Rock Me Gently (22 page)

‘And things?’ said Ruth. ‘Don’t you see? The dirty devil’s trying to teach you the blummin’ goose-step.’ She placed two fingers under her nose and raised her arm in mock salute. ‘Heil Mary, full of grease!’

‘Stop it, Ruth, it’s not a joke,’ I said.

Frances was shaking, her eyes goggling, her jaw trembling. I felt nervous for her, of her. I was afraid she might break down in some alarming way. My voice was deliberately calm.

‘You must put a stop to it, Frances.’

‘I can’t. I don’t know how to. What can I say to her? Please don’t tell anyone,’ said Frances. ‘She mustn’t find out that I’ve told you. I feel so mixed up.’

‘But why,’ Ruth asked, ‘did you ever get caught up with her in this way?’

Frances bent her head and muttered very low. ‘I’ve thought about this a lot. I honestly believe she was just trying to be kind and I used to think I liked it, especially when she’d give me sweets and things. Now she frightens me and I don’t know how to stop it.’

Ruth’s face creased itself into a sneer and she sniggered out loud. Her laughter seemed to confuse Frances, who hesitated as if trying to shake off the weariness that clung round her brain and clogged her thoughts.

‘OK, go on,’ said Ruth.

‘Well, I don’t want to make excuses, but I thought if I carried on with her, it would make life easier for everyone else. I was just a child when it first started,’ she added, as though she was an old woman chatting about a far-distant past. ‘She was a sort of mother to me. And, you know ... I thought she felt sorry for me ...’ She stopped and shook her head.

Ruth screwed up her mouth as though at a sour taste. ‘God, you poor sod.’ Her voice oozed contempt for Sister Mary.

Frances drew herself up, moving away from us. ‘I don’t expect anyone to understand, because even I feel muddled up,’ she said. She had been speaking with a soft whine of misery quite unlike her usual voice. Now she lost control of herself and hissed, ‘You have no idea how much I hate the way she touches me! I really don’t want to feel her hands on me ever again. I want to be left alone and not worry whether she’s coming to get me. I
hate
it. I feel so dirty. But it’s probably all my fault, I know that.’ With a deep sigh she rose from the table and walked out the refectory, the knife with which she had been eating still in her hand. We all watched her in astonishment. She’d forgotten to wait until grace had been said.

‘That gives me an idea,’ said Ruth. ‘I think I know how to put a stop to all this.’

‘Whatever you think of, it won’t work unless we’re all in it together,’ I said. ‘The only one who can make it happen is you, Ruth.’

Ruth said nothing for a long time. Then her lips curled up in what I could only assume was a smile.

‘Leave it to me,’ she said.

Ruth was in the centre of the huddle in the boot-room, staring at the faces around her.

‘It’ll be dead easy,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m just going to put the frighteners on her a bit. It’s the only way.’ She became very still, her mouth in a hard, thin line.

The door of the boot-room opened violently as Sister Mary, cane in hand, thrust herself in. The bold metallic eyes stared about and the harsh voice said, ‘Up to the dormitory, all of you.’

I tried to imagine what demons in her own life had driven her to the point that the only pleasure she sought was beating us children. The sight of both Sister Mary and Sister Columba made my heart shrink with fear. The numbness I felt helped still the throb of physical pain that I experienced whenever they beat me. I more than hated them - I had passed that stage months ago. They disgusted me, their very presence epitomising the ugliness and horror I felt each day at Nazareth House.

‘No,’ Ruth said. ‘We’re not going to the dormitory yet.’

The nun stopped and they looked straight at each other; Ruth seemed to be gritting her teeth so tightly that her strained jaw jutted through her skin. Sister Mary slowly moved towards her. Janet quickly closed the door and held on to the doorknob.

‘Don’t come any nearer,’ said Ruth, retreating and looking with horror in her eyes at the nun’s face. ‘You monster!’

The circle of girls that had formed around the boot-room looked stupefied as they waited breathlessly to see what Ruth would do next. A few carried on polishing shoes, afraid to look up. Into the goggle-eyed awful silence broke only the gasping of Ruth’s breath through her open mouth as she turned her back on Sister Mary and took something from one of the pigeonholes. When she turned round again, she had a bread knife in her hand. Someone shouted, ‘Look out! She’s got a knife!’

The world tilted and stuttered into slow motion. I was paralysed. Sister Mary caught her breath and instinctively recoiled against the wall, her back pressed into it in the hope that it might suck her in, away from the knife, its bright point hovering and now almost piercing the black stuff of her habit. There was an enthralled hush as the circle of girls inched in closer and the ones polishing shoes stopped, sensing that what they wanted to see was about to take place. No one breathed, our attention focused on the first rebellion within the convent.

‘You little slut, Norton,’ Sister Mary said, her face crimson, more with surprise than fright. She stood rigid, as if pinned to the wall. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

‘It’s time for justice,’ Ruth said, her face tightening into a sneer. ‘It’s our turn to watch
you
squirm for a change.’

‘Where did you steal that knife from? You’ve no business with a knife,’ said Sister Mary, speaking more rapidly. ‘Do you seriously think you can get away with this? I shall have you all arrested.’

‘Then we’ve got nothing to lose,’ said Ruth. ‘We already live in a prison.’

Frances grabbed Sister Mary’s cane and held it in both hands. Her lips were wet and trembling and tears spilled from her eyes.

I looked at Ruth and saw something in her face that had never been there before. It was swollen with hatred, twisted, dripping venom. Ruth scarcely ever altered expressions: instead she changed faces like donning a mask. And the face appeared and stayed in position without changing while she spoke. Then it would fall, detaching itself from her.

‘You can’t kill her, Ruth,’ I said.

‘Watch me,’ Ruth said, looking at me without appearing to see me, as if I was a stranger who shouldn’t have been in the room. ‘Just watch me. Someone’s got to put a stop to her.’

‘Be careful, Ruth,’ Frances said.

‘Listen to your friend, Norton. She’s talking sense,’ said Sister Mary. She was almost incoherent with anger and fear. Her crimson jowls shuddered and her thin mouth twitched in nervous curls of disgust. How could Frances let that mouth kiss her?

Frances took a deep breath and shoved the point of the cane into the centre of her tormentor’s stomach. We watched the nun flinch from the blow, her lungs wheezing for air.

‘Shut up!’ Frances said, her face emptied of its sweet-eyed appeal, a resting place for all the ordeals she had endured.

In so many ways, she was no longer the Frances I had known when I first arrived at the convent. Sister Mary had done more than bully her and beat her flesh into rags; she had taken her beyond mere humiliation. She had broken her down and pulled her apart. She had ripped into the gentlest heart I had known and plundered it of feeling.

‘Stop it, Ruth,’ Frances said. ‘She’s not worth it.’

Ruth lowered the knife.

‘I’m relieved that one of you is seeing sense at last,’ Sister Mary said, getting her wind back. ‘I shall, of course, have to report this appalling incident to the Mother Superior and to the police.’

‘You won’t be tipping off any coppers,’ said Ruth.

‘Of course I will, you have assaulted and threatened me with a weapon. You’re evil, Norton, and I’ll make sure you’ll suffer for this.’

‘You’re not only not going to report me,’ said Ruth, raising the knife again, ‘you’re never going to touch any of us again. You’re cruel, you’re like Hitler and you deserve to be sliced for what you’ve done to us, especially Frances. If you report any of us, then we’ll get you for all the low, filthy tricks you’ve been using on her.’

For a moment, Sister Mary searched for words to match her anger, her head thrust forward, her stammering mouth covered with spittle. ‘What kind of lies have you been telling them, you little brat?’ She glared at Frances. ‘I’ll never forgive you for this. Never, never, never.’

‘Don’t put the blame on Frances! This isn’t just about her,’ said Ruth. ‘This is about all of us. We’ve all had enough of your cruelty. You leave us all alone, do you hear me? Or you’re for the chop. I mean it, I’ll kill you.’

The threat was so unexpected, so shocking, and so horribly voiced that it froze us all completely. The nun and Ruth gazed into each other’s eyes.

‘Oh, you devil!’ said Sister Mary, in a misery of helplessness. ‘I hear you, but I’m never going to forget you did this.’ Shaking a pointing finger at all of us, her face twisted with spitting fury, she added, ‘Do you understand? I’m never going to forget this.’

‘That goes for us too,’ said Ruth. ‘Here’s a bargain for you.’

We all held our breath, our eyes fixed intensely upon Ruth.

‘Our silence against yours. Is it a deal?’

A soft murmur of approval swept over the boot-room. Sister Mary gave Ruth a sharp sideways look and with a nod of her head, she waved her hands dismissively.

‘That makes us quits then. It’s the devil’s deal, isn’t it?’ Ruth said, her voice rising. ‘Go away! Clear out of here!’ and she drew the knife back in her hand as if she would have thrown it at the nun.

I had a last vision of Sister Mary sidling along the wall, crablike and cowering, her breath coming in long shrieking gasps as she got herself out the door.

‘What’s the devil’s deal mean?’ I asked Ruth, awe making me feel weak.

She enlightened me. ‘First one to forget gets burnt. Good and proper.’

Chapter
13

I lay in an ambient trance on the grass outside a disco in the local village. I opened my eyes and saw through the chequer-work of leaves from overhead trees the big moon looking down on me, clear cut and intensely bright.

I had begun to wear clothes that allowed me to blend in with the kibbutzniks: shorts, T-shirts, kaftans and beads. I could relax and take pleasure in the fact that I was at last starting to shake off that awful closed-in sense of myself. I was like a teenager, falling in love with everything and everyone.

And now even the colour of the night sky knocked me sideways. Flopped out on either side of me were Rick and Mark, all of us tipsy and giggling.

‘Let’s light up.’

After weeks of saying no, I took the joint from Rick and propped it in my mouth.

‘Watch it!’ Loose tobacco threads caught fire. A flame and acrid smoke lit the air.

‘Go on, inhale and hold it in,’ ordered Mark. My chest caught fire as I let the smoke from the burning herb cruise through my lungs. A mellow buzzing filled my ears: Aleph, Beth, Ghimel, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Bar Mitzvah, Meshuuuuggah.

People massed around the entrance to the village disco, from which an amplified voice boomed, followed by heavy thrumming music that earthquaked from the speakers. Everyone hollered and whooped their approval. Within minutes, I ventured inside and stood, fascinated as dancers with bodies bumping and grinding all over the place showed off their new moves and party pieces. The music dilated and swelled like a waterspout. It filled the room with its metallic transparency, crushing time against the walls. I was carried away by the noise. Orbs of silver revolved in the mirrors flashing rainbows across the room; rings of smoke encircled them and spun around, veiling and unveiling the hard grin of the light. I drank the wine the volunteers urged on me - joy juice. It held all the answers, unlocking something inside me. It was fun to test myself against new things, I began to understand: that’s what freedom is. The right to experiment, to see what fits, what doesn’t. It was how one learnt who one was and who one wasn’t. I danced with the others on the crowded dance floor. A party started inside my head as I slipped into an ecstasy of sweat, saliva and pelvises, slinking and shaking to head-thumping sounds. In shadowy corners, couples danced with hands slinking up and down backs, skulking around hips, vanishing inside clothes.

Amid the music and laughter, all eyes turned my way when the Rolling Stones’ ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ was played. British music. ‘Go, Jude! Let it all hang out!’ yelled someone. I laughed, pulsating to the music. My eyes were out on stalks like a stoned snail. What the hell had been in that spliff I’d smoked?
It’s a gas,
gas, gas!
I’d never heard music played like that before; I suddenly understood the secret of its magic. The room seemed to expand and contract, like some crazy accordion, my soul steeped in cosmic schmaltz.

I could feel Rick’s eyes on me all evening. I led him a merry chase. I danced too often with other fellows, elated by my new power, but he was the one who later walked me across the tinder-dry grass back to the kibbutz. It felt so natural to lean into him and have him slip his arm around my waist. With the music fading behind us, it was as if we were the last pair of souls on earth, with just the buzzing crickets for company.

This feeling became swamped under a new, exciting throb of desire. It was a struggle to walk in a straight line, dizzied not just by drink but by thumping suspense - I could feel his breath on my cheek. I was on cloud nine. But something held me back.

‘What do you think?’ Rick asked, laying his hand over mine as we neared the kibbutz.

‘Noisy,’ I said. My heart was beating so fast and it made my voice sound unsteady. I took a deep breath, not daring to look at him.

‘I don’t mean the disco,’ he murmured. He put on a low serious voice that made me want to giggle, even as it filled me with dread. He held my gaze a little longer than I could stand. Desire suddenly drained out of me.

‘I’d best be getting some shut-eye,’ I told him in a whisper as we reached my room, ‘Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow, you know.’

He frowned. I had been leaning against him all the way back, pressed snugly against his arm. ‘Well- don’t you want to sit up for a while? I don’t bite, you know.’

I shook my head. ‘No, seriously, Rick. I’m really tired. Look, we’ll have a rave next time, OK?’

‘You’re strange,’ he said, ‘but in a nice way.’ He touched my cheek lightly.

I was in the habit of making up rules and pretending they had been imposed upon me; now I convinced myself that I didn’t like the idea of the night going on and on. Yet my heart still turned over in disappointment as I made my decision to continue playing the safe game, the orphan game that made me a loner.

He took my hand and gently kissed it. ‘I’m always here for you,’ he whispered.

As I watched him walk away it was like moving from a black and white movie into colour. It was unreal. It was just a fantasy. That was all. It will pass, I told myself, it will dissolve and go away eventually, and all you have to do in the meantime is keep a firm grip on yourself and not behave like too much of a ridiculous fool. After all, what did he see in me? It had all crept up on me and knocked me out before I was aware of what was happening. My feelings were like a force of nature that couldn’t be checked, an avalanche, a mudslide, breaching my carefully built defences.

Later, I awoke, queasily despondent from a burning, sheet-grinding dream. Wild with wine, I staggered to the bathroom, Rick’s face flickering inside my eyelids. I swung back into sleep and dreamed of sharks and guppies in the sea.

Summertime was the best time. Not knowing what to do with us
during the long holiday, the nuns regularly took us to the beach,
and let us splash and play in the waves. They sat on the beach,
shapeless black-and-white forms.

The yellow cliffs had warning notices with pictures of falling
rocks. I didn’t care. They held an odd fascination for me, and I
had wanted to explore them from the first time I saw them.
When I saw my chance I slipped away from the others, not
looking back at the group of children and nuns on the beach.
None of them paid any attention to me. The girls were too busy
splashing and having fun, and the nuns always talked among
themselves, not watching us.

I looked up, squinting into the sun, which was fierce, and saw
how, at the top of the cliffs, seagulls soared far above with
sunlight on their wings. I started to climb, clinging to the
bleached grass, stepping from ledge to ledge. A gull watched
me. I {lapped my hand at it, and it took off, sweeping down
towards the beach.

I braced myself against the rocks and looked around. The
sense of the sheer drop below suddenly pierced my body. I began
to hear the distant beating of the sea. Stick-like figures of
children scampered along the beach beside the dark lumps that
were the nuns. The seagulls mewed and yelped.
It
was safe
enough to stand there as long as I kept still. But I’d amazed
myself, climbing as high as this. Climbing so far seemed to open
a fresh door in my mind.
I felt
I was able to see past the jumble of
daily tensions and realise that, if I
could do this, I
could do
anything.

Cautiously
I looked up at the top of the cliff, wondering if I
could climb all the way. But craning up at the blue-white sky
made me feel dizzy.
I clutched the rocks on either side of me,
but they crumbled in my hands, and I
wavered, more frightened
than if I
had not tried to hang on at all. I
quickly pressed
my back against the cliff face, feeling sick and unsteady.
I closed my eyes as the wind tore at my hair.

‘Hey you!’

A man was approaching.
I stood still until he was near to me.
The noise of the sea was so loud that it was difficult to hear what
he was saying.

‘You mustn’t climb those cliffs. Can’t you see the notice?’

Almost in tears now, and determined not to understand him, I
said, ‘Why not?’

‘You mustn’t climb up there,’ said the man, as if he had not
heard me. ‘You’ll fall.’

‘
I won’t,’
I said, but I
knew I
was defeated.

‘Someone fell from there only last week,’ said the man.

‘All right,’
I said shortly.
I
turned my shoulder to send him
away and he moved off.

Frances had wandered away from the group, and was running
towards the cliff, beckoning to me.

Relieved,
I started to climb down, step by step, holding on to
clumps of grass. When
I reached the beach, Frances grabbed my
arm.

The nuns sent me to fetch you. They said it’s dangerous to
talk to strange men.’

I sat on the baking front steps of the children’s house waiting for my co-worker to arrive. Today it was an Israeli girl called Avatel. She was twenty years old and had recently completed a two-year army stint. We were planning to take our five charges swimming in the kibbutz pool.

I breathed in the citrus-tinged air. Everything looked bright and fresh today. I liked my new job taking care of the kibbutz children. I sat enjoying the sunshine, letting happiness touch me.

Because I had realised something after my trip to Jerusalem no, before the trip, as if I knew it all along - there are no secret passages to strength, no magic words. I was strong, I was able, because I
was.
The freak in the sideshow no longer fitted.

I smiled ruefully at myself. So, what was the catch? Some danger of which I was not yet aware? What would I have to pay for this, for thinking well of myself? Whatever the price, it was worth it. Even for ten minutes, it was worth it.

I glanced at my watch. Avatel had forgotten. I hoped for a moment that she had, then prayed that she hadn’t. I would have to take the children swimming on my own. Abruptly I jumped up, walked up and down.

A thought nagged at me, threatening to surface. I shrugged it off.

When Avatel finally arrived, grinning apologies, we changed the children into their bathing costumes and set off for the pool. When we got there, Avatel’s boyfriend Ben arrived, which gave me the opportunity to return to the children’s house to get some soft drinks from the fridge. I was wearing shorts, and as I set off, the backs of my legs were slick with sweat.

It was a perfect day. My head sang with an intricate, melodic line - Beethoven? Mozart? I couldn’t remember, but I loved those fresh unfamiliar instruments - the recorder, the harpsichord - those simple statements of truth. And tonight I would be going to the barbecue disco with Rick. Thinking about it made my skin ripple pleasantly. A feeling you get going up in a fast lift. I shouldn’t plan ahead like this, I thought, I shouldn’t expect good things to last long. The lift could hurtle down again and you could thump to the ground. I wandered to the house by a roundabout route, keeping to the shade of the trees. Dazed with the heat, with the sun on the blistered roofs, the paths, the burned grass, I walked slowly.

Squinting, I could just make out a corona in the whitest part of the sky. It reminded me of something, but I tried to deflect the memory. Suddenly fear surged through me. I stopped walking and stood glued to the spot. The children in the pool! Avatel and Ben weren’t watching them properly; they were too wrapped up in each other! Images scintillated, shone, disappeared. I had no idea where my panicked certainty came from, but the world seemed gently to crack about me, its appearance unchanged, yet on the brink of falling to pieces. Disaster is not quickly understood. I spun around and ran to the wire-mesh fence surrounding the pool. I saw four of the children standing waist deep in the water. There was a slight
lull
in their chatter as they looked warily at something at the end of the pool which I could not see. I thought from the way they were huddled together and the looks on their faces that they must have been watching Avatel and her boyfriend kissing. Slight relief slumped through me - and then I realised that I couldn’t see the fifth child, a girl called Danah. I gripped the wire fence.

‘Avatel!’ I had to call twice before she knew where my voice was coming from. ‘Avatel! Where’s Danah?’

She jumped up from beneath the tree where she and Ben had been sitting. She looked around the pool and then slowly spread her arms wide and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Don’t know!’

Her unconcerned gesture and lack of urgency were probably my invention. The crippling fear I felt when I noticed a child was missing from the group - even while I was telling myself she must be in the shallower water - must have made Avatel’s movements seem unbearably slow and inappropriate to me; the tone in which she said ‘don’t know’ was heard by me as monstrously casual.

Then she stiffened, pointing to the deep end of the pool. ‘What’s that?’

There, just within my view, a small pink bundle, floating and agitating below the surface of the water. Why did she
ask
what that was? Why didn’t she just dive into the water and swim to it? I couldn’t swim. I ran along the edge of the pool, my sandals slapping against the concrete.

Avatel’s boyfriend got there ahead of me. The water surged as he jumped in and pulled Danah out. He just had to reach and grab her because she was floating somehow, with her head underwater, moving towards the edge of the pool. He hauled the dripping child from the water.

The only person aloof from the situation was Avatel, who still hadn’t moved from the shallow end, where she stood transfixed, clutching a Coca-Cola. Danah had not swallowed any water. She wasn’t even frightened. Her hair was plastered to her head and her eyes were wide open, golden with amazement. She rubbed the water out of her eyes and said, ‘I swimmed to the deep end.’