Tower of Silence (18 page)

The locking of her door every night was something Mary was still trying to get used to in Moy. After the outright no-privacy years in Broadacre, it was hard to adjust to Moy’s covert watchfulness–to the sly spyholes in the door of every room, to the security cameras set high up in the corridors. It was difficult to sleep in a room where you knew the spyhole might slide back at any moment and someone might peer in.

It was difficult to sleep on the night after the writer woman, Joanna Savile, had given the talk. After lock-up Mary lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, her mind seething with memories and images–Broadacre and the plan to become pregnant, and Ingrid.

Ingrid.

Beneath everything, like a dark and bitter undertow,
was the never-to-be-forgotten memory of how Ingrid, in the end, had betrayed her.

At the end of Joanna Savile’s talk it had been quite easy and natural to go up to the little table and ask questions about writing. How did one begin? Ought you to choose your characters first and put them in your story, or was it better to think up the story first and then decide how to people it?

A couple of the others were there as well. They wanted to write short stories for magazines, or they wanted to write about their childhoods, or update
A Christmas Carol
for a play at Christmas. Mary thought all this was unbelievably dull, but she listened to everything that was said, nodding slowly at intervals as if she was finding it deeply absorbing, but all the time watching Joanna. Closer to, she was not as much like Ingrid as Mary had initially thought. She was thinner and her voice was different. More expensive. I hate you, thought Mary. You’re successful and probably quite well off because you look fairly glossy. And you’re wearing a wedding ring. I’ll bet you’ve got a husband who’s clever and successful as well, and I’ll bet you had parents who doted on you.

Whether or not any of this was true, Joanna Savile was helpful and patient with everyone. She talked to the short-story aspirants about how you had to make every word count in that framework, and she talked to Mary about setting out a synopsis–a work-plan, she called it. Had Mary a novel actually in mind? Uh–was it OK to call her Mary, by the way?

‘Yes, of course. And yes, I did think I’d like to try a
novel eventually,’ Mary said. No need to admit to anyone yet that her book was going to be the story of her parents’ cruel disinterest, and the story of Ingrid’s betrayal.

Ingrid…

As she talked to Joanna, the curled-up darkness in her mind–the darkness that was becoming more and more enmeshed with Christabel’s secret presence–was already starting to uncoil, and with it the familiar stir of excitement. I could do this. I could write my own story, and everyone would take notice of me again. Publicity. Interviews. The letters would come flooding in–perhaps a whole new generation would begin writing to her. And reviews–she remembered again about reviews in the newspapers.
Surprised to find such a degree of literacy from one who has been held at Her Majesty’s pleasure for more than thirty years…Triumph for teenage murderess…

There was something called the Koestler Prize as well; it was given for creative work done by people inside prisons or special institutions. One of the boys at Broadacre had been taking a City & Guilds course in photography and he had won a Koestler Prize. Mary had gone along to Moy’s small library earlier today to find out a bit more about it, in case it might be useful. The write-up was mostly pretty boring, droning on about rewarding creativity and encouraging enterprise, and about how dedicated the judges were. Mary would just bet they got a fat fee for the judging, never mind that the article said they gave their services free.

But apparently there were several categories in the
award, and one of them was Poetry, Prose, and Playwriting. Hah! Exactly what she had hoped! She read on, and halfway down the page her attention was caught by one paragraph about the writing awards.

‘In so far as the entrants have doubtless had enough judgement for one lifetime,’ it said, ‘we prefer to think we
assess
their contributions. So we look for imagination, verve and insight; writing which makes us stop and think. We cannot pretend it is always a joy to read; on the contrary, the outpourings of distress are frequently overwhelming. There are the tragedies of a thousand violent childhoods, loss and death; even the approach of release and freedom is sometimes recorded with a sense of fear.’

The outpourings of distress…The tragedies of a thousand violent childhoods…Yes.

Koestler Prize goes to Mary Maskelyne
…the headlines would read, or maybe it should be ‘
Prestigious’ Koestler Prize
…Yes, that was even better. And–
Astonishing confession of a child helplessly enduring the selfish cruelties of parents worshipping at the shrine of a dead daughter…Betrayal and deceit from those she had trusted
…

Mary could see the headlines as clearly as if they were already written. But it was necessary to appear modest and unassuming for the moment, and so when Joanna Savile asked if Mary was thinking of attempting a novel, Mary said, ‘Well, I do know a novel’s a big undertaking,’ and smiled uncertainly. Was she sounding sufficiently diffident? She might as well embellish it a bit. She said, ‘I expect a novel’s what everyone wants to do eventually
though, isn’t it? But I thought I might start with some short stories. To get into training.’

‘Short stories are very good discipline,’ said Joanna March, smiling at Mary. She had a lovely smile, the bitch. Ingrid used to smile a bit like that, in the days when Mary still trusted her, in the days when Ingrid could still be trusted, in the days when Ingrid had still had a mouth that could smile and a tongue that could tell lies—

Ingrid
…

Ingrid had not smiled on the night that Darren Clark died. She had not come to Mary’s bedside until the next morning–until long after Mary had made her carefully hysterical accusation of rape, and long after the painful examination had been made. And
this time
there was no humiliating off-hand reference to no penetration, and
this time
there was no slighting instruction to mark her medical records as ‘
virgo intacta
’.

Ingrid had looked white and shocked that morning. She stood at the side of Mary’s bed in the infirmary wing and looked down at her, her eyes unreadable. Funny how, when so much else had slithered from her memory, Mary could still remember Ingrid’s eyes on that morning: bleak and hard. And Ingrid’s mouth, the mouth that had done all those intimate things to Mary’s body, had been thin and stern.

‘You stupid, silly bitch,’ she had said, speaking very softly so that the infirmary attendants in their little glass-walled office could not hear. ‘What the fuck were you trying to do?’

‘He raped me,’ said Mary, staring at the unforgiving eyes. ‘I wasn’t trying to do anything. He made me go into the men’s dormitory with him–he forced me there–and then he raped me. He hurt me a lot. I didn’t know they could get as big as that; he was huge. I’m still bleeding from it.’ Had there been a slight softening of Ingrid’s expression at that?

‘You killed him, though. Mary, you killed him.’

‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I was trying to defend myself. There was a Coke bottle—Listen, if you’d had that huge horrid thing rammed into you, making you bleed, you’d have grabbed anything handy and smashed it into him.’

‘But you do know what you did to him afterwards, don’t you, Mary?’

‘Yes, I killed him. You’ve told me that.’ Mary hunched a shoulder and turned her back on Ingrid. ‘I can’t remember it all,’ she said, muffling her voice into the pillow. ‘It’s patchy, the things I remember. But I do remember that I was frightened. I’m still frightened if you want to know. I might be pregnant and that’s very frightening indeed.’

‘It’s not that much of a possibility, surely—’

‘Yes, it bloody is! He came inside me! I felt him!’ It was unexpectedly embarrassing to say these things to Ingrid; Mary was glad that she was still burying her face in the pillow. ‘What if I’m pregnant?’ she said, mumbling the words.

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be a problem. They’ll do a pregnancy test in a week or so, and if it’s positive, they’ll give you a D and C more or less automatically.’

‘What?’ Mary sat up in the bed and stared at Ingrid. ‘You mean an abortion?’

‘Mary, you wouldn’t want—’

‘They’ll make me have an abortion,’ said Mary, clenching her fists, feeling the hot fury start to rise. ‘That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

Ingrid said, very gently, ‘Yes, Mary, that is what I mean.’

An abortion. And those hoped-for headlines, that new wave of interest in the infamous Mary Maskelyne who had been raped and who had given birth as a result, would never happen. All that would happen would be a squalid half-hour on some surgical table, and presumably a note on the medical record–another hateful belittling note!–and life would drag tediously and despairingly on.

It was at that moment that Mary began to hate Ingrid.

The pregnancy test was done one week later, and the result was positive.
Good
. Thank you, Darren Clark, poor bled-out body, stupid dickless corpse, lying in a cemetery somewhere. Thank you. A pity you never knew what you did for me, but there you are, life’s a bitch and then you die.

Mary was allowed out of the infirmary after Broadacre’s psychiatrists had finally stopped poking and prodding at her mind–‘
Why
did you feel you had to mutilate him, Mary?’ ‘Because he fucked me, you wankers, why else d’you think?’–and after the other doctors had eventually stopped poking and prodding at her body.

‘I’m going through with this,’ she said to Ingrid. ‘I’m
not having an abortion, not at any price.’ Nor am I giving up those headlines, said her mind.
Teenage murderess gives birth to child after vicious rape
…

Ingrid said, ‘But Mary, sweetheart, even if you could persuade the doctors to let you have the baby, once it was born they’d take it away and get it adopted. You couldn’t possibly keep it. Not in here.’ She took Mary’s hand. ‘They’ll bring such a lot of pressure on you. Mostly because they’ll all be afraid for their reputations. Rape in a government institution—If that got out, it would create such a row.’

‘Oh, would it?’ Innocent eyes, remember to give her the innocent-eyes look. (Yes, but hold on to those headlines, Mary, because that’s what this is all for…
The notorious Mary Maskelyne yesterday gave birth to a son–a daughter
…
New episode in the tragic life of Sixties icon, Mary Maskelyne…
‘
I know I will never see my child again
,’
said Miss Maskelyne bravely, in an exclusive interview
…)

‘I don’t think they could actually
force
an abortion,’ said Ingrid, after a moment. ‘But they might make it very difficult for you to keep refusing.’

‘I see,’ said Mary slowly, not saying that what she really saw was that Ingrid was not prepared to put her head on the chopping block for Mary’s sake. ‘Yes, I see.’

To begin with, Broadacre’s governor and Broadacre’s doctors tried over and over to persuade Mary into what they called a termination.

‘No,’ she said, clinging to that one word. ‘No.’

‘Have you talked to your personal adviser?’ they said. ‘Really talked to her?’

‘Personal advisers’ were a new thing; an experiment of the Home Secretary’s, who had gone on television to tell anyone who was interested that people in secure psychiatric units and asylums should be assigned personal advisers, each adviser taking on eight or ten inmates. This was a marvellous innovation, said the Home Secretary unctuously; it was the way forward for mental institutions and criminal asylums, and it was the humane way to treat hundreds of poor unfortunate souls. Most of the attendants and doctors at Broadacre who had listened had said, Jeez, what a lot of crap, the Home Secretary no more cared about being humane than Adolf Hitler: all he was doing was angling for a knighthood when he retired next year.

But the support Mary had wanted from Ingrid (and failed to get from the cold-hearted bitch!) came, in the end, from a totally unexpected quarter. It came from the prison chaplain.

To the chaplain, abortion, for whatever reason, was total anathema. He came to see Mary, talking to her for long hours, yacking on about the sanctity of human life, and about how only God, who bestowed life in the first place, had the right to take it back. He was ugly and tedious and it was a pity nobody had told him how distasteful it was to have hairs growing down from his nose, but he talked about sin and about restitution, and he gave Mary the argument she had needed to screw down the sanctimonious prigs who only cared
about saving their careers and preserving their reputations.

Repentance. That was the reason she used to shut the clacking doctors and governors up when they came at her again with their representations and their persuasions. They wanted to hush everything up, of course; Mary knew that. But she donned the most innocent and the most hesitant of all her innocent and hesitant guises, and she said she understood, at last, how wicked she had been, and that she saw the birth of the child as a way to redress the balance. She had killed her parents, she said, and she knew now that it had been a truly evil thing to do. But with the chaplain’s help she was presently groping her way towards some kind of forgiveness. Some kind of cleansing. Would they, then, have her kill again? she said.

It discomfited them, because these days a professing of religious beliefs did discomfit people. But it worked. She was allowed to continue with the pregnancy.

‘But you do know that they’ll take the child away for adoption?’ said Ingrid. ‘Mary, you do know that?’

Mary said slowly, ‘The thing is that I’ve never had anything that was really and definitely my own. I never even had a dog or a cat. I’d like to know that I had a little boy or a little girl growing up somewhere in the world.’ She took Ingrid’s hand, moving her fingers intimately against the palm. ‘We might even be together one day, you and I. They might let me out one day, and I might be able to have a share in the child.’ She took a deep breath, and said, ‘They might even let you adopt the child right from the start.’