Flying Under Bridges (42 page)

Now we
can begin to focus on the reasons for my crime. Was I mad or not mad enough?
Was I sexually indiscriminate or promiscuous? Had I failed as a wife or mother?
How much domestic responsibility did I carry out? Did I mind? Or say that I
minded? Do I look like a woman? Talk like a woman? Was there anything about me
that suggested I wasn’t a ‘normal’ woman? Could I be treated? Perhaps it would
be best to plead guilty. Get it over with. Don’t allow the publicity to damage
my family and neighbours. They are the ‘real’ sufferers. They are the ones
betrayed by me. They could not be the source of my misery, I am a hapless,
guilt-ridden victim of my own uncontrollable impulses.

We have
found some excuses: I’m middle-aged, I had my mind on other things, I had no
previous convictions, I am needed to run my home … I am a wife and mother,
therefore I deserve understanding and sympathy and, of course, leniency. I am
respectable, middle class, therefore I must be so sensitive that I will be
reformed by a minimum of punishment or perhaps no punishment at all. My husband
can help, my children will help. I don’t need the help of the justice system if
I have them at home.

I hate
the lawyer most of all. It isn’t about justice. It isn’t about justice at all.

Fact
—
a married person may inherit property without paying
inheritance tax. They have automatic rights of survivorship over their partner’s
estate. They have legal, financial and psychological benefits on the death of
their loved one, which are sanctioned and affirmed by the state. Without the
status of legal next-of-kin, a partner may get shut out of medical decisions
or, ultimately, funeral arrangements.

It wasn’t
right what happened to you. It wasn’t right at all. I’m so glad that Shirley
sees that now. Maybe she will come out the other end. Maybe she’ll be okay. The
lawyer wants me to be quiet in court. To sit quietly and seem as ‘normal’ as
possible. Don’t talk publicly about the case ever. I need to compensate for my
unfeminine criminal behaviour by presenting myself as domesticated, sexually
passive and constitutionally fragile.

What if
I am wicked? Maybe I am greedy. Greedy for my daughter’s attention. Maybe I
should be punished not treated. Perhaps I deserve contempt. I must be mentally
ill, emotionally disturbed or in some way abnormal or it never would have happened.
I am not to say that I felt there was no choice. That if I had been a man I
would probably have given John a good hiding. I would have punched him, kicked
him, wrestled him to the ground. If I were a man I would not have killed him.

Tom
came to visit me in prison. He sat with me and we talked about silly things. He’d
walked. It’s a long way but Tom doesn’t like transport.

Fact
—
a young, fast-growing tree can recycle about forty-eight pounds
of carbon dioxide per year. Carbon dioxide is the principal gas in the ‘greenhouse
effect’. If you burn one gallon of petrol that equals twenty miles and twenty
pounds of carbon dioxide. Drive forty miles in a car and you produce roughly
the amount of carbon dioxide a young tree can recycle in a year.

I told
him I’d been trying to read the Bible to get some help. To find some wisdom. I
told him I had learnt a lot of the passages by heart but he shook his head.

‘That’s
not wisdom, Mum. Buddha says that a servant of the king may hear the king’s
words and repeat them to others but simply repeating his words would not make
the servant a king. Repeating the words of a wise man doesn’t make you wise.’

Tom
brought me something. He had been clearing out Mother’s house and thought I
might like a memento. He put it on the table. It was the Pope John Paul’s head
that lit up. The Calvinist Prince of Darkness — the corruptible man who could
pass off his own thinking as the inspiration of an incorruptible supreme being.
What had I learnt? I learnt that no one has any simple solutions to the human
condition. That there may not be any solutions at all.

You
decided to go to Barbados and I couldn’t bear that you were going to leave. I
kept thinking about John.
‘Fucking gay pride…’
Pride… what else was
a wedding but having some pride?
‘Flaunting their fucking perversions in
your face.’
I shut my eyes and I could see you drop Kate’s hand as the
nurse came into the room. I don’t write that to make you feel bad. It’s just
that you had to be free of all that fear, Inge. Kate knew that.

When I
went to see you the day you left, you had lost a lot of weight and all your
bounce seemed to have bounced away, but you still opened the door as if you
were pleased to see me. I don’t mean your smile. I mean really pleased.

‘Ah, I’m
so glad you’ve come. I’m in the neighbourhood at the moment
promoting
homosexuality.
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer. Come and join us. You know you want to. Be
part of a despised minority. Join us and have your parents reject you, your
boss fire you, strangers call you names and beat you… and if you agree to
become a homosexual for a trial period of just ten days then we will give you,
absolutely free… this carriage clock.’ You held up the very beautiful little
clock, which had always stood on the mantelpiece in your house. You held it out
to me. ‘I’m kidding but I do want you to have it. Kate gave it to me and I know
it would have made her happy.’

You
left and I couldn’t bear it.

‘Goodbye,
Camie, and thanks.’

Goodbye
to being Camie. You went away and left me. There was snow on the ground and the
tracks from your car tyres stayed for ages. I knew then that Edenford would be
sorry you were gone. You had been useful. The whole town had been able to
divert themselves from thinking about their own shortcomings by looking at
those they thought they saw in you. Everyone needed scandal. I wondered who the
town would turn on next. I thought about you and wondered if you would ever go
to San Francisco. If you would go and fly under bridges. And I wanted to run
after you but I couldn’t. I didn’t have any money. Then I thought maybe Shirley
could get away. I could suggest a short holiday. Give her time to think but I
didn’t have any money and then the wickedness started and it didn’t stop.

I sold
Adam’s collection of Shirley Bassey records and then, when I realised how much
I could get for them, I went home and got all the souvenirs and sold those as
well. He spotted the loss pretty quickly. Well, you would do. He had so much of
it. We hadn’t seen the floor of the spare room in years.

He’d
come straight home from work and gone up to change into his full costume for
rehearsals, as he’d been doing all week. He still believed that Miss Bassey was
to be his social salvation. I’d got rather used to mixing cocktails for my
half-hour with Shirley before supper. He stood at the bottom of the stairs in
full Bassey regalia — he looked fabulous, diamanté, acrylic wig — and he was
screaming at me. His eyes bulging under those extra extension eyelashes I’d got
him at Boots.

‘What
have you done! What have you done?’ he kept shouting.

I was
just going to explain calmly about needing the money for Shirley to get away
when the doorbell rang. In his temper I think Adam had quite forgotten about
his outfit because he wrenched the door open to see who it was. It was Horace. Horace
Hoddle from… the golf club committee. To say Horace looked surprised would
somehow fail to capture the moment.

Horace
didn’t actually speak but in his eyes was everything everyone had been saying
— Adam’s assault on that woman, Tom’s long hair and strange ways, Patrick, you
and Kate…

I don’t
know what came over me but as Adam stepped out to explain, I shut the door
behind him and locked it. I stood there till long after Horace had left, looking
at Adam through the leaded window in the hall. He stood on the front step with
the evening sun glinting off his gold lame.

It was
a shame. Backlit by the sun like that with his arms raised and his mouth wide
with fury, he was, for a brief moment… Dame Shirley. I wouldn’t open the door
and I think it was a salutary lesson to Adam just how secure he’d made the
house. After a while he turned and hobbled down the road to the bus stop to get
the 46 to William’s house. I watched his retreating evening dress and felt
rather sorry for him. He should have listened to me. I warned him that
stilettos should never be that tight. It was best for him. Perhaps the trip on
the bus would calm him down.

But I
needn’t have bothered. There was no talking to Shirley. My daughter was
slipping and slipping away. She became obsessed with the wedding.

Fact
—
the average UK wedding costs £10,500.

Shirley
wanted me to be involved. Of course she did, and I tried. We discussed which
shop to place her list at. It was very important. The mere name of the
establishment said something about the class of wedding we were having. So,
too, did the size of the ring. We discussed invitations, dresses, cutlery …

I
thought I would go mad. She wouldn’t talk about Adam or what had occurred and I
realised how much I had ignored of what went on between my mother and father.
Big things had happened and I had never said a word. Adam went to stay with
William and Pe Pe, while my life turned into a small sub-franchise of
Bride’s
World.
I didn’t understand any of it. The Bible was no help. I had started
at the beginning and got as far as the First Book of Samuel. As far as I can
understand, it was like this:

David
wanted to marry King Saul’s daughter, Michal, but David was worried that he was
poor and couldn’t provide a proper wedding present for a king. So Saul said, ‘The
king desires no marriage present except a hundred foreskins of the Philistines,
that he may be avenged of the king’s enemies.’ Now Saul was being sneaky
because he thought the Philistines would kill David, but off he goes and kills
not a hundred but two hundred Philistines and brings back their foreskins, ‘which
were given in full number to the king, that he might become the king’s
son-in-law. And Saul gave him his daughter Michal for a wife’. And who do you
think dealt with all those unwanted wedding presents when they arrived? Saul’s
wife, I’ll be bound. You can just see her at the wedding breakfast trying to
lay out the foreskins on the present table and hoping her second cousin, who
married a Philistine, doesn’t decide to turn up.

Now
that Shirley was taking another year off, she had taken a full-time job at the
building society. She worked there amongst the Peps and the Tessas, the endless
future plans of Edenford, and on her days off she sat at our breakfast bar
making endless lists. A week before the wedding she asked if John could come
and stay.

‘His
lease is up on his flat and it seems silly to keep it on when we’re not going
to live there,’ reasoned my daughter. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Mum? You’ve got
plenty of space in the spare room, now.’

And I
had. Shirley Bassey no longer filled my life. Mother, Tom and I were alone,
although everyone said Adam was desperate to come back from William and Pe Pe’s.

‘I don’t
think he likes my food,’ soothed Pe Pe, as if praise of my skill in the kitchen
would make everything better. He didn’t miss me, just my flans. I missed him or
maybe I missed the idea of him, I didn’t know any more. Pe Pe came round with
baby catalogues and we were awash with baby bootees and bridesmaids’ bonnets.
I nearly choked on some of the prices.

‘Dad
says we mustn’t stint on anything, Mum,’ moaned my daughter.

‘William
says I can have anything I want for the new baby and, believe me, I am going to
get the best,’ announced Pe Pe.

Dover the Land of
Plenty. 33 reasons why we should send them back and close the door. Reason 13:
pregnant refugee mothers only want brand new equipment for their offspring. Are
these infants entitled to hold a British passport to success now that they have
been born in our local hospitals?

Suddenly
I felt sick. I mean, like I was going to throw up. I started to run out of the
house. I could hear Shirley calling, ‘Mum, Mum! Come back,’ but I had to run.

Lost

I dreamed and behold I saw
a Man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his
own house, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked and
saw him open the book and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled;
and not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry,
saying, ‘What shall I do?’

(The
Pilgrim’s Progress
— John Bunyan)

I couldn’t breathe. I ran
as if I were never coming back. The tears started to come. Those horrible,
female tears. Stupid, stupid. I tried to run faster but the water from my
stupid eyes blinded me. The women in Sarajevo were not ashamed to show their
grief. They wept and clung to the bodies of their loved ones and the cameras
filmed and filmed. Women’s tears have a mind of their own. They are an
uncontrollable part of our bodies but I hated them. My breath came in sharp,
jagged pieces. Stupid, tearful, fat, middle-aged woman who couldn’t run. A
great, useless blob on the countryside. There was thick snow everywhere. It
didn’t look like England at all. Everything around me had turned into a foreign
country. A great white alien place that I had never been to before. I didn’t
know where I was going until I fell.. In my blindness, I crashed into something
which cracked but didn’t give and I collapsed beside it.