Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“Polly! You still taking a bath, girl? Didn’t I hear the water running long before dinner?”

“I just started, Rita.”

“Just started? I heard the water running directly you got home. More’n two hours back. So what’s up, luv-doll?” Rita scratched her nails against the door. “Polly?”

“Nothing.” Polly wrapped herself in the towel as she stepped from the tub. She grimaced with the effort of lifting each leg.

“Nothing my eye. Cleanliness is next to whatever, I know, but this is taking it to extremes. Wha’s the story? You fancying yourself up for some toy boy to climb through your window tonight? You meetin’ someone? You want a spray of my Giorgio?”

“I’m just tired. I’m going to bed. You go on back down to the telly, all right?”

“All wrong.” She tapped again. “Wha’s going on? You feeling queer?”

Polly tucked the towel round her to make a wrap. Water ran in rivulets down her legs to the stained green bath rug on the fl oor. “Fine, Rita.” She tried to say it as normally as possible, sifting through her memories of how she and her mother interacted to come up with an appropriate tone of voice. Would she be irritated with Rita by now? Should her voice reflect impatience? She couldn’t remember. She settled for friendly. “You go on back down. Isn’t your police programme on about now? Why don’t you cut yourself a piece of that cake. Cut me one as well and leave it on the work top.” She waited for the answer, the lumber and huff of Rita’s departure, but no sound came from the other side of the door. Polly watched it, warily. She felt chilled where her skin was wet and exposed, but she couldn’t face unwrapping the towel, uncovering her body for drying, and having to look at it again just yet.

“Cake?” Rita said.

“I might have a piece.”

The door knob rattled. Rita’s voice was sharp. “Open up, girl. You a’nt had a piece of cake in fifteen years. Somethin’s wrong and I mean to know what.”

“Rita…”

“We a’nt playing here, luv-doll. And unless you intend to climb out the window, you may as well open this door straightaway ’cause I mean to be here whenever you get round to it.”

“Please. It’s nothing.”

The door knob rattled louder. The door itself thumped. “Am I going to need the help of our local constabulary?” her mother asked. “I c’n phone him, you know. Why is it I expect you’d rather I didn’t?”

Polly reached for the bathrobe on its hook and slid the lock back. She draped the bathrobe round her and was in the act of tying its belt when her mother swung the door open. Hastily, Polly turned away, unfastening her hair from its elastic binding to let it fall forward.

“He was here today, was Mr. C. Shepherd,” Rita said. “He cooked up some story ’bout looking for tools to fix our shed door. What an agreeable bloke, our local policeman. You know anything about that, luv-doll?”

Polly shook her head and fumbled with the knot she’d made in the belt of the robe. She watched her fingers pick at it and waited for her mother to give up the effort at communication and leave. Rita wasn’t going anywhere, however.

“You’d best tell me ’bout it, girl.”

“What?”

“What happened.” She lumbered into the bathroom and seemed to fill it with her size, her scent, and, above all, her power. Polly tried to summon her own as a defence, but her will was weak.

She heard the clank-jangle of bracelets as Rita’s arm raised behind her. She didn’t cringe — she knew her mother had no intention of striking her — but she waited in dread for Rita to respond to what she didn’t feel emanating like a palpable wave from Polly’s body.

“You got no aura,” Rita said. “And you got no heat. Turn round here.”

“Rita, come on. I’m just tired. I’ve been working all day and I want to go to bed.”

“Don’t you mess me about. I said turn. I mean turn.”

Polly made the belt’s knot double. She shook her head to gain further protection from her hair. She pivoted slowly, saying, “I’m only tired. A bit sore. I slipped on the vicarage drive this morning and banged up my face. It hurts. I pulled a muscle or something in my back as well. I thought a hot soak would—”

“Raise your head. Now.”

She could feel the power behind the command. It overcame whatever feeble resistance she might have been able to muster. She lifted her chin, although she kept her eyes lowered. She was inches from the goat’s head that served as pendant on her mother’s necklace. She bent her thoughts to the goat, his head, and how it resembled the naked witch standing in the pentagram position, from which the Rites began and petitions were made.

“Move your hair off your face.”

Polly’s hand did her mother’s bidding.

“Look at me.”

Her eyes did the same.

Rita’s breath whistled between her teeth as she sucked in air, face to face with her daughter. Her pupils expanded rapidly across the surface of her irises, and then retracted to pinpricks of black. She raised her hand and moved her fingers along the welt that scythe-cut its path of angry skin from Polly’s eye to her mouth. She didn’t make actual contact, but Polly could feel the touch of her fi ngers as if she did. They hovered above the eye that was swollen. They tapped their way from her cheek to her mouth. Finally, they slid into her hair, both hands on either side of her head, this time an actual touch that seemed to vibrate through her skull.

“What else is there?” Rita asked.

Polly felt the fingers tighten and catch at her hair, but still she said, “Nothing. I fell. A bit sore,” although her voice sounded faint and lacking in conviction.

“Open that robe.”

“Rita.”

Rita’s hands pressed in, not a punishing grip but one that spread warmth outward, like circles in a pond when a pebble hits its surface. “Open the robe.”

Polly untied the first knot, but found she couldn’t manage the second. Her mother did it, picking at the tie with her long, blue fi ngernails and with hands that were as unsteady as her breath. She pushed the robe from her daughter’s body and took a step back as it fell to the fl oor.

“Great Mother,” she said and reached for the goat’s head pendant. Her chest rapidly rose and fell under her kaftan.

Polly dropped her head.

“It was him,” Rita said. “Wasn’t it him did this to you, Polly. After he was here.”

“Let it be,” Polly said.

“Let it…?” Rita’s voice was incredulous.

“I didn’t do right by him. I wasn’t pure in my wanting. I lied to the Goddess. She heard and She punished. It wasn’t him. He was in Her hands.”

Rita took her arm and swung her towards the mirror above the basin. It was still opaque from steam, and Rita vigorously ran her hand up and down it and wiped her palm on the side of her kaftan. “You look here, Polly,” she said. “You look at this right and you look at it good. Do it. Now.”

Polly saw reflected what she had already seen. The vicious impression of his teeth on her breast, the bruises, the oblong marks of the blows. She closed her eyes but felt tears still trying to seep past her lashes.

“You think this is how She punishes, girl? You think She sends some bastard with rape on his mind?”

“The wish comes back three-fold on the wisher, whatever it is. You know that. I didn’t wish pure. I wanted Colin, but he belonged to Annie.”

“No one belongs to no one!” Rita said. “And She doesn’t use sex — the very power of creation — to punish Her priestess. Your thinking’s gone off. You’re looking at yourself like those sodding Christian saints would have you do: ‘The food of worms…a vile dung-hill. She is the gate by which the devil enters…she is what the sting of the scorpion is…’ That’s how you’re seeing yourself now, isn’t it? Something to be trampled. Something no good.”