The Sculptress (2 page)

Roz waited a moment until she was sure she had
her voice under control. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s all right. I’m used to it. Everyone is afraid
at first.’

‘Does that upset you?’

A flicker of amusement twitched the fatness round
her eyes. ‘Would it upset you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, then. Have you got a cigarette?’

‘Sure.’ Roz took an unopened pack from her briefcase
and pushed it across the table with a box of
matches. ‘Help yourself. I don’t smoke.’

‘You would if you were in here. Everyone smokes
in here.’ She fumbled her way into the cigarette packet
and lit up with a sigh of contentment. ‘How old are
you?’

‘Thirty-six.’

‘Married?’

‘Divorced.’

‘Children?’

Roz shook her head. ‘I’m not the maternal type.’

‘Is that why you got divorced?’

‘Probably. I was more interested in my career. We
went our separate ways very amicably.’ Absurd, she
thought, to bother with pain management in front of Olive but the trouble was that if you told a lie often
enough it became a truth, and the hurt only returned
occasionally, in those strange, disorientating moments
of wakening when she thought she was still at home
with a warm body wrapped in her arms, hugging,
loving, laughing.

Olive blew a smoke ring into the air. ‘I’d have
liked children. I got pregnant once but my mother
persuaded me to get rid of it. I wish I hadn’t now. I
keep wondering what sex it was. I dream about my
baby sometimes.’ She gazed at the ceiling for a
moment, following the wisp of smoke. ‘Poor little
thing. I was told by a woman in here that they wash
them down the sink – you know, when they’ve
vacuumed them out of you.’

Roz watched the big lips suck wetly on the tiny
cigarette and thought of foetuses being vacuumed out
of wombs. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘About the sink?’

‘No. That you’d had an abortion.’

Olive’s face was impassive. ‘Do you know anything
about me?’

‘Not much.’

‘Who’ve you asked?’

‘Your solicitor.’

Another wheeze rumbled up through the caverns
of her chest. ‘I didn’t know I had one.’

‘Peter Crew,’ said Roz with a frown, pulling a letter
from her briefcase.

‘Oh, him.’ Olive’s tone was contemptuous. ‘He’s
a creep.’ She spoke with undisguised venom.

‘He says here he’s your solicitor.’

‘So? Governments say they care. I haven’t heard a
word from him in four years. I told him to get stuffed
when he came up with his wonderful idea to get me
an indefinite stay at Broadmoor. Slimy little sod. He
didn’t like me. He’d have wet himself with excitement
if he could have got me certified.’

‘He says’ – Roz skimmed through the letter without
thinking – ‘ah, yes, here it is. “Unfortunately
Olive failed to grasp that a plea of diminished responsibility
would have ensured her receiving the sort of
help in a secure psychiatric unit that would, in all
probability, have meant her release into society within,
at the most, fifteen years. It has always been obvious
to me—” ’ She came to an abrupt stop as sweat broke
out across her back.
Any problems like, for example
,
she objects violently
. . . Was she completely out of her
mind? She smiled weakly. ‘Frankly, the rest is
irrelevant.’

‘ “It has always been obvious to me that Olive
is psychologically disturbed, possibly to the point of
paranoid schizophrenia or psychopathy.” Is that what
it says?’ Olive stood the glowing butt of her cigarette
on the table and took another from the packet. ‘I
don’t say I wasn’t tempted. Assuming I could have
got the court to accept that I was temporarily insane
when I did it, I would almost certainly be a free woman by now. Have you seen my psychological
reports?’ Roz shook her head. ‘Apart from an unremitting
compulsion to eat, which is generally considered
abnormal – one psychiatrist dubbed it a
tendency to severe self-abuse – I am classified
“normal”.’ She blew out the match with a gust of
amusement. ‘Whatever normal means. You’ve probably
got more hang-ups than I have but I assume you
fall into a “normal” psychological profile.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Roz, fascinated. ‘I’ve never
been analysed.’
I’m too frightened of what they might
find
.

‘You get used to it in a place like this. I reckon
they do it to keep their hand in and it’s probably
more fun talking to a mother-hacker than a boring
old depressive. I’ve had five different psychiatrists put
me through the hoops. They love labels. It makes the
filing system easier when they’re trying to sort out
what to do with us. I create problems for them. I’m
sane but dangerous, so where the hell do they put
me? An open prison’s out of the question in case I
get out and do it again. The public wouldn’t like
that.’

Roz held up the letter. ‘You say you were tempted.
Why didn’t you go along with it if you thought there
was a chance of getting out earlier?’

Olive didn’t answer immediately but smoothed the
shapeless dress across her thighs. ‘We make choices.
They’re not always right but, once made, we have to live with them. I was very ignorant before I came
here. Now I’m streetwise.’ She inhaled a lungful of
smoke. ‘Psychologists, policemen, prison officers,
judges, they were all out of the same mould. Men in
authority with complete control of my life. Supposing
I’d pleaded diminished responsibility and they’d said
this girl can never get better. Lock the door and throw
away the key. Twenty-five years amongst sane people
was so much more attractive to me than a whole life
with mad ones.’

‘And what do you think now?’

‘You learn, don’t you? We get some real nut cases
in here before they’re transferred on. They’re not so
bad. Most of them can see the funny side.’ She balanced
a second dog-end next to her first. ‘And I’ll tell
you something else, they’re a damn sight less critical
than the sane ones. When you look like me, you
appreciate that.’ She scrutinized Roz from between
sparse blonde eyelashes. ‘That’s not to say I’d have
pleaded differently had I been more
au fait
with the
system. I still think it would have been immoral to
claim I didn’t know what I was doing when I knew
perfectly well.’

Roz made no comment. What can you say to a
woman who dismembers her mother and sister and
then calmly splits hairs over the morality of special
pleading?

Olive guessed what she was thinking and gave her
wheezy laugh. ‘It makes sense to me. By my own standards, I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s only the law,
those standards set by society, that I’ve transgressed.’

There was a certain biblical flourish about that last
phrase, and Roz remembered that today was Easter
Monday. ‘Do you believe in God?’

‘No. I’m a pagan. I believe in natural forces.
Worshipping the sun makes sense. Worshipping an
invisible entity doesn’t.’

‘What about Jesus Christ? He wasn’t invisible.’

‘But he wasn’t God either.’ Olive shrugged. ‘He
was a prophet, like Billy Graham. Can you swallow
the garbage of the Trinity? I mean, either there’s one
God or there’s a mountainful of them. It just depends
on how imaginative you feel. I, for one, have no cause
to celebrate that Christ is Risen.’

Roz, whose faith was dead, could sympathize with
Olive’s cynicism. ‘So, if I understand you correctly,
you’re saying there is no absolute right or wrong,
only individual conscience and the law.’ Olive nodded.
‘And your conscience isn’t troubling you because you
don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.’

Olive looked at her with approval. ‘That’s it.’

Roz chewed her bottom lip in thought. ‘Which
means you believe your mother and sister deserved to
die.’ She frowned. ‘Well, I don’t understand, then.
Why didn’t you put up a defence at your trial?’

‘I had no defence.’

‘Provocation. Mental cruelty. Neglect. They must have done
something
if you felt you were justified in
killing them.’

Olive took another cigarette from the pack but
didn’t answer.

‘Well?’

The intense scrutiny again. This time Roz held her
gaze.

‘Well?’ she persisted.

Abruptly, Olive rapped the window pane with the
back of her hand. ‘I’m ready now, Miss Henderson,’
she called out.

Roz looked at her in surprise. ‘We’ve forty minutes
yet.’

‘I’ve talked enough.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve obviously upset you.’ She waited.
‘It was unintentional.’

Olive still didn’t answer but sat impassively until
the Officer came in. Then she grasped the edge of the
table and, with a shove from behind, heaved herself
to her feet. The cigarette, unlit, clung to her lower
lip like a string of cotton wool. ‘I’ll see you next
week,’ she said, easing crabwise through the door and
shambling off down the corridor with Miss Henderson
and the metal chair in tow.

Roz sat on for several minutes, watching them
through the window. Why had Olive balked at the
mention of justification? Roz felt unreasonably
cheated – it was one of the few questions she had
wanted an answer to – and yet . . . Like the first stirrings of long dormant sap, her curiosity began to
reawaken. God knows, there was no sense to it – she
and Olive were as different as two women could
be – but she had to admit an odd liking for the
woman.

She snapped her briefcase closed and never noticed
that her pencil was missing.

Iris had left a breathy message on the answerphone.
‘Ring me with all the dirt . . . Is she perfectly ghastly?
If she’s as mad and as fat as her solicitor said, she
must be terrifying. I’m agog to hear the gory details.
If you don’t phone, I shall come round to the flat
and make a nuisance of myself . . .’

Roz poured herself a gin and tonic and wondered
if Iris’s insensitivity was inherited or acquired. She
dialled her number. ‘I’m phoning because it’s the
lesser of two evils. If I had to watch you drooling
your disgusting prurience all over my carpet, I should
be sick.’ Mrs Antrobus, her bossy white cat, slithered
round her legs, stiff tailed and purring. Roz winked
down at her. She and Mrs Antrobus had a relationship
of long standing, in which Mrs Antrobus
wore the trousers and Roz knew her place. There
was no persuading Mrs A. to do anything she didn’t
want.

‘Oh, goody. You liked her, then?’

‘What a revolting woman you are.’ She took a sip from her glass. ‘I’m not sure that
like
is quite the
word I would use.’

‘How fat is she?’

‘Grotesque. And it’s sad, not funny.’

‘Did she talk?’

‘Yes. She has a very pukka accent and she’s a bit of
an intellectual. Not at all what I expected. Very sane,
by the way.’

‘I thought the solicitor said she was a psychopath.’

‘He did. I’m going to see him tomorrow. I want
to know who gave him that idea. According to Olive,
five psychiatrists have diagnosed her normal.’

‘She might be lying.’

‘She’s not. I checked with the Governor afterwards.’
Roz reached down to scoop Mrs Antrobus
against her chest. The cat, purring noisily, licked her
nose. It was only cupboard love. She was hungry.
‘Still, I wouldn’t get too excited about this, if I were
you. Olive may refuse to see me again.’

‘Why, and what’s that awful row?’ demanded Iris.

‘Mrs Antrobus.’

‘Oh God! The mangy cat.’ Iris was diverted. ‘It
sounds as if you’ve got the builders in. What on earth
are you doing to it?’

‘Loving it. She’s the only thing that makes this
hideous flat worth coming back to.’

‘You’re mad,’ said Iris, whose contempt for cats
was matched only by her contempt for authors. ‘I can’t think why you wanted to rent it in the first place.
Use the money from the divorce and get something
decent. Why might Olive refuse to see you?’

‘She’s unpredictable. Got very angry with me suddenly
and called a halt to the interview.’

She heard Iris’s indrawn gasp. ‘Roz, you wretch!
You haven’t blown it, I hope.’

Roz grinned into the receiver. ‘I’m not sure. We’ll
just have to wait and see. Got to go now. Bye-ee.’
She hung up smartly on Iris’s angry squeaking and
went into the kitchen to feed Mrs Antrobus. When
the phone rang again, she picked up her gin, moved
into her bedroom, and started typing.

Olive took the pencil she had stolen from Roz and
stood it carefully alongside the small clay figure of a
woman that was propped up at the back of her chest
of drawers. Her moist lips worked involuntarily, chewing,
sucking, as she studied the figure critically. It was
crudely executed, a lump of dried grey clay, unfired
and unglazed but, like a fertility symbol from a less
sophisticated age, its femininity was powerful. She
selected a red marker from a jar and carefully coloured
in the slab of hair about the face, then, changing to a
green marker, filled in on the torso a rough representation
of the silk shirtwaisted dress that Roz had been
wearing.

To an observer her actions would have appeared childish. She cradled the figure in her hands like a tiny
doll, crooning over it, before replacing it beside the
pencil which, too faintly for the human nose, still
carried the scent of Rosalind Leigh.

PETER CREW’S OFFICE
was in the centre of Southampton,
in a street where estate agents predominated.
It was a sign of the times, thought Roz, as she walked
past them, that they were largely empty. Depression
had settled on them, as on everything else, like a dark
immovable cloud.

Peter Crew was a gangling man of indeterminate
age, with faded eyes and a blond toupee parted at the
side. His own hair, a yellowish white, hung beneath
it like a dirty net curtain. Every so often, he lifted the
edge of the hair-piece and poked a finger underneath
to scratch his scalp. The inevitable result of so much
ill-considered stretching was that the toupee gaped
perpetually in a small peak above his nose. It looked,
Roz thought, like a large chicken perched on top of
his head. She rather sympathized with Olive’s contempt
for him.