Little Fingers! (30 page)

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More guesses
about Dr. Berringer, the creepy cockroach.

He is a living
stereotype, sitting on his patio under the Spanish sun, waving his
long warming cocktail around in its ice-clinking glass, the straw
flopping around with the motion.

He is wearing
sunglasses, a panama hat, and his face is tanning by the
second.

He has
persuaded Carla to come into the garden to claim her ice-cream. She
is licking it uncertainly as he watches her intently.

Mary Knightly,
who arrived yesterday from the UK, is sipping water under a large
hat under a larger umbrella.

“
You spoil
these children, Daddy,” she says.

“
Children
deserve to be spoilt,” Dr. Berringer counters. “They are so
rewarding, and so crucial to the future.”

“
You could at
least look as if you are enjoying it,” Mary admonishes
Carla.

Carla looks at
her. She can tell that this strange, rather ugly old foreign woman
is cross, and neither knows or cares why. She does not like the man
much, and she likes her less. She is only eating this ice-cream to
please him, which it seems to do. She is content to ignore the
bad-tempered woman.

A chunk of
ice-cream falls onto her dress. “Here, let me help you with that,”
Dr. Berringer offers, leaning forward with a handkerchief. He
smiles straight into her face up close. She does not appreciate
either his movements or his breath, yet she does not flinch, and
lets him wipe the ice-cream off her front. It must have slid a long
way down, as he is rubbing her below her tummy button. She steps
back. “All off!” he declares. Carla says nothing. She will not
bother having an ice-cream here again.

“
Let me show
you something,” Dr. Berringer offers. Carla sees his finger
beckoning her, and feels disinclined to obey its presumption. “Have
you ever seen English money? It is different from your
euros.”

Carla can see
him attempting to hand her money, and does not understand why. What
must she do for it?

“
Go on, have
a look at it,” Mary choruses impatiently. “Daddy is trying to
educate you. Heaven knows, you need it.”

Carla decides
she is going to return to her garden. She is bored here. “Adios.”
She waves cheerfully, even at Mary. Jeff waves back in exaggerated
child-friendly gestures.

“
Sweet little
thing.”

“
What was I
like as a child, Daddy?”

“
You? Rather
shy. Watchful. Always concerned about what people's reaction to you
would be. Hurt if they rejected you. Exploitative if they humoured
you. Is that what you wanted to know?”

Mary is used
to her father's dispassionate clinical analyses of people and
situations. He does not allow sentimentality to distract his
thoughts. He says it as it is, as he would with a
patient.

“
Do you
remember me as a baby?”

“
Naturally. I
was there when you were born.”

Mary glances
up suddenly.

“
What was I
like?”

“
All babies
are much of a muchness at that age, except to their mothers. You
cried, you fed, you mostly slept. There wasn't much to take notice
of really.”

“
What do you
most remember about me as a baby?”

Dr. Berringer
pauses while he reflects. “You always had nappy rash. Your mother
was always making appointments to see me to try to cure your nappy
rash.”

Mary winces.
“Did I?”

“
Yes. We got
rid of it in the end.”

Mary looks
away into the distance. “I certainly don't have it now.”

Dr. Berringer
watches her. She is a strange, strained, nervy creature. “Is it
hard without George?”

Mary's
attention returns. “Harder than you might think. Certainly harder
than I thought.”

“
He was
devoted to you.”

“
And to you.
I am not sure which I found the more appealing. He would have done
anything for you. He did do a lot for you.” Mary is watching him
intently again.

“
I never
asked him to. Like what?”

Instead,
Mary's thoughts wander to the times when her father used to come to
her room, and settle down beside her. She knew he should not be
doing what he was doing, sliding his hand down her body, stroking
the inside of her thighs. Yet, she loved the attention and the
affection between them. At that time, she felt that her father was
totally devoted to her, wanted to participate in her every breath.
Perhaps her mother would leave them, or die, then they could be
together, just the two of them. She has to admit to herself that
those moments were intensely pleasurable, if fringed with stirrings
of guilt. She used to make some token, cursory gestures to resist
him, “Daddy, don't do that,” but he did and she permitted him to
continue. His fingered exploration excited her down from the depth
of her stomach. Sometimes she would quiver uncontrollably with what
she later learnt to be an orgasm, although she had rarely
encountered them with George. George did not have the edge of
danger her father had and has. He was a good man, at least good to
her, but not at all thrilling. Hesitant, always seeking approval,
always consulting her. He found it hard to act spontaneously, on a
hunch, and to take a risk. He was always mortified if he did
something she disapproved of. He would instantly become sulky and
defensive.

Mary smiles in
recollection of that expression George used to pull when hurt. The
shake of the head bound up with a grimace. Suddenly, she misses
that. In fact, she misses a lot about George. There will never be
anyone she will be close to again. She will be lonely, wasting her
time organising village events and having coffee with people who
really do not matter to her. There is no-one who matters to her to
the extent that she would suffer from their absence for more than a
few hours, except George, and her father. George was always a
reassuring presence in the room, like a loyal dog.

Who had killed
him, and in that horrible way? Did they have to be that brutal? It
had taken Mary some time to come to terms with sharing her life,
her drawing room, her bedroom with George. She used to wonder
whether he would ever turn on her. She did not treat him
particularly well, and she knew it. Sometimes she was loathsome
towards him, and shamelessly cruel, just to see how far she could
go. She could not stop herself. It was a desperate need, a
headlong, repetitive urge. George never resisted, and never
retaliated. He would smile behind his dark-framed spectacles and
offer her some tea, or some other kindness. How could he have been
so tolerant of her, without ever once giving her any cause to miss
a beat?

And now
someone had killed him. Was it simply a failed burglary at her
parents' house? Not with a wire. No burglar would walk into a house
with an electric cord intending to garrotte anyone who got in their
way. It was a premeditated killing from someone who knew he would
be there. They had slowly watched him die as he flailed and they
maintained the pressure. They must have been strong, although if
you are caught off balance it is sometimes impossible to recover
unless you are thinking straight, and George was not someone who
adapted well to situations. Maybe there was more than one of them.
“George, I miss you.” She imagines him, his face bulging, his eyes
popping, swallowing as if parched, helpless. This is not the way
she wants to think of him, but it is a recurring image, almost the
only image she now retains of him, one that is not even real as she
never saw it. It is an imaginary self-torture, persistent and
remorseless.

One night, her
father eased himself onto her, parting her legs first with his
hands and then with his own legs. He did it slowly, careful not to
frighten her. She was scared nonetheless. What was this? Why was
this? She felt his fingers open her up, and his penis ram hurtfully
inside her. She had screamed momentarily with the shock, so that he
had feverishly covered her mouth with his hand, bearing down his
full weight upon her. The breath was crushed out of her. She could
no longer scream if she had wanted to which, in any case, she
hadn't. It had only been that it had hurt. He took his hand away
again after he had whispered that she must not make a noise and
assured himself that she wouldn't, and lifted up his weight so that
she could breathe again. He rocked himself backward and forward on
top of her, breathing heavily. She was mesmerised by what was
happening. It was bizarre what he was doing, and his body hair
tickled and prickled. He was becoming more and more feverish in his
wriggling and in his breathing. She could smell is underarm sweat
that she usually found reassuring. It was sore and she felt bruised
where his bones were rubbing hard against her. Suddenly, he stopped
rigid, and she felt a warm sensation flow up her body and fill her
stomach. Without a word or a gesture, he removed himself from her,
got up, and left the room.

This was not
how it was with George. He would stay inside her, and kiss her, and
say how much he loved her. He would not want to let go of her,
saying how pleasurable it was to remain inside her, how safe he
felt. Then when they finally separated, he would go to the bathroom
straightaway to bring her a towel and a warm wet face cloth to
clean herself.

Her father
walked out, leaving his sperm to leak out of her onto the bottom
sheet so it was always cold, damp and sticky for the remainder of
the night. She would get up and wash herself, and sometimes cry
herself to sleep, not for his act of defilement, but for the fact
that he left her so absolutely each time, which she took to be a
cruel rejection and criticism of her. She had not performed her
duty in a way she did not understand. He was disappointed in her.
He wanted to punish her.

Now she
realises that it was more that he wanted to punish himself. That he
was degradedly ashamed of what he had done to her. Ashamed, partly
repentant, but intent on returning for more soon.

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Chapter
15

I am sitting
here trying to re-create my mother. She was once someone other than
I knew her. She was beautiful, and fierce, and courageous and
savage. She frightened people with her intensity, and allured them
with it too.

I lived with
the intensity, each hour of each day I was around her, but I never
met her spirit head on. Occasionally I caught momentary hints of
it. They lasted nanoseconds. By the time I knew her, she had
mellowed, she had saddened, and she had been crushed.

I used to ask
her to tell me about her childhood. She always changed the subject.
I used to beg her, telling her that I was asking for myself, not
for her. She made it clear to me that her past was
closed.

She revealed
only four facts about her life. That she had been raped at the age
of sixteen, and that I was the beloved product of that rape. That
she hated Mary Knightly more than anyone had ever hated on this
earth. That Dr. Berringer was right next to Mary on the list. And
that she had been orphaned when she was very young, and she never
got on with her foster parents. That is it. That was her life
before I came along, and there was very little
afterwards.

I never knew
who Louise's father was, and I am not sure that she did. She may
have been drugged out of her mind at the time, another rape
producing another baby.

Recreating my
mother as she was is rather like working from the bones of
dinosaurs to design a verisimilitude of their actual appearance.
How can you ever be sure that you are even remotely correct? The
only thing you can reassure yourself with is if others are prepared
to swallow your truth. That is what truth is - the belief of
others. If you say that the cosmos is 15 billion years old, and
weight of opinion agrees with you plus-or-minus, then that is how
old it is until that belief coalesces around other data. Truth is
data under-pinned by a shared belief. That is how shallow is the
basis of our lives. Everything we honour can be founded on a
plausible lie and a touchstone of fact.

I imagine my
mother at the age of fifteen, wiry-haired, wiry-framed, wired up,
challenging the boys to come and get her, to dare to get close to
her, offering them an emotional fry-up, great to devour and risky
for your health long-term. Somehow I see her at a fairground, on a
November evening, teasing the boys, living dangerously.

Strangely this
image seems to fit the way the people of Hanburgh describe her,
although they appear to have been barely more acquainted with her
in her youth than I. She was impossible, then she disappeared, and
later they heard that she was dead.

I miss my
mother. I wonder if she misses me. I want to believe that she is
beside me in this library at Hanburgh House. Toss me some data, and
I will turn them into truth. But the mother I want to be with is
the woman of before my birth, the one who had at least a one part
in a millionth possibility of living a different life. I doubt that
anyone ever accorded her a greater chance than that.

There is
something that has been troubling me, Inspector. I should have
discussed it with you a long time ago, but for some reason I
didn't.