The Diary Of Pamela D. (9 page)

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
‘I’m not sending you back unless that’s what you want. I would
rather you stayed-’

‘What?’

Wryly considering her
wide-eyed look of surprise, he said, ‘Look, it must be clear by
now, even to you, that you’ve made yourself something of an
asset
around here, not
just in our home, but in this community.’ It was clear that this
wasn’t what he intended to say, but he plunged ahead. ‘That Cross
child would have died if you hadn’t known what to do. The church
choir sounds better than it ever has. From what I understand, you
have a big solo coming up at Easter. You’ve rattled the cobwebs out
of all the dark corners of this house and organised my files.
Of
course
I want
you to stay.’ He considered her for a long moment, until she
coloured under his scrutiny. ‘
All
right
,
Miss
Pamela
Dee
, as Mother says! You may now run
away if you wish. I suppose you’re still a little young to
understand what I
really
meant to say to you.’

Taking his empty coffee mug,
she left for the kitchen, trying not to smile. Of
course
she understood. He
wasn’t sending her away after all! She could stay if she wanted to!
What could be more obvious?

She was so elated that for the rest of that
day, and for the rest of that week, the little worm of melancholy
which had been eating away at her heart was quiescent.

Inevitably, Pamela’s
thoughts turned often to Theo and the time he had kissed her. She
didn’t like to think that he’d done so merely because he was a
typical male in his prime who merely wanted to satisfy his carnal
appetite without any sort of regard for her as a person, that he
thought of her only as an object, a toy, a possible outlet. Such
thoughts evoked feelings of hurt, anger, betrayal. But who was she
kidding! Her own body had betrayed her. If Theo hadn’t allowed her
to break free of his grasp, he could easily have taken her. And
what was worse, Pamela had no illusions about his physical
strength, which was easily more than a dominating force where a
mere slip of a girl like herself was concerned, or that when he
held her, that she wanted him in ways that made her flush to think
of.
That
feeling in
itself made her writhe, with embarrassment, with anticipated
pleasure, with outright humiliation, with a strange sort of
tingling in her vitals which she instinctively knew was the
beginning of carnal desire.

So much for simply being content to live
under the same roof with the man!

As the weeks went by, a curious thing began
happening to her. She was becoming emotionally stronger, bolstered
by the people she had come to love, to think of as her very own
family, yet weaker at the same time, unable to control her moods,
especially where Theo was concerned.

Winter had lost its harsh sting and was just
beginning to show signs of abating when one morning, as the women
were serving breakfast to the field workers, they ran short of
eggs. It was a strange sort of morning; more like a sepia
photograph or an old memory than waking reality. Things moved in a
fluid, slow-motion sort of way, like the cloying, wraithlike mists
that floated grudgingly across the moors, clinging to the sweeps of
gorse as though possessing tendrils.

‘Pamela,’ Ellie said as the girl took a fresh
loaf of bread out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool,
‘would you mind very much fetching some eggs, please? We’re all
out, and I’ve got my hands full at the moment.’

Pamela, Ellie and the other
women members of the staff were wearing brand-new uniforms which
they themselves had made only days before. The material was still
crisp and new-smelling, and they were dove grey and white, trimmed
with a deep burgundy. Of course, all of the women were loath to
allow
anything
to
stain, tear, snag or otherwise mar their new and illustrious
attire, so they were more than a little stiff and careful in their
movements, where before they had been far more loose and casual.
This fact stood out in Pamela’s mind, momentarily, as though
nothing else mattered in the world. It was as though she were
laying on her bed, her vision filled by nothing except a vision of
a crisp, new uniform.

But that was nonsense. Where was she? Oh,
yes, she was putting on her wellies, which waited for her on a
rubber mat by the back door. Pamela then hitched up her dress on
one side with one hand and, carrying the wire egg basket in the
other, made her way to the chicken coop. She didn’t mind this chore
in the slightest. To get free-range eggs in their freshest possible
form caused a childlike wonder to stir within her, and she went
about the task dutifully, talking at the chickens as though they
were all familiar old friends-

‘Well, if it isn’t Miss Prissy Pants.’

Startled, Pamela almost
dropped the basket. ‘
Albert
! What are you doing, lurking in
the dark back there! You almost gave me a heart-attack.’ Though she
had been startled, the moment seemed somehow rehearsed, as though
she had gone over and over it in her mind, until she had got it
just right.

‘I saw you coming,’ he said. ‘I came through
the back way from the barn.’

‘Oh,’ Pamela said, her
attention on making her collection. ‘Well, don’t
do
that. At least make
some noise so I know you’re there.’ She was suddenly uncomfortably
aware that he was standing very close behind her. Without warning,
he put his hands on her waist.
Was
that what happened? Yes, that’s how it
was.

‘Come on, Miss Prissy Pants. Let’s go into
the barn for a bit.’

Afraid now, she pulled free
of him, continuing with her task, hoping he would simply give up
and leave. ‘Don’t touch me like that, Albert! I
mean
it! Go and do . . . whatever it
is that you do. The men are all sitting down having breakfast. Why
don’t you go join them?’

‘I’ll join them all right,’ he said, and
picked her up by the waist, making her cry out in alarm. ‘I’ll join
them after we have a little romp in the hay.’

Unceremoniously, he hoisted
her onto his shoulder, causing her to drop the eggs- she watched
them, one by one, as they fell- perfect, pristine ovoids one
instant, scattered spilth and ruin the next. Terrified now, her
mouth dry, she realized that he was going to rape her unless she
did something. But he was horribly strong; there was nothing she
could do to break his grasp. And for some reason found that she
couldn’t scream for help; somewhere in the back of her mind, she
felt as though she somehow
deserved
what was happening to her.

He carried her into the barn and flung her
onto her back on a fresh pile of straw, his gloating, totally
self-involved mien chilling; it was all she could do not to throw
up from fear.

‘You’ve no idea how I’ve been waiting for
this, you uppity little slut. Think you’re too good for the likes
of me, eh? Don’t want to get a little dirt on all that starched
linen?’ He was on her now, having undone his belt and pulled his
pants to his knees, before forcing his hands up her dress, grabbing
her undergarments. At that moment, sheer terror accomplished what
no amount of calm reason or calculated thought could. She pulled
away from him just enough to begin kicking. Somehow she found
herself away from him, her hand touching something smooth and hard.
It was the handle of a long, three-tined pitchfork. She picked it
up, got to her feet, and squared off with him.

Laughing as he pulled up his
pants, still approaching, he said, ‘What you going to do
with
that
Miss
Prissy Pants? Poke me with it? Think a little city bitch like you
can take me?’

Call it blind instinct and desperation, call
it what you will; she knew in that instant that her continued
existence depended on fighting, lashing out at him with every ounce
of strength she possessed. Viciously, she jabbed the tines into
Albert’s shins, making him back up in surprise. Every time he
turned away and exposed some unprotected part of himself, she
lunged, utterly without mercy.

‘Ow. OW! Stop, damn you! Agh! You little- Get
off, or I’ll-’

‘Or you’ll
what
?’ Pamela shouted at
him, her features suffused with terror, and with unfamiliar
emotions that she could never have imagined before: the desire to
lash out and hurt someone, to kill something that was monstrous and
evil. She was shaking like a leaf, but managed to keep herself
under control. ‘Get moving! Go! Into the chicken coop! You’re going
to start by cleaning that basket. Then you’re going to fill it, and
if you try anything and you don’t do exactly what I tell you then
I’m going to skewer you like a pig. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!!!’ Surely
that wasn’t
her
screaming?

As they came back to the
house, there was a crowd standing at the back door, wondering what
all the commotion was about. Some of the men were laughing, until
the two got close enough to see. All present became utterly silent
when Pamela said to Albert in a low voice, as he handed the eggs to
Ellie, ‘If you
ever
try to force yourself on me again, Albert Askrigg,
I’ll-’

‘You’ll
what
?’ he said belligerently, feeling
bolstered by the presence of the others. ‘What’ll you do?
Fire
me?’

‘She won’t, but
I will
.’ It was a quiet
voice that made everyone turn around in surprise. It was Theo, who
was standing at the back door, his features unreadable, but there
was something unmistakably dangerous about the way he was standing.
‘Ellie, would you be so kind as to take Pamela to her room? And as
for you, Albert, I think that you and I had better have a little
man-to-man . . . discussion.’

White-faced, Pamela stood as though dazed.
Didn’t she have a pitchfork in her hand a moment ago? Albert turned
to look at her once, giving her a look of pure, murderous hate.

‘I’ll be back for you,’ he said, pointing at
her as though he were a demon invoking a curse upon her life. ‘You
won’t get off so easy next time.’

At once Pamela felt
physically ill. She fled upstairs to the bathroom and heaved the
contents of her stomach. It took a long while for the aftereffects
of Albert’s intended abuse to surface, and she was sick to her
stomach and weeping for some time before she heard running water.
At
last
, Ellie or
Doris, or perhaps Mrs. Pascoe, had come to comfort her. She heard
the sound of water being wrung from a cloth and felt its damp
warmth pressed to her lip- and a searing stab of pain!

At her sudden reaction,
Ellie said, ‘I’m sorry . . . , did that hurt? What am I saying?
Of
course
it does.
Here, come lie on the bed and I’ll take your shoes off. Mrs. Pascoe
is coming up in a few minutes to sit with you. Dr. Morris is on his
way.’

Pamela lay in a daze as Ellie tended to her
lip, wiped the perspiration from the girl’s brow. Why was she
feeling so strange, as though she was watching and listening to
everything from the bottom of a well? And- ‘Ellie, what happened to
my lip? Why do I hurt so much? Wh-?’

‘Shush, now. Don’t try to
talk. You’re in shock. He beat you up pretty badly- that . . .
that
animal
!’

‘Wha-
ow
! What are you talking about? He
just pulled me into the barn, and I . . . I-’

‘Oh, my dear! If that’s how
you remember things,’ Ellie said very quietly, as though on the
verge of weeping, ‘then perhaps that’s how you
should
remember them. Now lay quiet.
Don’t try to talk. Just lie still and we’ll take care of
you.’

Pamela began feeling very strange: things and
people moved about her, but she couldn’t make sense of them. She
could only stare stupidly at the front of Ellie’s new uniform and
wonder what had happened. Who were these people who kept intruding
on her thoughts like phantom visitations, to stand or sit by her
bed, who ignored her feeble protestations and took off her clothes
and began prying and touching her in places they had no business
to, inspecting her as though her body was no longer her own? One
was a doctor- he told her so several times, as though that mere
fact was supposed to be meaningful to her, but the rest looked like
police men and women. She was sure she was dreaming, even when she
slipped altogether from wakeful somnolence into an even deeper
state of unreality. But still she heard voices, that of Theo and
someone she didn’t know.

THEO-- ‘Have your people from CID tracked
down Albert yet?’

?-- ‘No. He escaped into the moor. We’ve got
trackers out looking for him.’

THEO-- ‘Damn it to hell! I should have got
the others to help me restrain him.’

?-- ‘Don’t be a fool! The man’s a ruthless
killer- one or more of you might have got seriously hurt or worse.
You heard what my detectives said.’

THEO-- (sighs) ‘I can’t believe it. He had
all of us completely fooled.’

?-- ‘Yes, well, he’s very good at that. The
last girl he murdered was in Sheffield, two