A Great Deliverance (40 page)

“This is the sister?” Without waiting for an answer, he took Gillian’s arm and devoted his attention to her as they started down the passageway towards the locked ward. “I’ve told Roberta that you’re coming to see her,” he said quietly, his head bent to hers, “but you must prepare yourself for the fact that she may not respond to you. She probably won’t, in fact.”

“Has she …” Gillian hesitated, seemed unsure how to proceed. “Has she still said nothing?”

“Nothing at all. But these are the very early stages of therapy, Miss Teys, and—”

“Mrs. Clarence,” Jonah interjected firmly.

The psychiatrist stopped, swept his eyes over Jonah Clarence. A spark shot between them, suspicion and dislike.

“Mrs. Clarence,” Samuels corrected himself, his eyes steadily on her husband. “As I was saying, Mrs. Clarence, these are the earliest stages of therapy. We’ve no reason to doubt that your sister will someday make a full recovery.”

The use of the modifier was not lost on Gillian. “Someday?” Her arm encircled her waist in a gesture very like her mother’s.

The psychiatrist appeared to be evaluating her reaction. He answered in a way that indicated that her single-word response had communicated far more than she realised.

“Yes, Roberta is very ill.” He put his hand on her elbow and guided her through the door in the panelling.

They walked through the locked ward, the only noise among them the muffled sounds of their footsteps on the carpeting and the occasional cry of a patient from behind the closed doors. Near the end of the corridor, a narrow door was recessed into the wall, and Samuels stopped before it, opening it and switching on the light to reveal a small, cramped room. He motioned them inside.

“You’re going to find yourselves crowded in here,” he warned, his tone of voice indicating how little he regretted the fact.

It was a narrow rectangle, no larger than a good-sized broom closet, which in fact it once had been. One wall was completely covered by a large mirror, two speakers hung at either end, and a table and chairs were set up in the middle. It was claustrophobic and pungent with the smell of floor wax and disinfectant.

“This is fine,” Lynley said.

Samuels nodded. “When I fetch Roberta, I shall switch these lights out, and you’ll be able to see through the two-way mirror into the next room. The speakers will allow you to hear what’s being said. Roberta will see only the mirror, but I’ve told her that you will be present behind it. We couldn’t have her in the room otherwise, you understand.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Fine.” He smiled at them grimly as if he sensed their apprehension and was glad to see that they—like himself—were not anticipating that the upcoming interview would be a diverting lark. “I’ll be in the next room with Gillian and Roberta.”

“Is that necessary?” Gillian asked hesitantly.

“Considering the circumstances, yes, I’m afraid it is.”

“The circumstances?”

“The murder, Mrs. Clarence.” Samuels surveyed them all one last time and then buried his hands deeply in the pockets of his trousers. His eyes were on Lynley. “Shall we deal in legalities?” he asked brusquely.

“That isn’t necessary,” Lynley said. “I’m well aware of them.”

“You know that nothing she says—”

“I know,” Lynley repeated.

He nodded sharply. “Then I’ll fetch her.” He spun smartly on one heel, switched out the lights, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

The lights from the room beyond the mirror gave them some illumination, but their close little cell was alive with shadows. They seated themselves on the unforgiving wooden chairs and waited: Gillian with her legs straight out in front of her, staring passionately down at the scarred tips of her fingers; Jonah with his chair next to hers, cradling its wooden back protectively; Sergeant Havers slumped down, brooding on the darkest corner of the room; Lady Helen next to Lynley, observing the unspoken communication between husband and wife; and Lynley himself, lost in deep contemplation from which he was roused by the touch of Lady Helen’s hand squeezing his own.

Bless her, he thought, returning the pressure. She knew. She always knew. He smiled at her, so glad that she was with him with her clear-eyed sanity in a world that would shortly go mad.

Roberta was very much as she had been. She entered the room between two white-clad nurses, dressed as she had been dressed before: in the too-short skirt, the ill-fitting blouse, the flipflopping slippers that barely sufficed to give her feet protection. She had, however, been bathed in anticipation of the interview, and her thick hair was clean and damp, pulled back and fastened at her neck with a piece of scarlet yarn, an incongruous note of colour in the otherwise monochromatic room. The room itself was inoffensive and barren, devoid of decoration save for a trio of chairs and a waist-high metal cabinet. Nothing hung on the walls. There was no distraction, no escape.

“Oh, Bobby,” Gillian murmured when she saw her sister through the glass.

“There are three chairs here in the room, as you can see, Roberta.” Samuels’s voice came to them without distortion over the speakers. “In a moment I’m going to ask your sister to join us. Do you remember your sister Gillian, Roberta?”

The girl, seated, began to rock. She gave no reply. The two nurses left the room.

“Gillian’s come up from London. Before I fetch her, however, I’d like you to look round the room and accustom yourself to it. We’ve never met in here before, have we?”

The girl’s dull eyes remained where they had been, fixed on a point on the opposite wall. Her arms hung, inanimate, at her sides, lifeless, pulpy masses of fat and skin. Samuels, undisturbed by her silence, let it continue while he placidly watched the girl. Two interminable minutes dragged by in this way before he got to his feet.

“I shall fetch Gillian now, Roberta. I’m going to be in the room while you meet with her. You’re quite safe.”

The last declaration seemed entirely unnecessary, for if the hulking girl felt fear—felt anything at all—she gave no sign.

In the observation room, Gillian got to her feet. It was a hesitant movement, unnatural, as if she were being propelled upward and forward by a force other than her own free will.

“Darling, you know you don’t have to go in there if you’re afraid,” her husband said.

She did not reply but rather, with the back of her hand upon which the heavy scoring from the metal brushes stood out like cutaneous veins, she stroked his cheek. She might have been saying goodbye to him.

“Ready?” Samuels asked when he opened the door. His sharp glance made a rapid assessment of Gillian, cataloguing her potential weaknesses and strengths. When she nodded, he went on crisply. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be in there and several orderlies are within calling distance should she need to be quickly subdued.”

“You act as if you believe that Bobby could really hurt someone,” Gillian said and preceded him to the next room without waiting for a response.

The others watched, waiting for a reaction from Roberta when the door opened and her sister entered. There was none. The big square body continued to rock.

Gillian hesitated, her hand on the door. “Bobby,” she said clearly. Her tone was quiet, but matter-of-fact, the way a parent might speak to a recalcitrant child. Receiving no response, the young woman took one of the three chairs and placed it in front of her sister, directly in her line of vision. She sat down. Roberta gazed through her to the spot on the wall. Gillian looked towards the psychiatrist, who had pulled his chair to one side, out of Roberta’s vision. “What should I—”

“Talk about yourself. She can hear you.”

Gillian fingered the material of her dress. She dragged her eyes up to her sister’s face. “I’ve come up from London to see you, Bobby,” she began. Her voice quavered, but as she proceeded, it gathered strength. “That’s where I live now. With my husband. I was married last November.” She looked at Samuels, who nodded encouragingly. “You’re going to think it’s so funny, but I married a minister. It’s hard to believe that a girl with such a strong Catholic background would marry a minister, isn’t it? What would Papa ever say if he knew?”

The plain face offered neither acknowledgment nor interest. Gillian might have been speaking to the wall. She licked her dry lips and stumbled on. “We have a flat in Islington. It’s not a very large flat, but you’d like it. Remember how I loved plants? Well, I’ve lots in the flat because the kitchen window gets just the right kind of sun. Remember how I could never get plants to grow in the farmhouse? It was too dark.”

The rocking continued. The chair on which Roberta sat groaned with her weight.

“I have a job, as well. I work at a place called Testament House. You know that place, don’t you? It’s where runaways go to live sometimes. I do all sorts of work there, but I like counselling the kids the best. They say I’m easy to talk to.” She paused. “Bobby, won’t you talk to me?”

The girl’s breathing sounded drugged, her heavy head hung to one side. She might have been asleep.

“I like London. I never thought I would, but I do. I expect its because that’s where my dreams are. I… I’d like to have a baby. That’s one of my dreams. And I’d … I think I’d like to write a book. There are all sorts of stories inside me, and I want to write them down. Like the Brontës. Remember how we read the Brontës? They had dreams as well, didn’t they? I think it’s important to have dreams.”

“It’s not going to work,” Jonah Clarence said brusquely. The moment his wife had left the room, he had seen the trap, had understood that her entry into her sister’s presence was a return to a past in which he had played no part, from which he could not save her. “How long does she have to stay in there?”

“As long as she wants.” Lynley’s voice was cool. “It’s in Gillian’s hands.”

“But anything can happen. Doesn’t she understand that?” Jonah wanted to jump up, fling open the door, and drag his wife away. It was as if her mere presence in the room—trapped with the horrible, whale-like creature that was her sister—were enough to contaminate and destroy her forever.
“Nell
!” he said fiercely.

“I want to talk to you about the night I left, Bobby,” Gillian went on, her eyes on her sister’s face, waiting for the slightest flicker that would indicate comprehension and recognition, that would allow her words to stop. “I don’t know if you remember it. It was the night after my sixteenth birthday. I …” It was too much. She couldn’t. She fought onward. “I stole money from Papa. Did he tell you that? I knew where he kept it, the extra money for the house, so I took it. It was wrong, I know that, but I … I needed to leave. I needed to go away for a while. You know that, don’t you?” And then again, seeking reassurance,
“Don’t
you?”

Was the rocking faster now, or was it so only in the imagination of the watchers?

“I went to York. It took me all night. I walked and hitchhiked. I just had that rucksack, you know the one I used to carry my school books in, so I only had one change of clothes with me. I don’t know what I was thinking about, running away like that. It seems crazy now, doesn’t it?” Gillian smiled briefly at her sister. She could feel her heart hammering. It was becoming quite difficult to breathe. “I got to York at dawn. I’ll never forget the sight of the morning light hitting the Minster. It was beautiful. I wanted to stay there forever.” She stopped, put her hands firmly into her lap. The deep scratches showed. It couldn’t be helped. “I stayed in York that entire day. I was so frightened, Bobby. I’d never even been away from home for a night by myself, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on to London. I thought it might be easier if I went back to the farm. But I … I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

“What’s the point of this?” Jonah Clarence demanded. “How is all this supposed to help Roberta?”

Wary, Lynley glanced at him, but the man settled himself again. His face was rigid, every muscle tight.

“So I caught the train that night. There were so many stops, and at every one of them, I thought that I would be questioned. I thought that Papa might have sent the police after me, or come after me himself. But nothing happened. Until I got to King’s Cross.”

“You don’t need to tell her about the pimp,” Jonah whispered. “What’s the point?”

“There was a nice man at King’s Cross who bought me something to eat. I was so grateful to him. He was such a gentleman, I thought. But while I was eating and he was telling me about a house he had where I could live, another man came into the cafeteria. He saw us. He came up and said, ‘She’s coming with me.’ I thought he was a policeman, that he would make me go home again. I started to cry. I hung on to my friend. But he shook me off and ran out of the station.” She paused, caught in the memory of that night. “This new man was very different. His clothes were old, a bit shabby. But his voice was kind. He said his name was George Clarence, that he was a minister, and that the other man had wanted to take me to Soho to … to take me to Soho,” she repeated firmly. “He said he had a house in Camden Town where I could stay.”

Jonah remembered it all so vividly: the ancient rucksack, the frightened girl, the scuffed shoes and tattered jeans she wore. He remembered his father’s arrival and the conversation between his parents. The words “pimp from Soho … didn’t even understand … looks like she hasn’t slept at all…” echoed in his mind. He remembered watching her from the breakfast table where he’d been dividing his time between scrambled eggs and cramming for a literature test. She wouldn’t look at anyone. Not then.