First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (15 page)

He was sweating a lot and the flies were attracted to him, zooming in on his bald head. Perhaps it was the sweet smell of the rum drew them.

“Yes,” he said, thinking back to the night he’d interviewed her. “That’s exactly what she said—that the prospect of killing him was what kept her sane! Of course, when she said that, I knew she was crazy.”

The Commissioner had gone to visit her in her cell, hoping he might find out something that would mitigate her crime. He’d stopped in at the pub and had two stiff glasses of rum beforehand.

Her cell in the old guardhouse was stifling in spite of the barred window high in the wall. She seemed glad he’d come, this small woman with the intelligent face whom he’d seen often in the town. His own wife had frequently said she was a pleasant woman, though perhaps her marriage was not a happy one. He usually took his wife’s word in domestic matters.

Lizzie began to talk as soon as he sat down. She talked almost without taking a breath, as though the crime had unplugged something in her. He didn’t interrupt.

“At first when I knew Andrew was coming to stay with us, I was delighted. What could be better than to have a witness—someone from my own family—to see me do it. I was thrilled at the idea.

“But then Andrew arrived, and he was such a sweet boy, and he’d been through so much. He thought he’d found a home. Even in a few days, I was beginning to weaken. The poor dear’s presence was beginning to undermine me.

“I knew if I waited even a little while longer I’d never do it. So I made up my mind it had to be done right away.

“You’ve no idea the pleasure it gave me when I smashed the rock on Norman Beck’s head the first time. It was worth all the waiting just to have that satisfaction.

“Then it turned out he wasn’t dead. I hadn’t hit him hard enough.

“I thought I’d been thwarted. So you can imagine my feelings when the cart came back up the path with him on it. Then, to find out he’d no memory of what I’d done and wanted to come back to me.

“For Andrew’s sake, I actually did consider putting up with that man. I thought maybe I should do it to make a home for the poor boy.

“I might have been able to stand him for the boy’s sake if he’d stayed the same mean, cold-hearted Norman Beck. But the blow to the head changed him. He became loving and kind again, the way he was when I first knew him.

“That only made me more furious. The way he acted reminded me of everything he’d deprived me of all those years. I could have killed him at any time, he was so helpless and trusting. But I waited. I hoped Doctor Hebblethwaite was right when he said his memory would come back in due course.

“And it did. On that last night, he was trying to make love to me for the first time in years. It was hard for him because of his paralysis. He managed to climb on top of me. He was just in the middle of telling me how much he loved me when everything came back to him. In the moonlight I could see what a change came over him. His face turned ten years older again. He remembered everything.

“He tumbled off me onto the floor. He tried to crawl away. He knew what a terrible mistake he’d made. That was what I’d been waiting for. I wanted him to know what was happening. Then I killed him properly.”

Now, sitting on the verandah, the Commissioner shook his head as he told me all this. Except for the buzz of insects around his head, we sat for a while in complete silence. We might have been the only human inhabitants of this earth. He was silent for such a long time, I spoke.

“Why did she want to kill him?” I asked. I didn’t understand that at all.

“Your question was my question,” the Commissioner said. He pulled out a red handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. “I don’t suppose there’s anything to drink
inside?” he asked. “I don’t suppose your uncle kept some rum?”

I told him neither of them ever drank.

“Really,” he said. He didn’t sound surprised.

The heat in the cell was oppressive, and the rum made him sweat profusely.

“But why? Why did you kill him?” he asked Lizzie Beck.

“I used to love him so much,” Lizzie said. “When he was offered the post in this remote place, I agreed. I’d have done anything for him, because I loved him. And he loved me. But then he changed. After we’d been here a while, he became more cold and distant. He cut himself off from me and from all the people in the town. All he was interested in was his garden and his telescope.

“I put up with it for a long time, but I was so unhappy, I couldn’t bear it. I thought maybe I’d done something wrong.

“One day I asked him what was the matter. I asked him if he didn’t love me any more. ‘Love?’ he said. ‘What a load of codswallop.’ And he laughed at me.

“Can you imagine how I felt when he told me that? It shrivelled up my heart, because I knew he meant it. All those years for nothing! The best years of my life for nothing! That’s when I made up my mind to kill him. I could think of nothing else. I was obsessed with the idea. I saw him dead in everything I looked at. A kitchen knife wasn’t a kitchen knife any more, but a dagger to stab him with. Whenever I saw a tree, it wasn’t so much a tree, as a gallows with him hanging from it.”

The Commissioner couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Lizzie, Lizzie. Hold on a minute! You can’t be serious,” he said. “You can’t kill a man for not loving you. That’s not a good enough reason for killing anyone. If
that were allowed, half the world would be busy killing the other half.”

She spoke slowly and precisely.

“And why shouldn’t they?” she said. “It’s the worst crime of all.”

The Commissioner suddenly felt worn out. The heat was suffocating and he badly wanted a drink. He asked his final question.

“Aren’t you sorry now for what you did? If you were to show some sign of remorse, I’m sure I might be able to do something in your favour.”

“Remorse!” she said, looking at him with astonishment. “None whatsoever. I only wish they could bring him back to life so I could kill him again.”

I waved away the flies. The smell of the rum was making me feel a little queasy.

“Well,” the Commissioner said. “That’s about it. My job is to uphold the law. Your aunt didn’t leave me any option. She was like a woman with two heads, the way she went from love to hatred.” He eased himself up from the bench, his shirt front swelling out like a ship about to set sail. “She was crying when I left. She said the only thing she was sorry about was that you’d been caught in the middle of it all. She hoped you’d understand she had to do it.” He winced up at the sun. “I’d better be on my way.” He looked at me. “You can stay here tonight. But tomorrow morning, the cottage has to be destroyed. It’s the custom. I’ll find another place for you to live, so just have your things ready to go.”

He opened his umbrella, shook hands with me and began his slow walk back to the town. For a long time after, my hand smelt of rum.

That night, I packed my suitcase. I searched the cottage for a keepsake, but could find little to remind me of Lizzie.
I realized then how much Uncle Norman had dominated the house. The only adornments on the walls were faded charts of various types of vegetables, and one skyscape complete with stars and cosmic mists.

In the bottom drawer of Lizzie’s dresser I found a framed photograph, face down. It was the same as the one in Stroven—of my mother and father standing in the snow. I was going to take it as a souvenir. Then I decided not to. I think I believed it might somehow have been contaminated by the awful thing that happened in this house.

My last sleep in the cottage was not a pleasant one. I tossed and turned. I kept thinking someone was watching me. That scared me so much, I got up and looked around, even outside. But there was nothing. Then, when I did get to sleep, I had an awful nightmare. That column of women was marching towards me, led by my Aunt Lizzie, her face bathed in Uncle Norman’s blood, smiling savagely and holding a rock as though I was to be her next victim. I tried to run away, but I must have been in quicksand, for the harder I ran, the more I sank into it, and when I turned she was raising the rock to strike.

I was only too happy to wake up, my heart thumping. I stayed awake till morning came and waited at the front door. At eight o’clock, I saw two figures coming up the path: soldiers, pushing a cart with something on it. Nearer I could see it was a drum of fuel.

They arrived and set about their work without a word. I started on down to the town with my suitcase. About halfway, I looked back. The cottage was ablaze. The flame was a startling red against the black backdrop of the mountain.

As for Aunt Lizzie: neither I nor anyone else from the Island of St Jude ever saw her again. Commissioner Bonnar
received a radio message from the
Patna
five days out. A sailor who’d been assigned to bring Lizzie her breakfast unlocked the door and found the cabin empty. No one would have believed a woman her size could squeeze through the narrow porthole; and it must have been difficult, for the metal frame was smeared with blood. The ship reversed course and searched for the entire morning over the deepest ocean trench. At one point, they saw a school of sharks milling around, but no trace of Lizzie. The Captain issued rifles to the crew, and they spent an hour killing as many sharks as they could. Then they continued on their voyage.

“W
HEN WE’RE YOUNG
we feel we have the freedom to make a million choices.” Harry Greene had said this to me one night as we stood at the rails on the SS
Cumnock
. “We’re sure we can do anything we want—that we’re unique. But when we’re older and we look back, our lives don’t seem to have worked out all that differently from anyone else’s. God’s rope! ’Tis as though it’s all laid out in advance and predictable. We begin to wonder if we have any real choices at all.”

I thought I understood what he meant.

“Is that how you feel, Harry?” I said.

“Sometimes I do,” he said. “Yes, sometimes I do.”

He sounded sad when he said this. But after what I’d been through, I’d have been happy to believe my life would be predictable and ordinary, like everyone else’s.

So when the years following the death of Uncle Norman and Lizzie turned out to be settled and normal, I was thankful. Though on the morning of the burning of the cottage, when I went to the Commissioner’s Residence, I was full of anxiety. The Commissioner greeted me at the door and said someone was waiting to see me. We went into the lounge and a man stood up: a lean man with the windburnt face of a fisherman. He had the lightest of light blue eyes.

“This is Mr Chapman,” the Commissioner said. “I’ll leave you two to talk things over.” And he left us alone in the lounge. The strong smell of rum faded a little when he was gone.

Mr Chapman and I stood in silence: I was uncomfortable, and he seemed just as uncomfortable. Eventually, he cleared his throat and spoke.

“So you’re all right now, are you?”

I supposed I must be.

“Yes, I think so,” I said.

He nodded, and I noticed then how he didn’t look at me directly. His eyes would swing towards me, settle on my face for a brief moment, then swing past, like a lighthouse beam. Then back again, and on, and on. But in those instants he looked directly at me, his glance seemed to me very astute.

We stood quietly like this for the longest time. Then he put his hands in his trouser pockets and went awkwardly over to the bay window that looked out across the street to the sea. He began whistling, a tuneless sort of whistle, as if to say: Look, I’m so at ease, I’m whistling. Then he paced back and forth on the long polished floor of the reception lounge. He had a seaman’s awkward walk on land.

All at once, he seemed to think of something, and stopped. His eyes were triumphant and I thought he was going to speak. Instead, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out an old pipe, knocked out the dross into the fireplace, stuffed some fresh tobacco in, and lit it. Whenever his eyes settled on me now through clouds of smoke, they seemed to be saying: I’ve done my part, now it’s up to you.

I’d never met a grown-up this shy, and I wanted to help out. But I just couldn’t think of anything to say. After a while, the room was full of the silence and the stink of his
pipe smoke. At last, he shook out his pipe decisively into the empty fireplace and spoke.

“Well, that’s enough talking,” he said. “We’ll go and see Mrs Chapman and the boys.” Then his eyes swung faster than ever, and he seemed alarmed at the thought that perhaps he’d gone too far: “I mean, shall we?”

Just then, as though he’d been listening outside the door, the Commissioner came back into the lounge, bringing the smell of fresh rum in with him.

“Everything settled?” he said to Mr Chapman.

Mr Chapman nodded, his eyes sweeping past each of us.

“Good. Well, now you can get on with it,” said the Commissioner.

Mr Chapman and I went out together into the stunning midday heat.