Death of a She Devil

by Fay Weldon

  The wind got up. Black clouds swirled outside the window. The clouds turned to rain, concentrated tiny drops that pattered so hard against each pane and seemed to explode into a yet tinier spray as they landed. There was a rumble of thunder. Ms Bradshap started to scream and point and jabber. She was on her feet.

  ‘Do you see it? The face, the face at the window. Enormous! Staring in! See there, the running nose all squashed up? The two eyes. It’s her, it’s her, the ghost of Mary Fisher!’

  Dr Simmins was the first to rise to her feet and try to calm the shuddering, screeching Flora Bradshap. She accomplished this with a hard sudden slap to her left cheek. Ms Bradshap quietened a bit and sat down, but kept pointing and gibbering.

  ‘Wish fulfilment, Ms Bradshap,’ Dr Simmins said. ‘You saw what you wanted to see. The amount of sheer female hysteria in this place is beyond belief!’ But some observers did think they saw what Ms Bradshap said she saw, a giant misty female face pressed against the window. Then there was a sudden flash of lightning and a bang, and with that the rain stopped and the window pane was clear, other than for a few quite innocent leftover drops.

  ‘Will someone close the curtains?’ said Dr Simmins, and Ms Laura hobbled to do it.

  ‘Take Ms Bradshap to her room and give her a nice cup of herbal tea,’ said the good doctor to Valerie, and Valerie rose and obliged. She was nippier on her feet than the others. The She Devil left the room to discover the source of the bang – she was right to be prudent – lightning had avoided the conductors as ever and struck the walkway, where it had started a small fire. She then had to call Security to make sure it was properly extinguished. By the time she got back to 3CC/1 a vote had been taken and Valerie had been appointed as a trustee, unanimously.

  Well, so be it. Her more immediate worry was the weather. Valerie had said the low front was passing and a warmer front moving in, but ‘warmer’ could still drop below freezing, and the equinox tide was to be at a record height. The She Devil could see that one way or another the Widdershins Walk might be the death of her. Valerie’s promise of a steady helping hand over wet and slippery rocks could not be taken at face value; the helping hand could so easily turn murderous. Just a little push and over she’d topple.

  If only Bobbo would die, she could be overcome with grief and stay in her room to mourn.

  66

  O Grave, Where Is Thy Victory?

  Still he won’t die.

  Tyler would have very much liked to leave while the old man slept, but had to wait until Samantha finished her shift, and he could slip out with her unnoticed. She’d brought a couple of tuna sandwiches up from the village shop and they ate them while they waited for Bobbo to wake, if he ever did. They weren’t very nice sandwiches but at least the bread was white. The canteen only served brown, with, as Samantha put it, wood chips in it. The Lantern Room was vast and gloomy, and though lined with great windows pointing north, south, east and west, sunlight seemed reluctant to enter. Tyler, texting away to Hermione, waiting for Bobbo to wake, had to ask Samantha to turn on the light.

  ‘It’s already on,’ she said, and so it was. The great room was sulking, she told him. Once the whole countryside had been flooded with light from its lantern; now, deprived of its purpose, it was in a permanent bad mood. Even at midday in bright weather it stayed dark. And the sky was beginning to cloud over.

  ‘You are weird, Sam,’ said Tyler, admiringly.

  ‘So would you be,’ said Samantha, ‘stuck away all day like this with him and Mary Fisher. She’s the ghost. I’ve never seen her but she’s all around. I used to be frightened but I feel quite safe now, and she’s glad I look after Bobbo. When Bobbo goes I expect she’ll go with him, though he is quite difficult. I hope she does. She loved him. It’s ever such a romantic story.’

  They whispered. Their voices echoed. There was very little furniture in the cavernous room. There was the high narrow hospital bed in the corner where Bobbo spent his life, the armchair in which he sat, the chair for an occasional visitor, the table where Dr Simmins put out her medications, syringes, pills, an autoclave, a cupboard or two, the little kitchen with its microwave and kettle. In a far corner, incongruously, was a wide white velvet antique sofa.

  ‘That’s the sofa where they were in the act of love when your grandmother burst in on them. I don’t know why someone doesn’t throw it out. I reckon it’s why Mary Fisher hangs around, like a moth to a flame, keeps trying to get in. I do tend to stay this side of the room.’

  Tyler shuddered and the old man woke. They went together to the bed.

  ‘You still here, then? Got one last coffin-stick for a dying man?’

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘That figures.’

  Nurse Samantha brought him water and took his blood pressure.

  ‘Completely normal,’ she said. ‘You are a one, Mr Patchett. You quite frightened us all.’ She put her cool young finger against his neck. He grabbed for it, but she snatched it away in time.

  ‘Cunt, cunt, cunt,’ Bobbo said, at the rejection, and began to feel better. He turned his attention back to the young man. He’d soon get rid of him.

  ‘You a vegan?’

  ‘I was for a time, sir. Not any more.’

  ‘Don’t “sir” me. I’ve got no money to leave you, if that’s what you’re here for. Your Grandma stole it from me, malicious bitch. It’s in a bank in Switzerland.’

  ‘She did?’ People didn’t tell lies when they were dying, surely. Then his mother was right: the She Devil was truly evil. If dying was what the old man was doing. He seemed to have woken up with a new lease of life. His eyes glittered; he was even enjoying himself. Samantha tenderly dabbed his lips with a damp cloth. Bobbo, instead of grabbing, pushed her away so that the bowl spilled.

  ‘Clumsy cow. See what I have to put up with? But once your legs go, what’s a man to do? Not that she isn’t a hot little cunt.’

  ‘Don’t try and offend me, old man,’ said Nurse Samantha, briskly. ‘It won’t work.’

  Bobbo ignored her. He had a new audience.

  ‘Bare-faced robbery, wrongful imprisonment, that’s your Grandma, slimy piece of shit. Turd in the water supply. Always was. All over a bit of nooky. What about you? Not a vegan? Not a poofter, you say, not dropping anchor down Pooh Corner? Just a transvestite.’

  Tyler raised helpless eyes to heaven. The man should be locked up. Age was no excuse.

  ‘Not that I was averse to a bit of skirt swishing myself sometimes. Saves time. Au naturel. Ask any Scotsman in his kilt. But take my advice, boy, cut off the curls. That’s what I did. Chip off the old block. Come closer.’

  Tyler leaned nearer, though reluctantly. Supposing old age was catching? Bobbo’s eyes glittered through rheumy slots of useless skin.

  ‘Careful,’ said Nurse Samantha. ‘He’s going to fart.’

  He did, long and horribly.

  ‘Did he do that on purpose?’ Tyler asked. This was just more terrible than anything he had imagined.

  Samantha moved across to the wide east window and undid the ratchet which kept it locked. She opened it, as she was under instruction not to do in case the old man plunged to his death. So strong and chilly a wind blew in that she closed it again almost at once, but it was enough to clear the air of noxious vapours.

  ‘Of course it was on purpose,’ said Samantha. ‘It’s one of his best defence mechanisms. What else would you do if you were him? “Inappropriate sexual and excretory behaviour and speech is a function of generalised geriatric psychiatric disorder and a symptom of increasing dementia” is what my Grade 3 notes say. But I think it’s just to remind others that you’re alive.’

  Another sudden fit of energy possessed the old man; he lifted his head from the pillow. He sat up, took Tyler’s wrist and clung to it. Though Tyler did what he could to remove the claw fingers, they were too strong and he was nervous of snapping them. The wind had become noisy and sporadic rain spattered on the windows. Was the white sofa sliding gently
across the floor or was the whole High Tower slipping to one side? No, an optical illusion. His own head was to one side; that was what happened when you nearly fainted. Tyler wanted just to get home before something really bad happened. But what home? Nicci and Matilda? Hermione? It was bad, bad here and there was nowhere to go. Perhaps Mrs Easton would take him in? He should never have come. And still he couldn’t take away his hand from the dreadful grip.

  ‘And you get away from us, bitch,’ Bobbo cried. ‘Cunt, cunt, cunt!’ He was staring at the great east window, where a configuration of clouds had formed that looked for all the world like an enormous face.

  ‘It’s her,’ Samantha cried out. ‘It’s her, Mary Fisher.’

  Tyler thought: ‘No, I’m imagining this,’ and even as he thought it the clouds re-formed and the vision was lost. The claws on his wrist tightened.

  ‘Well, at least she’s gone,’ said Samantha, calmly, ‘and I’m glad I actually saw her. But I don’t like the look of him at all. He’s too lively. It’s like my mother when she was about to pop. I’m the eldest of six, you know. We were Catholics. She’d run round like a mad thing cleaning the house. Perhaps he really is pegging out, poor soul. The last dregs of energy, firing up just before they go out for good. Death like birth is a wonderful thing. Shall I video his last breath, Tyler? It might go viral.’

  Tyler said he really thought no, it would be disrespectful. This was his grandfather, after all. But shouldn’t she fetch somebody? Samantha said no, they’d only find Tyler there and she’d be in trouble. Tyler realised she was taking a selfie with Bobbo and trying to fit in his own captive wrist as well. He remembered Samantha had been the first in the class to go on Facebook back in 2009. She had always assumed virtue lay in sharing.

  Outside the window storm clouds collided, thunder rolled. The tempest had finally broken. Samantha counted aloud for the lightning, ‘One, two, three,’ and there it was. The sky lit up for a split second and sudden wind drove heavy rain across the window. All the wrinkles and harshness seemed to drain from Bobbo’s face. He looked translucent, young again. Tyler suddenly saw a resemblance to himself. The lips smiled briefly, in some inward communion. The bony fingers on Tyler’s wrist relaxed their grip. Old Bobbo’s head fell back onto its pillow. His eyes had stopped seeing, though they remained open.

  His breath had stopped coming.

  67

  We Are The Ghosts Of Mary Fisher

  And here we are pattering on the window pane, virtue-signalling.

  We are not one, we are legion. We are the thousand, thousand souls in every drop of rain: we are the dead who cannot die, for here we still are, common elements, two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. Stardust. We are the suddenly dead: the soldier dying on the battlefield, the starving mother with her child, the family that the un-manned drone destroyed. All, all on the wrong side of history. But all, all, the rich, the poor, the good, the bad, here today, gone tomorrow.

  From stardust we came, to dust we will return, with our hates and rages, loves, longings and disappointments. There goes our Bobbo in the rain: no virtue-signalling for him! At least he never pretended to be good. Soon the She Devil will join him. What can we say of her? Well, it makes no difference now. History marches on, good side, bad side. Love, love, love, even the She Devil moans (if it wasn’t for life how good I would be!) me too, all I ever needed was love. And now all this.

  We are the ghosts of Mary Fisher. We are without physical form but show ourselves in the single enormous face pressed against the dripping window pane, spying, a flattened nose, a weepy eye, horrid, dimly discerned through salt spray and mist, sea from the ocean, rain from the sky. Hydrogen and oxygen, multi-faceted. Me, me, she moans, what about me? Where is the beauty now, she wails? Where the love? One day perhaps she too can be quiet, when the great red giant sun of the future implodes.

  In the meantime we are the ghosts of Mary Fisher. We drench you with rain, batter you about the head as hail, muffle you with snow. You take no notice – you have to live.

  ‘Particularly nasty weather,’ you say, putting up your bright umbrellas. ‘Tickle your arse with a feather!’ Raining cats and dogs, comme une vache qui pisse. Is that a flood I see before me? Good God, the railway track has been washed away; the nuclear power station has exploded. Water got into the works. The cooling ponds were not enough, the tsunami barriers imperfect.

  We are the ghosts. Do shut up, Mary Fisher, pressing your stubby nose against the window pane; you have no right to your love, love, love is all you need. You never did. It never worked for you.

  68

  The End Of Bobbo

  But no such luck?

  Tyler felt a great desire to giggle. He had to remind himself he was in the presence of death. Was this all it was, just someone stopping? It was an anti-climax, not the bang, not even the whimper. Yet he found himself looking round the room to see where the old man had gone, for gone he certainly had. But the soul, if that was how you could describe it, was nowhere in the room to be seen. The body in the bed, deprived of its living malevolence, was there all right, but now just a shoddy pile of scrap flesh.

  ‘Christ!’ said Samantha. ‘Shit, he’s gone. I was switching to video. I missed the last breath. And it could have gone viral.’ Death seemed to make her angry. She had changed. Tyler felt as though something of her had gone with Bobbo. She put away her iPhone. She stepped forward with purpose, as though about to assault the body in frustration and rage, but all she did was close the rheumy eyes.

  ‘Are you meant to do that?’ Tyler asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘We’re meant to close the eyes as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Why is that?’ asked Tyler.

  ‘It’s a vacant house,’ she said. ‘And you don’t want anything nasty getting in.’

  Tyler removed the bony fingers from his wrist and stood up and shook himself.

  ‘Mind you, he was a dirty old man,’ said Samantha. ‘I can say that now he’s gone. I’m not likely to get anything worse. I can probably do my Grade 4 now and move over to admin.’

  ‘He had a hard time from the women in his life,’ said Tyler. It seemed right and fitting that at this moment something should be said in his grandfather’s favour.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said his grandfather. Tyler could swear he saw the dead lips moving. He heard his grandfather say, louder and clearer in death than life: ‘The money’s yours. Shit, fuck, dog’s droppings.’

  Tyler was not sure which was worse, the lips of a corpse speaking or what they were saying. Samantha did not seem to notice or hear. She was pulling the sheet up over Bobbo’s head.

  ‘I saw the lips move,’ Tyler said.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘It must be like with chickens. They can run round after their heads have been chopped off.’

  ‘And he was talking,’ said Tyler.

  ‘It’s a funny room,’ she said, ‘echoey. You were hearing yourself. There is no pulse, there is no breath. Dead as a doornail.’ It was clearly what she intended to believe.

  Tyler thought he heard a chuckling sound coming from beneath the sheet and saw the chest heaving, but now lightning was patterning the sky and it was hard to tell what was what he really saw and heard and what he imagined. Like when he thought he saw the sofa sliding across the room.

  ‘I’ll have to call people,’ said Samantha. ‘Stay in the shadows or something. Try not to be noticed. Not that it matters. I’m out of a job anyway.’

  Part 2

  Altogether Now!

  Chapter 1

  Nurse Hopkins

  I ran the Vesta Rose Agency for the She Devil back in the seventies: a small agency which catered for working women, doing their shopping, collecting their children, opening the door for the meter readers, waiting in for deliveries, that sort of thing. It’s now grown into an internet giant, providing domestic services for career women worldwide. I ran it until I died, or part died like Mary, two days before the first World Women’s Widdershins Wa
lk. I had grown very wealthy. You’ll just have to put up with me now that Mary Fisher has gone from the script. You will find me to be a more down to earth and less fanciful figure haunting the High Tower. And now Bobbo has gone new rules apply.

  I imagine it was Bobbo’s departing spirit that swept Mary’s tremulous ghost up and away, or possibly down and away, and carried it with him – which he won’t much like, I daresay, and as for her, she’ll need to do a lot more self-examination before she can settle. It is a great mistake to think that things ever, ever end. They don’t. The next life is just more of what went before, but on some different dimension, one step forward, two steps back or vice versa perhaps, according to the weather on Mount Olympus. I think Bobbo swept up some part of his bimbo nurse with him as he went – old habits die hard. Tyler certainly found her changed, but I daresay she’ll recover.

  I was emailing the She Devil with condolences on hearing of Bobbo’s death (one has to go through the motions though I knew the old thing would be happy enough to see the back of him and rumour had it that she only kept him alive to sign necessary documents) when I was afflicted with a sudden and rather terrible pain in my chest and I seemed to die. But no such luck; it now seems I only part died, like Mary Fisher before me.

  So here I am, left in this rather irritating limbo, circling the High Tower and keeping watch in Mary Fisher’s place. Being bodiless is actually a great relief to me: it was never a body to be proud of any more than the She Devil’s was before she had all that work done on it, silly woman. I have never had cosmetic surgery myself, I disapprove of it. I earned my title ‘La Jolie Laide’ in the A-list celebrity stakes, through exercise and healthy diet, not spending money.