red bruising, lined by dry river beds of wrinkles. A thin, almost transparent skin - all that’s keeping in her insides from the rest of the world. Katherine can easily imagine behind her shoulder, watching, waiting, growing impatient, stands Death.
There’s a smell to failing flesh. Not the odour of gastric juices or the lapsing of personal hygiene, it’s something else. Something like the dusty, damp smell that clings to an old house. The musty scent of inner decay.
Sitting here Anne’s mother is simply waiting for death to come. The only sounds are the heavy ticking of the wooden mantelpiece clock, counting down her last hours, keeping time with her laboured rasping breath. Katherine imagines that if she were to step out the door a strong sea breeze would pick her up and toss her around the street, swirling, tapping her against walls like an autumn leaf to be finally crunched underfoot. Brittle, dried, life forsaken and done. Katherine wishes she could be outside in that breeze now, smelling the fresh air of the living, far away from this decay and the awkwardness of the situation.
The heavy ticking of the clock slows down all sense of time. Within minutes Katherine can tell, without looking, where the second hand is on its face. The tick, tick sounds louder towards the half past, quieter, more dainty on the hour. It marks time slowly. Elizabeth West’s wheezing breath rattles in and out of her chest. She’s not much more than a rattling bag of bones.
After what seems like forever, she opens her eyes again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘everything requires a lot of effort these days. It must be about twenty-five years since we saw you last.’
‘Yes, over thirty actually. I’ve been in the UK.’ Katherine finds herself saying on auto-pilot. The big speech she’d planned for so long has evaporated, completely annihilated by Margaret’s revelation. Why the hell hadn’t she told her before?
Mrs West is talking again, rasping out her words. ‘I’ve often wondered what Anne would have done, I expect she’d have left the island too…’ she trails off. ‘I’ve some photographs here somewhere…’ She leans forward and reaches under her chair, in a well-practiced act. She doesn’t have photographs there “somewhere” thinks Katherine, she knows exactly where they are because her hand goes straight to them.
Despite years of pitying this woman, feeling guilty for her loss, Katherine has instantly come to despise her. Did she know? She must have, maybe not everything, but she must have suspected something. Her own daughter and husband. How did she rationalise that in her mind and conscience?
Katherine is almost surprised to find herself standing up, bending over looking at a well-used photograph album. They skip through the first few pages, images coloured by age, of people in old fashioned clothes: grandparents, great grandparents. Then there is one of Anne’s parents on their wedding day. Two people smiling, happy, slightly awkward in their youth; their whole lives together ahead of them. So difficult to relate that to the wizened old woman in front of her. Does she think of the day she met her husband? Does she regret their life together? The lies. Does she ever think of what else could have been? Or does she just completely blinker herself against the truth; find her own reality? How do you come to terms with the fact your only child took her own life? Took her own life because her father, the one man she should have been able to trust more than any other in her life, was abusing her. What went through Elizabeth West’s mind at the time? Did she just convince herself it wasn’t true? Has she brushed it away under the carpet in her mind hoping it will go away? She stayed married to him after Anne’s death, nursed him on his own death bed. If she hadn’t for
given, then she certainly condoned.
Katherine looks at photographs of the dead; all of them long since turned to dust: Anne, her father, and even her mother who is closer to the dead than the living. Katherine wonders if she contemplates her own end; the slow, painful, undignified failure of her body as one by one each of her vital functions betrays the soul they sustain. The messy, embarrassing failure of bowel and stomach. The wheezing pain of breath fighting a losing battle with nature. As the body gets weaker, so the mind can start to play tricks: hallucinations, failing eyesight, the wish to see Death at your bedside table.
She wonders what will happen to these photographs There are no other children to inherit them. Perhaps a relative will come and clear the house, pick their way through the accumulations of a lifetime, tossing aside personal memories and once loved mementos in favour of those with a monetary value. The photos on the wall, in nice frames, might find their way to an auction or car boot sale where new hands will claim them. Then the faces of the dead will be removed from their resting place and replaced with others. What will happen to the photographs of Anne? Will they end up in the bin to be burnt at the island’s incinerator, scooped up from the piles of unwanted rubbish where they’d fluttered, trying to escape the flames. Ash. Just like the person they portray.
In the album there are black and white pictures of a beautiful plump little baby girl, smiling, held by a proud Mrs West. As the pictures turn to colour Katherine can see the awkwardness of teenagehood in Anne’s face. This is the girl she remembers. Here she is at a family gathering. What of her aunts and uncles, did they suspect something? Had they, like her mother, simply turned and looked the other way?
Katherine wishes she had never come. She’d hoped to find some kind of peace, to lay Anne’s ghost to rest. Instead it has stirred a thousand other ghosts and they are now swirling around her in a cloud of grey, suffocating frenzy. Anne’s father and all of those who knew her - who knew what was going on, or even suspected it might be going on. Of those still living, are they haunted by that knowledge? By their own inaction? Or did Anne, conveniently removing herself from the nightmare of her life, allow them to simply say, ‘It’s all over, there’s nothing we could have done?’ At what point does anyone say I’ve tried to do something but nobody will listen? At what point do those who suspect turn the other cheek and give up on a helpless child? At what point do they cross that line and condone the abuse by walking away from it?
Finally, Mrs West turns a page and there’s one last photograph, Anne with both her parents. Gone is the proud mother cuddling her only child. Mrs West stands arms straight down next to her daughter, looking at the camera with a forced smile. There’s no mistaking her face looks drawn, strained. Anne’s arms are folded over her body. No smile. No enthusiasm; nothing but defensiveness. She could almost be a ghost herself by the look in her eyes. Only her father is smiling. Smug, confident, in control.
‘When was this one taken?’ Katherine asks in a small voice.
‘The week before she died.’ Mrs West replies.
Katherine looks at it. Yes, she can see it now. See how the life had been drained from her friend long before she could take it herself. It’s a horrible photograph, so clearly not a picture of a happy family. Yet Mrs West is staring at it wistfully, one of her bony fingers moving across the page as though caressing it.
For the first time in her life Kathy understands Anne hadn’t taken her life because of some teenage misunderstanding about boys. She hadn’t done it because her best friend made her life unbearable, she’d done it because of what lay waiting for her at home in the darkness of her bedroom. The click-click of the opening door, soft footsteps and then the rustle of her blankets. All at once the sickness of it all overcomes Katherine and she stands up and backs away.
Anne’s mother looks up at her and at that moment they both know what isn’t being said, what wasn’t said at the time, and Katherine feels her stomach turn. Behind the failing eyes of Anne’s mother is nothing but the rot and maggots of her own inaction.
‘I think I’d better go now,’ is all Katherine manages to say as her throat tightens.
‘Yes perhaps.’ Mrs West replies, sighing and returning her gaze to the photograph. ‘I just wanted you to know that’s all. You know, that it hadn’t been your fault. All those years ago when you came here, I never said, we never said, to you that it wasn’t your fault. Perhaps it doesn’t matter to you now, but I just wanted it said.’
Katherine can find no words to reply. The years she’s carried her guilt stretch out before her.
‘You don’t mind if I don’t see you out, do you?’ Elizabeth West asks, the breath now almost gone from her. Her confession done.
‘No...’ Katherine whispers.
‘Goodbye Katherine Gaudin.’ Kathy hears just before she closes the front door.
Kathy almost runs out of the house, just as she had done over thirty years ago, bursting from it into the fresh air as though her life depends on it. She gulps in the scent of salt on the sea breeze and feels it sting her skin where tiny tears escape her eyes. “I’m so sorry Anne,” she says to herself. “I’m so, so sorry.” She remembers her friend becoming more withdrawn, her school work worsening, the smiles rarely appearing on her face. As a child in a loving home she had no comprehension of the hell her friend found herself in, why her behaviour was a symptom of something so wrong. Now, as an adult, the jigsaw pieces fall into place.
So what of her own mother, had she known? Is that why Marie would never allow her to visit Anne’s house, discouraged their friendship? How did Margaret find out? How many people must have known for it to be an open secret, rumoured and suggested? Surely their mother couldn’t have known the truth because if she did she would have told somebody, done something. Wouldn’t she?
Her personal torment of guilt is replaced now by a million other questions and fears. She is cut adrift in a stormy sea, thrashing around, looking for something to grab hold of and help her keep afloat. Now, more than at any time in her life, Katherine feels alone.
She walks down to the coast road and starts heading back towards home, oblivious to the sea wind which tries to distract her: whipping at her hair, pushing her, tugging at her coat. Amid the storm in her head she is surprised to find it’s John who comes to mind first. Solid and dependable, unmoving. She has the urge to call him, to smash down the dammed up emotion, and let loose the torrent of words stored up inside of her.
Katherine retrieves her phone from her bag and turns it back on. There is a text message from Margaret simply saying “Call me”. She hesitates for a few moments. The shock has started to make her feel shaky and so she takes the easy route, calling her sister.
‘Where are you?’ Margaret asks.
‘Walking back along the coast road. I’ve seen her.’
‘I’ll come and get you.’ Her sister says. She isn’t asking, she’s telling and Katherine doesn’t complain. She sits on a bench near to the Rice Bowl Chinese, grateful to sit down, staring blankly at the cars queuing to turn into the road to Georgetown and making no sense of the questions and possibilities in her head. She simply can’t contemplate being able to keep quiet if she knew a child was in that kind of trouble. If she found out her own mother had known…
As far as she’s concerned Mrs West will rot in Hell. Her slow painful death from cancer is what she deserves and confessing to Katherine will not earn her a place at the Pearly Gates. Anne was just sixteen when she died - hung by her own tights from the attic rafters. Katherine only found that detail out when she heard it from some other school friends. It was almost as if her own mother wanted to wipe the slate clean, pretend like Anne and everything before her suicide had never happened. Was that the actions of a woman trying to protect her own daughter from the pain of loss? Or was it the nagging of a guilty conscience?
43
March 6th 2008, Jersey
‘Are you OK?’ Margaret leans across the passenger seat and pushes the door open for Katherin
e to get in.
‘Not really. No.’ Katherine replies. The barriers of her self-control pulled down by the shock of the last hour. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Anne’s father before, why leave it to the last minute?’
Margaret is silent for a moment. ‘Sorry, I did try to at Fort Regent. There’s a lot I’ve wanted to tell you.’
Katherine looks at her sister, properly looks at her; searching her face for signs of the emotions within. She is staring straight ahead and it’s obvious she’s struggling to hold something in. Her face is like a fat woman’s corset, bulging and trembling in places as she strains to keep what lies beneath under control.
Margaret clears her throat but her voice still comes out slightly strangled as she fights to hold back tears. ‘I thought you might feel guilty about it, that you hadn’t realised. What did she say?’
‘Nothing much really, just that it wasn’t my fault.’ Katherine replies.
‘Is that all? She didn’t say anything else?’ Margaret questions.
‘No, to be honest she didn’t say much at all. Didn’t need to. Why?’
‘I…’ Margaret hesitates, ‘Let’s just get home, I can’t talk while I’m driving.’ She pulls herself together.
Katherine reaches for her seat belt and straps herself in as they pull out into the traffic. This emotional response from her sister has taken her by surprise. She’d been expecting Margaret to be the comforter, after all it is her who’s just had the shock, just been to face her dead friend’s mother - but she says nothing. Her sister is clearly upset and instead Katherine waits and dreads what further revelations might lay in store. Is it their mother? Does Margaret know something? A thousand questions fly around her head.
They drive back to their childhood home. The house in which they were both born, raised and had their wedding receptions. Neither of them say a word for the rest of the journey, each leaking enough emotion into the atmosphere of the car for it to be unnecessary to speak.
