Water Gypsies (44 page)

‘Stepdaughter,’ she corrected, screaming in her head,
You were never my father, never!
All the time he was talking she kept looking round the cabin. How could she get away?

‘I used to bath you when you was just a tiny, skinny little thing. And look at you now – a grown-up woman with, how many kiddies is it?’

She didn’t answer.
Keep him from thinking about the girls.
She stared back at him as he went on and on stroking her hand.

‘I miss having family,’ he said plaintively. ‘ It’s a lonely life with no one.’

He paused and she heard his rasping breaths. She felt the dreadful thud of her heart.

‘I was sorry to hear about your mother going like that. I went to see her a few times before she died, you know. I’ve missed her over the years. She were a good woman, Flo was. Good to me. That’s why I’ve come to see you – chew over old times for a bit.’

Maryann almost laughed at the grotesqueness of this.
He’s mad.
Her mind was racing.
Stark staring bonkers.
She might have expected all sorts of horrors from him, but not this – not a reminiscence session! Perhaps she should keep him talking, keep his mind off her, off the children, and, pray God, Joel would soon be back…

‘You used to take us to the pictures.’ She managed to make her voice sound almost even and normal. ‘Best seats and a nice bag of bulls’ eyes. D’you remember? Me and Sal and the boys – all with Mom? Family outing.’

He was listening to her attentively, seemed to be smiling. She watched his face, appalled. Didn’t he remember what had happened to Sal? That she’d lain alone with the life blood dripping from her wrist because of all he’d done to her? Didn’t he know that? Or was it stored away in some forgotten part of his mind, like a locked trunk?

‘We had some nice times, didn’t we?’ he was saying, suddenly sounding so plaintive that for a second she felt as if there was a child speaking beside her.

‘Yes, we did,’ she lied.

‘We were a family. Amy and Margaret were family too – we used to sit round the table of a night, cosy as anything. I was a dad to you, wasn’t I, Maryann?’

This grotesque travesty pierced her so that again she could not speak, but she nodded. What would he do if she told the truth about what he had caused? What if she shattered the shining wall of illusion he was building round them both? She barely managed to hide her shudders at him touching her hand.

‘You’re trembling,’ he said, closing his other hand over hers. ‘There’s no need to be frightened of your old dad.’

She said nothing.

‘I’ve had a lonely life since … since Janet and the girls. Walking the streets looking like this. You might as well be a leper. No one’ll come near you. I’ve got my business, of course. I couldn’t go on being an undertaker with this face on me – had to move into something else. The business is doing well, thanks to Herr Hitler. And they have to treat me all right. All they want is to feed their families, their kiddies.’ There was a savage tone in his voice. ‘I’m the boss. I hold the purse strings, see. But other than that, I’ve taken to going out at night so’s I don’t get noticed. I’m a wreck of a man, aren’t I? I’m loathsome, inside and out.’ He looked up at her and all she could do was to stare back, mute. ‘Who’d ever look at me now?’

After staring at her for a moment he said, ‘I’ve come to apologize.’

She waited, hardly breathing, deeply suspicious. What was this now? A trick? It would be easier if she knew what he really wanted. But he sounded sincere and abject with self-pity.

‘I was never a good enough father to you girls. Never had a father of my own, see. He took off when I was a babe in arms. He was a soldier. And Mother… ’ he stalled. ‘No one ever understood Mother, understood
about
her, should I say. No one knew, you see.’

Maryann thought of the portrait, the sole decoration on the drab walls of his room. Mother’s eyes looking out at him from that sternly beautiful face.

Norman was staring down at her hand, stroking it again. Maryann struggled to remember what age he must be. Getting on for seventy by now and sitting here bleating about his mother. It seemed peculiar and deeply pathetic. She was startled by a tiny sound from the back bed, one of the children shifting in their sleep and she held her breath, managing to stop her eyes from moving in the direction of the sound. Norman didn’t seem to notice.

‘You’re a kind mother to your kiddies, aren’t you, Maryann? My mother wasn’t kind. She was . . unnatural.’ He seemed to lose his thread again, then said, ‘I’ve done some terrible things. I tried to tell that young man – that Pastor Owen. Not that other fool, of course – Joyce. Owen’s an innocent. He’s a real believer. Terrible for someone like me to come face to face with it – with someone who thinks there’s goodness. I tried to tell him – never got far. I wouldn’t’ve got him to believe all I’ve done. D’you know, I abandoned my own son? Never saw him again from when he was seven years old. I don’t know where he is to this day.’ To her horror she heard his rasping voice begin to crack.

‘You’re the only one left, Maryann! You know me, don’t you?’ He was wrestling with his emotions, beginning to sob and she watched, horrified. ‘ I can talk to you. You know who I am. But even you don’t know. You thought your mother was a cruel woman, but Flo was a saint compared with my beloved mother. She was the beloved, you see. My beloved. And I was hers.’

His shoulders heaved and in the second that he loosed her to reach for his handkerchief, Maryann pulled her hand free, nursing it to her as if she’d been stung. The sight of Norman Griffin weeping was horrifying. She shrank back, fascinated yet repelled, her loathing unmixed with any shred of pity. Her body tingled all over with the instinct to run away, but she was trapped.

‘She was so beautiful,’ he was sobbing. ‘The smell of her. She was so soft. Her bed always smelt of her – her soap, her body.’

Maryann sat very still, caught by what he was saying, by the tone of it. His voice had turned into a high, infant whine, and she saw a tear fall from his good eye and drop, glistening, onto the lapel of his coat.

Norman Griffin squeezed his eyes closed and shook his head violently as if to dislodge a picture from his mind. ‘Her body – she was always there, with that body.’ Looking round at her, he said, ‘You’re a mother, Maryann: you wouldn’t have your own son in your bed, would you? Standing in for your husband?’

Maryann looked back at him, almost unable to believe what she was hearing.

‘She was such a cruel woman – so cruel in the daytime when she didn’t want me, you know, like that.’ He halted again abruptly. ‘I’ve never said this to a living soul before…’ He tried to swallow, struggling as if there was something stuck in his throat.

‘Night-times, most nights – it never ended, the feel of her, making me touch her, and I wanted to in the end, couldn’t stop … All soft, damp…’ He closed his eyes, face contorting even further. She wanting me to touch her, kiss her. It was all different in the daytime. When she wasn’t pleased with me her mouth went straight and hard, eyes drilling into me. She looked as if – as if she couldn’t stand the sight of me. And she kept her cat-o’-nine-tails tied to her belt.’ There was a silence, then words flooded out.

‘She always beat me on my backside. Made me take my trousers down – short trousers when I was younger, of course. Always in the parlour, behind the nets. The things she used to say while she was doing it. She’d reach her arm right up as far as it would go and bring it down, nothing held back in the sting of it. I was red raw when she’d finished. The school chairs were so hard, I could barely sit. She made me bend over the sideboard. There was a china dish on there with a blue glaze on it and I’d always stand by it. I could see my face in it. I’d look at it while she was beating me. If I made a noise she did it even harder, told me I was weak, no good. So I thought, I’ll keep my face straight so that boy in the dish will look back at me and he doesn’t look bad and he’s not having a thrashing off his mom and he can’t hear the things she’s saying about me being dirty and wicked … I’ll be like him. It got so’s I was always that other boy, hiding with him till she’d finished.’ He let out a shuddering sigh.

‘I never knew what was coming then. Sometimes she‘d just go out and leave me with my backside all welts, and she’d close the door very quietly as if there was someone poorly asleep in there and she didn’t want to disturb them. As if I was sick. Then sometimes – ’ he shuddered – she’d pull on my shoulders while I was still bent over and make me stand up. I was half naked and she’d make me put my arms round her and kiss her and she’d press herself against me.

‘“It’s for your own good, Normie – it’ll make you a proper man, like your father was.”’

He had his eyes closed, as if trapped in the memories. Maryann eyed the door desperately, sickened by what she was hearing, by him expecting her pity, playing on her sympathy, perhaps even inventing all this for some warped reason of his own. But, worst of all, she knew in her heart by the way he talked that he hadn’t invented it.

‘Course he was always a proper man, a soldier. She made me feel like … nothing. A weak, spineless reed.’

She could hold her silence no longer.

‘So why did you do it to us? To my sister – and to Amy and Margaret?’ Unbidden, tears came, the surge of grief stronger even than fear in that moment, like a deep crack opening in her onto the pain of it all, the awfulness of being here with this man who had caused it and his monstrous, pathetic story.

When he answered her, his tone had changed as if her speaking had brought him to a different plane in himself. There was a hard coldness which brought her up abruptly and stemmed her tears.

‘I have to. It’s the only thing that makes me feel better. Feel nothing. For a while. I had to tell someone. It got so’s I had to. I tried to tell that Pastor Owen, but he’s a man and he’s too … clean. I had to tell a woman. Only I couldn’t have her spreading it. I started with Amy. She grew up into a right pretty thing. I thought she’d be kind. But she wouldn’t listen. I tried to make her hold still, but she kept struggling and she wouldn’t let me finish. I had to do it. Couldn’t have her telling anyone else.’

Maryann froze again. He’d told all of it to her now, his sad, dirty secrets, the perverted bullying of his mother. She’d been the one to hear it whether she chose to or not, and now … She had to keep him talking, to keep him calm. She saw him staring at her and his expression was cold and terrible.

‘Good at asking questions, aren’t you? Wheedling things out of me? You always were a devious little thing – always the one I could never quite get to grips with.’ He caught hold of her wrist abruptly, so hard that she gave a yelp of pain.

‘Don’t,’ she panted. Don’t hurt me. Why hurt someone else? Where does it get you? I’ve got a family. Just leave us, leave us alone instead of making everything worse. It doesn’t make anything better for you – it just goes on and on.’

‘But it
does
make me better – for a little while. It makes me happy and light, better than a tumbler of Scotch. As if there’s nothing in the world to feel, to worry about.’ He was pulling her gradually closer to him and she could smell stale drink on his breath now, see his scarred face looming before her eyes, blocking out everything else. She heard herself whimpering.

‘Make me feel better now. You can do it – you know you always could…’ Gripping her hard with one hand, he started to fondle painfully at her breasts.

‘Like old times, eh, Maryann?’ He breathed into her face. ‘You were always the fighter, the little wildcat, weren’t you? That’s what made you the best one, the exciting one – and you haven’t changed, have you? I knew you’d come back to me in the end – that I’d have you in the end.’

‘No-o–!’ Maryann moaned. He was hurting her, squeezing, pinching, tearing at the front of her blouse.

‘Confound it – there’s no room to move in this damn place!’ He struggled, trying to sit round, but finding his legs caught under the table. He shoved at it. ‘Can’t you get shot of it? Hold still,’ he roared, as she struggled. ‘You little bitch, I’m going to have you!’

A sound grated in the air, the broken mewl of a child. Norman Griffin sat up straight.

‘What’s that? You got one of your kiddies in there?’

No! she wanted to say. No, no! It was one of the twins, she could tell.

‘She’ll sleep again,’ she said hurriedly. ߢShe’s only a babby.’

‘Aha – let’s have a look then, shall we?’ He flung the table back and lumbered, stooping, to the back bed.

‘Well, well. All bagged up together, just like little rabbits. Oh – there’s our Sally again. What a lovely child she is!’

As he stood with his back to her, Maryann saw one desperate chance. Eyes fixed on the lamp burning on the little shelf across the cabin, she began to slide herself along the bench. If only she could get there without him noticing! It seemed to take an endless time to inch herself along, holding her breath as she watched Norman Griffin’s back. In a moment she launched herself to her feet and swooped towards the lamp. He caught her movement and lurched in front of her, pushing her backwards as he got between her and the lamp. She fell against the stove, banging her head on the wall behind. Ada was still crying.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ He snatched the lamp and held it up. As she stumbled groggily to her feet, Maryann saw his face lit up by the glow of the lamp.

‘Thinking of coming that one again, were you? Oh, I don’t think that one would work a second time. I saw Margaret the other week, by the way. Fine girl – not that she’ll ever breathe the air outside the asylum again. Now – what shall we do with this?’ He eyed the lamp, half turned, dangling it over the sleeping children.

‘Very fitting, wouldn’t you say? Do as you would be done by?’

‘No!’ She pulled at him with all her strength, trying to get at the lamp. ‘‘For God’s sake, have some pity. They’re babbies, all of them – my babbies! I never burned you – it was Margaret, not me!’

‘But you’d have liked to, wouldn’t you? You find me every bit as disgusting as she did.’ With his left arm he caught her round the neck and wrenched her in close to him, looking down into her frantic face.