CHAPTER 10
Jess sat in one of the upright chairs facing the bed. The only illumination in the room was a dim lamp on the bedside table to her right, which bathed the room in a gloomy reddish-brown glow. The body was stretched out on the bed, head propped up on a pillow, stripy pyjamaed arms on top of the covers, one hand over the other, a small primrose pressed between the fingers. Joe’s head was tilted back, mouth slightly open as if he was still taking in breath, but there was no movement. He was utterly inert. Life extinct.
Jess had always wondered how she would feel when the day eventually arrived. She had been expecting it for some months now, but when the call finally came, she was not prepared for it and now she struggled to come to terms with her own feelings, or more accurately, the lack of them. Where were they? No distress. No sadness. No pit of the stomach grief and no fighting back the tears. Nothing. She looked at this greying shell of the body of a man who had once been her father. Once.
Way back, when they were a family, they did family things, celebrated each other’s birthdays, wore silly hats at Christmas, and went on day trips to Southend. When Madge cooked Sunday roast for a treat and they sat on the couch together watching Only Fools and Horses on the TV and laughed out loud when Del Boy fell sideways through the open bar top in the pub. Once. But they were both gone now, and although she had wept and wept at her mother’s bedside as she slipped away and wept again for weeks afterwards, here there was nothing. Just finality. A closed chapter. Another reason.
She struggled to remember her father when she was young and he was fit and healthy. There must have been some good times, she thought. It couldn’t always have been so awful and so tormented. She glanced at her parents’ wedding photo on the chest of drawers. They looked like kids; even younger than she herself was now. She tried to imagine their lives. How happy they looked and what hopes they might have had for their future together. The boundless optimism of youth and a new, exciting world unfolding before them, theirs to take with both hands, joined forever by their marriage vows, a bond of mutual love.
She was insanely jealous of the young couple. They had had everything to live for, but ultimately the opportunity had been squandered. And she was bitter. She had never experienced happiness like that; it had been denied her. And although she thought she had got close once, it had all turned to dust, leaving her worse off than before. Her youth had been stolen from her and it would never come back. She was truly alone now, the last link severed.
She stared at her dead father again, and as she did so, her mother’s voice floated into her consciousness from the dark recesses of her mind. A voice weakened by illness and enfeebled by a profound sadness, but at the same time energised by as much strength as she could gather in these, her dying breaths. The sound echoed in her mind and it was if her mum was there, next to her.
“Jess, my darling. Promise me you’ll take care of him. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him now. He was always useless at looking after himself. He loves you a lot, you know. We both do.”
Jess blinked back the tears and felt her jaw tighten, but she could not respond; didn’t respond then, couldn’t respond now
“And I loved him too … once. He was well handsome. I still love him. Despite everything he did.”
Her mother’s words. Slow, deliberate, thoughtful, regretful. Despite everything he did. The purple bruise below her mother’s eye, her cheekbone covered with excessive make-up, the split lip caked in scarlet lipstick, the premature crow’s feet around the eyes and the greying hair of a sixty-year-old who looked more like someone in her seventies, and, above all, the utter exhaustion of someone for who the fairy-tale romance had long since died, and who, through stoicism, stubbornness, eternal optimism and a misplaced sense of loyalty, remained in perpetual denial. The ultimate self-delusion that love – yes, love – could forgive everything.
Jess remembered the noise, the shouting, the sound of breaking glass and crockery flung across the room, and the slaps and the screams stifled lest they travel upstairs to her room but which had been as clear as a bell, even with her fingers in her ears and the bedcovers over her head. The tears in her eyes, the rocking and swaying, arms tightly folded around her chest willing it to stop. Praying to God it would stop. He would stop.
And then, the next day, life carrying on as normal, as if it were nothing but a bad dream. Breakfast served, clothes washed and ironed, packed lunches prepared, and being sent off to school, her father kissing her mother goodbye as he set off in search of work, again, her mother wearing rather more make-up than was necessary for a Wednesday morning. And so it went on.
She remembered the world becoming hostile, and turning in on herself. Turning away from her relationships at school, recognising subtle shifts in friends’ demeanour, attitudes fostered by gossiping neighbours passed on through their own children developing into bullying, hatred and ostracism.
Turning away from life at home, where she spent all her time alone in her room, unable to live with the constant fear of further attacks, her mother’s acquiescence and the contempt for her that grew from her capitulation, her absolute submission.
Learning to spot the signs early, recognising the flash points and making herself scarce. Her father’s sorties to the pub, drinking money they didn’t have and returning in a rage, ranting about the unfairness of it all; and the conduit for his anger was always there, waiting dutifully for him. The woman he loved. The voice of the woman he loved was still pleading with her daughter.
“Your dad ain’t a bad man, Jess. He didn’t mean you no harm. He just can’t help it.”
Jess swallowed deeply. He didn’t mean you no harm. She felt her chest expanding with the involuntary intake of breath and the pressure in her heartbeat which began to resonate in her ears. The memories were coming back and she couldn’t stop them tormenting her.
She’s fifteen again. She’s in her room, in bed, listening to the sounds of the night. It’s almost midnight on a Saturday and she can hear the front door latch, as she does the same time every Saturday night. Last orders at The George plus a bit, plus the stagger home, dodging the traffic, kicking empty bottles down the street, shouting and swearing at neighbours complaining about the noise. The slow, lumbering trudge of feet on the stairs, the thunderous waterfall of urine into the pan, the flushing of the toilet, the cack-handed wrestling with her parents’ bedroom door and its careless closure, and the muttering and arguing and oral recriminations which would eventually give way to loud snoring. And then, only then, could she sleep.
But this night, the toilet flushes, and … nothing. Nothing but silence, and in the silence her eyes darting around the ceiling, ears straining. Something’s different. The scuff and a snort outside her door, the familiar creak of the spring in the door handle and the squeak of the door hinges, yellow light pervading the darkness in a growing strip along the wall. Anxiously turning on her side to face the window away from the door. The squeak of the hinges again, this time in reverse, and the click of the latch and the fading of the yellow light. And the voice, familiar, gentle, whispering, comforting. “Jessie? Jessie? Are you awake, Jessie? Where’s my little girl? Where’s my good girl?”
Then the rustle and movement of the bedcover and duvet she is gripping tightly around herself, her body contracting and curling into an ever-tightening ball, his weight tilting her mattress backwards and the sweaty, stale tobacco and boozy stench of his breath close to her neck. The arm under her head curling around her neck, clasping her shoulder, pressing her body to his, his free hand reaching under the duvet, straightening her leg and resting on her knee.
And then, amidst the trembling fear, fear that his dormant rage will suddenly erupt and she will surely die, silence and motionlessness. Silence apart from the laboured breathing and the snuffles pre-empting the inevitable snore. She holds her breath. She will slide out when she can, and go. But where? Anywhere.
Then he’s snoring, asleep. She waits an interminable time, five minutes. She’s trying to slither out from below his arm but it’s too heavy. He snuffles and the snoring stops. She freezes. The right hand moving slowly up her leg taking her nightdress with it until, under the duvet, her leg and thigh are bare, and his hand is on her hip. He is awake again and the fear intensifies “You’re a good girl, Jessie, A goooooood girl.” The hand leaving her hip and his fingers sliding across her belly. She can’t move. She can’t breathe.
And so it began.
“Look after him for me, Jess. Promise?”
Jess opened her eyes again and felt the sweat on her brow and realised she was back, here, in this room, with this thing who is, was, her father.
She recovered herself and stared at his corpse, at his gaunt, grey, lifeless face, and she thought for a moment she could sense the faint smell of decomposition, the stench of putrefaction, and they were strangely familiar. She had done as she promised. Despite everything. Rest in peace, Mum. Without a further look, she got up and left him for the last time. Another reason.