The Sacrificial Man (2 page)

Roz Colyer, Essex

‘Pacy, believable, with characters you can really root for;
Ruth Dugdall is a talent to watch out for.’
Devon Violets

This novel has been several years in the making and in that time I have benefitted from the generosity & support of many people. My heartfelt thanks to Helen Miles, who was first to offer
The Sacrificial Man
a publishing contract and generous enough to agree a move to Legend Press when it became clear that the ‘Cate Austin novels’ belonged together; to the team at Legend, Tom Chalmers, Lauren Parsons & Lucy Boguslawski who are nothing short of amazing in their dedication and energy. Belated thanks to Elaine Hanson whose generous setting up of the Luke Bitmead Bursary resulted in the publication of
The Woman Before Me
, the first Cate Austin novel.

For their professional expertise I am indebted to Nigel Stone, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of East Anglia and Dr Bodhan Solomka, Forensic Psychiatrist at the Norvic Centre.

This novel was partly funded by an Arts Council grant and SCAN grant. These enabled me to benefit from a year of mentorship with Michelle Spring. My writing friends Liz Ferretti, Morag Lewis, Sophie Green and Jane Bailey have given direction when I wondered where I was heading, our monthly meeting have saved me from a dead end many times! I am also grateful to Maureen Blundell for her candid advice and keen eye.

A personal note of thanks to my family, Margaret & John Dugdall and Peter & Beryl Marshall, for keeping the faith even on days when I had lost my own.

And finally a big cheer for my husband, Andrew, who has believed in this novel from the outset and has made many sacrifices in the name of writing. None involving any potbellied pigs, thankfully!

Thanks to you all.

To Andrew, for all your sacrifices and support.
With love.

Now more than ever seem rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain…
John Keats

Trains terminated here. It was the end of the line.

Only just past nine, and I waited for the last train to arrive. A sharp breeze made me nip my jacket close, turn my collar up. I was alone on the platform. A mere shelter. No café, not even a chocolate machine, just a bench and a timetable screwed by cracked Plexiglas to the crumbling brickwork. I was on the edge looking down, fighting that familiar urge to jump that some commuters experience. On the track were discarded cans and wrappers, the litter of those who had also waited for trains. I was an actor in the wings of an unlit stage, apprehensive before the audience arrived. The wind picked up in bitter gusts. I turned my face against it, looking down the track into the dark tunnel. Lights would come, then noise. Then him.

I checked my watch. Seven minutes past nine. Eight minutes to go. Not long. Too long. I stamped my feet, fidgety with nervous energy, hands curling and uncurling in my pocket, chilled to the core by the thought of what was to come. I didn’t know what he looked like. I’d seen a picture, but how often do people use a photo that reveals the truth? Being beautiful, I didn’t need a flattering image, but the picture I sent him was also a lie. My hair looked over bright in the sunshine, light lifting my features as I smiled to someone off-camera. In it I looked carefree. After, I regretted sending it, thinking I’d lured him to me under false pretences. Worried he’d be disappointed when I wasn’t as easy-hearted as I’d appeared in the snap. This was one of the advantages with meeting in cyber space; we could hide our neuroses.

I tried to relax; after all, he’d picked me. He said he’d had quite a choice, more replied to his advert than he would have anticipated. I looked into the dark sky and thought of all the others out in the world seeking the same thing. I wasn’t alone in my desire.

Stop. I’m going too fast. There’s another story to tell, before he arrives.

Others are coming to judge me. Professionals will come and demand that I tell them my story. Whatever they conclude, bound by conventional thought, by their own mediocre experience of love, my deed will outlive me. Time alone will prove what is right. They can’t force this tale from me and I won’t trust them. But I’ve chosen you. You will listen. You are my judge, the true arbiter. And we have time, yet, before the train pulls into the station.

My internet name was Robin, like the bird, but also because it made me think of American cheerleaders with tanned tennis legs and blonde hair. Wholesome. When I was Robin my world sparkled new and I could do things differently. I could be someone else.

We didn’t use our given names on the site. It was part of the unspoken deal. And anyway our parents named us. Our avatars, picked by us, revealed something truer. I liked his. He was Mr Smith.

To me, Smith was beautifully anonymous – an Everyman. I didn’t want the unique or standalone; I sought the mediocre, the average, the one lost in a crowd. I wanted the man who worked behind a desk, who microwaved cardboard meals, who rubbed the sore grooves down his nose, scored by his glasses. Mr Mousy Hair, Mr Nylon Shirts. Strange, that I sought the ordinary when I’m anything but. I’ve never met a man who didn’t desire me, at least at first, but my own taste is modest.

Robin wanted safety. Predictability was more important than fun, and I quickly deleted adverts from men who smugly announced they had a GSOH. I like to laugh, but not on demand. I wasn’t seeking a cabaret act.

His was a simple enough advert. He’d been a fan of Morrissey in his teens and I imagined a melancholic youth with floppy hair smoking dope. He said he was a Catholic and, however lapsed, the faith was in his blood. I suppose that attracted me too, that tenuous link to my mother’s religion.

Yes, others replied to his ad as well as me. Some men and several women. But I was his choice.

I had to hunt. I’d meet other men before Smith. After all, finding love is never easy. I was making a commitment for life, and these things can’t be hurried. Also, I wasn’t quite ready. If Smith had come to me before that time, I’d have let him slide through my fingers like sand.

I didn’t respond to his advert straight away. I looked around first, visiting chat rooms and surfing the web. Staying silent, a wallflower. It’s easy on a computer screen. Your entrance is only noticed when someone types:

: Hello Robin! I see you’ve just joined us. Welcome.

If you stay silent long enough no-one bothers you. After a page of conversation your arrival is history and people forget. I learned how relationships could be built by words. Biding my time. Browsing Facebook and Twitter, searching special sites, cruising in and out of chat rooms. I didn’t know what I was waiting for until I found his advert:

Man seeks beautiful woman for the journey of a lifetime: I will lift mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help. Will you help me to die?

I read it over and over, keeping it on my screen until I finally logged off. I needed time to think before I replied.

But I’m rushing again. Always my failing, that I head for the summit before charting the course. I must resist. It’s important to start at the beginning. And doesn’t every story begin with the mother?

My mother’s name was Matilde Mariani. This is her story, too.

1977

Matilde walked slowly, scuffing her patent shoes on the pavement and hauling her school bag, letting it bang against her legs, marking the white kneesocks with dust. It was a sticky day and her blazer was tight across her chest. She undid the single button, took off the straw boater with her free hand. No-one would be home when she arrived and she could be happy, but first she had to pass the row of shops. The boy who delivered the meat was loitering outside the butchers, his bike thrown on the pavement. Behind him, through the window, animals hung in halves. She was careful to keep looking ahead, waiting for the jeer. “What, ain’t yaw gonna talk to me now? Posh cow! Stuck up spic! Ain’t I good enough for yaw, then gal?”

Letting the Norfolk drawl wash over her, she told herself she was used to this and, after all, it was only words. She kept walking, holding her breath against the iron stench of pig’s blood in the air. The house felt empty. Her father mostly worked late; he had three factories now and didn’t trust the managers so he was always on site, checking the fabrics and the orders, making sure no-one was fiddling him. ‘I will always be a foreigner to them’, he said. ‘I cannot expect loyalty’. Matilde’s mother was better at fitting in, and belonged to many local groups ran by women with money who needed an occupation. She kept busy so that she did not have to endure the lonely house, but for Matty the hour between arriving home and her parents’ return was when she found peace. She preferred to be alone.

She climbed the stairs to her room, shrugging off the blazer, and undid the top buttons on her shirt, still carrying the school bag and boater.

Her bedroom door was ajar. She knew she had closed it that morning. Her heart sunk: Papa was home after all.

He was sat on her bed, a great walrus of a man with slackened jowls and eyes like beetles, green-black and shiny. Above him Karen Carpenter, her favourite singer, gave a sad watery smile.

“You’re late. Where’ve you been?”

She could hear it, the threat. She knew it was there, just under the surface. Karen’s smile was hopeless. “Papa, I walked too slowly. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t lie to me. You’ve been with a boy again. Look at your shirt!” Her hand rose to cover her collarbone. “Come here.” She did not move. “I said, come here.” She walked forward, watching Karen’s resigned smile so she didn’t have to see her father’s eyes. Knowing the beetles would crawl all over her flesh if she looked at him. “Closer.” She could smell the alcohol on his breath. He spat words that pricked her with moisture, “You are a filthy slut. You are a disgrace to this family.” He waited until she was crying, then struggled up from the bed and left the room.

Karen Carpenter was trying to smile, but her eyes remained sad and dark. It was Matty’s fault, she was too pretty. She saw herself in the mirror and winced; hair too light. Not the brunette of the Mediterranean, but blonde. And green eyes, not blackened like her father’s, but light green like fresh moss. Too striking. If she wasn’t so pretty it wouldn’t happen, that’s what she believed. But how do you make yourself ugly if you’re not? How can you still be beautiful when everything inside is ugly?

At school the other girls avoided her. Only the boy who worked at the butchers showed interest. And Mr Ferris, the Latin teacher. He spoke to her in a way that made her shiver and shrink back. She was afraid that he could see through her, to the truth. That she was a slut.

She was seventeen. Not an adult, but not a child either, so she knew what it meant when her period was late. There was always the pill to stop babies coming, but how could she get that? She was so young, and not even married. How could she admit her sin to a doctor? Instead Matilde, or Matty as she wanted to be called – at least in her head where she had friends who understood – tried to pretend it was not happening. It would not happen again. Mostly, she tried to ignore it and concentrate on books. All types of books, but especially those about people.

She did well in her studies. Even her mother said so. The previous year she had passed all her O levels, with high grades. So she stayed on at St Albans, with the other girls in straw hats who talked endlessly about boys when all she wanted to do was read. And learn. She was studying for A levels. Latin, of course. Papa insisted. It was a part of their heritage, he said, and anyway she was good at it. Mr Ferris said it must be because of her Italian father, her knowledge of a romantic language, but he was wrong; her father almost never spoke his mother tongue. And music, another good thing for a lady to learn. But what she really wanted to study wasn’t on the syllabus. Her choice would have been psychology. She read books that weren’t in the school library, only in the big library in town, searching for answers. It was the closest she got to knowing why. She read Freud, his diagnosis for hysteria, and thought she understood. Hated him for naming it, for making it bigger than them, for putting it in every home. She felt sick, but couldn’t stop reading about Dora K and she wondered if that is what she was, a hysteric, and if that was why she must keep her mouth shut. Why she must study.

And now, one year into her A levels, one year from the exams, she had stopped bleeding.