Tower of Silence (13 page)

Nobody saw her do any of this, and she whispered to father and mother that she was sorry about what had happened–she thought they would know it was not her fault that the shrine had been taken away. It was to be hoped that it had not disturbed their journey across the
old and holy Bridge, because Selina was not sure if she could bear the sight of those poor tattered ghosts in her bedroom all over again.

She wondered about Aunt Rosa’s ghost. It would be just like the horrid witchy old thing to come into her room when it was dark, but Selina thought she would not mind it very much, because of not liking Aunt Rosa, and certainly not loving Aunt Rosa in the way she had loved her parents.

When she thought about it again, Selina was very glad she had stretched the black string across the top of the stairs that night. She had tied one end onto a nail in the skirting board and then wound the other end round the banisters, doing it carefully and quietly after everyone was in bed, creeping out in her dressing gown and slippers. Nobody had heard her and nobody had seen, although she had had the spookiest feeling that Christy had been with her. This was such a strong feeling that she had to keep looking over her shoulder, in case Christy might be crouching in the shadows watching her. But she was not, of course, because she was dead; she had died on the night the men took them to the Tower of Silence, and if anything had held Selina’s hand and talked to her in the darkness, it had been Christy’s ghost. Selina thought it would be like Christy to come back, just for that short time, so that her friend would not be alone in the scary Tower of Silence. And Christy would approve of what Selina was doing tonight, because she would understand about the shrine; she would understand that Aunt Rosa could not be allowed to destroy the shrine.

The string across the stairs was about six inches from the ground–just the height of a person’s ankles–but because it was black it would not be seen. Aunt Rosa had not seen it when she got up next morning, which was why it had tripped her up and sent her tumbling headlong down the stairs. The police doctor had said that the fall had broken her neck. Her legs had been broken as well, and one wrist, but it had been breaking her neck that had killed her.

After the funeral Aunt Flora had been worried that Selina, poor motherless scrap, might find it difficult to go to sleep, what with it being hardly a year since her parents had died, but the fire in the little hearth had burned up bright and warm and the bedroom was cosy and snug. Selina went to sleep without any trouble at all.

Mary had slept very deeply on the night after Ingrid died. The doctors at Broadacre had forced some kind of tranquilliser into her, but she thought she would have slept deeply anyway, on account of having been revenged on that bitch Ingrid. It was strange that after all these years it still hurt to remember how much she had trusted Ingrid and how Ingrid had betrayed her trust. It taught you a lesson, that kind of thing; it taught you never to trust anyone, except for that secret strong voice inside your own mind. It taught you to not even trust people who seemed genuine and kind, and said that their sole purpose in life was to help you.

Ingrid had said that at the start. ‘I want to help you, Mary,’ she had said on that first night, the night of the rape attempt. She had sat on the edge of the bath while Mary got undressed, and she had talked soothingly, her
hand on Mary’s thigh. Mary did not really want anyone in the bathroom with her–she wanted to be on her own to scrub away the smell of the man’s body from her skin–but they would not let her, because she had to be examined to see exactly what the man had done and how far he had got. Ingrid had probably been told that Mary must not be left alone in case she washed away the evidence.

But at least she had been able to wash her face and hands, and shampoo her hair, which helped a bit. Ingrid helped her to dry her hair. ‘Pretty,’ she said. ‘You ought to let it grow a bit.’
Pretty
…That word again.

When Ingrid hugged her Mary could feel Ingrid’s body through the thin pyjamas she had put on; she could feel Ingrid’s breasts pressing against her own breasts. It felt peculiar. When she said, ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ a little pulse of excitement started up at the pit of Mary’s stomach. She felt her nipples harden, and she stared at Ingrid, feeling her face grow hot with embarrassment and apprehension. Ingrid was breathing a bit faster and there was a faint line of sweat on her upper lip. Will she do anything else? thought Mary. I’ll hate it if she does; I’ll hit her, hard, and then I’ll run back to the dormitory–there’ll be people around by now.

But when Ingrid bent over and kissed Mary, full on the lips, her mouth open so that Mary tasted her breath, she did not run away and she did not try to hit Ingrid. She kissed her back, at first fumbling because she was so inexperienced, but then with more confidence. She gasped when she felt Ingrid’s tongue, and when Ingrid stepped back, and said with unmistakable regret, ‘I mustn’t and I
daren’t. Go along to the dormitory, Mary. Goodnight,’ Mary felt a sharp pang of disappointment. She had expected Ingrid to do more than just kiss her. She had not expected this incomplete love-making.

‘Incomplete,’ Broadacre’s duty doctor had said, making his brief humiliating examination. ‘No penetration.’

‘We didn’t think there had been,’ said the slab-faced nurse smugly.

‘No, nor did I. Oh, and for the record, she’s
virgo intacta
.’ The doctor had straightened up and peeled off the thin surgical gloves and dropped them into a bin, and then said, apparently as an afterthought, that Mary could have a bath now if she wanted.

Broadacre had been so vast and so bewilderingly complex that at this distance Mary could not sort out any particular strand from those early, tangled memories. There had been so many new impressions and new faces: new routines to learn, new mealtimes to adjust to, different arrangements for recreation and work, and sessions with unfamiliar doctors and psychiatrists.

Christabel had stayed with her throughout it all, of course, her strength forcing Mary to cope, helping her to look for ways to make this unbearable place endurable, her thoughts tangling with Mary’s to make up the pattern of those years. At times it was difficult to know which were Christabel’s thoughts and which were Mary’s own.

But the one memory-strand that had never become tangled or indecipherable was the memory of that doctor
who had examined her after the rape attack, and of his look and his tone.

Virgo intacta
, he had said, and he had given Mary that look half of pity, half of contempt. As if he was faintly bored. As if he was relegating her to some lower-class, inferior pigeon-hole. And as if he might be thinking: this one’s never even been laid, and she’s never likely to be either, stuck in here. So put it on the file that she’s a virgin and close the filing cabinet, and draw a line under the whole thing. Mary had hated him with a deep and passionate hate. Fine sodding chance I’ve had to be anything
but virgo
bloody
intacta
when I’ve been locked up inside madhouses since I was fourteen.

That had been the moment when she had looked down the years that stretched out in front of her and seen their unutterable dreariness. Unless she was very clever or very lucky she would live her life inside Broadacre, or a place very like it. She would spend her days doing stupid unimportant work that they said, patronisingly, was ‘rehabilitating’ and ‘worthwhile’. Mary knew the work was neither of these things, because anyone with half a brain could see it was invented work, trivial work. Trivial. The word rasped against her mind, hurting, humiliating.

Mary Maskelyne, trivial! The Sixties icon, trivial! The teenager hailed as an anti-heroine almost before the word was common currency–the girl to whom all those other teenagers had written, asking for advice, asking how to find the courage to do to their wicked, abusive parents what Mary had done to hers! Dubbed as trivial and of no
interest! How
dared
the doctor imply that! And written in the records as a virgin! Did that mean that in the years to come–perhaps after she was dead–when people wrote biographies of famous murder cases, they would say things like,
In the 1960s there was the famous multiple-murderess, Mary Maskelyne, who lived and died a virgin
…? And all those people in the future would think, Imagine that, Mary Maskelyne was never screwed. She killed people but she never got fucked, poor old cow. There was something faintly pathetic and slightly comic about elderly virgins. They were a sub-breed by themselves–twittery old spinsters, eccentric great-aunts, all a bit peculiar because they had never been laid.

A little pulse of anger had started to beat inside Mary’s mind then–or was it anger? Mightn’t it be the secret, hunched-over thing in her mind again, four years older, but uncurling just as strongly as it had done that other time? With the thought the anger-pulse seemed to change pace very slightly, so that it was no longer anger, but excitement. I’m planning again, thought Mary. I’m weighing up ways and means, and I’m calculating what to do to be revenged–yes, and to make life more interesting, and it feels
good
!

She lay on her bed in the ugly dormitory that smelled of stale sleep-breath and sweat, and stared up at the ceiling. It was covered with myriad cracks and it looked a bit like the map of Europe, although if you turned your head it looked more like an elephant, with Italy where the trunk was.

If the rape had been complete that doctor would not
have spoken so dismissively. If she had conceived a child as a result of it he would have looked at her with very different eyes indeed. A child. They would all sit up and take notice of that, because they would have to! The whole country would sit up and take notice, as well. Press releases would be issued, and the papers and the television and radio stations would all take it up. The newspaper headlines would be banners, exactly as they had been four years earlier.
Maskelyne raped inside Broadacre
…they would scream.
Killer to give birth to rapist’s child
…

There would be public inquiries and news items. They would resurrect the film footage of Mary arriving at court for the trial, and there would be interviews with psychiatrists and social workers. The letters would all come pouring in once again, and once again Mary would be important. And that doctor would be made to feel a fool, because he had got the whole thing wrong.

The cracks in the ceiling stopped being Europe, and rearranged themselves into a different pattern. Christabel’s face. Not quite as it was in the old photographs from home, because Christabel was older now. But unmistakably Christabel, looking down at Mary, the sister she had never known, smiling at her, whispering into her mind that it would serve them all right if Mary could lose her virginity in here, if she could become pregnant. Telling her to go for it, Mary, make the bastards look stupid, get yourself screwed and enjoy what follows.

Get yourself screwed…

How? And who? And when? The curled-up blackness
deep within her mind went on planning and calculating, and the golden strength and the glowing energy of her dead sister trickled in and out of Mary’s thoughts.

Ingrid had not minded about the virginity thing, in fact she had seemed rather pleased about it.

The night after the rape she had come into the bathroom again while Mary was there, and she had perched on the edge of the bath exactly as she had done last time, except this time Mary was actually in the bath, covered in soapy water.

Ingrid had wanted to know about the doctor and his examination, and she listened carefully, her head tilted to one side as if she were trying to hear not just what Mary was saying, but what she was thinking and feeling as well. She said there was nothing wrong with being a virgin, in fact it made Mary special. It meant there were things they could explore together, said Ingrid: feelings that Mary could experience for the first time. This time she did much more than stroke Mary’s thighs and give her that single wistful kiss: this time she explored Mary’s whole body, reaching down into the warm water to caress her breasts. To start with Mary had the curious feeling of being pulled out of her skin, and forced into another that did not quite fit her, but after a while she quite liked it.

What Ingrid did in the damp, soap-smelling bathroom, the door locked against intrusion, was worlds and light years away from the gruntings and heavings of the semi-rape of twenty-four hours earlier, just as the soft fragile fluttering of a butterfly’s wings or a bat’s was worlds and
light years away from the heavy, leathery pounding of an eagle’s wings or a gryphon’s.

But both sprang from the same root. Both rendered the creature airborne.

Ingrid’s fingertips and Ingrid’s flicking tongue rendered Mary airborne that night; they took her up and up into a breathless, coiled-spring excitement, and she had thought that if only it would go on she would be for ever grateful to Ingrid—

And so she had been. She had been breathlessly, enchantedly grateful to Ingrid, until the day that the enchantment had dissolved, and she had seen what lay beneath the magic. Betrayal. Ingrid had not cared about Mary at all. She had probably been laughing at her all along–telling the other staff at Broadacre about the things Mary had let her do, bragging to them about Mary’s wide-eyed gratitude.

And in the end, Ingrid had betrayed her.

Get yourself screwed, Mary
…

It was easy to slip out of the dormitory during the recreation time one week later–Mary had rehearsed it three times, and each time she had been able to go unchallenged more or less anywhere she wanted.

Recreation time was seven until eight: the hour after supper and before the bedtime bell. Most people watched television, although as Mary went cautiously out of the block she could hear that some of them were playing stupid Monopoly or Ludo–she could hear them screeching with silly glee, and she could hear the pit-pat
of the table tennis game as well. It was a good time to pick, though, because it was a time when the warders thought they knew where everybody was. But Broadacre was so big it was easy to get lost for an hour or so, and there were so many staff that they had not all got to know Mary yet. They knew the fourteen-year-old whose features had been blazoned across all the newspapers, of course; they knew the back-combed hair and skinny-rib sweater and the heavily made-up eyes, because everybody knew that. But they did not know what Mary looked like now, four crucial years on, with her hair cut into short, feathery fronds, and her face almost free of make-up. It was laughably easy to give the warders the slip, and go along to the men’s dormitory. If anyone recognised her or stopped her, she would say she was looking for the library because she wanted a book to read.

The man who had attacked her on that first night was called Darren Clark, and he was in Broadacre because he had raped several little girls. Ingrid had said that the attack on Mary would have been a kind of initiation ceremony to him: he had done it before with new patients and the attendants were supposed to keep him under supervision when new people came in, but he liked giving them the slip.

Darren Clark’s family were quite well-off, and they had been able to employ a very good barrister to defend him against the rape charges. They had paid doctors to provide reports saying he was not responsible for what he had done, because they had not wanted the shame of having a son who was a criminal. They thought
it was far less shameful to have a son who was mad, said Ingrid.

Mary did not care whether Darren Clark was mad or not, providing he could do it to her properly, providing no one interrupted them–and providing she got pregnant as a result.

It was an awful lot of ‘providings’. But she had sent the note to him–‘Please meet me in your dormitory at seven o’clock tomorrow night’–and if he did not turn up it would not matter all that much. If he showed the note to anyone, that would not matter either, because Mary had not signed it. The end would simply be that she would have to look for someone more suitable. But she thought Darren Clark would come. She thought he would be intrigued and flattered; Ingrid said all men were screamingly vain. She had said, as well, that Darren Clark was quite intelligent most of the time. Mary supposed this meant when he was not raping children or initiating new inmates.

Mary had told Ingrid that the rape attempt had been loathsome. She said she had hated the feel of Darren Clark’s body writhing against her, and the hard stick of his erection pushing between her legs had made her feel so sick she had nearly thrown up in his face. Ingrid had laughed softly, and said, ‘Poor baby. He wanted to piston-pump you, Mary, that’s what he wanted. I’m glad he didn’t get that far; you’d have hated that a whole lot worse.’ Mary had said whatever you called it and however far it had got or not got, she had hated it anyway. She had wanted to scrub her skin for about a month to get
rid of the memory of him touching her and slobbering over her.