A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George
Bless her, he thought, returning the pressure. She knew. She always knew. He smiled at her, so glad that she was with him with her clear-eyed sanity in a world that would shortly go mad.
Roberta was very much as she had been. She entered the room between two white-clad nurses, dressed as she had been dressed before: in the too-short skirt, the ill-fitting blouse, the flipflopping slippers that barely sufficed to give her feet protection. She had, however, been bathed in anticipation of the interview, and her thick hair was clean and damp, pulled back and fastened at her neck with a piece of scarlet yarn, an incongruous note of colour in the otherwise monochromatic room. The room itself was inoffensive and barren, devoid of decoration save for a trio of chairs and a waist-high metal cabinet. Nothing hung on the walls. There was no distraction, no escape.
“Oh, Bobby,” Gillian murmured when she saw her sister through the glass.
“There are three chairs here in the room, as you can see, Roberta.” Samuels’s voice came to them without distortion over the speakers. “In a moment I’m going to ask your sister to join us. Do you remember your sister Gillian, Roberta?”
The girl, seated, began to rock. She gave no reply. The two nurses left the room.
“Gillian’s come up from London. Before I fetch her, however, I’d like you to look round the room and accustom yourself to it. We’ve never met in here before, have we?”
The girl’s dull eyes remained where they had been, fixed on a point on the opposite wall. Her arms hung, inanimate, at her sides, lifeless, pulpy masses of fat and skin. Samuels, undisturbed by her silence, let it continue while he placidly watched the girl. Two interminable minutes dragged by in this way before he got to his feet.
“I shall fetch Gillian now, Roberta. I’m going to be in the room while you meet with her. You’re quite safe.”
The last declaration seemed entirely unnecessary, for if the hulking girl felt fear—felt anything at all—she gave no sign.
In the observation room, Gillian got to her feet. It was a hesitant movement, unnatural, as if she were being propelled upward and forward by a force other than her own free will.
“Darling, you know you don’t have to go in there if you’re afraid,” her husband said.
She did not reply but rather, with the back of her hand upon which the heavy scoring from the metal brushes stood out like cutaneous veins, she stroked his cheek. She might have been saying goodbye to him.
“Ready?” Samuels asked when he opened the door. His sharp glance made a rapid assessment of Gillian, cataloguing her potential weaknesses and strengths. When she nodded, he went on crisply. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be in there and several orderlies are within calling distance should she need to be quickly subdued.”
“You act as if you believe that Bobby could really hurt someone,” Gillian said and preceded him to the next room without waiting for a response.
The others watched, waiting for a reaction from Roberta when the door opened and her sister entered. There was none. The big square body continued to rock.
Gillian hesitated, her hand on the door. “Bobby,” she said clearly. Her tone was quiet, but matter-of-fact, the way a parent might speak to a recalcitrant child. Receiving no response, the young woman took one of the three chairs and placed it in front of her sister, directly in her line of vision. She sat down. Roberta gazed through her to the spot on the wall. Gillian looked towards the psychiatrist, who had pulled his chair to one side, out of Roberta’s vision. “What should I—”
“Talk about yourself. She can hear you.”
Gillian fingered the material of her dress. She dragged her eyes up to her sister’s face. “I’ve come up from London to see you, Bobby,” she began. Her voice quavered, but as she proceeded, it gathered strength. “That’s where I live now. With my husband. I was married last November.” She looked at Samuels, who nodded encouragingly. “You’re going to think it’s so funny, but I married a minister. It’s hard to believe that a girl with such a strong Catholic background would marry a minister, isn’t it? What would Papa ever say if he knew?”
The plain face offered neither acknowledgment nor interest. Gillian might have been speaking to the wall. She licked her dry lips and stumbled on. “We have a flat in Islington. It’s not a very large flat, but you’d like it. Remember how I loved plants? Well, I’ve lots in the flat because the kitchen window gets just the right kind of sun. Remember how I could never get plants to grow in the farmhouse? It was too dark.”
The rocking continued. The chair on which Roberta sat groaned with her weight.
“I have a job, as well. I work at a place called Testament House. You know that place, don’t you? It’s where runaways go to live sometimes. I do all sorts of work there, but I like counselling the kids the best. They say I’m easy to talk to.” She paused. “Bobby, won’t you talk to me?”
The girl’s breathing sounded drugged, her heavy head hung to one side. She might have been asleep.
“I like London. I never thought I would, but I do. I expect it’s because that’s where my dreams are. I…I’d like to have a baby. That’s one of my dreams. And I’d…I think I’d like to write a book. There are all sorts of stories inside me, and I want to write them down. Like the Brontës. Remember how we read the Brontës? They had dreams as well, didn’t they? I think it’s important to have dreams.”
“It’s not going to work,” Jonah Clarence said brusquely. The moment his wife had left the room, he had seen the trap, had understood that her entry into her sister’s presence was a return to a past in which he had played no part, from which he could not save her. “How long does she have to stay in there?”
“As long as she wants.” Lynley’s voice was cool. “It’s in Gillian’s hands.”
“But anything can happen. Doesn’t she understand that?” Jonah wanted to jump up, fling open the door, and drag his wife away. It was as if her mere presence in the room—trapped with the horrible, whale-like creature that was her sister—were enough to contaminate and destroy her forever. “Nell!” he said fiercely.
“I want to talk to you about the night I left, Bobby,” Gillian went on, her eyes on her sister’s face, waiting for the slightest flicker that would indicate comprehension and recognition, that would allow her words to stop. “I don’t know if you remember it. It was the night after my sixteenth birthday. I…” It was too much. She couldn’t. She fought onward. “I stole money from Papa. Did he tell you that? I knew where he kept it, the extra money for the house, so I took it. It was wrong, I know that, but I…I needed to leave. I needed to go away for a while. You know that, don’t you?” And then again, seeking reassurance, “Don’t you?”
Was the rocking faster now, or was it so only in the imagination of the watchers?
“I went to York. It took me all night. I walked and hitchhiked. I just had that rucksack, you know the one I used to carry my school books in, so I only had one change of clothes with me. I don’t know what I was thinking about, running away like that. It seems crazy now, doesn’t it?” Gillian smiled briefly at her sister. She could feel her heart hammering. It was becoming quite difficult to breathe. “I got to York at dawn. I’ll never forget the sight of the morning light hitting the Minster. It was beautiful. I wanted to stay there forever.” She stopped, put her hands firmly into her lap. The deep scratches showed. It couldn’t be helped. “I stayed in York that entire day. I was so frightened, Bobby. I’d never even been away from home for a night by myself, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on to London. I thought it might be easier if I went back to the farm. But I…I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“What’s the point of this?” Jonah Clarence demanded. “How is all this supposed to help Roberta?”
Wary, Lynley glanced at him, but the man settled himself again. His face was rigid, every muscle tight.
“So I caught the train that night. There were so many stops, and at every one of them, I thought that I would be questioned. I thought that Papa m
“You don’t need to tell her about the pimp,” Jonah whispered. “What’s the point?”
“There was a nice man at King’s Cross who bought me something to eat. I was so grateful to him. He was such a gentleman, I thought. But while I was eating and he was telling me about a house he had where I could live, another man came into the cafeteria. He saw us. He came up and said, ‘She’s coming with me.’ I thought he was a policeman, that he would make me go home again. I started to cry. I hung on to my friend. But he shook me off and ran out of the station.” She paused, caught in the memory of that night. “This new man was very different. His clothes were old, a bit shabby. But his voice was kind. He said his name was George Clarence, that he was a minister, and that the other man had wanted to take me to Soho to…to take me to Soho,” she repeated firmly. “He said he had a house in Camden Town where I could stay.”
Jonah remembered it all so vividly: the ancient rucksack, the frightened girl, the scuffed shoes and tattered jeans she wore. He remembered his father’s arrival and the conversation between his parents. The words “pimp from Soho…didn’t even understand…looks like she hasn’t slept at all…” echoed in his mind. He remembered watching her from the breakfast table where he’d been dividing his time between scrambled eggs and cramming for a literature test. She wouldn’t look at anyone. Not then.
“Mr. Clarence was very good to me, Bobby. I was like part of his family. I…I married his son Jonah. You’d love Jonah. He’s so gentle. So good. When I’m with him, I feel as if nothing could ever…nothing ever again,” she concluded.
It was enough. It was what she had come to do. Gillian looked at the psychiatrist beseechingly, waiting for direction from him, for his nod of dismissal. He merely watched her from behind the protection of his spectacles. They winked in the light. His face told her nothing, but his eyes were very kind.
“There. That’s it. It’s done nothing,” Jonah concluded decisively. “You’ve brought her up here to this all for nothing. I’m taking her home.” He began to get to his feet.
“Sit down,” Lynley said, his voice making it clear that the other man had no choice in the matter.
“Bobby, talk to me,” Gillian begged. “They say you killed Papa. But I know that you couldn’t have. You didn’t look like…There was no reason. I know it. Tell me there was no reason. He took us to church, he read to us, he made up games we could play. Bobby, you didn’t kill him, did you?”
“It’s important to you that I didn’t kill him, isn’t it?” Dr. Samuels said quietly. His voice was like a feather floating gently in the air between them.
“Yes,” Gillian responded immediately, although her eyes were on her sister. “I put the key under your pillow, Bobby. You were awake! I talked to you! I said ‘Use it tomorrow’ and you understood. Don’t tell me you didn’t understand. I know you did.”
“I was too young. I didn’t understand,” the doctor said.
“You had to understand! I told you I’d put a message in the Guardian, that it would say Nell Graham, remember? We loved that book, didn’t we? She was so brave and strong. It was the way we both wanted to be.”
“But I wasn’t strong, was I?” the doctor queried.
“You were! You didn’t look like…You were supposed to come to Harrogate! The message told you to come to Harrogate, Bobby! You were sixteen. You could have come!”
“I wasn’t like you at sixteen, Gillian. How could I have been?” The psychiatrist hadn’t moved in his chair. His eyes travelled between the two sisters, waiting for a sign, reading the underlying messages in body movements, posture, and tone of voice.
“You didn’t have to be! You weren’t supposed to be! All you had to do was come to Harrogate. Not to London, just to Harrogate. I would have taken you from there. But when you didn’t come, I thought—I believed—that you were all right. That nothing…that you were fine. You weren’t like Mummy. You were fine.”
“Like Mummy?”
“Yes, like Mummy. I was like her. Just exactly like. I could see it in the pictures. But you weren’t. So that made you fine.”
“What did it mean, to be like Mummy?” the doctor asked.
Gillian stiffened. Her mouth formed the single word no three times in rapid succession. It was too much to bear. She couldn’t go on.
“Was Bobby like Mummy in spite of what you believed?”
No!
“Don’t answer him, Nell,” Jonah Clarence muttered. “You don’t have to answer him. You’re not the patient here.”
Gillian looked at her hands. She felt the burden of guilt heavy upon her shoulders. The sound of her sister’s ceaseless rocking filled the air, the sound of tortured breathing, the beating of her own heart. She felt that she couldn’t go on. She knew she couldn’t turn back.
“You know why I left, don’t you?” she said hollowly. “It was because of the present on my birthday, the special present, the one…” Her hand went to her eyes. It shook. She controlled herself. “You must tell them the truth! You must tell them what happened! You can’t let them lock you away for the rest of your life!”
Silence. She couldn’t. It was in the past. It had all happened to someone else. Besides, the little eight-year-old who had followed her round the farm, who had watched her every movement with eyes shining with adoration, was dead. This gross, obscene creature before her was not Roberta. There was no need to go further. Roberta was gone.
Gillian lifted her head. Roberta’s eyes has shifted. They had moved to her, and in that movement Gillian saw that she had indeed broken through where the psychiatrist had failed these last three weeks. But there was no triumph in that knowledge. There was only condemnation. There was only facing, one last time, the immutable past.
“I didn’t understand,” Gillian said brokenly. “I was only four or five years old. You weren’t even born then. He said it was special. A kind of friendship fathers always had with their daughters. Like Lot.”
“Oh no,” Jonah whispered.
“Did he read the Bible to you, Bobby? He read it to me. He came in at night and sat on my bed and read the Bible to me. And as he read it—”
“No, no, no!”
“—his hand would find me underneath the covers. ‘Do you like that, Gilly?’ he would ask me. ‘Does it make you happy? It makes Papa very happy. It’s so nice. So soft. Do you like it, Gilly?’”
Jonah pounded his right fist against his forehead. With his left arm he hugged himself tightly across his chest up to his shoulder. “Please,” he moaned.
“I didn’t know, Bobby. I didn’t understand. I was only five years old and then it was dark in the room. ‘Turn over,’ he would say, ‘Papa will rub your back. Do you like that? Where do you like it best? Here, Gilly? Is it special here?’ And then he’d take my hand. ‘Papa likes it there, Gilly. Rub Papa there.’”
“Where was Mummy?” the doctor asked.
“Mummy was asleep. Or in her room. Or reading. But it really didn’t matter because this was special. This was something fathers share with daughters. Mummy mustn’t know. Mummy wouldn’t understand. She didn’t read the Bible with us so she wouldn’t understand. And then she left. I was eight years old.”
“And then you were alone.”
Gillian shook her head numbly. Her eyes were wide, tearless. “Oh no,” she said in a small, torn voice. “I was Mummy then.”
At her words, a cry escaped Jonah Clarence’s lips. Lady Helen looked at Lynley immediately and covered his hand with her own. It turned, grasping her fingers tightly.
“Papa set up all her pictures in the sitting room so I could see her every day. ‘Mummy’s gone,’ he said and made me look at them all so I could see how pretty she was and how much I had sinned in being born in the first place to drive her away. ‘Mummy knew how much Papa loved you, Gilly, so she left. You must be Mummy to me now.’ I didn’t know what he meant. So
“You wanted to please him. He was your father. He was all you had.”
“I wanted him to love me. He said he loved me when I…when we…‘Papa loves it in your mouth, Gilly.’ And afterwards we prayed. We always prayed. I thought God would forgive me for making Mummy run away if I became a good enough Mummy to Papa. But God never forgave me. He didn’t exist.”
Jonah’s head sank to the table, cradled in his arms, and he began to weep.
Gillian finally looked at her sister again. Roberta’s eyes were on her, although her face remained without expression. The rocking had stopped.
“So I did things, Bobby, things I didn’t understand because Mummy was gone and I needed…I wanted my Mummy again. And I thought the only way to get Mummy back was to be her myself.”
“Is that what you did when you were sixteen?” Dr. Samuels asked softly.
“He came to my room. It was late. He said it was time to become Lot’s daughter, the real way, the way the Bible said, and he took off his clothes.”
“He’d never done that before?”
“Never all his clothes. Not like that. I thought he wanted…what I usually…But he didn’t. He…spread my legs and…‘You’re…I can’t breathe, Papa. You’re too heavy. Please, don’t. I’m afraid. Oh it hurts, it hurts!’”
Her husband swayed on his feet, scraping his chair back viciously on the linoleum floor. He staggered to the window. “It never happened!” he cried against it. “It couldn’t! It didn’t! You’re my wife!”
“But he put his hand over my mouth. He said, ‘We can’t wake Bobby, darling. Papa loves you best. Let Papa show you, Gilly. Let Papa inside. Like Mummy. Like a real Mummy. Let Papa inside.’ And it hurt. And it hurt. And I hated him.”
“No!” Jonah screamed. He threw open the door. It crashed against the wall. He ran from the room.