The doll who ate his mother: a novel of modern terror Page 13

  He snapped his card toward her, like a dealer. She ignored it and gazed toward the man with the football. “Good evening, Mr. Wright,” she called.

  “Hello there, Mrs. Kelly. Got visitors, have you?”

  “We’ll just see about that. How many are there?”

  “Three men. I think it’s three men; you know how they are these days. And a girl.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wright.” As she turned back to them Clare saw that the large pale eyes never moved. They gazed blindly at her. “Say your names,” Mrs. Kelly said.

  “Clare Frayn.” When the blank intent gaze moved on, she shivered.

  “Chris Barrow.”

  “Edmund Hall. I’m a writer.”

  “Oh, you’re this writer, are you? So that’s what you want. I thought so. And who’s the other one, that’s keeping quiet?”

  “I’m George Pugh, Mrs. Kelly. A cinema manager,” he stumbled on.

  “No need to sound so sorry about it,” she said, grinning or baring her teeth. “Well, you sound human, anyway. A bit less sure of yourself than your friends. And you’ve come to try to upset me, have you?”

  “We don’t want to upset you,” Edmund said.

  “And you won’t, oh no. Make no mistake about that. I’m past being upset. Not like my friend you made ill, in the launderette. So now, do you still want to talk to me?”

  “Please. We’d like to hear anything you can tell us about your grandson. These people have relatives who suffered from him, you see.”

  Chris was hardly a relative of his cat, but Clare suppressed her amusement. “So that’s why it takes four of you to talk to me, is it. Because people suffered.” Mrs. Kelly smiled, then pounced: “Suffered in what way?”

  “Could we discuss it inside?” Edmund said.

  “There are children listening.” And there were, sidling closer.

  “If I let you in—if I let you in—you’re to follow me. I’ll show you where to go, and you’re to stay there. I won’t have you excusing yourselves and wandering off. And don’t think you can creep out, either. Is that understood? All right. Mr. Pugh, you come in last and slam the door.”

  The house smelled like dusty old clothes in a mouldering wardrobe. Mrs. Kelly’s voice echoed amid the hollow clatter of feet on the bare boards. “One more thing. Just remember my friends are outside. I’ve only to scream. Even the four of you won’t stop me screaming.”

  Clare slowed, gazing up the uncarpeted stairs. A rusty socket hung from a flex above the landing; stripes of wallpaper stepped down toward her, almost colourless beneath twilight and dirt. “Never mind looking how bad it is,” Mrs. Kelly said, startling her. “Mr. Wright’s told me all about that. It’s better than falling downstairs over the carpet. You’ll just have to put up with it, as I have to.”

  “I’m sorry,” Clare said. “I couldn’t see for a moment, after the sun.” The hall flung her voice back at her, making her stammer. As she followed Mrs. Kelly the dusty furniture muffled her words, like a hand before her mouth.

  The room no longer had a door. Despite the warm evening and the coal fire in the grate, the room was cold, and almost bare except for several armchairs. A blackened rectangle of linoleum protected the floorboards from sparks, although the fire was caged. In an alcove, two framed photographs, dim with dust, stood on a small table. Large and tiny pigeons hung in flight on the pinkish wallpaper, halves of pigeons were trapped in the joins. Near the ceiling, ragged leaves of wallpaper hung down; in some of them, spiders crouched on tangles. “Sit down,” Mrs. Kelly said. “I want you sitting down.”

  The armchair puffed dust at Clare, like a fungus. Mrs. Kelly grasped the back of the chair nearest the fire and lowered herself to sit, facing the doorway. She put her handbag on the floor beside a large portable radio, a Liverpool Echo, the Catholic Pictorial, and the tabloid which had reported Edmund’s search. “Now talk away,” she said.

  “As I say,” Edmund said, “we’d like you to tell us about your grandson.”

  “I’m sure you would. But why should I? Is it your business? I don’t want to talk about him.” She closed her eyes tight and opened them, unchanged, blank. “I’m tired. I just want to rest. I think I’ve earned that.”

  “Do you know what he’s been doing?” Edmund demanded.

  “No.” And she smiled triumphantly. “You tell me.”

  “He caused a man to be killed in a car crash and stole part of the body. And he murdered a woman and half devoured her.”

  “You saw him doing these things, did you?”

  “I know it was him, Mrs. Kelly. So do you.”

  “If you’re so sure of yourself,” and her smile was malicious now, “why haven’t you told the police?”

  “I’ve done that.” He sounded totally convincing to Clare, but she knew the blind could hear lies where the sighted saw honesty. She held herself rigid, in case an uneasy movement alerted Mrs. Kelly. Dust glinted slowly, floating; shadows on the pigeons shuddered.

  “Then why haven’t the police been to see me?”

  “Because I haven’t told them your address yet. That’s the one thing they don’t know. But let me be completely honest. I’m writing a book about these murders. That’s partly why I’m here.”

  Her face was as blank as her eyes now. “But I want to see your grandson get what’s right for him. I used to know him at school. The police can only arrest him. But that isn’t the whole answer.”

  Clare heard him leaving his feelings ambiguous, so that he could agree with Mrs. Kelly’s. Had he done that with Clare?

  “And these other people are relatives, are they,” Mrs. Kelly said. “Who’s the one who sends pansies to do his lying for him?”

  Launderette, Clare mouthed at Edmund, pointing at Chris. “I sent someone to talk to your friend,” Edmund said, frowning.

  “That’s the kind of person you associate with. And you want me to believe you know what’s best for him, my grandson. I don’t think there’s anything more to be said.”

  Clare chewed her fingers to block her mirth. Edmund had trapped himself in his own ambiguity. At the same time, she felt helplessly frustrated. They had been close to the truth, and he’d lost it.

  “Of course I don’t know what’s best for him, oh, no. I’m only his grandmother. You should try living with him for a few years before telling me what’s right. Then maybe you’d know what you’re talking about.”

  All at once Clare’s frustration said, “Since you know, Mrs. Kelly, won’t you tell us?”

  “You’re going to have a try now, are you? Who are you?”

  “Clare Frayn. Your grandson killed my brother.” The empty eyes gazed at her. The silence made her say, “I’m a teacher.”

  “A teacher! Are you! You all think children are angels these days, don’t you? He was no angel, let me tell you. He was the Devil incarnate.”

  Edmund was nodding to Clare, but she didn’t need his cue. “Come on, Mrs. Kelly, children aren’t devils,” she said. “In what way was he a devil?”

  But Mrs. Kelly grinned. “Oh no, you won’t trap me like that. I’ve got all the rest of my senses left, don’t you mistake it.”

  “I’m not trying to trap you,” Clare said, full of frustration.

  Mrs. Kelly hadn’t waited for her. She was muttering, “I know all about teachers. They’re the ones who want to tell parents how to bring up their children. I’d like to see a teacher give twenty-five years of her life to a child and then have that child betray her. I’d like to see her telling parents what to do then.”

  “Do you mean your grandson?” Clare said, keeping her temper. “He betrayed you?”

  “No, I don’t mean him.” As if the silence had contradicted her, she added furiously, “I mean his mother. My daughter Cissy, Cecilia.”

  “Sounds like you haven’t had much luck bringing up kids, right?” Chris said.

  “I’ve had the Devil’s luck. He must have it in for me. I don’t know why God lets him. There must be a special place for
me in Heaven. The Devil made Cissy betray me, I know. And she turned to him for help. Not to her own mother.”

  Both Chris and Clare opened their mouths, but Edmund gestured as if he were a conductor silencing an orchestra. In the silence the glowing embers crinkled like tinfoil. Mrs. Kelly said, “Just you have a look at her. Does she look badly brought up to you? Mr. Pugh, you look at her in the photographs.”

  Clare watched George rub a hole in the grime for a face. The girl beneath the glass was about eleven; her large eyes gazed out of her large face, her full lips were pressed together primly. “Is that her as a little girl?” Mrs. Kelly said. “That’s her confirmation dress. It cost so much to make, we were flabbergasted. But we bought it. Just so she could go to the Devil.”

  In the other photograph the girl was years older. A woman in her forties—Mrs. Kelly—and a burly man stood on either side of her, arms about her shoulders. The girl’s lips were fuller now; she looked sullen—trapped, Clare thought. “Can the others look at them?” George said.

  “Yes, yes. Let them all see.” Mrs. Kelly shook her head. “That one of the three of us,” she said. “I had that taken because I thought we were such a close family, so Cissy would have something to remember us by. I shouldn’t have wasted my money.”

  She took hold of the arm of her chair and squatted down to place coal on the embers with fire-tongs. George moved to help, but she said, “Sit down, sit down. I’m not helpless yet.” She threw on a shovelful of slack; dark flames uncoiled, mostly smoke.

  “Sometimes I wonder what God has against me,” she said from her chair. “He’s sent me some trials in my life, I know that. Cissy never had much in her head, but I’m sure the teachers made her worse. I brought her up as I’d been brought up; it never did me any harm. We found her a job in a factory, but she didn’t keep that long. Still, we were used to going without; my husband was only in the post office. We looked after her and never complained. All we asked was that she was home by nine every night, and told us everything she’d done during the day. And what she was going to do the next day. Sometimes she caught herself out there; she’d contradict herself. But someone must have taught her to lie. Because she’d been at another factory for six months before we knew she was going with a man.”

  She looked as if she might vomit. “They used to do what they did in broad daylight, in the factory. Her supervisor found them one day. Against the wall, like animals. Her father gave her something to remember that night, even if she was twenty-five. Do you know what she did then? She ran away. Her, who couldn’t even keep her shoelaces tied. She wouldn’t have run away if her father had been well. But he had lung cancer, so that made it easy for her.”

  The shouts of children had gone from the street, which was sinking into darkness. “We knew she’d be back,” Mrs. Kelly said. “Her man didn’t want her, not for long. She went wherever she went for a couple of months, then she came back here. Do you know why? Because she was going to have a baby. As brazen as you please, she brought that here.” Her lips were white with primness.

  “Yeah, well,” Chris said. “It’s still life, though, isn’t it?”

  “You call that life, do you? I wonder if you’d think so if you heard what that thing did. I sound cruel, don’t I? A cruel mother, not fit to bring up children. Oh, we thought as you do, at the time—we thought it was still a baby, after all; it deserved the same chances as anyone else. We told her she could have it, but we couldn’t afford to keep it, not with her father getting worse. Of course there was no question of her not having the baby, but it would have to be adopted.

  “You’d have thought we’d told her to kill it. It mustn’t be adopted, she kept saying, it mustn’t go out of her sight ever. We found out why later. But even if we’d known, I don’t see what difference it could have made.

  “She was ashamed to talk to us, and I don’t wonder. At least she never talked about the man responsible. I certainly didn’t want to hear about a man like that. So she just sat around the house and wasted away. Just sat and wouldn’t say what she was thinking, not even to the priest. She didn’t dare tell him, of course. And I had to watch her get thinner. I’m a cruel inhuman mother, am I?” she shouted at the silence. “Let me tell you, I lay awake half the night, every night, praying for her and the baby. I wouldn’t have wasted prayers on that thing if I’d known. We thought it was the worry that was sapping her, but it was that inside her, eating her away.

  “Then just before the baby was due, she left. And the next day there was a letter saying she was going to kill herself. After the way we brought her up, she sinned against the Holy Ghost, against hope.”

  She closed her eyes. The listeners waited, hoping she would answer the silence. Flames leapt through smoke. Suddenly Clare realized they must learn the contents of the suicide letter. She remembered what the doctor had told George about Mrs. Kelly’s daughter. Hoping she sounded as stupid as the question, she said, “But what reason did she have to kill herself?”

  “You may well ask. She had her reasons. But I don’t want to talk about them. I want to forget, if I can.”

  Clare groaned silently. Then Mrs. Kelly said, “No, I won’t have you thinking I drove her to it. I’ll tell you what she couldn’t tell me face to face.”

  Edmund nodded vigorously at Clare, flourishing his upthrust thumb.

  “She wasn’t satisfied having a baby out of wedlock,” Mrs. Kelly said. “That wasn’t enough of a sin for her. She tried to get rid of it. She’d heard of a man who could get rid of babies by black magic. God help her.

  “But he didn’t get rid of it. He made her promise it to him. After the way we brought her up, she promised her child to the Devil. And he told her nothing could take back that promise, not even death.”

  She crossed herself, squeezing her eyelids tight. “He must have seen how easily swayed she was. He roped her into all manner of filthy practices. She wrote them all down; she must have enjoyed thinking how it would upset me. I threw all that on the fire, didn’t even let my husband see. This Satanist was a dirty old man, filthy, making use of gullible people.

  “But he had powers from the Devil. He’d kept himself young; he told Cissy all about that. Now he was growing old, he needed someone to look after him. I’d have looked after him,” she said savagely. “He wanted Cissy’s child to look after him and to be taught all the filth he knew. I don’t know what changed her mind, but she ended up hating him. She said she was writing to him as well, to tell him what she was going to do.”

  “This guy, the Satanist,” Chris said. “Is he still alive?”

  “No, thank God. That’s one prayer of mine that was answered. He should have suffered as he made others suffer, but he died in his bed, of old age. Sometimes I wonder what God’s doing.”

  “Your daughter,” Clare said. “She killed herself after the baby was born?”

  Mrs. Kelly was silent for minutes. Once she made to speak, then her face collapsed and filled with darkness—shadows of the fire. On the walls, chairs of dark jelly danced and jerked, slowly quivering.

  Abruptly Mrs. Kelly said, “They found her in a cave in Wales. Someone had seen her going up a hill. She was dead, but that was alive, God help us. I’d taken her letter to the police. They told me when she was found, and I had to go to identify her. Then they showed me the baby at the hospital.”

  Chris was squinting at the photographs. He said, “Have you got a picture of him?”

  “I’ve got nothing of him. And I want nothing. After what he did, all I want is to hear that he’s dead.”

  “But you cared for him, didn’t you?” Clare prompted. “I mean, you looked after him.”

  “Oh yes. I couldn’t leave him with strangers. He looked such a lovely baby. That was a Devil’s trick to delude me. And I wanted him because he was Cissy’s. It wasn’t my fault she’d gone to the Devil, don’t think that, but I thought I could save him from going the same way, make up for what she’d done. The cruel mother wanted to make up for her daught
er,” she said harshly.

  “They kept him in the hospital for months. They said he should have died. I don’t know if they meant he would have been better dead, but that’s what they ought to have meant. When I went to collect him, a nurse told me— No. No, God help me, I won’t talk about that.” Her hands fastened convulsively on her chair.

  “I tried to bring him up as if he were normal. The priest said he was still a child of God; it was up to me to put him on the right path. He said God must have let him live so that I could save him. I tried, God knows. I even called him Christopher—carrying Christ. I thought that might help.”

  Clare winked at Chris; shadows flickered in reply.

  “We went without to bring him up. We were used to that. We even bought him special food, to change his tastes.” She shuddered, or the light did. “I told him his mother had gone to Heaven. Perhaps she had. God’s mercy is infinite.

  “He was far cleverer than Cissy. I often used to see him watching me. The Devil had made him clever—pretending to be a little boy, waiting for the chance to be a monster.

  “When he was five my husband died. I had to bring him up on the pittance they gave me. Oh, that didn’t worry me, I could do without. But my sight was going. I was terrified of him, and he knew it.”

  “Of a five-year-old child?” Clare demanded.

  “A five-year-old monster, you mean. Oh, but children are angels, aren’t they? I’ll tell you something. When he was eleven he savaged another boy. Did you know that, Miss Teacher?”

  “I saw it happen,” Edmund said hastily. “I went to St. Joseph’s too.”

  “And you say he wasn’t a monster? I took him to the doctor, but he was no use at all. Take him to a psychiatrist, he said. I’d as soon have taken him to the Satanist; not one of those men believes in God. I swore the doctor to secrecy and told him everything; then he wasn’t so sure of himself. I told him prayer and faith were the only things that could save that child, and he couldn’t prove they weren’t. Not that they saved him. You can’t save a monster.”