Flying Under Bridges

To
Alice

Books are not solitary
enterprises. My thanks to the following for their invaluable advice and
assistance — Ursula Mackenzie, my editor, friend and mentor, without whom I
wouldn’t write a word; Pat Kavanagh, my splendid agent; Viv Redman, for immense
patience with fine-tuning the text; Juliet van Oss for fantastic
error-spotting; Patsy Silburn and Glen Wolford for work on the early material;
everyone at Little, Brown; Germaine Greer for her splendid writing over the
years; and, as ever, my wonderful children.

One need not be a Chamber — to be Haunted —One need not be a House
—The Brain has Corridors — surpassing

Material Place —Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting

External; Ghost

Than its interior Confronting —That Cooler Host.

Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,

The Stones a’chase —Than Unarmed, one’s a’self encounter —In
lonesome Place —Ourself behind ourself, concealed —Should startle most
—Assassin hid in our Apartment

Be Horror’s least.

The body — borrows a Revolver —He bolts the Door —O’erlooking a
superior spectre —Or More —

‘Ghosts’, Emily Dickinson

Preface

Two women, one story. An
everyday tale of morals, marriage and murder. Both women from the same town,
the same school, the same generation. For a long while their lives went in
completely different directions. Fame, acclaim and the fast lane for one; husband,
kids and the suburbs for the other. Nothing in common but their past until the
summer they met again. Soon one became a killer and the other was not
surprised. It could have happened to anybody but it didn’t. It happened to them
and by the time the snow fell they were both trying to understand.

Chapter
One

1
January

Holloway
Prison for Women

London

My dear Inge,

In the Beginning

In the
beginning was the word…

(JOHN
1.1)

Do you think there is a
Bible quote for everything? That’s my one for today — about the beginning. It
seems appropriate. Happy New Year and all that. It’s a funny bit of the Bible
really because it doesn’t come at the beginning of the Book at all. It was
written after lots and lots of things had happened and that’s what I feel like.
As though I’ve got to go back to the beginning even though I am so far into the
story. I do want to find the ‘once upon a time’ bit of what happened but it’s
not easy. I just think if I could explain it to you then you could explain it
to Shirley. Is she all right? Give her my love, won’t you? So long as it doesn’t
upset her. I mean, don’t if it will. You decide. I miss her, but I don’t know
what’s right any more. I’m so glad you’re looking after her. Everyone wants to
know ‘the facts’ but even I find it hard to get it all straight in my head.

I know
Shirley still wants to think it was an accident but maybe she should know the
truth. I have nothing else to give her. I still can’t believe I’m here. I’m in
prison. It’s unbelievable. I’m in prison for killing somebody. Everyone keeps
talking at me and I am trying. I am trying to find the words. In the beginning
was the word.

In some
ways I think it’s quite simple. I mean, guests ruin weddings all the time,
although I will admit it is probably less usual for them to do it by killing
the groom. I do want to be honest about what happened. I didn’t entirely mean
to kill him. Well, I may have meant to but I didn’t plan it. I was, after all,
the mother of the bride, which I think anyone would say carries a certain
responsibility. I’ve had a letter from the women’s group I used to meet with. I
think they were trying to be supportive but their basic message seemed to be
that the whole thing has done nothing for me socially. As if I care.

I’m
tired. I just want to sit. I just want to be left alone, but there are
questions, endless questions. The barrister seems a sweet girl. Too young to
have to wear black every day. Nice hair and given to a good suit but she hasn’t
got a clue. She’s a bit older than Shirley but I think of her when we meet. I
think of Shirley. I think of Shirley all the time. How did I end up here? She
would have been married now … if I hadn’t killed her fiancé. My daughter,
married.

‘Do you
mind… Mrs Marshall?’ The barrister blushes at me. She obviously minds
terribly. ‘Would you say you were a woman of a certain age?’ She nods at me and
I half think she is going to wink as well. I’m not at all sure what we are
blushing and winking about. I’m forty-five. I tell her I’m forty-five. I don’t
know if that’s a certain age or not. I don’t seem to have been a useful age
since I was eight and finally old enough to have my own bicycle. After that it
seems to have been pretty much downhill. Quite a lot of years of being too
young and then decades of being far too old. I don’t ever seem to have been
just right. Now I am getting hairs on my chin. I am growing into an old woman
with a beard. A woman small children won’t want to kiss. There’s another sign
of age. I think about being kissed by small children, not Richard Gere or Errol
Flynn. The barrister stumbles forward into my inner life.

‘I was
wondering about the… menopause.’ She almost whispers the word. It is too
ghastly and yet we must consider it. Something that is too far away for her to
contemplate looms over my every move. I look at her young body choking with
ovarian health. Little eggs bursting all over her inner bits while my crop
withers and shrivels on the vine.

‘It
might be… helpful,’ she manages as we plod on. You can see her point,
especially at these prices. The menopause would be helpful. What a relief if we
could blame the whole thing on some hormonal imbalance. That I was imbalanced
at the time. It’s so much tidier. I might even get off. My sister Martha would
say it is what men want to believe if we women step out of line. We poor
females at the ‘mercy of our defective carcasses’. I suppose the good thing
about being a woman (from a legal point of view) is that there is always
something to blame. Menstruation,  pregnancy, childbirth, the menopause — it
all adds up to ‘hormonal imbalance’. We do droop and drip endlessly. Germaine
Greer says (I know, you’re shaking your head and saying, ‘Oh Eve, not Germaine
again,’), but Germaine says that men believe that every one of a woman’s
working parts comes with a ‘built predisposition to malfunction’. We are God’s
faulty design. Nothing so proud and substantial as a male organ but a vacuum
that is useless unless filled. Listen to me. Who would have thought?

‘There
have been numerous cases where women …’ The young black-suited woman flicks
through fat books and dust settles in the air. I could clean that. I am good at
dust. She finds  comfort in her legal tomes because she does not understand
me.  I have done something women don’t do. I have been violent and now we must
sit quietly, women together, and find that it was all due to ‘the adverse
effect of my biology’. Maybe it was. I don’t know. Maybe it is the menopause.
Maybe it is postnatal depression. Latent, of course. I had my last baby twenty
years ago but I’m sure there is some precedent in her fat books. The solicitors
have got a woman to represent me on purpose. I think it is supposed to soften
my image but she looks at her books rather than me. I suspect I frighten her,
although I don’t mean to. Am I the witch waiting in every woman? Is there a
shadow of me in this bright university mind and dull suit?

The
barrister is just one of many who have probed and prodded since I was
arrested. No one can ‘understand’ and it is very important to everyone that
they do. I am in the middle of ‘having reports done’, which hasn’t happened
since school. Do you remember?

Eve
is a keen member of the form. She has good

application
but with little obvious result.

Keen. I’ve
always been keen but this is the first time I’ve ever actually
done
anything.

The
psychiatrist is another prober. I see him after the barrister has departed in
legal despair. A flurry of pink ribbon waves around the departing legal
shoulders. The lawyer wants to tie me up while the shrink wants to unravel me.
He is a very earnest old man with a rather pleasing middle-European accent. I
listen to his constipated vowel sounds and I find them rather comforting. I
mean, if you were in a film with a psychiatrist then he ought to be a bit
German, don’t you think? It is the only textbook thing about the untextbook
thing that I have done. His heavy accent suggests power. Questions which will
be answered and properly. The Dutch or the Belgians never conquered the world
because the accent was all wrong. In the beginning may have been the word but I
don’t think it was a Flemish one. The fact is if someone told you in Flemish
that they planned to rule the world, you’d tell them not to be so silly. I
wonder what it is about Austria and Germany that makes its people want to go
into mental health? Of course the Von Trapps didn’t. They were Austrian but
they escaped over the mountains and ran summer music camps in Vermont. I should
have liked that but I had no mountains…

I’ve
just come back to my letter from exercise period. What the hell was I writing
about? The Von Trapps? Maybe I
am
going mad. Maybe I was mad. I have been
so busy using my brain to run other lives and now I find I have this huge empty
space under my skull and a
To Let
sign on my forehead.

The
shrink, the mental inquisitor, holds my hand rather too long when he shakes it
and insists on staring me in the eye when we talk.

‘Tell
me,’ he asks, ‘what do you see when you look at me?’

Mainly
I see that he has a big nose but I keep it to myself. The nose has a huge wart
on it. A vast growth, like an alternative nose with a large hair growing out of
it, but I don’t mention that either. Opinions have been getting me into enough
trouble. It’s funny him having a long hair growing on his face like a fairy
whip. He can’t mind or he’d pluck it out. I suppose he’s a man so it’s all
right to have hair like that. I’m not allowed any on my chin. We women must
pluck and tidy ourselves away while men are quite happy to let bits of themselves
swing around for all the world to see.

We talk
about everything very slowly. Perhaps I could do some embroidery during our
sessions so I’ve got something else to look at besides the two noses.

‘What
do you see when you look at me?’

‘A man,’
I say, because it is polite and straightforward and I can’t think any more.

He
nods. ‘You cannot ignore that I am a man.’

I don’t
know whether it is a piece of analysis or a statement of fact.

‘Let me
just be sure that I have the facts straight, Mrs…’ He looks at his notes. I
am so forgettable but I am polite. He can’t see without his glasses so I help
him.

‘Marshall.
Mrs Adam Marshall.’

‘Mrs
Adam Marshall.’ He writes everything down in pencil as if I might be tempted
endlessly to change my mind about what I’ve said. We could always go back and
rub things out. I’d like that. I’d like to rub my whole name out.

‘The
body of the deceased was found… and I believe the word you used was “crucified”,
against a holly bush in your front garden.’