‘You made yourself drunk,’ he said. ‘You’re not the little innocent you pretend. You’re too much like your mother. She fancied
me. Near as dammit had me. Would have, but the bugger knifed her.’
Beverley closed her eyes. She felt him move her head so it faced him. She smelled his breath. It was hot and warm and slightly
sour.
‘Open your eyes,’ he said. When she did she could see the pores of his face and the new hair sprouting where he had shaved.
‘All sorts of things are best forgotten,’ he said. ‘This too.’
The eyes were familiar, but strange, narrower and deeper: greener than the blue she’d thought they were. Perhaps they were
the devil’s eyes and the devil and the man were the same thing.
‘What kind of eyes did my father have?’ she asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said, taking the hand away. ‘I told you to forget all that.’
‘Sorry,’ she said. The hand returned. She could see if you did what was asked of you, you got what you wanted.
‘So like little Kitchie,’ he said. ‘I’ve watched you grow into her. I’ve respected you. No one can say I haven’t. But you
want it too, don’t you? You and that dress, oh my. Really shook our Rita, that did. She thought she’d better get in there
first. But she doesn’t know men. Women never do. Lie flat on your back, little Bev, and look at me.’
She did. He was the doctor, he was her father, she wanted to do as she was told. She lay flat but left the sheet up to her
neck. She liked her body. She could make it do handstands, had won the gymnastic prize at school. She could bend over backwards
and walk on her hands and then bring her legs up over her back and keep the position. No other girl at school could do that.
She wanted him to see it, the neat little navel, the swell of her breasts, and yet she didn’t.
‘Take away the sheet,’ he said.
‘No, you do it,’ she said. ‘Then it’s what you’ve done, not what I’ve done.’
‘Kitchie said that to me once,’ he said, and laughed. Ah yes, he was bringing the medication round. A likely story.
‘I don’t think you’re little Beverley at all,’ he said. ‘I think you’re Kitchie come back a few years younger, and you’re
still begging for it. Even though you’re a ghost. That’s okay by me.’
A bank of clouds had hidden the moon but now it shone brightly through the verandah windows. If anyone was passing by, the
other side of the garden, past the picket fence and the brass Doctor’s plate she polished every day, they could see right
in. But there was nobody to pass, all decent people were abed, there was only this moment, and the moon, and the man who was
not her father sitting
on her bed, his hand feeling for her nipples beneath the sheet. She realised if they could see in she would not mind. She
wanted everyone to see what was happening. His dressing gown fell open as he moved, and she averted her eyes from the hairy,
strong, erect phallus, reddish and rough, as her friends had whispered about it to her, like a third person in the room, with
a will of its own. It was scarcely owned by anyone: it did what it wanted.
‘Ever heard of parthenogenesis?’
‘We did it in biology,’ she said. ‘It’s asexual reproduction. When the mother gives birth on her own, without a father. It
doesn’t happen in humans.’
‘Yes it does. Very occasionally, but it does. The egg is self-fertilised and the mother gives birth to a daughter identical
to herself. A clone. So you don’t have to be her ghost, you can be her clone. How’s that?’
He took the sheet down to her waist and she raised her arms above her head, she was not sure why, but it gave her small breasts
more prominence and she liked the feeling of stretch. He ran his hands down her sides and flanks and pinched her nipples a
little and then rubbed his finger around first one, then the other, so they stood up.
‘Everything works,’ he said. ‘Doctor says so. You’re ripe so you can carry on where Kitchie left off. Do you like that?’
She nodded. She should have screamed but she didn’t: the night was too warm and the moon was too bright and what had begun
would have to continue. She wondered what had been in the pills he gave her. Probably not aspirin. She had taken them without
argument. She could see she had a liking for all things drastic. She remembered reading something about the White Slave Traffic.
Bad oriental men drugged innocent white girls and carried them off as
easy, willing victims to harems in foreign parts, and then kept them there by force. It was better than ending up teaching
like Miss Butt, Miss Crossly, Miss Ferguson or Mrs Barker, which seemed the only opportunity open to her in life.
He slipped a tentative finger between her legs and she instinctively tightened up to stop him but he pushed her legs further
apart and abruptly and roughly put in two fingers instead of one, then widened them inside her. Now her legs fell apart of
their own volition.
‘You’re a natural,’ he said and she felt flattered. He said, ‘I’ll only put it in a little way,’ and she let him. It seemed
too good to be true, on a par with being dead one moment alive the next. He was right. She was bringing her mother back to
life, but the detail escaped her. Then she remembered and said, ‘What if I get pregnant,’ and he said, ‘You won’t, I’ll see
to that,’ and put it in all the way. Then everything seemed vague, other than the weight of his body on hers was heavy, and
the wiriness of the practised muscles as they stood out on his bare shoulders and forearms. It seemed what his body was made
for. He should not be thwarted, it was dangerous to thwart men, she had picked that up from somewhere.
‘You’re not even a virgin, you naughty little bitch,’ he said at one stage and she said she was so, child gymnasts often broke
their hymens, and he said, ‘Tell that to the marines.’ Then he said, ‘Next time I clone you we’ll do without the gymnastics,’
so perhaps he did believe her. He said the price of virgins the world over was high. He liked to talk, to keep up a running
commentary. She wished he wouldn’t. He might wake Rita and for all she was trying to keep quiet herself she couldn’t. Her
mouth kept uttering mews, grunts and squeals as if she was an animal, which she hated, and he put his hand over her mouth
as he rutted away like the bull; and then a
screeching fiend, Grendel’s mother, suddenly upon them, bursting into their secret place, tearing them apart, pulling Beverley
by her hair out of the bed, Arthur sent reeling into the verandah window and the glass broken, the dogs from the farm next
door woken, barking, rattling their chains, Rita shouting that Arthur was nothing but a pervert or ever had been – what was
he doing to the poor stupid child –
‘Now you’ve been and done it, you silly cunt,’ Arthur said. ‘I was going to withdraw.’
By the time she was nineteen Beverley had a one-year-old daughter called Alice and was living in Earls Court in London. She
had made an Australian friend, Dionne, on the boat over. Dionne was six foot two, blonde, luscious, big-haired and long-legged
and went to drama school. She wanted to be taken seriously and play Lady Macbeth, and was doing a classical acting course,
though the tutors hinted that perhaps singing-and-dancing was more suitable. Beverley paid for her tuition; Dionne helped
Beverley with Alice. It seemed fair dos.
Beverley had embarked on a three-year course at Royal Holloway, an all-woman college, studying semantics and moral phil osophy.
It was 1952. Only 5 per cent of women went to university, but she had passed the entrance exam easily enough. She told no
one about Alice’s existence. Rita had warned her not to. Such girls as did graduate were expected to do a further secretarial
course, leaving work when they got married and had children. A few women went on to have jobs in the civil service or teaching
but then were expected to stay unmarried and give up their personal life.
Beverley preferred not to give the future too much attention. She had too much to think about what with Alice who, though
she was a pretty, charming, easy baby, expected more time and attention than Beverley had reckoned on. Beverley had rather
gone off sex, or
if not sex, the kind of loaded emotional sex men seemed to demand, and sex itself was too overwhelming, and led to babies,
an inbuilt sort of punishment. But she liked parties, and dressing up: she liked to lead men on and then turn them down and
soon got the reputation of a pricktease, and on several occasions only escaped rape by the skin of her teeth. Men assumed
that no meant yes, and it was reasonable to get violent if you kept insisting it didn’t. Good girls didn’t get themselves
into these situations, bad girls did, and bad girls were fair game.
She liked older men; boys her own age were callow, pimply and weak and, though more likely to take no for an answer, never
seemed to have sufficient weight on her body. Dionne, on the other hand, really liked pretty boys. Men’s eyes followed Dionne
wherever she went. Beverley felt quite jealous but Dionne comforted her by saying that even if they looked down her, Dionne’s,
cleavage, there was nothing to see, whereas Beverley had lots. The fashion was for full skirts with layers of petticoats beneath
so they billowed out, a cinched-in belted waist and black V-necked tops which you could push right down over your shoulders
to show as much cleavage as you dared. Beverley dared a lot and the feeling of going out without knickers was stirring. She
got to see a lot of thick rough red penises, or penes, but the art was to never let them get inside you. None ever seemed
as impressive as Arthur’s but she pushed her mind away from that whenever she could. They both went to elocution lessons to
get rid of their New Zealand accents. Both decided, whatever the future, it had better be posh.
When it became apparent to Beverley that she was pregnant, she had been in England for two months and was running out of money
– so she wrote to Rita and asked her what she should do now. She didn’t know who else to ask. She and Dionne were waitressing,
earning £5 a week and sharing a room at £3 a week rental. Beverley was not entirely certain that Arthur was the father of
the baby, having met an attractive and lively young naval officer on the way over, who also practised the withdrawal method
so favoured at the time, though Arthur was the most likely.
Rita’s reply was prompt and brisk. Beverley felt a wave of affection towards her. She knew enough by now that sex could send
you mad: Rita had been mad: she, Beverley, had not been Arthur’s helpless victim, she had wronged Rita, who had to live with
a man who might be a murderer and might not be; just as she, Beverley, had put up with a father so ambiguous it didn’t bear
thinking about, and in all likelihood was grandfather to his own daughter. Alice had Arthur’s high domed forehead but that
didn’t mean she was definitely Arthur’s. She could still be the naval officer’s child and the domed forehead come down from
Beverley herself.
A cheque for a £1,000 fell out of the envelope. You could buy half a house for that, and a good one too.
Dear Beverley,
wrote Rita,
this is a fine kettle of fish. I am glad to hear from you all the same, we were worried about you. But you are grown up now
and it is natural for young people to make their own lives. I am enclosing a cheque for the amount left over from the sale
of your father’s farm, after your board and lodging for all those years is taken care of. I think this is fair. We always
did our very best for you and I am sorry things turned out the way they did. About the baby. Abortion is a criminal offence
so don’t do that or you’ll end up dead or in prison. Some people I know try drinking gin and taking very hot baths but I’ve
never known it to work. Buy yourself a wedding ring from Woolworth’s and always
tell people you are a widow, or they won’t talk to you. Go to an adoption society and see if they’ll take you on. Tell them
the father is a good-looking young medical student you met on holiday and he gave you a false name. If they think there might
be anything wrong with Baby they won’t have you on their books. Or a French or Belgian soldier, an officer, is another favourite
I don’t know why. So long as you don’t make him a German. The money I’ve sent you will help if you want to keep Baby, but
it won’t last for ever, and you are a pretty girl so your best bet is to find someone to marry you and give you and the baby
a roof over your heads. Not many men will take on a girl who has a bastard, but sometimes an older man will, though he won’t
be the pick of the crop. Arthur took me on, and you as well, so it sometimes works out, and Mr Right does come along, so don’t
be too sorry for yourself. At least you were born to respectable married folk and weren’t sullied before you were even born,
which happens to some. Best not to keep in touch, dear. Things got very complicated round here and I don’t suppose they’ll
get much better. I told Arthur your news and all he said was how do I know it’s mine. You know how men are. Well, we all make
our beds and have to lie on them. I wish you all the best in the world. Love from your mother Rita.
Beverley folded the letter up many times until it was just a small wedge and put it at the back of her drawer and kept it
through her many travels, and has it today at Robinsdale, in the drawer where she keeps her valuables. She has never reread
it since that one time. It contains all the confusions of her early days. Arthur ruined her, money saved her. Rita was just
not very bright.
Beverley was entitled to a small grant to get her through university – not much because she was from abroad – and was able
to pay for Dionne’s drama school course and their elocution lessons out of Rita’s money. The rest she put in Post Office Savings,
and that, and the money she earned cleaning, one shilling and sixpence the hour, kept her going until Alice was five. Dionne
did nude modelling for a men’s photographic club three evenings a week at five shillings the hour. She stood on a stand with
no clothes on striking poses while old men took photographs of her. It was quite harmless, though she worried that when she
was famous someone could use the pictures to blackmail her. Sometimes Beverley joined her but never without black bra and
panties. They were risqué enough; the norm was white or pink. But the girls got by. They even had a good time.