Rosie O'Dell (30 page)

“Having his shower, I think. What’d they say?”

“What didn’t they say? This is a powder keg. TOM, COME DOWN! GET DOWN HERE
QUICK!”

I trotted down the stairs in my towel. “What’s going on?”

Dad was pacing the kitchen, a scrap of paper in his hand, and Mom was watching
him from her chair at the table. “Tom, my son, my son,” he said, waving the
paper at me, “if you ever show the same intuition with the stock market as you
did with this, you’ll be a multi-millionaire before you’re twenty-five. I was
just talking to London. He has a record with the Criminal Investigation
Department of Scotland Yard for sexually assaulting four young girls. They have
him in their files as a predatory pedophile.”

“Holy fuck!” It was out before I could stop it. I glanced at
Mom to apologize, but both she and Dad were nodding at me in agreement.

Then Mom asked, eyes narrow, head shaking, “But how can he be practising
medicine over here with that on his record?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time some doctor or teacher or priest left behind a
record of sexual deviancy,” said Dad, “and insinuated himself into another
unsuspecting jurisdiction. In this case, he was helped by a name change before
he came over. Apparently, he started off in life as James Balbo.” He spelled out
the last name.

“Which explains why… Still, it is strange, though,” said Mom. “Did they say if
he spent any time in prison, Joe?”

“I don’t have any details like that. I only asked them to get back to me as
soon as they found anything that might disqualify him for a position of trust.
They came up with this after one visit to the CID in London.”

“I suppose it’s the right person,” said Mom. “It’s not possible it’s a
mistake?”

Dad read from his note: “‘Heathcliff Godolphin Rothesay, born James Balbo,
Beckenham, Kent, September thirtieth, nineteen thirty-five, physician.
Reportedly left England in the late sixties. Thought to be somewhere in North
America.’”

“That sounds like him for sure.”

“So, Tom, do you mind telling us what is going on, precisely, and why you
wanted me to get this stuff?”

“I’ll have to get permission first to break my confidence.”

“Well, do it quick, please. You’ve dragged us into this now, willy-nilly, and
we have a right to be fully informed.”

“
WHAT
!”
ROSIE WHISPERED FIERCELY
tomeinacornerof
a corridor after school. “I told you all that in the strictest confidence and
you’re telling me you went and mentioned it to your
father
!”

“I mentioned nothing to him. Your name and what happened was never brought up.
I merely asked to have a check done in England as if it was a job application.
Before you get too mad, wait till you hear what we found out. He—”

“Tom, you know darn well as soon as you mentioned his name to your father, he
and your mother put two and two together. You
told
me you thought they
suspected something back in grade seven. God, this is terrible. This will end up
forcing me in directions I may not want to go. Oh God, this is awful.”

“Rosie, he was nailed for sexual abuse of children over there.”
I told her what I had learned. “The man is a psychopath who took advantage of
his position of trust over you to do the same things to you. He exploited and
abused your vulnerability and your grief and your need for love, just as he had
done before with the other children. What happened to you was in no way your
doing or your fault.”

Rosie folded her arms across her breasts as if she were very cold and looked at
me for many seconds. The small movements of her eyes were the only indication of
the upheaval taking place in her head. Then she muttered, “I’ve got to get away
from everyone so that we can talk and think about all this. I wish Suzy was
here.” Suzy was going to dinner with her father and older brother who were in
town.

I went outside with Rosie into the cool sunshine. We left the school grounds
and walked until we reached Elizabeth Avenue, then down Long Pond Road and
Rennie’s Mill Road, along Circular Road, where Dr. and Nina Rothesay had
considered buying an old house upon marrying before deciding on their new modern
one, to King’s Bridge, back along Empire Avenue, and up Portugal Cove Road to a
bus stop on Elizabeth near Memorial University. We talked a little, but mostly
we walked and thought. Every now and then, after minutes of silence, Rosie would
say, “My God.” As we waited for her bus—outside the shelter to get away from the
other two people waiting—she put her arms around me. “This is incredible,” she
said. “Absolutely tremendous. I love you. I’m still mad at you for not checking
with me first, though.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. But I had this big brainwave early in the morning and I
couldn’t wait to put it into operation.”

“I know the feeling. And this is going to be very helpful in getting rid of
that guilt I always feel. Next brainwave you have, though, let me know before
you do anything, okay?” She hugged me again. “Tom, you are amazing.”

The news from England did alter the view Rosie had had of herself from the time
she’d been twelve. Instead of the knowing little woman she thought she was,
wholly responsible for the guilt and loathsome disgust she had felt, she told
Suzy and me, now her self-image from then was of just one more defenceless and
susceptible child in a long list of children victimized by a charismatic,
cunning criminal. A list that included—now there was absolutely no doubt left in
her mind—poor little Pagan. She said she felt so horrible over not protecting
Pagan better, but it had never even
occurred to her before Pagan
died that he could be a serial predator of children. And sending her away from
home to a residential school on the mainland, which was supposed to represent
equal treatment of the two girls, making up for Rosie’s expensive tennis camps,
prevented any suspicion from arising in her mind.

“We all had our heads up our arses about the danger to Pagan,” said Suzy. “Our
hearts will be broken forever over that, but all of us who should have realized
it are in the same boat, Rosie, not just you.”

Rosie appeared uncomforted. But then she straightened up and looked back and
forth at me and Suzy. “Well. What do we figure I’m supposed to do now? I can’t
forget about it, even if I wanted to, and just get on with my life. He’ll go
ahead and do it to other kids.”

I knew what she should do, but before I could speak, Suzy jumped in. “You could
tell the police everything—your own experience, your suspicions about Pagan
again, and now the English stuff, but without getting into the nightmare of
laying charges and going to court. Just let the police investigate him behind
the scenes and keep him in their sights and track him on their radar for the
rest of his life. At least that should keep him from doing it again wherever he
ends up.”

“That was my first thought when Tom’s story from England came to light,” said
Rosie. “Maybe it’s the way to do it. But would it work? He was able to slip
under the radar and come over here in spite of what happened in England. He’s
about to do it again, judging by my friend in BC. And he’s cute and cunning
enough to end up in India or Africa or somewhere under a new name and unknown
and absolutely free to prey on innocent victims again. What do you think,
Tom?”

I pushed for a process that would lead to the second worst ordeal of my life.
“In addition to everything you just said, I think we owe it to you and we owe it
to poor little Pagan to nail him right now and nail him good. I think you should
report him to the police and have them bring charges against him.”

“How the heck do I do that? Wander into police headquarters and spill my guts
to the first uniform I see?”

“I’d say you should go and have a confidential talk with my mother. She’s used
to this kind of thing as a nurse and can point you in the right direction and
send you to the right people.”

“
LET ME GIVE YOU
my own experience of
what kind of a person you’re dealing with here,” said my mother to Rosie, alone
at our kitchen table. Rosie recounted it all to Suzy and me afterwards. After
Mom had gone to see the principal, Mr. Abbott, and Rosie’s teacher in grade
seven, Miss Pretty, about her suspicions that someone might be abusing Rosie in
some way, perhaps sexually, the principal wondered what they had to go on except
wild surmise and unsupported conjectures without a shred of evidence except
Rosie’s so-called condition and Nurse Gladys Sharpe’s gut-feeling. Yet, he
couldn’t just sit on it now that, rightly or wrongly, the matter had been
raised, and he had no choice but to invite Rosie’s mother and Dr. Rothesay to
his office for a full and frank discussion with Miss Pretty and himself about
Rosie’s mysterious ailment. In other words, said Mom, precisely the wrong
action.

At that meeting, according to the account Mom later received from Mr. Abbott
and Miss Pretty, Nina told the principal and teacher that her elder daughter had
always been an emotionally sensitive girl, having inherited her natural father’s
high-strung aesthetic state. Then Dr. Rothesay intervened with his bombshell: he
feared that her current condition derived from causes far more serious than
that. He would put the proposition squarely to them that she had begun to
manifest some behavioural characteristics of a child being abused by an adult,
perhaps sexually. Principal and teacher struggled not to fall out of their
chairs.

Mr. Abbott replied that such a possibility had also been raised by someone
outside of the school altogether, another respected professional close to the
girl. To which Dr. Rothesay demanded in a booming voice with barely suppressed
rage why they, as professionals in positions of utmost trust respecting Rosie,
had not notified the child welfare authorities immediately after the respected
informant had raised that dire possibility.

When Mr. Abbott responded that they had absolutely no corroborating evidence
beyond the lady’s suspicions, Dr. Rothesay apologized for his tone and
sympathized with them in trying to come to grips with this highly problematical
area. His experience at practising medicine in England in cases where
authorities had been notified of suspicion of child abuse showed that once that
Pandora’s box of allegations and finger-pointing was opened, it took on a life
of its own among the police and social workers. He’d seen cases where court
proceedings ultimately established that there had been, in fact, no abuse at
all, yet innocent relatives, teachers, and family friends had in the meantime
had their lives ruined. Allegations of sexual
assault, often
made as a result of overzealous investigators putting words into a child’s
mouth, especially a child with a highly developed imagination, often left the
police with no alternative for their own protection—for fear of being accused of
doing nothing—but to lay criminal charges against close family friends or
teachers, often without a jot of corroborating evidence, and let the chips fall
where they may in public court. Now none of that was important compared with the
possibility that Rosie was being abused by some adult here at school, say, or at
the home of a trusted adult friend of the family. He was therefore inclined,
especially in the light of their similar concerns, to place the matter in the
hands of the police for investigation, and he would like their advice as fellow
professionals on taking that initiative.

To Mr. Abbott’s query whether, in mentioning the possibility of a close family
friend or someone here at school being involved, he had any indication of one or
the other having actually occurred, Dr. Rothesay replied that he had no
indication whatsoever. He was in precisely the same position as the principal
and teacher were. He had no evidence of anything outside her home, just as they
had no evidence of anything inside her home, though he would be surprised if
suspicions of abuse at home had not occurred to them as a possibility.
Speculating on these horrible possibilities, parents would naturally think of
their child’s teachers or close adult friends, while teachers, principals, or
friends would naturally think of the child’s home. He’d brought Rosie’s school
up only as one of the logical places, along with the home of friends, for the
police and social workers to start asking their questions, making their
suggestions, and drawing their frightening conclusions. He hadn’t meant to alarm
anyone, but any decision they might make today ought to be made in the full
knowledge of what would happen. They could not bury their heads in the sand over
the untold damage that notifying the authorities might cause teachers and
friends, and indeed Rosie herself. Conversely, the likelihood of such drastic
repercussions to everybody should make them alive to other sensible
alternatives.