Tower of Silence (10 page)

But if Broadacre had a drug culture, Mary never found out about it. Far worse than the complex drug syndicates were the barred windows and the bleak soulless rooms and the dormitories with rows of iron-framed beds. There were no individual rooms at Broadacre except the isolation rooms, and the only concessions to privacy
you got in the dormitories were skimpy curtains that were supposed to close round your bed, but did not quite meet so that you were always on display.

It was a place where people screamed as Mary had screamed in the YOH, and where people beat their hands on locked doors for hours upon hours, and it was a place where injections were given not just to stop inmates from screaming, but to prevent them from attacking the attendants and the doctors.

On Mary’s first night everybody had seemed to be busy on some ploy or other, watching television or playing table tennis in the recreation room where vacant-eyed people sat blankly in corners.

Mary had not known what she was supposed to do or where she was supposed to be, and she was certainly not going to ask one of the cold-eyed attendants, snooty bitches. In the end she had gone to the dormitory, and a young man had followed her. He sat on the edge of her bed, asking her about herself; he had been pleasant and nicely spoken, and she had thought he was one of the orderlies. But after about ten minutes he had suddenly pushed her down on the bed, and leapt onto her and tried to tear all her clothes off. His hands had been clumsy, the nails jagged so that they had scratched her skin, and his breath had been hot and smelly. He had unzipped his trousers and Mary had felt the hard bulge of his erection pushing against her–like a hot thick stick! Horrid!–and it had seemed a very long time before the attendants came running in and dragged him off.

Ingrid had been one of the attendants. That had been
the first time Mary had seen her. She had come back to the dormitory after it was all over, bringing a mug of hot milk and two aspirin tablets for Mary. She seemed genuinely sorry about what had happened; she said Mary must have found the experience horrid and terrifying, and imagine it happening on her first night at Broadacre, as well. But there would not be a repeat performance, Mary could be sure of that, said Ingrid. She put her arms round Mary and hugged her.

‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ she said, stepping back. ‘You’re so very young—How old are you, Mary?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Eighteen.’ An odd look had come into Ingrid’s eyes, as if she were calculating something. But she only said, ‘God, you’re not much more than a child. Don’t tell anyone I hugged you just now, will you? But you’re so pretty I couldn’t help it.’

You’re so pretty
…Mary had stored these words away, to be taken out and looked at later, when it was dark and everyone was asleep. Her parents had never said that she was pretty, although perhaps if she was in a school concert or a gym display, or going to a schoolfriend’s birthday party, Leila might say, ‘You look very pretty, Mary,’ always adding
in that dress
, or
in your gym outfit
. Implying that Mary needed a party dress or a smart gym outfit to look halfway decent.

And ‘I enjoyed the singing,’ William might say, after the concert was over. But he never said,
You sang well, Mary
.

And then would come the hurtful comparisons. ‘Your
sister had a dress just that colour,’ Leila would say. ‘Do you remember it, William? Only it was a softer green than Mary’s. Oh, and she had little velvet bows on it–emerald shade–and there was a velvet bow for her hair. She wore the dress on her sixth birthday–we gave her a tea party in the gardens at Alwar. She looked like a little princess.’

Mary had not been given parties in gardens, or had velvet bows added to her dress, and she had never been anybody’s princess.

In the early years in the Young Offenders’ Hostel she had certainly never been called pretty. Sulky, said the warders and the slab-faced matron. Mutinous. ‘Miss Sullen’, matron called her. Matron was an old bag, everyone agreed on that, and she had a way of calling people out in front of everyone–usually at dinner-time in the long, wooden-floored refectory–and saying insulting and humiliating things. She had names for most people: Mary was ‘Miss Sullen’, or ‘Madam Sulky Drawers’. She had an ugly grating voice and an even uglier Midlands accent, which she tried to cover up in front of the doctors, or if health workers or NHS inspectors came round.

But she ran the hostel firmly and efficiently, and people who were not patients admired her. Doctors and the lay workers and the office staff often said, Oh, isn’t she selfless! And she never spares herself, you know. There was talk of her being given an MBE in the New Year’s Honours, and after that the old bat went around simpering and hunching one shoulder when anyone asked her about it, and saying, Oh my goodness me, ai don’t
know
how
these rumours get around, ai don’t reely. Ai don’t expect to be rewarded for just doing mai job.

When matron fell down a flight of stone steps, splitting her head open like an egg on the concrete floor below, everyone was shocked. There was an inquest, and the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death, and said it was sad that matron had not lived long enough to receive her MBE from the Queen.

After it was all over, the new matron told Mary and two of the other girls to scrub the hall floor thoroughly, because there was an unpleasant stain where matron’s brains had spilled out, and people did not want to be reminded of the accident.

But everybody agreed that it was a great tragedy.

When Great-aunt Rosa died, falling down the stairs at Teind House, everybody agreed that it was a great tragedy.

Selina was told she would have to be a very, very brave girl, and not cry for Great-aunt Rosa. People all died in the end, said Great-aunt Flora, and some of them died when you did not expect it. But you had to accept it, and remember that what it really meant was that they were with Jesus in heaven.

What it actually meant in this case was that there was a great deal of crying (by Aunt Flora), and tetchy grumbling (by Great-uncle Matthew), and a lot of scurrying about and taking photographs by policemen, who had to make sure that the fall had been accidental.

‘Not,’ said Great-uncle Matthew crossly, ‘that anyone really thinks otherwise, but there it is: one knows these
people have to do their jobs. Flora, I’ll take luncheon in my study quietly, I believe. I don’t mind a tray, just this once.’

Between sorting out Great-uncle Matthew’s trays (he had supper as well as lunch in his study in the end), and making cups of tea for the police officers, and telephoning people to tell them what had happened, Aunt Flora cried. She cried on and off for most of the day. Selina helped with the tea-making and Great-uncle Matthew’s trays, but she did not cry because secretly she was glad that Aunt Rosa was dead. When the flurry died down a bit she went up to her room, and sat on the window seat and stared out over the orchard. The window was a big one, but it was made up of lots of tiny panes of glass. The glass felt cold and a bit damp when she leaned her face against it, and the room felt cold as well because Great-uncle Matthew did not believe in heating in people’s bedrooms. Selina had hated the cold, stuffy bedroom at first, but she had discovered that you could keep pretty warm by putting your dressing gown on over your day clothes, and wrapping the bolster round your feet. That way you could curl up on the window seat and read or draw, and nobody knew where you were.

She could see the Round Tower just beyond the tops of the trees. If Aunt Rosa had not poked and pried inside the tower, she might still be alive. But she had been a quizzy old witch, that Rosa; she had followed Selina out to the tower one afternoon, and she had seen the beautiful shrine that Selina had made before Selina could hide it. She had not even heard Aunt Rosa come creeeping and
snooping up on her, and the first she had known was when she turned round to see the horrid old creature standing in the doorway, her arms folded, staring round the room, her thin lips clamped tightly together.

Aunt Rosa had been angry and shocked, and she would not listen when Selina had tried to explain that the shrine was secret and sacred, and also hugely important.

Wicked heathenism, Aunt Rosa had said, and her thin nose had quivered so that Selina had suddenly realised that Aunt Rosa looked exactly like the picture of the witch in the story about Hansel and Gretel. She had tried to explain that a memorial in Inchcape church was not enough for her parents, and she told Aunt Rosa about the
patet
, and the worrying possibility of her mother and father’s still being sinful and not, as a result, being allowed to go over the old and holy Bridge into paradise. Aunt Rosa had not understood, and (Selina did not realise this until much later) she had not wanted to understand. She had said it was pagan rubbish, and Selina ought to think shame on herself for talking like that, a great girl of eight and three months. There must be no more of it, was that understood?

‘Yes, Aunt Rosa.’

As for heaven, said Aunt Rosa briskly, most certainly Poor Elspeth and very likely That Man as well would have gone straight to heaven. Why on earth should they not? And when it came to honouring their memories–well, Selina would do better to say her prayers every night, and put her mind to her schoolwork and her household tasks. That was the way to honour the dead, and there was to
be no more of this nonsense about ghosts hiding in the bedroom and pleading for help, said Aunt Rosa briskly, her witchy mouth prim and tight so that you could see the rows of little wrinkles round it, like a drawstring purse. This pagan shrine or whatever Selina called it, was to be removed and everything tidied neatly away, was that quite clear?

‘Oh yes, Aunt Rosa,’ said Selina.

Dismantling the shrine was heart-breakingly easy. Taking to pieces the carefully arranged photographs and books and cuttings felt like breaking up the final bits of father and mother. Mother’s evening stole was already cobweb-thin with age, and the page with father’s newspaper article about Mr Nehru was dry and brittle. But it all had to be done; Aunt Rosa would certainly check that Selina had done it.

She put all the things in the bottom of her wardrobe, and tried to think that mother and father would have long since taken the three steps of Humata, Hukhta, and Hvarshta that would get them across the old and holy Bridge into paradise, and that it would not matter about the shrine’s being destroyed.

But she knew that it did matter. She thought that something had been broken: a promise, a link, something invisible but vital. And it was Aunt Rosa’s fault. Yes, that was something to think about very carefully.

It was necessary to stay awake for quite a long time that night, to see if anything happened. Selina heard Aunt Rosa come to bed, and then Aunt Flora, a bit anxious and
twittery because there was so much to remember when you retired for the night. There was her library book and her reading glasses, and her pills that had to be taken last thing, and the woolly scarf she liked to use as a bedjacket. She was a bit like the white rabbit in
Alice
, Aunt Flora, only she was plumper and wore spectacles which Selina did not think the white rabbit had done, and also she was woollier on account of the mufflers round her neck. She wore little soft slippers that went pitter-pat on the bare old floorboards.

Great-uncle Matthew came up to bed half an hour later. Selina heard him go round the house, making sure everywhere was locked up, tapping the barometer to see what kind of weather they would have tomorrow, winding up the clocks as he went. He always did it in exactly the same order every night.

And then the house was quiet, with the familiar, slightly creaky quiet that it sank into every night. Selina knew the house’s noises by this time: she knew that the floorboards always creaked ten minutes after Great-uncle Matthew had come up them, so that you might think that a burglar was creeping up the stairs. She knew the sound the roof timbers made after dark and how the range in the scullery clunked a bit as it cooled down. Normally these were all unremarkable, rather friendly noises, but tonight they did not feel friendly at all. Selina lay on her left side so that she could watch the door and the deep old wardrobe in the little alcove just inside it. If the ghosts came they would come out of the dark puddles of shadow made by the wardrobe’s bulk.

Great-uncle Matthew had not pulled the chain in the bathroom firmly enough tonight; Selina could hear the tank filling up in the growly clanking way it had if you did not give the chain a good sharp tug. When she first came to Teind House she had thought that there was something hiding inside the thick old lead pipes that connected into the cistern and were wrapped in bits of Great-aunt Flora’s wintergreen to stop them from freezing in cold weather. For weeks she had been terrified to go into the cold bathroom after dark in case the lid of the cistern was suddenly lifted from inside, and mad eyes, half hidden by wet matted hair, glared out.

The rusty coughing sound was only the water going reluctantly into the cistern, of course. Selina knew that now. Or–did she? What if, just for tonight, it was something else? What if it was really something huddled in the corner of her bedroom, slowly and thickly choking on its own blood, coughing its life away and unable to call for help because its throat had been torn away…?

She sat up in bed, cautiously because it was important not to make a noise until she saw what might be happening. You had to be quite cunning with ghosts, even when they were the ghosts of your own parents; you had to remember that they would probably be filled up with the panic and the desperation they had felt as they died, and that they would most likely look as they had looked at that moment—

Father, his chest burst open where the bullet had gone in. Mother, her whole body shredded and tattered. It
was not too bad seeing father, but mother, oh, poor mother…

Don’t come, whispered Selina into the unquiet darkness. Oh, please don’t come. Please be all right, please be already on the other side of that Bridge.

It was no use. The shadows were moving, they were like curdled ink or clotted blood; there was a horrid dull red tinge to them that might have been the light from the harvest moon beyond the bedroom window, but Selina knew was really the blood from her parents’ wounds, oozing out into the darkness…

Father appeared first. That was all right, that was not so bad at all, because his jacket was hiding the ragged-edged hole where the bullet had torn into his heart. His face was spattered with blood where his chest had burst open, but he could still smile in the way he had always smiled, and his hair was still crinkly and dark and nice. Selina loved him very much indeed.

But mother was with him. She was just behind him and she was holding out her hands exactly as she had held them out in Alwar that night, imploringly, pitifully. Mother had once had such pretty hands, but now there were only bloodied stumps. Blood poured down her face and dripped from her chin.

I’m sorry, whispered Selina to the terrible thing that had been mother. I’m so sorry. But it wasn’t my fault, it truly wasn’t.

Mother’s hands were still groping blindly in front of her. Selina could see the wedding ring glinting in the mess of squelched-up bones and raw flesh. It was
suddenly unbearable and pitiable that mother should still have this symbol of her marriage to father when her flesh was so torn.

Selina wanted to look away, but it was impossible. She clutched a fold of the sheet tightly and after a moment she said, very softly, but very earnestly, ‘I’ll find a way to make the shrine for you again–I
swear
I will!–and then you can go back to crossing the Bridge and the three steps you have to take, and then you’ll get to where you should be. And I’ll pray much harder for you, I’ll do it every day–I’ll be so good, I promise I’ll be so good—’

Had they nodded then, just very slightly? Had father made to touch mother’s shoulder, as if to pull her back? Selina waited, not daring to breathe, her hands trembling.

And then it was over. There was only the moonlight lying in bars across the floor, and the feel of the crumpled sheet in her hands, and the stickiness of fright-sweat prickling her scalp.

The children had not tried to fight as the sun went down behind the terrible tower on the edge of Alwar. They had been much too frightened to even think about fighting by that time. Christy had whispered to Selina and Douglas that they must watch their chance and make a run for it if they could, and Douglas said something about grabbing the reins of the pony and driving back down the bare dusty road, leaving the men behind. ‘But what about the guns?’ said Selina. ‘What if they shoot us?’

‘They won’t, not when it comes to it,’ said Christy
valiantly. ‘They wouldn’t shoot children. And my father will be here by then, anyhow.’

‘And mine,’ said another of the children. But they all knew that nobody really believed this any longer.

In the event, there was no opportunity of taking over the cart, because once it stopped the men pointed the guns at the children and ordered them out. ‘Out of cart now,’ they said. ‘You get out of cart, and line up against tower.’

‘Why are we here?’ demanded Douglas. ‘This is a funeral place. This is where people bring their dead. I thought you had respect and honour for dead people in this country.’

The man who had ordered them out of the cart, who seemed to be the only one who could speak English, said, ‘This place where no one come. No one think to look here. That why we use it.’ He grinned suddenly, displaying his rotting teeth. ‘You die in Tower of Silence. Place of dead,’ he said. ‘That how it should be. A good message to send to your British government who refuse to let our people go.’

Christy said, ‘But it isn’t our fault that your friends are in prison,’ and Selina wanted to say, ‘And people who do wrong deserve to be in prison,’ but she did not quite dare.

The man gestured to the tower again, this time using the gun to indicate what he wanted. ‘All line up before wall. Do it now, or we not wait for sunset to shoot.’

As they shuffled into line there was a moment when Selina thought Christy was going to defy their captors.
Her lower lip jutted out mutinously, and her eyes shone angrily in the glow of the dying sun. Her fists were clenched as if she might be going to hit the man, and Selina’s heart gave a huge bump of panic and excitement, because one half of her was terrified that Christy would do something that would get them all shot there and then, but the other half–and it was a bit more than half, really–wanted somebody to get them out of this. And Christy or Douglas were the only two who were brave enough.

Seen like this, the tower was much, much worse than it had looked from the road. It was built from harsh stone that would graze your hands if you touched it, and its sides sloped steeply, so that it was narrower at the top than it was at the base. Most of the time it would be black, but with the setting sun directly behind it the dark walls were streaked with crimson. Selina stared at it and remembered all over again about the ogre’s tower. You could very nearly imagine that the walls were that colour because all the squelched-up bodies inside had reached the top and all the blood was slopping over the rim and oozing down the outside.

When she looked right up at the very top, she saw a dark outline against the fiery sky. Something round-shouldered and dark-cloaked seemed to bend its head to look down at her, and she shuddered and felt an icy fear clutch the pit of her stomach because she knew what it was. It was not the ogre who caught men to grind their bones for bread, but it was something very near to it. After a moment, a second shape came to sit beside the first, and then a third.