Authors: Peter Robinson
Kirsten shrugged. ‘Fine.’
Sarah turned on the cassette player and disappeared behind the curtain into the kitchen. She must have been playing the tape earlier because one song was just fading out, and then ‘Simple
Twist of Fate’ began to play. It was the second track on Bob Dylan’s
Blood on the Tracks,
Kirsten remembered, and it used to be one of her favourites; now, as she listened to
Dylan’s hoarse, plaintive voice while Sarah was busy opening the second bottle, she realized that the strange lyrics didn’t mean what she used to think they did. Nothing did any
more.
Sarah returned with a larger bottle, lifting it up with a flourish. ‘Da-da! More your cheaper kind of plonk, really, but I’m sure at this stage it’ll do.’
Kirsten smiled. ‘Oh, it’ll do fine.’
‘What did you mean,’ Sarah asked when she had filled the glasses and sat down, ‘when you said I’d be surprised? What would I be surprised by?’
Kirsten frowned. ‘I was thinking of the man who attacked me,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t a person, an individual, to him, was I? I was just a convenient symbol of what he hated
or feared.’
‘Would it have made any difference?’
‘I don’t know. Would it have made any difference if it had been someone I knew? I can think of one way it would have: I’d know who it was.’
‘And?’
‘I’d bloody well kill him.’ Kirsten lifted her glass of wine too quickly and spilled some down the front of her shirt. She patted herself on the chest. ‘Doesn’t
matter’ she said. ‘It’ll dry.’
‘An eye for an eye?’
‘Something like that.’
Sarah shook her head slowly.
‘I’m not crazy, you know,’ Kirsten went on. ‘I mean it. Oh, there’ve been times . . . Sometimes I think it’s some sort of contagious disease he gave me, like
AIDS, only in the mind. Or like vampirism. Can you imagine all those ripped-up women coming back from the grave to prey on men? Of course, I didn’t die, but maybe a part of me did. Maybe I
have a little bit of the undead in me.’
‘That’s cuckoo talk, Kirstie. Or drunk talk. You’re not going to convince me you’re turning into some sort of vampire version of Joan of Arc.’
Kirsten looked hard at her and felt the focus blurring. My God, she thought, I’m losing it. I almost told her. She laughed and reached for a cigarette. ‘You’re right,’
she said. ‘I’m not. It’s all academic anyway, isn’t it?’
‘Thank God for that,’ Sarah said. The music stopped and she got up and turned over the tape.
As the two of them chatted, Kirsten glanced out now and then at the windows of the bedsits and flats over the street, just as she had in years past. At some point, she noticed ‘Shelter
from the Storm’, another of her favourites, was playing, and her eyes burned with tears. She held them back.
Around midnight, Kirsten began to yawn in the middle of one of Sarah’s stories about a retired brigadier-general who had strayed into Harridan by mistake.
‘Boring you, am I?’ Sarah asked.
‘No. I’m just tired, that’s all. It must be the wine and the travel. How about sleeping arrangements?’
Sarah yawned too. ‘Look, now you’ve got me at it. How about I take the chair and you have the bed?’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that.’
‘It
is
your room, after all. I’ve just been caretaking.’
‘It
was
my room. No, I’ll put a couple of cushions on the floor and sleep there.’
‘But that’s stupid. You’ll be so uncomfortable. Hell, it’s a three-quarter bed, let’s share it.’
Kirsten said nothing for a moment. The suggestion made her feel nervous and shy. She knew that Sarah wasn’t offering any kind of sexual invitation, but the thought of her own patched-up
body next to Sarah’s smooth, whole skin made her cheeks burn.
‘I haven’t brought a nightie,’ she said.
‘Not to worry. I’ve got a spare pair of pyjamas. Okay?’
‘All right.’ Kirsten was too tired to argue, and the idea of sleeping in what had once been her own bed was inviting. When she stood up, she felt herself sway a little. She really
had drunk too much.
They prepared themselves for bed and drew the curtains. Kirsten watched Sarah pull her T-shirt over her head and struggle with her tight jeans, then stand there naked and unselfconsciously brush
her blonde hair in front of the mirror. Her breasts bounced lightly with the motion of her arm, and below her flat stomach, the spun-gold hair between her legs caught the light.
Kirsten undressed last, in the dark, so that Sarah couldn’t see her scars, and when she slipped between the crisp sheets, she found herself staying as close to the edge of the bed as
possible to avoid any unconscious contact.
But she needn’t have worried. Sarah lay with her face turned to the wall below the window, and soon her breathing settled into a slow, regular pattern. Kirsten listened for a while,
feeling slightly dizzy and nauseated and cursing herself for almost telling Sarah everything she knew, not to mention what she intended to do about it. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep and
dreamed of Martha Browne, that unknown woman in black swinging back and forth at the end of a rope in the misty Dorchester rain over a hundred years ago.
The next day, Sarah went into the bookshop, and Kirsten spent the morning revisiting her old campus haunts: the coffee lounge where she had met friends between lectures, the library where she
had worked so hard for the final exams. She even wandered into an empty lecture theatre and imagined Professor Simpkins droning on about Milton’s
Areopagitica.
Though she had avoided it on her way over, taking the roads instead, Kirsten walked back through the park. As her feet followed the familiar tarmac path through the trees she felt nothing at
all, but when she reached the lion, its head still spray-painted blue and the red graffiti still scrawled all over its body, her hands started shaking. Unable to stop herself, she walked over to
the sculpture.
It was a little after twelve. Children played on the swings and seesaw nearby. The clack of bowls came from the green behind the low hedge, and one or two people sprawled out on the grass,
listening to portable cassettes or reading. But Kirsten still felt extreme unease, as if she had somehow stumbled on a taboo place, an evil spot shunned by natives. She couldn’t help herself
when she sat astride the lion, drawing amused glances from two students playing cards on the grass nearby. It all happened so quickly. The fishy smell began to suffocate her and the world darkened
at the corners of her vision. Then she saw him and heard his raspy voice and saw the blade flash in the moonlight. She leapt off and hurried on her way, trembling.
As she walked on down the avenue of trees, she cursed herself for giving in to fear. She would need all the courage and strength she could get for what she had to do, and jumping at shadows was
a poor start. Still, she told herself, somehow shadows were more frightening to her now than substance. That must be a good sign. It was time to go.
First she went back to the flat and left a note for Sarah, then she went into town. After shopping for one or two essentials she needed for her trip, she headed for the bus station. About three
hours later, Martha Browne arrived in Whitby on a clear afternoon in early September, convinced of her destiny.
SUSAN
Like some shadowy female figure out of Hardy standing on a blasted heath waiting for her lover, Sue stood on the waste land in the thickening darkness and watched Greg Eastcote
shut his garden gate and take the path towards her.
Before he had got far, while Sue was still about sixty yards ahead, she turned her back to him and started walking along the rough path. When she got to the main road, there were few people
about, but the street was well lit. Sensing him behind her, rather than seeing him, Sue continued along until she had passed the intersection with Bridge Street, where the road narrowed. This was
the tourist area again, the cobbled street of gift shops, the Monk’s Haven, the Black Horse. At this time of evening though, all the shops were closed. Polished jet gleamed in its gold and
silver settings in the windows, and the enamel trays that had been covered with coffee-or mint-flavoured fudge all day lay empty. All the happy holiday families were back at the guesthouses
watching television, or they had managed to put the kids to bed and gone out to the pub for a quiet pint alone. Only lovers and vampires walked the streets.
Hands in the pockets of her windcheater, Sue walked on purposefully. She had known where she was heading all along, she realized, but she had known it in her instinct and her muscles, not in her
conscious mind. He was still behind her, moving more cautiously now, not hurrying to catch up with her. Perhaps he was getting worried. When she got to the steps, she turned and started climbing,
counting by habit as she went. It was dark and deserted up the hill, with no street lights to light her way. But St Mary’s was floodlit, like a beacon, and high above the church a waning
three-quarter moon shone in the clear sky, surrounded by stars. At the top of the hundred and ninety-ninth step, where Caedmon’s Cross stood silhouetted against the bright sand-coloured
church, Sue turned through the graveyard of nameless stones. She could tell he was following her, that he would soon appear at the top and look around to see which way she had gone. She slowed
down. She didn’t want to disappoint him.
In the light of St Mary’s, she followed the path through the graves around the seaward side of the church and across the deserted car park, where the world turned dark again. She found the
coast path and stopped for a moment by the gate. Yes, he was there, just coming out of the cemetery and looking in her direction.
She turned back to the path and hurried on. She was high on the cliff now, the sheer part known as the Scar, walking in the general direction of Robin Hood’s Bay. The raised boardwalk
underfoot creaked in places, and she had to slow down in case of missing boards. A barbed-wire fence came between the path and the drop, but it had collapsed here and there where erosion had eaten
the rock away.
Now that she was further away from the church’s interfering floodlights, the moonlight shone more clearly, dusting the grass on one side and the sea on the other with its ghostly silver
light. Sue thought she might lead him as far as Saltwick Nab and down the steps, out towards the knuckled rocks that pointed to the sea. But he was getting closer. She could hear his footsteps on
the boardwalk, and when she half-turned her head, she could see him outlined faintly by the moonlight.
He was walking faster. She would never make it that far before he caught up with her, and she didn’t intend him to attack her from behind. As she walked, she reached her hand into her
shoulder bag and felt for the paperweight. There it was, smooth and heavy against her sweating palm.
He was almost so close now that she could hear his laboured breathing. The climb up the steps must have tired him. When she could bear it no longer, Sue stopped abruptly and turned to face him.
In the moonlight, she could just about make out his features: the low, dark brow, wide, grim-set mouth and the eyes glittering like stars reflected on the water’s surface. He had stopped,
too. Only about five yards lay between them, and at first nobody said a word; neither of them even seemed to be breathing. Sue found that she was shaking. Suddenly, she remembered with perfect
clarity all the pain she had suffered the last time she had seen this ghostly face in the moonlight.
Finally, she found the courage to speak, ‘Do you remember me?’
‘You,’ he said, in that familiar raspy whisper. ‘You were in my house.’
‘Yes,’ she said, gaining strength as they talked, feeling the hardness of the solid glass in her hand.
‘Why? What are you trying to do to me?’
Sue didn’t answer. Now that she had found him, she had said all she wanted to.
‘Why?’ he repeated.
She noticed that he was moving towards her very slowly, closing the gap as he talked.
‘You know what you are,’ she said, bringing her hand out of the shoulder bag. Then she took a sudden step towards him and shouted, ‘Come on, then! Here I am. Come on, do it.
Finish me!’
She could see the confusion and horror on his face as she continued moving towards him. ‘Come on. What’s wrong with you? Do it!’
But he kept on backing away as Sue edged closer, paperweight out in her hand now. He stretched out his arms before him as if to ward her off, and immediately she knew. She knew that he needed
surprise to succeed. He was a coward. And what must she look like, she wondered, coming towards him with a fist of thick glass held out and all the rage of a ruined life in her face and voice? It
didn’t bear thinking about. The miserable bastard was terrified and his fear unnerved her for a moment.
He must have sensed her confusion like an animal scents its prey, for he began to smile as he slowed his retreat. In a moment he would start walking towards her again. But he had already gone
too far. On his next slow step backwards, one of the rotten boards shifted under him and he wobbled at the edge. He waved his arms like a semaphorist, a look of terror on his face, and Sue almost
reached forward to help him. Almost. But he regained his balance and again she saw that
other
face, the one his human mask barely hid. She took a pace forward and kicked out hard at him. Her
foot connected with his groin and he tottered back towards the edge of the cliff with a scream.
The fence was low there, only about a foot or so off the ground, and the post stood at an odd angle, crooked, pointing out to sea. As he fell backwards, his clothing snagged on the rusted barbed
wire and he managed to turn himself around. He was half over the edge but his hands clawed at the thick tufts of grass. The more he struggled, the more the wire seemed to wrap him up, and when she
moved closer, Sue could see blood seeping through his clothes. He grunted and snatched at the sods as he tried to stop himself from slowly sliding over. Sue knelt down and smashed at his hands with
the paperweight. The fence post twitched like a dowsing rod as he howled and struggled, snatching at the barbed wire now, anything to get a grip, his hands coming away crushed, ripped and bloody.
Only his head and shoulders showed above the edge now. The wire had torn one sleeve right off his jacket and its barbs stuck in the skin beneath. The post was almost out of the ground, pointing out
to sea, and the more he struggled the more he slipped.