Ladies From Hell (12 page)

1

P
AMELA WAS WASHING
her hands in a bowl
of soapy water and broken glass, and didn’t seem to understand; and Liz’s voice had gone so that the harder she tried to shout to stop, the less sound came. The water had turned from pink to scarlet before she managed to speak; then it was only a whisper, but Pamela smiled and turned. “It’s all right, bunny,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt a bit. Honest…” She held out dripping red paws; and Liz shrieked.

The dream flicked off; and she sat up shaking. Light was in the room; the calm cool light of early morning. Somewhere close, from the lilac or one of the big pear trees, a blackbird was singing; and there was a far-off whisper of sound that might have been a tractor, fields away. The rest was silence. She listened to the quiet, feeling her heart bang against her ribs; but the house stayed still.

She knew she had screamed out loud. She pushed the hair from her eyes, sat a moment with her face in her hands trying to make the dream go away. She was still shivering; and her nightdress, no longer sweet-smelling, clung to her stickily. It was a pretty dress, ribboned and with cheeky matching pants. She’d run it up herself a year ago, from a Simplicity pattern. She had been pleased with it then; now, she thought it made her look a fool.

She rubbed her face and swung her legs from the bed. She stood up, leaning fingertips lightly against the wall. She felt giddy; and her head was starting to throb. She opened the door and walked to the bathroom, steps muffled by the thick carpet.

The bathroom was carpeted too. It was a big room, tricked out in blue and gold. An air of decadence always hung
about Pamela’s wilder flights of interior fancy.

She ran water into the basin, shivering again. She put a hand to her throat, touched the bow at the neck of the nightie and paused. She had decided she disliked her hands. They were short-fingered and square, almost stubby. Not a horsewoman’s hands. Mrs. Properjohn had a horsewoman’s hands; sinewy, and boyish.

She pulled the ribbon undone, stepped out of the dress. She washed herself to the waist, keeping her eyes lightly closed. The water was barely warm. The boiler fire must have gone out again. Pamela had overspent on fuel coupons back in February, and the knock-on effect had lasted till June.

She picked the nightie up, walked back. She got into bed, pulled the quilt to her chin. No sound had come from her mother’s room; so perhaps she hadn’t disturbed her. She listened again, holding her breath. The habit of secrecy, once begun, had become compulsive.

The sun had crept round to the window corner now, throwing a single spear of light across the white-painted wall. Often as a small child she had lain like this, watching the solitary shaft glow and brighten, steepening its angle as it changed from orange to yellow. That had been when her father had been alive, before they sold the farm. In those days the house had been thatched; so as she lay she could hear the secret scuttlings of mice and birds. Now, the roof was of corrugated plastic. They had torn the thatch off the same time they grubbed out all the hedgerows and trees. She still remembered how bitterly she had cried; but that was in the past, long ago. She was fifteen now, past the age of tears. Adults didn’t cry; besides, it was dangerous.

The headache had not left her. She let her eyes drift closed, knowing she would not sleep. The church clock struck distantly from the village. Six fifteen. Forty-five minutes to breakfast; an hour and three quarters to the bus, two and three quarters to School.

She found she was clenching her hands under the quilt; and her heart had begun to thud again. She tried
to make herself relax, emptying her mind carefully, thinking of nothing at all. After all, she told herself, it was Friday; and Friday wasn’t all that bad a day.

Soon, very soon now, she could tick off another week. Which left just four to end of term. She would be safe then, for two glorious months; and after that, only another year. The short term to Christmas, the long drag in the spring—though there was a ten day break—then summer again, and finished. For ever. And perhaps then, if the Properjohns kept their word, she could go to them full time; work with the horses, and about the house. Maybe even—and her heart gave a positive bound—learn to ride.

She let her thoughts drift round, guardedly, to David Properjohn himself. He was in his second term now as MP for the area; it was that, and that alone, that gave him entitlement to the rations needed for horse ownership. Now the Properjohns owned not one horse but three; something nearly unheard-of. The big bay, Helen Properjohn’s palomino—privately Liz thought all palominos idiots, but the creature was certainly glorious to behold—and the stocky, barrel-chested little pony shared by the children. She would ride the palomino, almost certainly; she’d sat him already once, in the privacy of the stable yard. And David Properjohn—but that was a thought to be closed off secretly, silent and firm as a tap. There. There was no thought.

Certainly he was good-looking, with his corn-coloured hair and keen blue eyes; even the people who didn’t like him admitted that much. He’d kept his figure too, he looked about twenty-five.

She moved her legs in the bed. So much in her life that seemed wrong somehow, that she just couldn’t understand. She thought bitterly of the fantasies she had once entertained, that had come to her unasked and that wouldn’t be driven away. It had seemed at one time she couldn’t look at Helen, or speak, without a hot little wave of resentment and jealousy; till the day in the kitchen when she caught the older woman watching her and saw the amusement and worse, the compassion. The storm that broke then was none the less shattering for its
silence; now, she was an adult.

It seemed she must have dozed in spite of herself; for the clock on the bedside table had drifted round to seven. She heard the click of her mother’s door and closed her eyes, simulating sleep. Not that Pamela would come into her room. Then the clitter-clatter of Sheba’s claws on the kitchen tiles, squeak of the side door bolts; and from outside, a bark.

She called, in answer to her mother’s shout; rose, and dressed. Blue skirt, white shirt and tie, white ankle socks, sandals. The safe, private time was over; this was the real start of the day. She felt the faint fast trembling inside her, the sense of unreality; fingers numb on the buckles of the shoes, feet not quite touching the ground. And somewhere, the growth of fear; like a little cold round white stone.

She tidied her hair, ran downstairs. Pamela was working already, spooning absentmindedly at a bowl of grapefruit while she flicked over sheets from a pile of typescript on the corner of the kitchen table. She was wearing jeans and an old grey sweater, and the heavy hornrims she called her office glasses. A leaping thought almost made the girl plead to be allowed home for the day; Pam would probably give in. She resisted it. Absence was an abnormality; there must be no abnormalities of any kind. Instead she said, “Can I have some codeine? I’ve got a bit of a head.”

Pamela looked over her glasses tops. She said, “Were you up in the night?”

“I went to get a drink.”

Her mother said, “I thought I heard you shout.”

Liz said, “It was a dream. It was only silly.”

She made herself eat cornflakes and toast. She said, “How’s the book?”

Although they dealt with a way of life that had never existed—or maybe because of it—Pamela’s books sold well. They kept her and Liz in what was these days the almost unheard-of luxury of a house of their own.

Pam lifted the filter from the coffee
jug, poured. She said, “It’s going OK.”

Liz said, “I don’t think the highwayman should be a foreign prince at all. I think he should be a frog in disguise.”

Pam laughed. She said, “Funny bunny.” She smoothed her daughter’s hair, looking at her sharply. She said, “Are you all right, Liz?”

“Why?”

“You’re a bit pale.”

Liz said, “I’m OK, honest. Got to dash. ’Bye.” And then it was her shoulderbag from the pegs, check for keys, season ticket; and Sheba running with her, down the path to the gate. She shoved the big dog in the chest, heard her bark as she skirmished back to the house. She thought, ‘She loves me too. But she can’t help either.’

The bus came into sight as she neared the stop at the far end of the village; a white British National, well battered about the sides and with a star-shaped smash in one of the windows, still unfixed. She climbed aboard, seeing with relief that it was Ian on duty again. He sat up beside the driver, a moustached, thickset young man in blue uniform shirtsleeves, his pistol belt turned so that the holster sat comfortably in his lap. He grinned at her and she smiled back, nervous and quick, ducking her head at the instant storm of catcalls. She slid into the only vacant seat, kept her face down till the noise subsided fractionally. Somebody—one of the Fourths—shouted, “Lizabeth Manley. Can’t get a bloke.” Then,
sotto voce
, “Has to rub herself off every night.” The noise peaked again, and the policeman glared round angrily. But the driver had crashed his gears, she doubted that he had really heard.

These country buses weren’t too bad; most of the real trouble came from the town mob. But window-smashing had been on the increase again and a couple of drivers had been roughed up, necessitating the guard. She had had her hair filled with glass, and a girl she knew slightly had needed stitches in her cheek. Ian had been on for a week now; she guessed this would be his last day. It would be the other one next week, the sallow one with the bad skin. She fancied he looked at
her oddly, and she never quite knew how to meet his eyes. Ian she liked. He owned an Alsatian too, a big cream bitch he’d saved from being put down because of her colour. He sometimes used to walk her over the Common of an evening, and Liz would talk to him by the gate; odd little conversations about obedience training, and why bullets spin. And once Pamela had called him into the house to drink a glass of chilled beer. Then, she could chatter to him readily enough; here despite the smile he seemed remote. As if he too was acting a part he didn’t understand.

She opened her bag. She had set herself to read Jefferies’
Bevis
, although the authorities rather frowned on the book for its middle class overtones, and had reached the mystical chapter on the zodiac. She read slowly, trying to close her mind to the din round her; she was unwilling to reach the end of the long novel, let the calm, golden nineteenth century slip away. The journey was uneventful. Once some missile bounced over the seatback, rapping her sharply on the shoulder; and once a metal pellet slapped viciously into the windowframe by her head. She shrank lower in the seat and turned the page. They wouldn’t chance too much; not with the policeman there.

She closed the book at a few minutes before nine. The coach was rolling through town centre now; she put her hair back and swallowed, waiting as ever for the first sight of the School. There it was now, shouldering over the new façades of office blocks that lined the High Street; a great slabsided box, tier on tier of windows flashing back the sun as the vehicle turned in alongside the main façade. Beyond were other high boxes and still more; Pre-Nine and Pre-Eleven Blocks, Lab Block, Admin, Sports Tower. Some, the nearer, were linked by airy corridors packed already with jostling black blobs of heads. All of it impersonal, vast, all of it the Duke’s domain. The bus turned again, slowing, chasing its own cool oblong of shadow; and she jostled to the head of the steps, stood waiting for the doors to whiffle back. She jumped down, pushed free of the mob, turned left into the Main Quad, lost herself in the scurrying swarms of children. Then a quick dash for B Block lavatories, five precious minutes to herself inside one of the few
cubicles that locked before First Bell pealed through the building and she headed out into B Concourse on her way to her Study Group.

As ever, the noise hit her with almost physical force. Noise, and heat. Sun burning through the high glass sides of the building; and the crash and clatter of footsteps, shouting of hundreds of voices, unremitting screech of the trannies without which few of the pupils ever moved. She weaved and dodged, scurrying between the harassed knots of masters, avoiding the thirty and forty-strong gangs of Fourths and Fifths with their jeans and sweatshirts, tank tops and straggling hair. Girls clung to their arms, screeching worse than the rest; girls with eyeshadow of silver and gold, girls with lipstick of green and blue. Girls with masses of frizzed-out hair, like insane busbies two feet and more across; black girls and white girls and brown. Girls who showed their bellies, and girls who showed their boobs. She caught up at last, thankfully, with a dozen of her own Group, joined the jostling mob of younger children pushing its way up the stairs.

Once more, the long shaft of sunlight lay across the wall; and once more she watched it from the bed through half-closed eyes. Her hands lay at her sides. The palms were damp. She curled her fingers, gripping the counterpane.

She had been running, endlessly it seemed, through the endless corridors of the School. And always as she ran she could hear the patter and whisper of pursuit, the rising snatches of laughter and excitement. Escape was the one thought in her mind; but it seemed that try as she might, each passage traversed, each corner turned, merely led her deeper into the place. Till finally, against her will, feet dragging, she reached the vast Main Concourse with its radiating web of walkways. And they were all full, each corridor, each gallery; full of folk she could scarcely see, but who rustled and lisped and hooted. The noise, the laughter, grew worse, ringing inside her head; till she looked down and saw she was wearing nothing but the silly floral pants. She crouched then, sobbing with shame; and silence fell.

In the quiet, his footsteps sounded very clear. She tried not to look up, but her eyes were drawn. He
seemed taller even than his six feet two. She saw his hair, the pale high cock’s comb so blond it was nearly white; the creased leather he wore winter and summer; and his eyes, bright and pale and quite, quite dead. In his hand he carried a pair of shiny cutting pliers. He stooped over her; and gently, very gently, reached with the pliers for her fingers.