The Crossing

by Christina James

  More days yawned before he came back. He picked up the bottle from the floor, where it had lain many hours in the dirt and urine, and offered it to me. Obediently, I drank it. It was cold and fetid and made me vomit immediately. He told me that I disgusted him, abandoned me to the darkness again.

  He returned sooner than I expected, switching on the light immediately. He was panicking about something. I knew the symptoms too well, could tell from his mannerisms, from his frenetic tone. What came next was a shock.

  He undid the halter, shoving my head free. The raw skin on my neck bled as he drew the leather across it, but I barely noticed. I was jubilant. I was certain he was going to release me.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “If you let me go, I promise never to say a word.”

  He wasn’t wearing the balaclava. He cocked his head to one side, his eyes bright and amoral as a bird’s.

  “Let you go?” he said. “But I love you. You are mine. This is where you belong. I have to keep you safe.”

  He hadn’t unbound my hands. He left them tied behind my back, shoving me to one side while he fiddled with something on the wall. A panel in the wall slid open, allowing me to see the thickness of the masonry. The rough edge of stone at the opening must have been fifteen inches wide.

  He pushed me through it and followed, fiddling with the wall on the other side. The panel slid back, ponderous but unstoppable. There was a dim light set up high, almost touching the ceiling. Shadowily, it revealed a steep staircase that seemed to descend into the ground forever.

  “Walk down the stairs.”

  I was dehydrated and weak from lack of food and sleep. It was hard to keep my balance with my hands tied behind my back.

  “Move!”

  I stumbled down the stairs as fast as I could. I tripped when I’d nearly reached the bottom and fell headlong, hitting my head on the ground.

  “Get up!”

  Dazed, I raised myself and pushed up on to my feet from a kneeling position. There was a door set in the wall next the staircase. The Lover brushed past me and tapped on a metal panel.

  Another huge door swung open. Light came pouring from the room beyond. He turned to me. He was smiling. His eyes were moist with some sentiment I couldn’t read. I expected him to grab me again, hurl me into the room with a force made unnecessary by the fact that I could barely stand. Instead, he cut the ties and softly reached for one of my hands, which he held as he led me into the room like a husband introducing a bride to her new home.

  The space beyond the door was large and sparsely but adequately furnished as a sitting room. There was a two-seater sofa and two wood-framed easy chairs, with a coffee table wedged between them. At the far end it narrowed into a passage, from which I could see other doors leading off. To the right of where I stood there was a small kitchenette, separated from the main room by a sort of breakfast bar. The place resembled a conventional flat, except for certain details: the ceiling was so low that I could barely stand upright and there were no windows. It was a prison.

  Its significance burst upon me within seconds. I turned to him in panic. He was still clutching my hand. I tried to snatch it away, but he tightened his grip. I couldn’t stop my face twisting with fear.

  “Let me go!” I said. “Please let me go! I’ll do whatever you ask. Please don’t leave me here.”

  His anger was immediate. He hit me across the face again.

  “Don’t you like it?” he said. “Ungrateful bitch! Do you know how long it’s taken me to build this for you? How much money I’ve spent to make it nice for you?”

  “It’s . . . lovely. But I can’t stay here. Please, I can’t stay here. I need to be above ground. I need fresh air.” I could hear myself gibbering.

  He was gentle again.

  “You just need to get used to it. You haven’t seen it properly yet. Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  He was nervous in those early days; his own fear made him volatile. I could smell it on him when he came. I thought they might be looking for me – or they might not. Either way, it was hopeless. No-one would find me here and I knew he’d kill me if I tried to escape and he caught me. They’d give up the search quite soon, too. I was an alien, a foreign national, in the country legally, but still part of the moving flotsam and jetsam of temporary workers. No roots. No friends. No privilege. No proper status.

  What I most wanted, what above all I needed to keep my sanity, was not to be incarcerated in darkness. He’d tethered me like a beast again and the third time he returned he lifted my skirt and mounted me from behind as if I was an animal. I tried to resist him but he yanked the halter. I thought he’d abandon me to the darkness again or break my neck. He was yanking hard as he fucked me. I tried to think of the times when we’d been real lovers, when he’d been tender and I’d wanted him, had loved him. Even then, he’d sometimes frightened me. The sex had been gentle and violent by turns. He’d seemed sometimes to love me, to love our love, and sometimes to be disgusted by it.

  Now I was disgusted by the Lover and his sweaty probing body, but even more by the dirtiness that he made me suffer. He subjected me to every kind of squalor. When finally he unloosed the halter, I’d been tethered for a month, unable to wash, unable to cleanse myself of the detritus from his couplings, unable to eat or drink without his help, rough and sparse as it was, obliged to urinate and defecate where I stood. I had been trapped like a beast in a stall.

  He had humiliated me to the point of non-endurance: or so I persuaded him. There was still left in me a spark, a small glimmer of humanity, a small vestige of the same defiance that I’d summoned to stand up to my stepfather. The Lover feared that more shame would kill me. He thought he’d broken me in and so he let me go. Not to return to the world outside, no. I knew that could never happen now. I might plead and cajole and promise: in fact, I did none of these things, knowing that he would never believe that I would keep silent.

  And so the bargaining began. When he allowed me the freedom of my prison his foresight astonished me. He’d thought of everything. There was a shower and a toilet, a bed and a sitting area, a stove and cooking utensils. There was a store-cupboard containing dry goods and a small fridge, which was empty when first he showed it to me (he’d fed me on bread while I was tethered). He promised to fill it for me ‘if you are good’. There was a suitcase containing my clothes and the other few possessions I’d brought to England. I almost laughed at his frugality. I suppose he had to get rid of this stuff somehow; and if he hadn’t brought it here, it would have gone to waste, and he’d have had to buy me new things. Yet even though I knew he had no plans to release me, the thought that he’d worked out a way of keeping me alive here day after day, month after month, year after year until the years turned into decades, still shocked me to the core. It was terrible to know that I might live out my life in this place until it ended.

  Being good, being nice. That was what he continually exhorted, encouraged, pleaded for, demanded, shouted for, lashed out at me for, hurt me and left me in the dark for days for. Only he knew the rules for being good and nice. It was my duty to guess them – my duty to guess them, his right to have me guess. And so I bargained.

  His headaches were bad. I’d massage his head. Someone had insulted him. I’d listen to the rigmarole, agree with him. This was risky: in the course of his narrative, he might see his own fault, take the other’s side, smack me with the flat of his hand for being slow to see it myself. But of course I could not criticise. He wanted sex, I’d provide it. I’d try to make it reciprocal, encourage him to love me as well as using me. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes I was his angel and his darling. Sometimes I was a fucking whore, to be used and punished as he pleased. The sex was violent then. And there was violence with no sex, visits when he just wanted to hurt me. He’d strike me across the face until it was swollen with bruises, make me lie on the floor so that he
could stamp on my hands or knee me in the back. Worse were the times when he tried to destroy me by spitting his words of contempt, his handsome face hideously twisted, to make me despise myself, make me hate everything about me. He’d leave me then, often for several days. He hoped that I was writhing in the misery of self-loathing. His ultimate punishment was always the darkness.

  Then he’d come back, perhaps with fresh food or books and, finally, the television. Then he’d be calmer, say that I wouldn’t be imprisoned forever, that it was just a halfway house until he could trust me to be with him, rely on me not to run away, consent to be his wife.

  The wife business was a mirage right from the start. I’d refused to be his wife when I was free and he’d said this had insulted him so deeply he wouldn’t ask again. Not only did he not ask, but after some years I realised he’d probably married since he’d incarcerated me. I first suspected when his visits began to follow a more regular pattern. Then after the television came I knew the time and I saw that his visits were mostly during the day and rarely coincided with conventional meal-times. And once I caught a glimpse of a wedding ring, before he followed my gaze and hid his hand. He left precipitately.

  I’ve said that my life is run as a bargain. It doesn’t sound as if the deal works well for me, I know. But within my limits, I succeed. He hasn’t withheld food for many months. He hasn’t left us in darkness for even longer. He rarely beats Ariadne. When he beats me, at my own request he takes me into the bedroom so that although she can hear, she can’t see what he is doing. We never have sex in front of her: I have insisted on that. And Ariadne and I are both still alive.

  They may sound like small victories. Viewed by a free person, I suppose they are. But we are the ultimate captives. And our gaoler is a madman.

  Chapter Nineteen

  TIM WAS STANDING in his office with his back to the door, gazing abstractedly out of the window as he tried to talk on the telephone to Bob Grummett without losing his temper.

  “I know you can’t speak for Kayleigh, Mr Grummett,” he said in a tensely patient voice, “but what I’m asking is when is it likely that I can see you both together? I’m going to visit your wife this morning. Dr Butler has okayed it. And I’d like to talk to you and your daughter before I return to Spalding, if possible. I’m also going to visit the site of the accident. Is Kayleigh still staying with Mr and Mrs Cushing?”

  He waited in silence for what seemed like several minutes while Bob Grummett spun a long and convoluted story about the two girls not getting on. Exasperatingly, the story meandered to no conclusion, nor in the process of listening to it did Tim receive an answer to his question.

  “Mr Grummett, could you tell me quite simply in words of one syllable at what time Kayleigh will be leaving work today, where she is going afterwards and whether you will yourself be available when she gets there? If I can’t see you both then, my only alternative is to interview her while she’s at work and ask you to accompany me.”

  “She won’t like that!” The words leapt out of the phone so loud that Tim had to hold it away from his ear.

  “What she likes is rather beside the point!” He shouted back, before remembering that if he didn’t treat Kayleigh with kid gloves she or her father might try to claim that the police had not behaved with appropriate compassion.

  Juliet entered the room at that moment and grimaced at Tim. He acknowledged her wry reproach.

  “All right,” he mouthed. “I’ll try to be nice to him.” He put the phone on ‘speak’.

  “What was that clicking noise?” Bob Grummett’s disembodied voice was suspicious.

  “DC Armstrong has just come into the room. She’ll be accompanying me when I come to see you, so it’s best that she hears what we’re talking about now. Otherwise I’ll only have to repeat it to her later.”

  “Is she the girl who came to the hospital with you last time?”

  “I’m not sure that DC Armstrong would describe herself as a ‘girl’.”

  “She seemed all right to me,” said Bob Grummett reflectively. “She coming with you when you see Rube?”

  “That is my intention,” said Tim, realising too late that he sounded pompous. Juliet was looking amused – whether the cause was Bob Grummett or Tim himself, it was hard to tell.

  “Rube’ll probably get on better with her. Kayleigh, too. Not too keen on uniforms, you see. That female copper was a bit rough on her.”

  “If you mean . . .”

  Juliet put her hand on Tim’s arm. He let the sentence hang in mid-air for a few seconds and started again.

  “Speaking of Kayleigh,” he said, bracing himself once more, “can we try to establish a time at which to speak to you together today?”

  “Won’t it do when we’re at the hospital?”

  “It would ‘do’ fine, but Kayleigh’ll be at work, won’t she?”

  “Not today, no. She’ll be with her Mam. Got herself signed off sick with worry,” said Bob Grummett proudly.

  Tim passed his hand across his eyes, a ‘heaven give me strength’ look etched into his face.

  Juliet moved further towards the phone.

  “That’s perfect, Mr Grummett,” she said. “Thank you very much indeed. I’m sure the hospital will arrange somewhere quiet for us to talk with you and Kayleigh once we’ve seen Mrs Grummett – or we can find a space in the cafeteria. Shall we meet there in about an hour? Will Kayleigh be there then?”

  “She’s there now, I shouldn’t wonder. Should I bring Mr Dixon with me?”

  “Who’s Mr Dixon?”

  “My sollicingtor. Mr Yates said I should get one.”

  Tim groaned.

  “That’s up to you, Mr Grummett,” said Juliet briskly. “We only want to ask you a few questions, but if you would feel more comfortable with Mr Dixon there, by all means ask him to attend. I’d advise that he only comes to the meeting with you and Kayleigh, though, and not to the ward. Otherwise, Mrs Grummett might be alarmed.”

  “You’re right.” Bob Grummett pondered for a long minute. “Perhaps best leave him out of it for now,” he concluded. “He can always come along later.”

  “We’ll see you at 11.30, then,” said Juliet. “At the hospital.”

  “Aye.” There came the sound of a receiver being noisily set down.

  “Heaven give me strength!” Tim and Juliet chorused together, her voice a descant of mimicry. She burst out laughing. Tim was cross.

  “It’s all right for you,” he said. “I’d been trying to get sense out of him for at least a quarter of an hour before you came in.”

  “And probably still would be doing, if I hadn’t.”

  “That’s true. How did you manage to cut through all his crap?”

  “I didn’t,” said Juliet. “I just let him know that I was on his side.”

  “Okay, I admit it. He’s an old fool and I haven’t got the patience to deal with it. Is he, though?”

  “Is he what?”

  “Is he an old fool, or is he actually being quite devious?”

  “Are the two things mutually exclusive?”

  “I’d have thought so, usually.”

  “Usually, perhaps, but I’d suggest not in his case. I think he’s trying to be cagey and probably congratulates himself that he’s keeping you guessing. But, as you’ve pointed out, he wasn’t exactly at the front of the queue when the brains were being handed out. The question isn’t whether he’s trying to deceive you, though, it’s why. Unless he’s what local folk call ‘ornery’ – in which case he’s just winding you up for the hell of it – he can have no good reason for being so obstructive all the time. Which suggests that he’s hiding something.”

  “Agreed,” said Tim. “Ask him what it is, will you, since you’re such a lovely ‘girl’? It’ll save us a lot of time.”

  This time they were both laughing.

&n
bsp; “Come on,” said Tim. “Time for a coffee before we brave the Grummetts.”

  Juliet set off for the small office kitchen with Tim in her wake. She seemed to be enjoying life more than at any point since he’d known her, certainly since she’d recovered from the previous year’s illness. He wondered if there was a reason for it.

  Chapter Twenty

  RUBY GRUMMETT WAS sitting up in bed, looking sallow and fractious. Her black boot-button eyes stared at the wall opposite, suffused with a kind of vacant hostility. She was wearing a high-necked nightdress with a lace yoke and long sleeves, made from a faded yellow fleecy material which had seen better days and did not flatter her complexion. No bare skin was visible except her face, about one inch of neck below her double chin and her hands, which lay inert on top of the sheets. Her fingers were swollen like sausages; her wedding ring was cutting cruelly into the flesh.

  When Tim and Juliet entered the ward, her entire family was gathered round her bed. Bob sat nearest her, having wedged his chair between her locker and the top end of the bed, his face filled with concern. Kayleigh occupied a chair next to him. She was examining the contents of her handbag. Philippa was seated on the opposite side of the bed, her face invisible to the two police officers.

  Ruby was not as agitated as she had been on the occasion of their previous visit, but she was obviously preoccupied with something. Her muttered words, though not inaudible, were incomprehensible. Kayleigh raised her head to take a long look at her mother and giggled inconsequentially. Philippa threw her sister a glance of utter contempt before bowing her head to scrutinise her fingernails. Bob stretched out his hand to take one of Ruby’s. She didn’t push him away, but she seemed not to relish the gesture, either. They both raised their heads as they became aware of Tim and Juliet, their hands fixed in an awkward clasp above the bedclothes.