The Godsend

by Bernard Taylor

  At last, after twenty-five minutes, six red lights, and a near-thing with a U-turning taxi, we got there.

  Less than a hundred yards from the flats I saw an empty parking-­space; I drove in, switched off and jumped out and, with Kate hurrying, just yards behind me, ran along the street. Turning the corner I looked up towards our flat. And relief poured over me, making me cry out into the air.

  There, high above at the living-room window, Lucy was looking down to the street.

  Thank God! Thank God!

  She saw me, and a look of joy came over her face. I slowed, smiled, waved to her, and saw her urgently wave back. I was just about to hurry on again when I saw that she was starting to open the window. A man coming towards us looked at me in surprise as I shouted up:

  “NO! NO! Don’t open the window! Lucy, don’t!”

  Perhaps she didn’t hear me; perhaps she was just too relieved to see us there, but she did open the window, wide, looking down at Kate and me, and saying something which I couldn’t hear, gesticulating wildly.

  “Go back inside!” I yelled.

  It looked to me then as if she started to withdraw into the room—for a moment she was gone from my sight. But it was only for a moment. She reappeared almost immediately, her head turned away as if seeing something—or someone—just behind her. For another split-second she remained there, and then, her white face frozen in a mask of fear, she turned in full view again. She seemed to be leaning out—out—lower, lower still, fingers scrabbling on the window-frame. “NO!” I cried, “NO!” and saw her mouth open wide as she screamed in terror.

  For one brief instant I thought I glimpsed the top of a corn-­coloured head. Then the next instant her hands had lost their frantic hold and she was falling out, over the sill, plunging downward into space.

  The seconds that followed straight afterwards are blurred in my memory. There was her scream, the sound of the impact on the concrete and then Kate’s cry as she ran forward. I hear other voices, see other faces as they gather quickly around, all filling the afternoon with their noises of horror. Kate throws herself down—in the rain and the blood—across Lucy’s body, as if to protect her from further hurt—her mouth opening like a puppet’s in dry, silent screams. I can feel my heart beat faster, faster as I turn away and run up the stairs to the third floor.

  The blur is gone then; from that moment everything remains clear.

  The door to the flat is unlocked. The key is there on the shelf, right next to the clock—where it always is. Beside the telephone with its useless, dangling flex, stands Bonnie—looking at me with wide, innocent eyes. The hate inside me is like an explosion.

  I move forward, and speak.

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  I remember how my hands reached out, taking her by the throat, pressing—such a little neck; such a little girl; and it should have been so easy. But she fought—God, how she fought me!—with the strength of someone twice her size.

  With a power and agility that took me completely by surprise, she swung in, kicking at me, her little Mickey Mouse shoes viciously­ lashing out at my crotch. I dodged the first blow and her foot only grazed my hip, but her next aim was deadly and I doubled-up, gasping, falling to the floor. Yet I held on, still, dragging her with me. And I wasn’t going to let go until she was dead.

  She struggled like a wild thing, something not human; her limbs were everywhere, and she writhed and twisted in my grasp as slippery as a reptile. Digging her finger-nails deep into my flesh she wrenched her head away and brought her teeth down hard on my right hand, ferociously biting, biting, till I could feel the bone giving way. Pain was shooting all up my arm, and I cried out and swung my left fist at her temple with all the strength I could find. She reeled back, flat, from the blow, and I scrambled forward and threw the weight of my body heavily on top of her, pinning her there, taking her by the throat again and squeezing, squeezing . . .

  And then other hands were there, clutching at me, pulling at my arms, dragging me away. I see the look on Mr. Taverner’s face as he looms above me—but hazy, through the cloud of pain and madness that is all around. I can see too the shape of Mrs. Taverner as she stoops before me. And I can see Bonnie, quite limp, as she is lifted up, the golden curls bouncing about her still face. There are livid marks on her neck, and the skin all around her mouth is smeared with my blood.

  Bonnie didn’t die.

  She was stronger even than I thought.

  At this moment she is in the care of the local authorities. I don’t know where. I don’t want to know. I don’t care any more. The fact that she still lives seems of little importance to me now.

  When Kate leaves in the next few minutes I shall be totally alone. Right now she sits, staring into space, picking idly at the fingers of a cotton glove. Her eyes look vacant, the pupils dilated. She seems, nowadays, to be under a permanent state of sedation—how much of it comes from within, and how much of it comes from the doctor’s prescription, I don’t know. But some means of withdrawal were necessary for her, I know; she couldn’t possibly go on as she was; I recall so vividly how she threw herself on Lucy’s coffin at the funeral, and had to be dragged back, forcibly.

  She blames me for Lucy’s death, I think, in spite of what her knowledge and her intelligence tell her. In the police station that day she came at me in such a fury of despair, slicing my cheek with the stone in her ring. The ring that I gave her. I shall keep the scar. It will go with the ones that Bonnie gave me.

  Now she gets up, paces. I watch her for a moment and then turn away to follow her progress in the mirror. She doesn’t look at me at all. She just wanders back and forth from the window to the door, waiting, totally out of reach a few feet away.

  My eyes flick to my own reflection for a second or two, and I’m suddenly aware—like seeing an old friend after a passage of time—of the passing years, the change in me. I would never go grey, you told me once—Do you remember? Oh, Kate you were wrong about so many things.

  I move round in my chair, away from my image, and look at her suitcases all packed and standing by the hall door. She will go to a cousin in the North—someone she hardly knows, really. I feel useless.

  “Shall I take your suitcases downstairs, ready for the taxi—?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, no, the driver will come and collect them. “You mustn’t go to any trouble,” she says dully.

  “It’s no trouble . . .” How formal I sound. We’re like strangers.

  She sits again, waits, and I wait with her. I trace the bite-marks on my hand, little dark-red semi-circles.

  The first two fingers of my right hand have only intermittent searing pain in the way of sensation now. The surgeon told me they’ll never be any better and that I must be prepared for them to be amputated. Well, they’re no good to me as they are. And they’re ugly to look at;—and uglier still for being so completely useless. It’ll probably be better when they’re gone—I’ve got to get used to working without them, and at the moment they’re just in the way. I have to admire the surgeon’s work, though; the bones were so badly crushed and it’s a wonder he was able to save them this far. He is a very thorough man—but no match for Bonnie.

  Kate hasn’t mentioned Bonnie. She won’t speak of her. Though she has accepted the truth about her—I think—as far as she is able to accept the truth about anything. And that’s something else she can’t forgive me for; the fact that I made her face the horror—leaving her with nothing.

  And it’s true—she has nothing. Nothing at all. You can see it in her face. She is lost, destitute, bereft of everything that gave meaning to her life. Once she had everything. We had everything.

  I will go to her. Now. Perhaps there’s still a chance for us. Catastrophe brings other people together—why should we two be separated by it?

  “Kate . . .”

  I wait but she doesn’t answer. She twists the glove in her hand.

  “Kate . . .”

  I reach out; my left hand br
ushes her shoulder. She flinches, moves away a fraction of an inch, almost imperceptible, but enough.

  “Don’t,” she says. Then shakes her head. “I’m sorry . . .”

  No chance. No chance at all, and I retreat back into my own emptiness.

  And now the taxi-driver is here, insistently ringing the doorbell. There is no more time for talk. She gets to her feet, picks up her bag.

  I move forward. “Shall I answer it—?” It’ll be the last thing I can do for her. She nods, then turns away, avoiding my eyes. She knows as well as I do that this is the last ending. She looks in the mirror, lifting nervous hands to twitch at her hair. I go on into the hall and open the door.

  Bonnie stands there.

  I catch her in the act of stretching up, on her toes, reaching to press again at the bell-button. She stops, looks up at me, drops her hand. From behind me I hear Kate’s gasp.

  “Bonnie . . . !”

  Bonnie stands looking past me at Kate. I stand between them, glancing from one to the other.

  “. . . Mummy . . . ?”

  There is an anxious, pleading note in Bonnie’s voice. Her eyes glisten with tears and her lip quivers. On her throat I can see the bruises left by my hands. She wears a dress I haven’t seen before. How did she get here? Did she come here alone? How?

  Kate is staring, incredulous. She begins to weep, sinking to her knees, her bag falling from trembling fingers. Tears streaming down her cheeks she lifts her thin arms, her hands reaching out. She speaks again, the word full of the sound of wonder.

  “Bonnie . . .”

  “Mummy . . .” Bonnie’s voice again, tiny, hardly there, and then Kate’s—sounding as if it is torn from her.

  “Oh, my baby . . . ! My baby . . . ! Come to me . . .”

  Bonnie runs past me and throws herself into the waiting arms. Kate rises, turning from me, holding Bonnie tight against her, Bonnie clinging as if she’ll never let go. She looks at me over Kate’s shoulder. Such big, blue eyes. I can feel the hair at the nape of my neck rising . . .

  She gives me a little smile.

  Is it of triumph? Is it happiness?

  Maybe it’s both.

  I shall never know.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bernard Taylor was born in Swindon, Wiltshire, and now lives in London. Following active service in Egypt in the Royal Air Force, he studied Fine Arts in Swindon, then at Chelsea School of Art and Birmingham University. On graduation he worked as a teacher, painter and book illustrator before going as a teacher to the United States. While there, he took up acting and writing and continued with both after his return to England. He has published ten novels under his own name, including The Godsend (1976), which was adapted for a major film, and Sweetheart, Sweetheart (1977), which Charles L. Grant has hailed as one of the finest ghost stories ever written. He has also written novels under the pseudonym Jess Foley, as well as several works of nonfiction. He has won awards for his true crime writing and also for his work as a playwright. It was during his year as resident playwright at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch that he wrote The Godsend. There Must Be Evil, his latest true crime study, is to be published in England in September.