A Sight for Sore Eyes (7 page)

Chapter 8

Soon after Richard and Julia were married the police asked Richard if he would let Francine attend an identity parade. 'She only saw his shoes and the top of his head,' Richard protested. 'If you think about it,' Detective Inspector Wallis said, 'I'm sure you'll agree that no one looking down from above ever just sees the top of someone's head and his shoes. There's going to be a lot more than that. His hands, for instance, the shape and size of him, his ears, his shoulders.' Julia thought the project very wrong. Francine, in her opinion, was disturbed enough already, a frightened, traumatised child. This might send her over the edge. It was their first disagreement, hers and Richard's. Richard won it, but that was the last struggle with Julia he was ever to win. She sighed and looked sad, saying, 'I hope we aren't talking about irreparable damage to Francine's already fragile personality.' They both went with her to the police station in Surrey where the identity parade was held. Because of the peculiar nature of the view Francine had had of the man on the doorstep, she was placed in a room where she could look down on the eight men in the lineup. The glass in the window was one-way so that she could see them but they could not see her. Or so the police told Richard. It looked like normal glass to Julia. 'They would say that, darling,' she said, 'to set our minds at rest.' In any case, Francine was unable to pick out the man. She could pick out four, she said the tops of their heads all looked like the top of the head she had seen, but no particular one. What happened to the men in the line-up none of them was told, but no one was arrested. 'But he's seen her, hasn't he?' said Julia. 'That was the point of the one-way glass,' Richard said, 'so that he couldn't see her.' Julia, who was nothing if not illogical, said, 'It doesn't matter, though, does it, if he saw her or not? The reality is that he knows who she is and he knows she's the only witness the police have.' 'You're presupposing that he was one of those eight men.' 'Well, of course he was, Richard. He wouldn't have been there if he wasn't.' What motivated Julia towards her subsequent actions? Later on, this was a question Francine asked herself. At the beginning she was too young to ask. Richard didn't ask. He didn't question at all, for he recognised that Julia had a genuine fear for Francine's safety and believed that Francine herself was afraid. In embarking on her system of the protection and cocooning and insulating of Francine, she was only obeying her conscience and her knowledge of psychology. That she might be carrying out her safeguarding programme for other reasons, because she was herself childless and likely to remain so, or because she had lost her means of livelihood and profession, or because she had abandoned all other areas in which to exercise power, occurred only to her stepdaughter, and that not for another ten years. But at that time what principally troubled Francine was the departure of Flora. She might have stayed, at least as an occasional visitor or helper, or been invited to be a sitter while Richard and Julia went out in the evenings. But Richard and Julia never went out in the evenings, they never went out together. Julia thought it harmful for Francine to be in the house without either one of them. So Flora left and Francine cried. 'You can come and see me,' Flora said. 'I'm not far away. You get Mrs Hill to bring you.' But somehow Julia never had the time. She was too busy looking after Francine. Privately, she told Richard it was better for Francine to make a clean break with Flora. 'On a practical level,' she said, 'you wouldn't want your daughter picking up that accent.' It was at about this time, after Flora had gone, when Francine was nearly nine and had tried and failed to spot the man in the identity parade, that Richard read a letter to Julia from a former client's solicitor. He read it by mistake, confessed and apologised, but still, quite humbly and contritely, wanted to know what it meant. 'It means that a very vindictive, and I must say unbalanced, man has finally won his victory over me. He has succeeded in puffing me out of practice and no doubt his triumph is complete.' The explanation which followed made Richard nearly as indignant as his wife. This man's son had been Julia's client. He was a boy of ten. A tragedy had nearly ensued when, after coming home from a session with Julia, the boy had tried, and luckily failed, to hang himself. The father threatened to bring an action against Julia, was set to do so, being certain he could show evidence of damage to his son's mind directly caused by her, but had finally been persuaded to settle on payment by Julia of two thousand pounds and her promise to retire from all psychotherapeutic work. 'You should have fought it,' Richard said. 'I know. I hadn't the strength. I hadn't the courage, Richard. I was all alone - then.' She said nothing about the eminent psychiatrists who had been willing to give evidence in court. She gave no hint of the boy's testimony to his father's solicitor of the terrors, agoraphobia and recurring nightmares her questionings and suggestions had allegedly induced in him. 'I'll still be able to make use of all my knowledge,' she said quite gaily. 'There are others to benefit from it. You and Francine. Would you think me melodramatic if I said I intend to devote my life to Francine?' All children need to be looked after and at first it was only that Francine was looked after more thoroughly than most. For instance, there was the matter of her father and her stepmother never leaving her with anyone else, there was the business of Julia vetting her school friends for their suitability and there was the baby monitor. This transmitted from her bedroom to Julia's and Richard's bedroom any sounds that might indicate she was having a nightmare or even a disturbed night. Her reading matter was scrutinised by Julia and the small amount of homework she did, the occasional essays she was expected to write, studied for evidence of a disturbed psyche. Flora had left her considerable privacy. With the coming of Julia she had none. It was Julia's discovery of the video cassette box that prompted Francine's drastic action. Remarkably for her, Julia didn't look inside the box, only at the wording and illustration on its cover. 'A Passage to India is a wonderful book, Francine, and I believe a very good film was made from it,' said Julia, 'but I don't think you're quite old enough for either yet. It's best to postpone these things until you can understand them. 'I don't want to watch it,' Francine said, 'I just want to have it,' and she put out her hand for the box. 'Shall I take it downstairs and put it with the others? Then we'll know it's safe.' 'It's safe here,' said Francine as firmly as she could, but was quite surprised just the same when Julia's scarlet-tipped fingers relinquished the box and Julia gave one of her bright, colourful smiles, red lips, white teeth, the prominent blue eyes of an ornamental fish. Of course, it was not true, what she had said. The box and its contents were far from safe. While she was at school there was nothing to stop Julia coming in here and taking it and looking K, inside. Julia, certainly, could read that writing. But now, perhaps, so could Francine. A curious reluctance to look at those sheets of paper took hold of her. The idea of them frightened her. Not as an illustration in her book of Grimm's Fany Tales frightened her, so that, knowing precisely where it came in the fat volume, between page 102 and page 104, she carefully turned three pages at once when she looked into that particular story. Not like that, for she felt only a kind of distaste, a sense of wishing to avoid the contents of the cassette case in the way she wanted to avoid eating anything flavoured with ginger. It happened that she was reading a child's book of Greek myths and one of the myths described was of Pandora and how when she opened a certain precious box she released into the world a swarm of evil things. Francine didn't believe that she would let out anything similar if she opened her box, but even at ten years old she could see the analogy. Still, that same day she lifted the lid of the box and took out the now yellowing sheets of paper. And for the first time she understood that what she was looking at were letters. On the top sheet was no address, but there was a date, a day in March some three and a half years before. She read the way the letter started: 'My darling.' It was no longer difficult for her to read this handwriting, but it was still impossible to do so. For some reason, and she had no idea what, she was too frightened to read on. Her eyes refused to focus on the forward-sloping letters. She saw a blur of darkish stripes on a pale ochre background, and then she put the pages back into the box and closed the lid as hard as she could, pressing it down as if it hadn't clicked into place at once. The house had no fireplace. She was never alone in the street where there were rubbish bins. It was only at school that she was away from Julia's loving, watchful eye. She took the video cassette box to school with her in the navy-blue, yellow-trimmed backpack all the pupils of this select preparatory school carried with them, and at morning break took the letters out of the box, put them into her blazer pocket and went out into the playground. Everyone else was also out in the playground, which was really a garden with lawns and play areas and a sandpit and a mini-zoo, and Holly, who was Francine's best friend, called out to her to come and see the new baby guinea-pigs. On her way Francine had to pass one of the crimson-painted bins with swing-lid tops which were set about this part of the gardens to teach pupils the virtues of tidy litter disposal. Francine swung up a lid as she passed and pushed the letters quickly in under it. Holly was still calling her and now she waved back and ran over to look at the little curled-up blind things and their fat mother who was coloured like a tortoiseshell cat. But next morning, when Julia dropped her off at the school gates - it was only with difficulty that Francine had stopped Julia accompanying her all the way into the class-room - she had to pass that red bin with its swing lid. With a hasty look over her shoulder, to check that Julia was moving off, she lifted it up and looked inside. The bin was empty and someone had put a fresh liner inside. Sometimes Richard thought Julia too watchful. Francine had no chance to be independent or private or to develop without supervision. But he hardly knew what to believe or what to think. Perhaps the child was in danger. The man who had killed his wife was still at large and maybe he lived in fear of what Francine might one day remember, and remembering, tell. And apart from that there was the possibility of damage to her mind or her psychic self or whatever the term was. In the light of present-day thinking it was almost unbelievable that the things that had happened to Francine could leave any child unscathed. She must be damaged, even if the scarring was unapparent to him. He might be unable to see it, but that need not mean it wasn't there. He was torn in two by half-belief and dread of further selfblame, in no mood to argue with Julia or attempt to dissuade her from her excessive vigilance. Suppose he were to call off this watchdog and then find that all her warnings had been wellfounded? He thought of the story of Cassandra whose predictions were doomed to be disbelieved, yet who had been right. So when the time came for Francine to change schools, the grant-aided former grammar school where the neighbours' daughters went and that she herself favoured was rejected in favour of Julia's choice, a very select, very expensive private girls' school called the Champlaine. Holly de Marnay was going there and it was from Holly's mother that Julia gleaned all the knowledge she had about it. The Champlaine was housed in a Georgian mansion on the edge of Wimbledon Common, a long way from where the Hills lived, but it had an exemplary record of pupils going on to the best of further education. In the previous year just under ninety-five per cent of the sixth form had entered university, twelve to Oxford or Cambridge. Classes were small, academic qualifications of teachers high. Among the students - never called pupils - were an earl's granddaughter and a Thai princess. Lacrosse was played, but soccer too. The Champlaine had a large heated swimming pool, squash courts and both hard and grass courts for tennis. Its new science lab was reputed to have cost three million pounds. Fees, therefore, were extremely high and paying them would involve considerable sacrifice on the Hills' part. Julia didn't protest. If it meant no foreign holidays, no second car and few new clothes, she accepted this as the price which must be paid for Francine's safety. Though boarding was favoured by the Champlaine authorities, she was not allowed to board. Julia would never have a quiet moment. There had been a recent story in the newspaper of a man getting into a school dormitory and raping a girl. If he could rape he could kill. So Francine became a day girl and thus a member of a slightly disfavoured minority. From certain in-jokes, cult behaviour, secret societies and private rituals she was excluded. It might have been less marked if the pupils had not known her past historv and the events in the house in Orchard Lane. But they did know. Julia had insisted that the Headmistress - mysteriously known here as the Chief Executive - told the entire school and staff at an assembly before Francine arrived. 'For her own protection,' Julia explained to Richard. 'If they know they will be vigilant on her behalf. They will help to protect her.' Richard doubted if teenagers thought or behaved like that, but Julia must know. She had been a teacher before she became a psychotherapist. 'There is less to worry about when she's in the classroom,' said Julia. 'I'm thinking of when she's outside in the grounds. Her friends can operate surveillance. Francine had many friends, other day girls. It was to be a long while before she was allowed to go to their houses, but Julia allowed them to come to the Hills, once they had been carefully vetted by her. She would ring up a girl's mother and suggest they meet for lunch, then grill the woman as to her family, her husband's - and occasionally her own - profession, the number of her children, and her attitude towards crime and punishment, this to include what she thought of prisons and whether she favoured the re-introduction of capital punishment. The women didn't seem to mind too much. Julia never revealed her motives and these parents of Champlaine pupils thought she was interested in their ancestry or their claims to belong to an upper class and
particular political persuasion. The result of it all was that Francine was allowed to ask one or two friends round and occasionally have them stay the night. But she was never to go out with a friend and the friend's family or on school trips. The Champlaine took the fourth form to Lake Lucerne one year and the fifth form to Copenhagen the next without her. National Theatre visits happened, but in Julia's company, not her schoolfellows'. Francine was at an age to rebel and rebel she did - a little. Why was she guarded like this? What was the point? She even said, 'I'd rather have someone attack me than be kept in prison.' The occasion was a proposed visit to the ballet with two school friends and the mother of one of them. Julia had uttered an unhesitating no. To the West End in the evening by public transport? All right, Miranda's mother would be with them and Francine would stay the night at Miranda's and phone when she got there, but suppose.. 'You have to realise you re in a special position, Francine.' 'I'm never allowed to forget it.' 'Do you think I like it?' said Julia. 'Do you think it's for my pleasure?' 'I didn't say that. But I don't think I'm at risk - I mean, who am I at risk from?' Then Julia did what she had promised Richard she would never do. She told Francine her theory. Francine turned white and began to shiver. 'But I didn't see him. I didn't see anything.' 'Francine, you have nothing to worry about if you behave sensibly, if you let us look after you. 'Can't we somehow let him know I didn't see him? Can't we - I don't know - put it in the papers, make the police tell him?' 'Now you're being silly.' Why did she do it? Julia, that is. Why? Her own explanation for her vigilance she believed. The man thought Francine could identify him, therefore he pursued Francine. If she hadn't believed that and continued to do what she did she would either have been an evil woman or a fool. Julia was neither. She was no wicked stepmother. At first, and for a long while, she had confidence in that theory of hers, but after a time her motives blurred and her aims became confused. For instance, she seldom asked herself what use she would be as a protector, how she, a not particularly athletic woman of nearly fifty, could defend Francine or convince a potential attacker she was a force to be reckoned with. She never carried a weapon or would have dreamt of doing so. By night she slept and Richard slept while Francine was alone in her bedroom, which an intruder might surely have entered as easily, or more easily, than a school dormitory. The baby monitor was long gone. (Francine, who put up with a lot, who was both gentle and stoical, had protested finally about that and demanded its banishment.) Julia, moreover, had no real knowledge of what happened while Francine was at school. She hoped, she trusted, but she didn't know whether Francine went out in her lunch-time or what she did during free periods or even if she sometimes played truant. Many did - even the earl's granddaughter. All this Julia was vaguely aware of and aware, too, that the time was coming when either Francine must be shut up, institutionalised like some helplessly handicapped girl, or else set free into the world. But it was over just this question that what good sense she had left, and what common sense, collapsed. Francine was her charge, over whom she fancied she had absolute power. She had saved her, preserved her through childhood and adolescence to the approach of womanhood, and she could not relinquish her. And during those years she had sacrificed herself for Francine. No one had asked her to do so - Richard had merely asked her to marrv him - she had done it entirely of her own volition. But it had been a sacrifice. There had been time, when she was first married, to have a child of her own, she was young enough, but that would have meant in part deserting Francine. She could have pursued one of her two careers - but that would have meant neglecting Francine. Day in, day out, during term time, she had driven Francine the ten miles through heavy traffic to school and the ten miles back and the ten miles to fetch her and the ten miles back. Not once had she been out with her husband in the evening unless they had Francine with them. Her marriage, too, she had sacrificed. She had spoilt it for Francine's sake. For things were never the same again between them after Richard found out that she had broken her promise and told his daughter. It was farcical, that theory of hers, but Francine was only fifteen years old and to lay such a burden on a child who had surely suffered enough, who had suffered a lifetime's agony before she was eight, that he thought indefensible. Julia he saw with new eyes, as predatory and overweeningly possessive, and as spiteful, too. For what other motive could she have had for telling Francine but malice? The girl had wanted a little freedom, had been, if not rude, a little too direct, and Julia had lashed back with a tale calculated to terrify. 'Malice?' she said. 'Malice? I love Francine. All I want is to make it possible for her to live as happy a life as she can in an imperfect world.' 'You are going to have to rethink your whole attitude,' he said in a sombre tone. 'You are going to have to understand that she is growing up and will inevitably grow away. Julia saw it very differently. To Francine she had devoted herself and how could she now wrench herself away or even pave the way for so doing? Besides, there was another aspect to be considered. She couldn't relinquish Francine now, give her up and see her make closer friends and take up other interests more important than her, Julia. With her sacrifice and her self-denial, she had bought her stepdaughter, she had paid a price for her and made her hers. Francine was her stepdaughter, but she was also her possession, a girl she had created out of a frightened child. In a way Francine was more her child than if she had given birth to her. And she would fight to keep her.