Veil of Darkness (7 page)

There is chaos in her brain as flash flash flash goes the book, connecting with Kirsty’s most inner fears, speaking thoughts only she understands, riveting with its terrors, blood-curdling with its dangers. From blackmailer to martyr, one moment loving, the next depraved; the author terrifies, comforts and laughs like a close but alarming friend. No no no, yes yes yes, why why why,
be careful
! The book turns Kirsty lost and cold, as if she has wakened alone in a dark, strange room. ‘
Evil is not without purpose. I am a subterranean monster thrusting its head and mouth out of the earth in search of prey. Killing him is so sweetly easy…
’ Occasionally Kirsty looks up, blinks and shakes her head like an owl, exhausted by emotional bombardment, but tenderness, humour and pity twist like wild roses through this blitzed landscape. Kirsty flies through the night on wings of exultation and courage, with a bigness in her head that is awesome.

Who is this person?

Kirsty is forced to pause, to wrench herself from the plot to find out.

Ellen Kirkwood.

Never heard of her.

This edition, in pristine condition save for the musty smell, was printed in 1913. The publishers, Bryant, list no other titles under the author’s name. There is no biography, no photo, no clues.

The underlying story is simple, a tale of a woman and her awesome revenge, a black-veiled woman, a bride of Christ.

‘
My entire being is filled by an awareness of him, trembling uncertainly between existence and annihilation
…’

If the force of this books grips Kirsty so violently then what about everyone else? The most incredible part is that a novel written all those years ago can strike the perfect chord today. It would only have to be slightly altered…

By the time Kirsty has finished, daylight is flooding through the streaky windows.

And all that makes the ending endurable is the knowledge that Kirsty can start at page one and read the whole lot over again.

T
HIS COULD BE DISHEARTENING.
No decent person would choose to be introduced to this scrawny little blackguard, but Graham Stott, black sheep, ungrateful son and Avril’s brother, has to be taken on board in order to be fully cognizant of Avril’s lack of self-worth.

Life is so unfair. Graham’s waist measures thirty and he tops the scales at ten stone exactly while poor old Avril…

Graham Stott prepares for parole after a three-year stint for burglary. It would have been longer, grievous bodily harm if the old biddy sleeping upstairs in the house had suddenly woken up, and the screw Mike Tarbuck despairs of a system that lets maniacs lose on the street when everyone knows they are worse than animals.

But Graham is homeless, poor lad.

Where on earth will he go?

With disbelief and raucous hilarity Avril and Bernie listened to Kirsty’s outrageous plan.

‘This is deeply immoral. You can’t re-write a book and make out it’s your own. It must be illegal for a start. What if you’re caught? What if you’re sued?’

Bernie took a more positive view. ‘You’re skint, she’s skint, and they wouldn’t send her down for that.’

‘But what about your kids?’ frowned Avril. ‘They’d have a spiv for a mum.’

Kirsty was shocked by their response. This felt so right, it had to be done. The decision was taken, it was already out of her hands. It was more of an urge than a rational thought, a potent mixture of bliss and anger. ‘You don’t have to join me,’ she said. ‘But there’ll be money in it, and a laugh.’

This sounded too crude for Kirsty.

‘Count me in for the dosh,’ said Bernie.

‘What help could you be?’ Avril scoffed. ‘You’re a moron, barely literate.’

‘I’m the only one round here who’s lived, and you need me for my experience of life.’

‘You’ve both got to read it,’ said Kirsty. Maybe her own reaction to
Magdalene
had been over the top, maybe the others would hate it. ‘I’m going to bring it up to date, I know I can do that, no problem. Avril can read it while she’s typing it up and if Bernie reads it when it’s finished we’ll know whether or not it’s something special.’

‘Well, it looks dead boring to me,’ said Bernie, eying the mass of small print, weighing the book in a drooping right hand.

But Avril is grateful for a chance to do something really useful. When they’d first arrived she’d thought Kirsty didn’t like her, that she saw her as fat and boring, and at first she’d been hurt by Bernie’s teasing, but now she’d got this relationship going and had the chance to contribute something solid. ‘I’ll nick an audio machine from the office and you can try that out. It would be quicker, and then I can type it up in my lunch hours.’

Kirsty’s gratitude was warming and pleasing, as was the way she sympathized with Avril’s on-going homesickness.

‘People find it hard to like me,’ she once confided to Kirsty. ‘That’s why you two are so special. Strangers seem to try and avoid me, but I try so hard to be warm and polite.’

‘“Smile and the world smiles with you” is a wicked lie,’ said Kirsty. ‘Smile and they think something’s seriously up.’

Avril irritates. She is always offering her services, sharing her snacks and smiling. Prepared to put herself out for other people’s convenience, she would make an excellent vicar’s wife. But Avril is an invader of personal space in the way that cats rub strangers’ legs. Yet she’s sensitive to the point of obsession. There’s no way she can handle the young pretender who runs the office, man-about-town, son-in-law of the dithering minibus driver, Colonel Parker, no matter how desperately she tries to please. She finds his military directness unnerving and Avril is greatly relieved that she works in the outer office and is not his personal assistant. That dubious privilege rests with Meryl Pudsey, a bag of nerves and no wonder.

Mr Derek, as they must call him, although this makes him sound like a hairdresser, is conceited, rude and impatient. He is a Mills and Boon hero come unhappily to life, the kind of man you think you might marry before you meet him in the flesh: strong, demanding and good-looking, with the square jaw of the craggy. On the first day, Avril fell foul of him because she was flustered when he came for the post. Naturally she was flustered, she had never sorted post before, and as her fingers grew larger and fatter and finally lost all control, she could sense his rage burgeoning inside him like a bloodied alien about to burst out from under that stiff, striped waistcoat and starched white shirt.

How different from comfortable Daddy in his cardigans with their leather buttons, shiny and tempting as new conkers.

‘Just leave it,’ he’d barked with exasperation, eyes whisking hither and thither. ‘Go and sit down, whoever you are. Leave it, damn you! Can’t you see you’re making things worse with your clumsy fussing?’

As tears threatened Avril’s baby-blue eyes, as she chewed her dolly-pink lips, the thought of Mother came floating to mind, Mother in her fireside chair reading the
Daily Mail,
light from the standard lamp pooling her beiges in a pink glow of safety. But the game Miss Pudsey came to her rescue. ‘It’s just his way,’ she said through a slightly twitching mouth that belied her calm. ‘Take no notice of Mr Derek. His bark is worse than his bite.’

‘He’s a prick,’ said Kirsty.

‘He’s a wanker,’ said Bernie.

How Avril dreads the moment when her personal extension will buzz and Mr Derek will call her in with his now familiar, ‘If you please.’

‘Will there be bullies all through my life? Will they pick me out like beady-eyed seagulls pouncing on hot dogs?’

‘There’s a huge notice on your back that shouts out “hurt me”. We must find out why and change it,’ said Bernie.

At the summons of Mr Derek, Avril gathers her notebook and enters his office with a watery knock. She mustn’t wait for any ‘come in’, that would only madden him further. All those beautiful clothes so carefully chosen by Mother are a total waste of time. Whatever she wears she feels fat and foolish the moment she flops over his threshold.

Fast and accurate mean little to her now.

Perhaps it would have been kinder to the students if Avril’s business studies course had employed the odd cantankerous male tutor.

Wherever the six feet four manager goes he uses a stiff-backed rush, so his legs move faster than the rest of his body, as if he’s riding a penny farthing.

But Avril will not be defeated. Spurred on by her recent social success Avril tries to befriend Rhoda, one of the few locals employed by the Burleston. But Rhoda with the rook’s nest hair is careless and lazy, taking advantage of Avril’s soft nature whenever she gets the chance, slipping extra work her way, taking an overlong mid-morning break, skipping off early and using the phone for personal calls whenever Miss Pudsey is out. She nicks pens, too, and smokes her menthol cigarettes in the ground-floor guests’ bathrooms. When she throws the stubs down the loo, no matter how often you pull the chain shreds of tobacco come bobbing back up and someone is bound to report it.

And what if they think it’s Avril?

‘It is a tendency with you,’ said Mother on the phone, ‘to rush things, dear. You can’t expect everything to come up roses after only one week.’

‘I don’t expect roses, Mother, but I do expect civility and fairness. Is that too much to ask?’ said Avril, with a choke in her voice. ‘Well, is it?’

‘No, dear, of course not. But you must bear in mind that Mr Derek is the boss and he shoulders many heavy burdens. It’s not for him to go home and shed the problems of the day by turning on the TV over a bowl of cornflakes like your father. Oh no, a man like that is permanently on the go, tussling with important business problems. Backbiting, Avril, is no answer. Look what happened to the Conservative Party.’

But I’m efficient and fast, Avril wanted to wail, but I just don’t get given a chance. It’s not easy… there’s hardly any straightforward typing. Instead she said, ‘Some of the guests can be very demanding.’

‘Naturally,’ said Mother in her best customer-complaints voice. ‘And wouldn’t you be demanding if you were paying those kinds of prices?’ as if she was buying vests from British Home Stores. ‘You must remember, Avril, that you are a small cog in a vast machine, an essential cog, but a small one, dear, and it’s up to you to put your heart into what you are doing so the machine can run smoothly.’

It is to the desk that the guests come if they have complaints or face complications. Because Rhoda sits with her back to the foyer, she pretends she can’t see them and Avril is left to face the music. ‘I asked for my tea at eight thirty…’

‘Can you arrange these connections on Friday week for me and my husband…?’

‘No, I never used the telephone, that item should not be on my bill…’

‘So why don’t you give cash back?’

‘That’s all very well, but where is Nanny? I made it quite clear to her that I would pick Jonathan up here in the foyer after lunch.’

‘I had a golf lesson booked with the pro and the man had the cheek to forget.’

And so on and so forth.

The cruellest offenders are the Miss Lewises, Peg and Vi, who have been coming to the Burleston for an early summer holiday since their parents used to bring them when they were just knee-high. These two Devon-violet old ladies expect, demand even, superstar attention, and are poisonous if they fail to get it.

They called her a dozy lump yesterday, and although Avril is used to being tormented because of her build—at school they called her Jumbo, quite an affectionate term, although Avril didn’t see it that way—she believed that when she started work and entered the sensible world of adults she would leave such stigmatizing behind.

‘You want to get off that big bottom of yours more often,’ carped Peg Lewis, gathering up her rook-black cardigan and shaking it aggressively when Avril was slow to produce the key.

‘I’m sorry.’ Avril gaped, undefended and unwilling to absorb such an insult.

‘They take anyone these days,’ quipped the equally venomous sister, Vi, as they both tottered off towards the lift muttering under their breaths.

There was no-one to complain to. Mr Derek was out of the question and Meryl Pudsey didn’t have the clout.

She longed for the understanding arms of Kirsty or Bernie.

When six thirty arrives Avril feels drained. This mixing with people is what finishes her. Any amount of shorthand, typing, menu-drafting, columns, indentations, noticeboard information, photo-copies—four, ten or fifty—she could knock all this off with her eyes closed, no problem. It’s when it comes to people. She often grabs a quick, cold supper and goes straight to bed dreading tomorrow.

‘You don’t know you’re born,’ she moans at Bernie. ‘No wonder I have mean, horrid thoughts, sometimes you make me so jealous that I feel sick and then hate myself for my wickedness. The whole thing’s a vicious circle. Why is life so damned unfair? Every day you fend off men who ask you out clubbing or dancing. Why do men always go for the obvious?’

Bernie drags at her twisted fag. She picks tobacco off a shapely lip. ‘I’ve got the gift of the gab and a face that might have launched ships, I suppose that makes men like me, but never the sort I really want. Why is it never the people I want?’

Kirsty remembers an article she read saying beautiful children have the advantage of being subconsciously preferred by teachers: beautiful children or just kids with attractive names. Examiners give higher marks to students with names like Victoria or Anastasia, while those with names like Avril or June get stuck at the bottom of the list. No wonder Avril is jealous. Bernie could throw on an old sack, shake her shaggy head and look good, whereas Avril sleeps with rollers in and takes ages to adjust her tights and make sure she’s got no panty line showing.

And Kirsty isn’t the only one who is ultra-perceptive. ‘I knew you were on the run when I saw you on the train,’ says Bernie, in one of the few conversations when she forgets and stops talking about herself.

‘And I thought you were hiding,’ says Avril, flopped on her bed in her dressing gown, resting after a hellish day.

Bernie leans towards the fly-blown mirror on the chest of drawers in their threadbare room and pulls down one cheek before expertly drawing a black line under her eye.