Elizabeth George - A Great Deliverance

“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 fi ne.”

“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 fi lled 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 fi nd 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 fi ngers 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 he showed me. He read the Bible. He prayed. And he showed me. But I was too little to be a proper Mummy to him. So he…I did other things. He taught me. And I…was a very good student.”

“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 fl oor. 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.

Then Gillian began to cry. “I was just a shell. I wasn’t a person. What did it matter what he did to me? I became what he wanted, what anyone wanted. That’s how I lived. Jonah, that’s how I lived !”

“Pleasing everyone?” the doctor asked.

“People love looking into mirrors. So that’s what I was. That’s what he made me. Oh God, I hated him. I hated him!” She buried her face in her hands and wept as the grief overcame her, tortured tears held in check for eleven long years. The others sat motionless, listening to her weeping. After long, painful minutes she raised her ravaged face to her sister’s. “Don’t let him kill you, Bobby. Don’t let him do it. For God’s sake, tell them the truth!”

There was no response. There was absolutely nothing. Only the unbearable sound of Gillian’s personal torment. Roberta was motionless. She might have been deaf.

“Tommy,” Lady Helen whispered. “I can’t bear this. She’s done it for nothing .”

Lynley stared into the next room. His head was pounding, his throat ached, his eyes burned. He wanted to find William Teys, fi nd him alive, and tear the man savagely limb from limb. He had never known such rage, such sickness. He felt Gillian’s anguish overcome him like a disease.

But her weeping had lessened. She was getting to her feet. She was walking unevenly, numbly, to the door. Her hand reached for the knob. She turned it, pulled it open. Her presence had been useless after all. It was over.

“Did he make you have the naked parade, Gilly?” Roberta asked.

As if under water, Gillian turned slowly from the door at the sound of her sister’s husky voice. “Tell me,” she whispered. She walked back to her chair, moved it closer to the other, and sat down.