Deathwatch - Final (20 page)

 Margaret spent her days leafing through fashion plates. She wore scent and went about the house in a Chinese silk robe. She read novels and quarreled with anyone who listened.

The house seemed to Tom to be tumbling about their ears, yet Margaret bought furnishings. At first it was a pretty china candlestick or a French clock for the mantel; then she began to order more: a pianoforte, wrought iron garden benches, statues, vases, tables. The parlor was cluttered, but Margaret kept on buying. It was her announcement at supper one evening that a carriage with silk appointments was being delivered that started what turned out to be Tom's flight.

Cedric sat at the head of the lace-covered table. His cheeks and nose were inflamed hideous pink from drinking wine. Margaret sat on his right. She leaned over and took a morsel of cheese from his plate, chewing daintily, then smiled and stroked his hand.

Tom fumed inwardly. Couldn't she hide it, while they all sat right in the same room?

Bob opened the tureen and stirred with a ladle; a thin steam rose up. "Oh Christ, Delia, not again."

"It's my specialty," she said, smiling.

Tom watched Cedric pat his sister's hand.

"I'm sick to death of cabbage--can't you at least put a bite of meat in it."

"It has potatoes--" Delia began. Her face had a panicky look.

"M-e-a-t. Meat," Bob said. He turned to Cedric. "We can't be working all the day and come into this--"

"No meat." Delia sobbed. "Animals. It isn't right."

"There, there." Cedric soothed.

Tom felt a quiver of anxiety. Bob wasn't going to let it alone.

"Fine, fine!," Bob said, throwing both muscular arms up and out in a wide vee. "Then why the hell can't she cook?" He pointed to Margaret.

"I do!" Margaret shouted.

"I don't call bringing up a wheel of cheese and slicing bread cooking," Bob turned away from her, his eyes blazing at Cedric, "do you?"

"Well--"

"The only time we have a decent meal is when Tom cooks it," Bob said.

"Then let Tom cook!" His aunt pushed back from the table.

Cedric followed. She stood by the oak sideboard sobbing. He put his arm over her shoulder. Cedric gave her his handkerchief. "Thank you," May said. She blew her nose. Cedric whispered in her ear. She lowered her voice, but not nearly enough, Tom realized. "And I had such a nice surprise planned, too. Yes, the new carriage."

"What." Bob's voice was dead level. "What did you say?"

"Your aunt has ordered a lovely vehicle--"

"Goddamn it. Look, just look at this," Bob shouted. He seized Winston by the shirt cuff and tore it. "This child is wearing rags and you're ordering enough to fill a castle. Is that what you think this is? A castle? Look around, May." Her name sounded like an obscenity in his mouth. "Look at the dust," he smeared one finger along the sideboard. “Look at the dirt and the filthy goddamn muck." He shook a yellowing curtain. "Look at you, a fat whore wearing a Chinese costume."

"Cedric," she pleaded.

"Leave him out of it--I'm talking to you, not him,” Bob said. He stabbed his index finger over and over at his brawny chest, like savage punctuation marks: "I do the work, I sell the goods that pay for your junk and toys. Me. I'm the man. I--" his hand dropped to his side, he couldn't go on. He suddenly lifted one of the chairs as if he meant to throw it, but he banged it down. Bob sagged, his head drooping, his thick dark hair falling in his face. Suddenly he sniffed. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "O the hell with it, I'm done with the lot of ye." He left the room.

Tom knew Bob would be gone when they all woke up, and he was right.

***

Another year went by, Tom was nearing sixteen. They never heard from Bob, he never wrote in all that time.  Gradually, his cousin Donald took over Bob's old jobs and Tom did as much as he could about the place. He found a local lad of twenty, who had a wife and a new sprat on the way. In exchange for helping out with the farm chores, the young man received a small rough cottage surrounded by three acres. Tom let him keep all the produce on the plot. Next year, he'd find another tenant farmer, he told himself; and, if the profits were better, he could buy more land.

He spirited some of Margaret's purchases out of the house on the sly and sold them. Margaret cried whenever he did it, but Cedric never said a word. Tom used the money from Margaret's furniture to send Winston to school. It wasn't the best education a person could get, but at least Winston wouldn't grow up rude.

Tom let Delia do as she pleased. Somedays she played with the chickens. Some days she gathered flowers in the woods. He taught her her prayers and he saw to it that she had decent shoes, flowered dresses, hats. He let her make her specialty once a week, and if did take all day for the girl to put a few wilted cabbages into the pot of boiling water, Tom felt her smiling pride was worth a dull dinner.

Most importantly, he stayed away from Rose. He became convinced he animated her power over him by being afraid, by thinking about her, by watching her. No more, he promised himself, and it had worked. He could be in the same room now, and not look at her, not let himself know she was even there. It was, he told himself, a matter of will.

He was in the kitchen; the door was open to let in the weak September sun, and he was scouring out a skillet, daydreaming. Cooking had unleashed a new side in him, another dream, and he planned to be a chef. He would tour Europe, train with a French master and perhaps cook for the queen herself one day. He liked to picture himself with a scullery full of underlings who did the scut work, while he strutted about the great shining kitchen, the staff waiting in silence until he tasted: "Sorry, lad, needs more marjoram." Or, to another, "This omelet wants chervil." Of course, he himself would prepare the most complicated dishes, the fancy sauces and creamy desserts.

Now, he checked the mutton roast, and began doing the vegetables. Three apple pies were cooling on the sill.

"It's my day." Delia skipped down the steps. Her cheeks were flushed.

"Tomorrow is your day." Tom saw she held a drooping bouquet of overblown yellowing tuberoses. They need water, darlin’," he said and handed her a glass pitcher.

"Oh." She looked up at him. "The flowers?"

"Put them in and fill it." He watched her go out to the pump, and went back to his work. She came in and settled at the long wooden table. He looked up to see her putting the blooms one at a time into the pitcher. "They're too tall. You'll have to pinch the bottoms, see? Then they won't lean like drunken sailors." He showed her, and she laughed.

She put her face in the flowers and sniffed deeply. "No scent left." She tilted her head back and inhaled again. "Tom are you cooking an animal?"

"It's all right, really."

She sighed. "I smell it." She stuck one of her long light brown braids in her mouth. The weaving was uneven, but Tom let her do her hair as best she could.

"Don't do that, Delia."

"I'm hungry."

"There's candy in the jar." He handed her a carrot to peel.

She scraped the crooked orange root slowly. "The peppermints, right? I don't like them. They're too red." She crunched down on the carrot meant for the pot.

"What do you mean?" He opened the door and peeked at the roast.

"Red scares me Tom."

"And why is that?" He half-smiled thinking she would take up the subject of meat again.

"I used to get red, oh, a lot," she said confidentially.  "It was red, you know, in my--between things," she finished. "Blood, it was blood." She nodded.

He stopped, the towel frozen in the act of wiping his hands.

"But not anymore, not for--for a long time. Don't you think that's better? It doesn't hurt. And, of course, Tom, it's not messy." She started on another carrot.

He was going to cry, he knew it. Oh, Jesus, what an idiot I've been. It had happened and he hadn't even suspected Cedric. Noreen and Ellen hadn't been there to tell her, help her. He looked at her, at the faint, faint swell of her small abdomen, at the slight heaviness in her young bosom, and he thought his heart would break.

He came and took her face in both hands. She looked up at him, her face filled with astonishment. He kissed her brow.

"Tom, are you crying?"

"No darlin’," he said.

Tom doused the fire in the cookstove so the roast wouldn't burn and went up the steps to sit in the yard.

***

Hours later when he came inside, his mind was made up. There was nothing supernatural here, he told himself. Poor blighted Delia's condition was the result of lunacy. His father was just an insane, cruel man who liked to lord power over a defenseless child...a helpless trusting child. Margaret wasn't enough for him; no, Christ no, fifty women wouldn't be enough, because it wasn't a woman Cedric wanted, it was a girl-child. Something was broken inside him--inside his brain or his heart or his soul--and it would never be fixed.   

Delia and his father. Ashamed, Tom shook his head; it was all so sordid, so awful. He didn't think he could live in the midst of such horrible madness.

He was going to poison them all, and maybe himself as well.

- 6 -

O
leander was the key. Every part of the bush was lethal: the roots, the flowers, the leaves. He would grind some of the plant into a pulp and put it into their food.

He laughed to himself; what a joke May's purchases had turned out to be. She wanted an English garden and she'd ordered two huge wooden boxes to flank the entrance, and inside the peeling green tubs were oleanders. They were drooping things, neglected as the rest of the garden, but that of course, wouldn't matter. Tom sighed. Rose first, then Cedric and Margaret--and maybe, maybe the others.

Delia often carried Rose a cup of tea, but he couldn't let the girl bring Rose the poison. It would be using Delia's innocence, and that would make Tom like Cedric. That meant he'd have to find a way himself. But Rose wasn't going to take any cup of tea from Tom's hand, that was certain. So how? He imagined himself cramming a handful of twigs and leaves between the old woman's lips and clamping his hand over her mouth and nose until she swallowed.

The viciousness of the fantasy pleased him, but it was too uncertain. She might make enough noise to draw the others, and this time Cedric might not aim his gun at one of Tom's arms. Besides, he wasn't sure how much oleander was required to kill a person, and he needed to know. He sat and thought about it: the chickens were too small to test, but a sheep or a sow would be about right.

He waited until full dark and sneaked out to the yard, hastily breaking off twigs from the center of the bush where his depredations would least likely be noticed.

Then, he crept down into the kitchen and began mashing the plant up in an old pot with a wooden spoon he planned to burn in the fire when he was done. He added water, and set it to boil. While he waited, he scrubbed his hands over and over with the strongest soap he could find.

He had a thin gruel when he was done. He was too tired to go chasing after one of the sheep, so he went to the hog pen. There was an old sow named Penny who was past breeding. She was destined to be slaughtered soon, anyway. He carried along the pot he boiled the oleander in; earlier he'd tossed in some kitchen scraps and stirred it up. Now, he held it under Penny's snout and she snuffled it up, grunting happily at this unaccustomed late night treat.

The tension sapped his energy. Tom sat wearily against the wall of the barn where he could watch her. Nothing much seemed to be happening. In a little while, the moon came up, and he dozed lightly.

When he woke up the pig was dead.

***

Penny's death proved how quick and fatal oleander was; the problem, Tom knew, was that his grandmother wasn't going to wolf down a poisoned dinner that no one else was eating just on his urging. The other problem was he didn't know how much--or what kind of--taste oleander leant to a dish. Was it nasty? Bitter? Cloyingly sweet?

He tried sniffing at the pot, but all he got was a vague peculiar odor--some bizarre smell that was like a bad combination of lavender and very old bay leaves. And then he had another thought. It wasn't dawn yet, no one knew the pig was dead--so why not serve up Penny herself with a dash more oleander and plenty of garlic to disguise any hints of the plant’s deadly flavor?

Delia wouldn't eat it of course, but if the rest of them were dead, who would look after her? He suddenly realized his thoughts had undergone another change. He didn't really want to kill Margaret, and there was no reason at all to kill Donald, his cousin. And maybe--he felt his eye tic in a jerking spasm--maybe he himself didn't want to die just yet.

***

Tom finally worked it out. He would smoke the poisoned hog meat. The next time Donald was due for a trip to one of the markets, he'd put a few bills in Margaret's hand and send her off on the trip as well. He imagined the conversation. "Ssh, don't tell, it's for you. Go and buy yerself something grand." Margaret was just greedy enough to fail to stop and think it was Tom who'd been selling her furniture. Winston was at school. That would leave Rose, Cedric, Delia and himself. How could he prepare them something and be sure his own portion wasn't poisoned? He couldn't. 

But if all went well, he'd leave their bodies to rot at the table, take his sister and flee. He and Delia would change their names and lose themselves in another country, another life. Tom would make sure no one ever found them.

***

The pork hung in the smokehouse all that autumn. Tom held his breath every time he checked on it. He was half afraid wild dogs or badgers would get at it, and a spate of small furry poisoned bodies around the farm would arouse suspicions. But the quartered animal hung unmolested. It was getting colder, the crops were in. Everyday, he expected Donald to announce he was going to market. Tom counted and recounted the folded notes he'd stuffed in an old lard crock in the kitchen. There was enough money for Margaret to buy a dozen Chinese robes if that was what she wanted.