The Girl Who Passed for Normal (12 page)

She wanted to scream. She wanted to take the world inside her and explode. She wanted to die. But she knew that she wouldn’t scream, and wouldn’t die. Not yet. Before she screamed or died she had to telephone the police, get in touch with Luke Emerson and Catherine’s lawyers and Iva. Someone had to do something, and there was no point in having
hysterics
. For really, nothing — not even murder — meant
anything
. She would do what had to be done, and only when all the chaos was over, when all the pieces had been picked up and thrown away — only then, perhaps, would she scream and die. But even then she knew she wouldn’t. Because there would be nothing left to scream and die for. She would be alone. She would have survived the end of the world.

She stood up. She had to telephone the police. She went out of her room, along the corridor. She looked into Mary Emerson’s room. Catherine was still sitting on the bed, staring at the bathroom door.

Barbara went into the room and whispered, “Catherine.”

The girl looked around, but didn’t move her body or her arms, which hung by her sides as if they didn’t belong to her.

“Catherine, I must call the police now. Come downstairs with me, please.”

Catherine stood up and walked toward Barbara with her mouth open and her shoulders slumped. Barbara wanted to tell her to stand up straight, to close her mouth, to remember all the things they had learned together. But there was no point. It had all been a waste. It wouldn’t matter, when Catherine was shut up, how she looked. She wouldn’t have to pass for normal anymore. She would just be a mad girl who had murdered her mother.

Catherine stuttered through her open mouth, “Please don’t tell the police. Please. I did it for you. I only did it because I love you.” Then she gave a sort of cry, and Barbara thought she was going to fall. But she just swayed and took Barbara’s hand and said, “Please save me, please.”

Barbara closed her eyes. She felt herself swaying in time with Catherine. She thought of the home she had thought she would have. She thought of the possibilities of love and freedom and happiness that had been offered her. She thought of Marcello, so safe and strong. She thought of her mother, who had accepted the cruelty and unfairness of life. She thought of herself; the perfect secretary, being hired and fired — and of the lifelong struggle she would have, moving from one “position” to another.

Swaying in time with Catherine, she thought of the whole normal world. She didn’t want it. She had lived in the normal world, and Howard had died, and David had left her. She wouldn’t accept it. She couldn’t. And if she called the police now she would be calling the normal world, the world of the exploited and unhappy, of the dead and disappeared. She didn’t want that world. She wanted the other world; the world of love and strength; the world of the exploiters; of those who
at least had a chance. She wanted to be free and strong, and to love. She had given up her role as secretary. If she went back to it now there was only failure and poverty for her, and the derision of the strong. Failure and poverty; for
secretaries
didn’t earn much. She swayed. It was all such a waste.

She sighed and said quietly, “What do you want me to do?”

They walked slowly down the stairs, and Catherine considered Barbara’s question. Her crying stopped.

They stood in the hall, Barbara watching Catherine, and Catherine gazing at George, the myna, who was silent.

Eventually Catherine said, “We must bury her in the
garden
.”

Barbara shook her head. She was exhausted. She wanted to sleep, but knew she couldn’t. She had made a decision to fight, to keep trying to win the game with this particular hand, and until she had either won or lost she couldn’t relax. But already, in a way, she was glad she had made that decision. At least here there was a chance of excitement, whatever the outcome. The alternative that she’d been contemplating in her room was hopelessness.

“We can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

She couldn’t think why not, apart from the practical
difficulties
. “We’ll never be able to dig a hole deep enough,” she said, “It would take days.”

They walked into the living room, and Barbara sat down.
Catherine stood by the window looking at her, and rubbing her nose with her sleeve. She was standing straight. “Oh, we can do it,” she said. “We’ve got all the time in the world. We can work all night tonight and if it’s not ready we can go on in the morning. No one can see us.” She stopped, and nodded authoritatively.

“But dogs dig up bodies. Or if it rains —” Barbara shook her head violently. No, this wasn’t excitement. This was
madness
. One didn’t bury bodies in gardens. She felt her lips pressing together, and was about to stand up, when she realized that equally one didn’t murder people at all. But Catherine had, and thereby made superfluous the notion of what one did or didn’t do. Nevertheless, as she leaned back again on the sofa, she said, “Look, Catherine, this is ridiculous. We can’t just bury her and forget her. People don’t just
disappear
. Someone will come looking for her. They’ll know she never left Rome, and eventually they’ll dig up the wilderness, and then —” She didn’t know what then. Whatever she did was going to be new from now on, therefore she could do as she pleased. So why not bury Mary Emerson? She would worry about people searching for her when they did. She wanted to laugh. Yes! Bury the bitch, and hope no dog dug her up. She giggled, and Catherine looked at her curiously.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But if she just disappears — oh, I don’t know.”

It occurred to her that David had disappeared without
anyone
worrying. Perhaps that was because he was free to
disappear
. Mary Emerson certainly wasn’t — she would have been once she’d reached America, or at least once she’d left the house. But until then she wasn’t free, and people with
responsibilities 
couldn’t disappear. The letters that had come for David since his disappearance had only been from friends announcing their imminent arrival in Rome; but if these friends did arrive — and they hadn’t up to yesterday — they simply wouldn’t find him. It would be as easy as that, and they certainly wouldn’t worry about him. But any letters that came for Mary Emerson couldn’t be ignored; they would be about money, about property. Barbara thought that it was strange; Mary Emerson couldn’t disappear, simply because, unlike David, she had the means to do so.

“It’s a shame she didn’t die when she got to New York,” she said with a small smile.

“If we bury her near the wall, and not too far away from the house, we can watch and make sure no one comes near,” Catherine said. “And then we can put cement in on top of her once she’s in the hole, and as the ground is wet the cement will get hard, and —”

“How are we going to see out there?”

“Your eyes get used to the darkness. We can use a torch if you like, but it’s better not to.”

Barbara nodded. In five minutes Catherine had changed from a collapsed mad girl to something else. Now she knew just what she was doing, and seemed completely in control of both the situation and, Barbara felt, her.

“You go and get her out of the bath and pull her
downstairs
,” Catherine said. “I’ll go and get
the spades from the garage and take them out there. Then I’ll come and help you.”

Barbara stood up obediently. It was so easy. She felt that, if only for a short time, all she had ever known, or experienced, had been lifted from her. All she had to do was bury a body.

She went out into the hall and started to climb the stairs, wondering if the killing of her mother would also have some magnificent liberating effect on Catherine. Perhaps this trauma now might even cure her completely. But she didn’t think it was likely. It would be too neat, too satisfactory.

When she saw Mary Emerson again she almost changed her mind, and went to call the police. She saw now that it would not be simple burying a body. It wouldn’t even be simple getting a body out of a bath full of eggs.

She stood at the end of the bath and looked. Logically, she thought, she should drag the corpse out by its ankles. But she had vomited over the ankles, and didn’t want to touch them. She stood at the side of the bath, and closing her eyes, leaned over and made a grab at the brown woolen dress. She caught it, but it slipped from her hand. She started sweating, and was afraid she would vomit again. She made another grab, and again the body slipped away from her. It looked bigger than it had when it was Mary Emerson, and seemed to be getting bigger all the time.

She grabbed, slipped, and started crying. Once she got the thing halfway out before it slipped very smoothly back. She kept her eyes closed as she grabbed, and grabbed again, and slipped again. She was crying, she was hysterical, she wondered why Catherine didn’t come to help her. Perhaps Catherine had given her this task as a test, which she had to pass before she could claim some part in, and some credit for, the murder itself.

Finally it was lying on the floor, and Barbara felt she had broken her back, strained all her muscles, and got egg and vomit all over her. But it was out, and she pulled it by its
neck out of the bathroom, across the bedroom, onto the
landing
; and when she reached the top of the stairs she shoved it down somehow, with her eyes closed, and with one hand on the wall, to steady herself and feel the way.

When she had reached the bottom of the stairs she let go of the body and ran into the kitchen to wash her hands. There was a mirror above the sink, and she looked at herself in it. Her eyes were red and her lips were white. Her nose was running and her hair looked as though it had been out in a greasy shower. She stayed in the kitchen; she didn’t feel she was crying, but she saw that she was. Catherine came to find her. The girl stared as if she couldn’t understand why Barbara was crying, or couldn’t remember what had happened.

“Hello,” she said, absently.

Barbara wiped her eyes. “Please put something over her,” she said, “I don’t want to see her again.”

Catherine left the kitchen, and Barbara heard her doing something out in the hall; after a minute she returned, and smiled.

Barbara said, “Thank you.” She shivered.

Catherine gazed at her, and then said cheerfully, “I think you broke her neck pulling her down the stairs. It’s at a funny angle. We must bury her before she gets all stiff, mustn’t we?”

“Yes.” Barbara nodded. “We must.”

Catherine had brought a piece of rope from the garage; she tied it to the corpse, which was wrapped in a blue bed cover. Barbara watched her from a distance. Then they started pulling the awful thing out of the front door, out across the gravel and the rock paths. Every time it jolted, or seemed to be stuck, and they had to pull harder, Barbara winced.

Catherine said, quite calmly, and not even out of breath, “It’s all right, you know. She can’t feel it.”

But Barbara could. She felt each tiny piece of gravel ripping her skin, tearing out tufts of hair, ripping her back, and though she didn’t look, she knew that the blue bed cover was trailing behind, not covering anything, staying with the corpse only because it was caught on something; a brooch, perhaps, or a pin in the red, slimy hair.

By the time they had reached the low hedge that divided the rock garden from the wilderness, Barbara was in agony. Her hands were cut by the rope, she had a disgusting taste in her mouth, and all the pains she had felt when she had pulled the body out of the bath renewed their attack on her. But it didn’t matter, she told herself. Because it was too late now. She was committed. She had made her decision in — how long? Two seconds? A decision that already had changed her whole life. How ridiculous it was. She pulled, and
wondered
. One second? More maybe. Six weeks? Nine months? A lifetime? It didn’t matter.

She pulled and pulled, and wasn’t conscious of where they were going. They were simply going out into the long grass, into the wilderness. The blue bed cover had been left behind, but the sight of the body no longer horrified her; it was no longer a body. It was a mere thing, that had to be pulled, agonizingly, through the long grass. Catherine had tied the rope around the thing, under its arms. It looked very efficiently tied. She wondered how long Catherine had been practicing tying knots; or what, even, the piece of rope had been doing in the garage in the first place. Perhaps Catherine had asked her mother to buy it for her, and made up some story of
why she wanted it. Or perhaps she hadn’t had to make up any story. Perhaps her mother had known.

They pulled and pulled, two thin girls in a winter evening, and the thing they pulled had, not long before, been a human being, with a name, a brain, and dreams of freedom, and had known — Barbara repeated this to herself — how it would die. Not consciously, perhaps, but somewhere, surely, it had known. For Catherine — poor, demented Catherine — had been part of it. So it had bought the rope, sent Iva away early for the Christmas holidays, or at least postponed its own departure until after Iva had gone, and hired a suitable assistant for its mad daughter. That, of course, was why it had never left before; it had been waiting, searching, for Barbara, or for someone like her; and that was why, consciously, it hadn’t trusted her. Then, when all was ready, it had been prepared to take back into itself what it had mistakenly given out of itself; its failure, its mistake; its wrong, mad daughter.

Barbara shook her head. She must concentrate on what she was doing. She pulled.

She couldn’t resist, however, gasping to Catherine, “Why didn’t your mother trust me?”

Catherine stopped pulling, and smiled at her. “She said she wouldn’t trust anyone who came to stay with me. But she distrusted you in particular because you were so efficient. She said you were too good for me.” Catherine giggled, and Barbara saw that the girl still didn’t appear to be tired in any way. “She said she almost liked you, but she said she couldn’t really like anyone who came to stay. She said the only reason she could think of for someone like you coming would be for my money. That’s why she told that friend of
yours with the moustache about my money, because she was sure he would tell you and, as soon as he did, you would say yes. And,” Catherine sounded delighted, “you did.”

Barbara wanted to drop the end of the rope she was holding, but she clutched onto it tighter and said, “Then why did she ask me to stay?”

“Because you were so efficient and good for me. She didn’t care about my money really. But she thought she’d better go away while she could, because she knew she’d have to come back to me eventually, to send you away. But you were the only person she could leave me with — you were the first person she’s ever been able to trust me with.”

Barbara smiled. She felt very sorry for Mary Emerson. The only person she’d ever been able to trust her daughter with was someone she didn’t trust. So perhaps it wasn’t too absurd, Barbara thought. The woman had suspected her of being after Catherine’s money; and then, just when she’d apparently been proved right, she realized what Barbara was really after. She had realized that it was Catherine herself that was at stake — and she had had enough of Catherine. She didn’t want to fight for her anymore. So she had prepared herself for the sacrifice.

“Are you all right?” Catherine said.

Barbara looked down at her thin hands. She had painted her nails to come here today. She shook her head violently. She must keep control. She must not think about the past, make things up, justify herself. She mustn’t think at all.

They pulled. Barbara thought about snakes and scorpions, but apart from the fact that she was sure that they hid
somewhere
in the winter, she was also sure that, even if they didn’t
hide, they wouldn’t harm two thin girls out in the cold December night. They would know what she and Catherine were doing; and respect them for it. They would feel a sort of kinship.

Eventually Catherine said, “This is the place. I put the spades down here.”

Barbara let go of the rope. She felt quite normal suddenly, and was conscious above all of the fact that it was cold, and she only had a blouse on. She looked back toward the house, toward the warmth and the light. Beyond the house she could hear the traffic going down the road, and could see the
headlights
in the dark sky. She thought again of people going home to their families, to their dinners, to their beds. She wondered how many other people were burying bodies at this moment. One or two, she guessed. Somewhere.

She dug her heel into the ground. It seemed fairly soft; it had rained a lot that December.

Catherine handed her a spade.

“You were right. It’s quite light out there.”

“Don’t worry. No one can see us.”

Barbara nodded; she hadn’t thought of that.

“The first part is the most difficult,” Catherine said. “We must cut the turf all around mother with the spades. We have to dig about three inches in. Then when we have the right shape, we must move mother over and make lots of little squares. Then we must take up each little square and put it over there. Then we dig, and put mother in and put cement on top of her and then put the earth back and then the little squares of grass and afterward you shouldn’t be able to see too much.”