The Crocodile Bird (39 page)

She walked across and switched off the television. He jumped up, and for a moment she thought he would hit her. But she had misjudged him there. Sean wouldn’t hit a woman.

“Why?” she said, the single word.

“Come on, love, you know why. You’ve got to put all that behind you, that life. You’ve left the place, she’s gone, you’re out in the real world now. Them books, they was just a way of hiding yourself from real life. Hopefully you’re not going to need them in the future. We’ve got our whole future before us. Isn’t that what you said yourself?”

Had she? Not in that context, she was sure. He was triumphant, he was in charge. She felt as angry as she now guessed Eve must sometimes have felt.

“They were
my
books.”

“They was
ours,
love. We’ve been through that before. Okay, so you bought them with the money you earned. How would you like it if I said that Coke you’re drinking was mine because it was my money paid for it? It’s the same thing.”

It was illogical and Eve had taught her to be logical, to be reasonable. Eve must have felt like this when Bruno pretended to have a social conscience to cloak his need to possess her utterly. She must have felt like this when, after seventeen years of striving and repudiation, of hope and humiliation and desertion, Jonathan had at last asked her to marry him.

Liza was impotent, she had nothing to say, she could only imagine how he would twist what she said. She set their food out, she made tea, she put the television on again and was rewarded by his seizing her hand and squeezing it in his own. Together they watched an episode in a Hollywood miniseries. Or Sean watched it while she fixed her eyes on the screen and took her mind elsewhere.

She could clean a house and fetch water from a spring and read books but it was true what he said, in other ways she was more like six than sixteen. She couldn’t manage on her own. Even if she worked eight hours a day for Mrs. Spurdell or someone like Mrs. Spurdell, she would still only earn £120 a week, and she doubted if she
could
do eight hours’ housework a day. Where would she live? How would she afford anything?

Was there anyone in the world who would pay her to translate Latin into English for them? She knew nothing about it but that she doubted. Besides, she knew from investigating in Mr. Spurdell’s study that you had to have certificates and things, diplomas, degrees, before people would employ you to do things which weren’t housework or putting packets on a shelf in a supermarket.

She had nowhere to live. Jonathan Tobias might have helped her about that but he was dead. She had no father, only one of three men who knew nothing of her existence. Eve didn’t seem to care for her. Eve didn’t know where she was or what had happened to her, but perhaps, in Eve’s position, she wouldn’t care, either. Or Eve might care very much, might be in an agony of anxiety, when she found out, as she must have, that Liza had never got to Heather’s. But no one had come looking for her, no one had put pieces in the paper about her or on the television. Liza knew there was no one to look after her but Sean. There was only Sean.

He held her hand. Soon he had his arm around her. She was full of cold dislike for him, which she somehow knew would have warmed into simple irritation after a night’s sleep. If he would leave her alone. If he would leave her to come to terms with it in her own way. She had to, after all. She had to make the best of it because without him she was useless and helpless.

Only he wouldn’t leave her alone. He must have been able to tell how hostile she was to him, he must have sensed her reluctance to be touched by him and understood something by the way she took his hand off her leg when he began running it up and down her thigh. They would have to share a bed, she was resigned to that, but when she realized he intended making love she spoke a firm, “No!” And then, “No, please, I don’t want to.”

But making love wasn’t at all what happened. She had asked him once if he would ever force her and he had treated the question as ludicrous. But he took no notice when she told him she didn’t want him, she didn’t want to do it. He silenced her by clamping his mouth over hers. He held her hands down, tried to force her thighs apart with his knee, and when that didn’t work, with his foot. To justify himself, he pretended she was playing coy and laughed into her mouth as he thrust like a dog in the street, as he shoved his penis hard inside her, held her arms stretched out the width of the bed, pinioning her.

She was powerless. It hurt, as it had never hurt even the first time. When it was over and he was whispering to her that he knew she had really enjoyed it, he could always tell if a girl liked it, she thought of Eve and Trevor Hughes. Eve had had a pair of dogs to call, but she had nothing.

He fell asleep immediately. She cried in silence. It was weak and foolish, she was a baby to do it, but she couldn’t stop.

Eve would never have tolerated such treatment. Eve never permitted persecution. Not since what had happened on the way back from the airport. Her own suffering was nothing like as terrible, but bad enough, a foretaste of a possible future. Eve had revenged herself on three men for what three men had done to her. That was why she had done those things, for vengeance more than for fear or safety or gain. More for vengeance than for Shrove.

Was this then what her own life would be? Making love when she wanted to and also making love when she didn’t want to. Or doing
that
when she didn’t want to. After what had happened, she thought she would never want to again. She remembered the day of Jonathan Tobias’s wedding and how Eve had used the occasion as an opportunity for a lesson, as she so often did. She had taught Liza about marriage and marriage customs but had said nothing of having to do what a man wanted when you didn’t want to, of men getting their way because they were stronger, of working for them and waiting on them and submitting to their right to tell you what to do.

Perhaps she hadn’t because Liza had been only a child then. It was a lifetime ago and she was a child no longer. But once more she was in a position where she couldn’t run away. And it was worse than last time when all she needed was courage. Now she had nowhere to run to.

One other thing Eve had done for her, though, apart from teaching her so many of the things Sean said were useless, and that was to teach her to rough it. Life had never been soft. They made their own pleasures with the minimum of aid, without toys, television, videos, CD players, external amusements. Eventually, after years, they had got their bathroom. The gatehouse had an old fridge and an even older oven, but there was no heating upstairs, no down quilts or electric blankets of the kind she’d seen at Spurdells’, no new clothes—those jeans and the padded coat were the only things she possessed not made by Eve or from the Oxfam shop—they’d had none of that takeaway or processed food she’d got used to with Sean but never really trusted. They’d made their own bread at the gatehouse, grown their own vegetables, made their own jam and even cream cheese. Everywhere they went they’d had to walk once Bruno was gone.

Her mother had given her a kind of endurance, a sort of toughness, but what use was that in the world of Spurdells and Superway? You didn’t need to be tough, you needed certificates and diplomas, families and relations, a roof over your head and means of transport, you needed skills and money. Well, she had a thousand pounds.

She could see the money belt on the table where he had thrown it when he stripped her. If he knew about the money, he would want it. Once he wanted it, he would take it. He would say that what was hers was theirs and therefore his. She got up, washed all traces of him off her body, pulled on leggings and the blue-and-red sweater for warmth, and curling the money belt up as tightly as she could, thrust it inside one of her boots.

Keeping as far from him as she could, on the far edge of the bed, she went to sleep.

TWENTY-TWO

P
ROUDLY
showing Liza her box of decorations that had all come from Harrods, Mrs. Spurdell said it was too early to dress the tree yet. But there was no point in deferring the purchase of it until later when the best would be gone. Philippa and her children were coming for Christmas. Jane was coming. Having once told Liza Philippa’s Christian name, Mrs. Spurdell had since then always referred to her as Mrs. Page while Jane was “my younger daughter.”

It was the first Christmas tree Liza had ever seen. Indeed, it was the first she had ever heard of and the rationale for uprooting a fir tree, winding tinsel strings around it, and hanging glass balls on the branches was beyond her understanding. As for Christian customs, Eve had taught her no more about Christianity than she had about Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

She could hear Mr. Spurdell moving about in his study upstairs. His school had broken up for Christmas. With the two of them in the house she had no chance of a bath. She scrubbed out the tub and put caustic down the lavatory pan. While she was cleaning the basin it occurred to her to look in the medicine cabinet. There, among the denture-cleaning tablets, the vapor rub, and the corn solvent, she found a cylindrical container labeled: MRS. M. SPURDELL, SODIUM AMYTAL, ONE TO BE TAKEN AT NIGHT. Of its properties she knew nothing except that it evidently made you sleep. She put the container in her pocket.

If she didn’t have her money in her hand before she gave notice, she thought it quite likely Mrs. Spurdell would refuse to pay her. While she pushed the vacuum cleaner up and down the passage, she worked out various strategies. Determined to be honest and not to prevaricate, she knocked on the study door.

“Do you want to come in here, Liza?” Mr. Spurdell put his head out. “I won’t be a minute.”

“I’ll do the study last if you like,” she said. “I’ve brought all your books back.”

“That’s a good girl. You’re welcome to more. I’ve no objection to lending my dear old friends to a sensible person who knows how to take care of them. A good book, you know, Liza, ‘is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit.’”

“Yes,” said Liza, “but I don’t want to borrow anymore. Can I ask you something?”

No doubt, he expected her to ask who said that about a good book but she already knew it was Milton and knew too, which was very likely more than he did, that it came from
Areopagitica.
He was all smiling invitation to having his brains picked.

“How can you find out where someone’s in prison?”

“I beg your pardon?” The smile was swiftly gone.

Now for the honesty. “My mother has gone to prison and I want to know where she is.”

“Your mother? Good heavens. This isn’t a game, is it, Liza? You’re being serious?”

She was weary with him. “I only want to know who to write to or who to phone and find out where they’ve put her. I want to write to her, I want to go and see her.”

“Good heavens. You’ve really given me quite a shock.” He took a step forward, glanced over the banisters, and spoke in a lowered voice, “Don’t give Mrs. Spurdell a hint of this.”

“Why would I tell
her?
” Liza made an impatient gesture with her hands. “Is there a place I could phone? An office, I mean, a police headquarters of some kind?” She was vaguely remembering American police serials.

“Oh, dear, I suppose it would be the Home Office.”

“What’s the Home Office?”

Questions that were requests for information always pleased him. Prefacing his explanation with a “You don’t know what the Home Office is?” he proceeded to a little lecture on the police, prisons, immigration, and ministries of the interior. Liza took in what she needed.

She drew breath and braced herself. Sean’s words came back to her, about being more like six than sixteen, about being helpless. “Please, may I use your phone? And may I look in the phone directory first?”

He was no longer the benevolent pedagogue, twinkling as he imparted knowledge. A frown appeared and a petulant tightening of the mouth. “No, I’m afraid you couldn’t. No to both. I can’t have that sort of thing going on here. Besides, this is the most expensive time. Have you any idea what it would cost to phone to London at eleven o’clock in the morning?”

“I’ll pay.”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s not only the money. This isn’t the kind of thing Mrs. Spurdell and I should wish to be involved in. I’m sorry but no, certainly not.”

She gave a little bob of the head and immediately switched on the vacuum cleaner once more. When the bedrooms were done, she came back to the study and found him gone. Quickly she looked for Home Office in the phone book. Several numbers were listed. She wrote down three of them, knowing she didn’t want Immigration or Nationality or Telecommunications.

The house was clean and tidy, her time up. It seemed harder than it had ever been to extract twelve pounds from Mrs. Spurdell, the last pound coming in the shape of fifteen separate coins. Liza thanked her and said she was leaving, she wouldn’t be coming anymore. Mrs. Spurdell affected not to believe her ears. When she was convinced, she asked rhetorically how she was supposed to manage over Christmas. Liza said nothing but pocketed the money and put on her coat.

“I think you’re very ungrateful,” said Mrs. Spurdell, “and very foolish, considering how hard jobs are to come by.”

She began shouting for her husband, presumably to come and stop Liza from leaving. Liza walked out of the front door and shut it behind her. All the way down Aspen Close she expected to have to run because one of them was pursuing her but nothing like that happened. If the manager who admired her had been on duty in the Duke’s Head she would have asked him if she might use his phone, but there was a woman in reception. While she was occupied at the computer, Liza walked upstairs and had a bath.

Not waiting for Sean but going home on the bus, it occurred to her as she climbed to the front seat on the top, that for a six-year-old—like the milkman with a child’s mental age?—she hadn’t done badly. Surely she had been resourceful? She had acquired a soporific drug, discovered how to find her mother, had even found the phone number, had given in her notice, had a bath, and lacking a towel, dried herself on the hotel bathroom curtains.