The Sacrificial Man (31 page)

Beattie hadn’t been pestering me that night and I was glad. The home was silent and I laid out the trays for the morning’s breakfast, following the instructions on the printed sheet taped to the kitchen cupboard door. Most of the residents shared rooms so the trays were a squeeze, what with prunes, cornflakes, juice and toast. I arranged the bread, brown or white or both, on the plate, all set for toasting. I put dry cereal in the bowls, ready for the milk. It was how I was told to do it, though now I think about it, it was unhygienic leaving the food out all night. By seven the next morning the cornflakes can’t have been very crunchy, but maybe that was a good thing considering most of the residents wore dentures.

After setting out the breakfasts, I doled out the medication which was labelled with the names of the recipients. I had to open each bottle or jar and put a plastic cup on each tray, also with the names on the side. Most residents had a shot of Gaviscon, and there were red or pink or white tablets for everyone. No-one was left out. I was sixteen and didn’t know what any of the pills were for. I was in a position of trust which I was too young to shoulder. I hope things are different now; no teenager should be able to dish out drugs like I did.

It was about half ten by the time I’d finished setting up the trays and that was my duties done. All I had to do then was be there, which was why the job was such a cushy number for me. I settled in the square hold of an armchair and pulled
The Bell
Jar
from my rucksack. Eventually I dropped off. Technically it was a waking duty but I always managed to fall asleep, curled like a cat between wings of yellow Draylon. By my side was a travel clock, with the alarm set for a quarter to seven, and I normally slept through until then so I put the clock in my pocket. It was only tiny and I wanted it close enough to wake me.

I was disturbed very soon by shuffling feet on the corridor carpet. Sleep in conditions like that is never very deep, and I quickly realised that the looming figure was Beattie, no doubt about to pester me about some imaginary wedding she thought she was going to. I thought I’d give her another pill, but then I saw that she was holding something and whatever was in her hand was dropping to the floor. I got up, and walked towards her, but she seemed surprised to see me and her hand went flat on the wall.

I saw then what it was.

I smelt it.

I didn’t want to touch her, but I couldn’t let her daub shit on the walls, so I pushed her back, man-handling her towards her bedroom. I was disgusted, and wanted her out of my sight. In her bedroom the curtains were still drawn with the lights off and I kept them that way, not wishing to see the excreta. The smell assaulted my nostrils. If I saw it I would feel obliged to do something about it but if I waited until morning it would be someone else’s job. So, taking Beattie under her arms I hoisted her into bed and told her, firmly, to stay there. I shook her and she jerked back, damn her, starting to get up again and what with the smell and the fatigue and her fighting me I lost my temper. I hit her around the head. Not hard, just to make her sit back on the bed. How was I to know her head would be so wobbly on her neck that the blow would sound like an axe felling wood? Her head hit the pillow hard, her eyes tight shut, and I thought it was a good sign. I wouldn’t need to medicate her after all.

I hurried to the kitchen, washed my hands until they were red and wondered how successfully I could ignore the mess in the hall and lounge. I decided it was best if I remained in the kitchen which thankfully had one low chair. With my coat folded like a pillow I managed to get comfortable enough to doze, and I didn’t leave the kitchen all night.

The alarm woke me and I tried not to think about the dried faeces on the wall. I poured milk and toasted bread, carefully scraping margarine and marmalade until all the breakfast trays were ready. I began my deliveries, bypassing the hall, deciding to leave Beattie until last.

The men tended to be up, sitting on their beds or on chairs. The women usually waited for their trays in bed, enjoying this parody of hotel living. The ones who had more money, and therefore their own rooms, took the trays as if this being waited on was their due, eyeing the plastic medicine cups with restrained glee.

Finally, there was just Beattie’s tray left, with cornflakes, one slice of white with marge and three prunes (it always amused me that the number was stipulated. What would happen if I put an extra one in the bowl? In Beattie’s case, maybe I should put one less). But as it turned out, it didn’t matter.

She’d been dead for some time and rigor mortis had set in. We were supposed to do regular checks through the night though no-one said how often and I can’t have been the only one who didn’t bother.

She was on her side, in the same position I’d left her, curled like a baby. I put the tray on the bedside cabinet and sat in the space within the curve, looking at her. My feelings from the night before washed away, and I was only concerned with her face. The knotted tension, the folds of skin, the beady eyes, were all gone and she looked about twenty years younger. In fact, seeing her that way, I knew what she had looked like as a child. I was calm when I touched her. The cold skin yielded to my fingers despite the firmness underneath. Her cheek was smooth. I kissed her. I don’t know why, it just felt right. I touched her face, her cheek, and closed my eyes to think of the other time, when the woman had been the most loved, when the body I curled against had been Mummy’s.

That was my second encounter with death and it hadn’t been horrible. It had been fine. I knew death was something I could be happy with. For me it held no fear, only beauty. The promise of something better, removed from the slow wasting of daily life.

Maybe it started then, at sixteen, my desire to assist the dying. Maybe younger when I was just four, when I clung to Mummy in those precious minutes before the world intruded. But I didn’t invent Death’s beauty. This new-found philosophy was reflected back again and again in poems and novels. The final moments of life can be lovely. If you’re young or in love they can be perfect. Romeo and Juliet may be a tragedy, but it’s also a love story. Who wouldn’t choose the path of immortality over infirmity and dementia?

Mummy is always young and always beautiful. She is with me. Always.

I’ll be sentenced in just three days. I dread it and long for it at the same time. I want it to be over. My days are a blank page and Lee is happy to fill them. I don’t ask her when she’s returning to Germany and she doesn’t ask me about my plans. Together we drift.

“Oh, Alice,” she says, “It’s like a cathedral.” She stands under the impressive roof of the church, looking up like a tourist in New York gazing at skyscrapers. “How did a tiny village get to have something like this?”

“It’s because of the wool trade. Lavenham was a big deal in Tudor times.”

The details of this place are so familiar to me. You can’t go for a drink without reading on the top of the menu about this Tudor village with its roots in the manufacturing of cloth, wool and yarn. The whole area is defined by architecture and symbols of that time, mini-factories dominated the area when Henry VIII was on the throne. Perhaps I take this history for granted because Lee is impressed, squinting up at the carved roses on the eaves. “It’s like
The Da Vinci Code
. Maybe Dan Brown should have come here rather than traipsing up to Scotland.”

“Well, you know what Americans are like for the Highlands.” I look up all the same, piggybacking on her enjoyment of deciphering the codes. The last time I was here was with Smith.

We walk through to the silent chapel where candles are lit, and a thin visitors’ book is open. Curious, I go over and read:

For my son, John, who is on duty in Afghanistan. Bring him home safe.

Pray for our neighbour Reg, sick with bowel cancer.

Thinking of the WPC who died in Ipswich last week while doing her job, stabbed by a drunken teenager.

I flick back the pages revealing pain and illness, so much bad luck. If lighting a candle and asking a few nuns to pray could work they’d need a much larger volume.

“What’s that?” Lee peers over my shoulder, and I stand aside so she can see. She peels the pages, more slowly than I had, then puts her hand in her back pocket for a coin which she drops in the box. She chooses a thin white candle. Touching its wick to a flame, she lights it and places it on the rack. I wait to see if she will lift the pen, if she’s going to write a message. She doesn’t.

I’m itching to know. “Who’s the candle for?”

She pauses, and for a second I think she is praying. When she looks at me her eyes are like sorrowful pools. “For you.”

“Me? I’m not ill”

“You’ve been having a lot of headaches recently. I think you’re really stressed, and it’s my job to look after you.” She takes my arm and leads us out of the chapel. Lee knows about Smith, she must know. How could I ever have thought otherwise?

Later, back at my home, we lie together in bed. Lee asks, “Why don’t you have any photos around?”

“I don’t like clutter.”

“But, not even a picture of your family.” She is silent for a moment, but her eyes flicker with active thought. “Your mother was always so kind to me.”

“She liked you.”

“How would she feel is she saw us together now?”

I look at Lee’s cropped hair sticking out randomly from the shape of the pillow, her face free from make up or any other artifice. She works hard for a living and she loves me. It would be everything my mother would want for me, if only Lee were a man. “I think she’d throw a fit. Probably refer me to a shrink, like last time.”

“Well, she couldn’t do it any worse than my own folks did. When I first came out my old man said I wasn’t to set foot in the house again. But he came round, Alice. It just took time. You can’t deny what you are. You can’t hide your nature.”

“I’m not like you, Lee. You know who you are. What you are.”

“What are you then, Alice?” Her voice rises to uncharacteristic volume. She props herself up on one arm, and with the other she reaches for me, her fingers form a bangle around my wrist. “Poor Alice. So clever, yet you can’t see what’s staring you in the face.”

I pull my arm free. “Don’t Lee.”

“Why won’t you ever talk about it, Alice?” she asks, collapsing back down onto the mattress, looking up to me. “Why do you never talk about your real mum?”

Suddenly I’m melancholy. I can’t speak for a long time. When the words do come they surprise me. It’s not something I ever talked about. “I was four when I lost her. She was only twenty-one, she had her whole future ahead of her, if the world had been just a little bit kind. She deserved a better life than she got.”

Lee kisses my shoulder. She knows more than anyone that this is hard for me to talk about. “She could have achieved so much, if it wasn’t for me. Having me ruined everything for her.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Alice. None of it was your fault.”

I kiss her, stopping both our mouths from saying anything we could regret. She pulls away, serious. “Tell me something you’ve never told anyone else.”

I try to pull back, but she won’t release me. “Let me in, Alice. Tell me a secret.”

I tell Lee this:

When I was twelve I was invited to another girl’s sleepover party. I didn’t often get invited to parties, but this was a girl from the church youth group so she probably had to invite everyone out of Christian duty. I was determined to go but when I arrived I was miserable. I watched everyone else laughing, their teeth stained red with cherryade, feeling more alone than if I’d been in my bedroom. As we settled down in our sleeping bags some of the girls began to tell ghost stories.

I hated it and wanted them to stop. I wanted to go home. Then the girl whose party it was, a morose thing with mousy hair whose name I don’t remember, began to tell the story of a woman, in her isolated cottage at night, doing a jigsaw puzzle. The woman slowly places piece by piece into the puzzle until she realises that the picture she is creating is of her own room, and the figure in the picture is herself. Cautiously, she puts in the final piece of the picture that shows a man outside the window brandishing an axe. The final noise she hears is breaking glass.