The Full Legacy Read online

  It was a relief to talk to someone who knew the problem.

  About fifteen years ago, when we were all at college together, someone brought a Ouija board to a Gay Soc Christmas party. My first instinct, after everything that had happened with my father, was to make my excuses and leave. But that wasn’t Corinne’s style, and I wanted her to think I was cool, so I didn’t. Come to think of it, that was pretty much the way of things with me and Corinne. She was an adrenaline junkie and I constantly overrode my better judgment to be with her.

  Anyway, it was a mistake. And it was Luke and his partner Jon who patched me up afterwards. They got me back on my feet without my mother ever finding out, which was a miracle, considering the official psychiatric diagnosis of ‘Delusional Psychosis’.

  I didn’t see Corinne for dust during that time. She never spoke about it afterwards either, but I think I freaked her out. She didn’t want to be lumbered with a girlfriend with ‘issues’, and I didn’t want to see her anyway. I didn’t want the shame of her seeing me in that state.

  Luke’s eyes were full of concern as he waited for me to say something. He never pushed me or got impatient with me when the words wouldn’t come. Maybe it was his counselling training, or maybe, more likely really, it was just the way he was.

  Finally, the words formed themselves into a coherent sentence in my head.

  I took a gulp of tea. It had already begun to cool while Luke waited. I noticed he had almost finished his.

  He gave an almost imperceptible nod that said ‘That’s it. I can see. Just go for it.’

  I nodded back quickly in reply and took a rush at the words.

  ‘I think it’s starting again,’ I said. And then I began to cry.

  All my life I’ve been trying to escape my father’s legacy. In his prime, he was a world renowned medium, author of countless books on the afterlife, leader of his own independent spiritualist church. I imagine that people must have questioned his judgment when he got my mum pregnant. Especially when she was only seventeen and he was in his thirties. But at least he ‘made an honest woman of her’, as they used to say back then, and he was handsome and charismatic and powerful and he had a cold, frightening way of looking at people if they crossed him, so nobody ever really liked to question him much about anything he did.

  I can still remember the day the police came to arrest him. My mother screaming at them not to hurt him as he tried to run and they forced him to the ground and into handcuffs. She believed utterly in his innocence. Her unquestioning love for him shone out for all to see. She feared him too, in that Old Testament kind of way that people feared God. I think that’s why she was never charged as an accessory. Anyone could see that she was just another of his victims.

  At the trial she sat in the public gallery with some others of his more gullible women. The local press said that she smiled and called out to him as he was led into the dock, but he never once looked at her. I imagine he couldn’t bear the shame of being brought so low. Then she listened to two days of evidence about all the money he’d conned out of grieving widows and parents desperate to contact their lost children. Ostensibly it was to build a new meeting place for his ‘Church’. In fact, it had all been poured down the black hole of his gambling addiction. Fifty thousand pounds or more, a fortune back then, squandered on the roulette tables where his powers were meaningless.

  My mother’s simple faith in him was shattered. She was appalled at what she heard.

  She didn’t go back to see him sentenced.

  She divorced him while he was in prison and fought to stop him having access to me when he came out.

  Then on the 7th of May 1968, the day we received the news that my father had hung himself in a squalid bedsit in Tower Hamlets, my mother shut herself in her bedroom and the sound of her sobbing almost broke my heart.

  ‘Okay,’ said Luke gently. ‘Let’s start from the beginning with this.’

  So I told him - starting with the party on Saturday night.

  Later, when he had listened and calmed me down somewhat by trying to convince me that I wasn’t going mad, he phoned Jon and told him he was bringing me home for dinner. And Jon, bless his heart, was delighted to see me when I arrived.

  The Poet

  It was late as we walked through the echoing East London streets to the Tube.

  I was clutching a slim paperback called ‘Extreme Empathy’ which Luke insisted would help me understand what I was experiencing from a psychological perspective. He was on a one-man mission to convince me that I was well within the range of ‘normal’ when it came to the more frightening edges of my experience.

  Jon, I sensed, wasn’t quite so convinced.

  ‘I feel really bad about this,’ he was saying as we passed the ‘Taste of Paradise’ kebab shop. The extractor fan was blowing the smell of onion and grease like bad breath into the sweet night-time air. ‘I should be driving you home. If I’d known you were coming I never would have started on the G and T’s the minute I got in from work.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ I rubbed his arm affectionately. Teaching Religious Education in an East London Comprehensive, I reckoned he must need all the help he could get with winding down on a Friday night. And he really was fussing about nothing. I regularly travelled on public transport at night and considering everything else I had going on in my head, getting home at eleven o’clock in Greater London was the least of my worries. ‘I’ve been doing this since I was twelve.’.... Much younger actually, but I didn’t say so out of loyalty to my mother.... ‘I know how to handle myself.’

  Luke nodded, he was a bus and tube guy himself, and he was much less inclined to see dangers round every corner of the London Transport network.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Don’t fuss.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like the idea.’ Jon grumbled. ‘I wish you’d let us call you a taxi.... Will you at least phone me when you get home?’

  Luke rolled his eyes. I figured he’d been hoping he might be on a promise when they got back.

  I stepped in to rescue the remnants of his evening. I owed him that much, at least.

  ‘Nah... you two get to bed..... You’ve been great and I’m just so grateful to you both for helping restore my sanity again, but I’ll be fine now. There are always loads of people around at this time of night. I’ll give you a ring next week sometime, I promise.’

  We were at the Tube station. I hugged them both tightly, wishing for a foolish frightened moment that I could stay there, safe in the warmth of their protection.

  At the end of the day though, we’re all on our own. I’ve never really had any illusions about that one.

  And, of course, Sod’s Law dictated that the Underground was unusually quiet that evening and it did feel a bit creepy. My footsteps echoed off the tiled walls as I passed the old familiar posters for ‘Les Miserables’, ‘Cats’ and ‘The London Dungeon’.

  When I saw the beggar hunched against the far wall, I felt uneasy at the thought of passing him, all by myself.

  From a distance, I noticed that he was muttering to himself. The words were indecipherable at first, the low, slurry sing-song of a drunk locked away in his own private world. They seemed to have some inner logic, like a prayer, or a chant, or... as I drew nearer, I wondered, maybe a poem. It put me in mind of an almost-girlfriend I’d had about three years after Corinne died. She took me to poetry readings and ditched me with the ‘no chemistry’ excuse when she cooked a candlelight dinner and I fell asleep straight after dessert. It was a rich dark chocolate mousse whose endorphin count had clearly tipped my ambivalence about venturing into a new relationship over the edge. I remember the pudding with affection. But a distrust of poetry has remained with me to this day.

  And it was definitely a poem. The cadence of the words grew clearer as I drew parallel with the man and found myself straining to hear... disjointed scraps about a cathedral and something that could have been French but sounded like CCNY, and a yellow rose.... He was sitting
cross legged on his coat on the floor, looking like some battle scarred Norse warrior who had returned home to die. His filthy blonde hair hung in rats’ tails over the dandruff speckled shoulders of an ancient black T-shirt, and his one-eyed collie dog lay by his side looking at him with an air of quiet devotion. One day, when he was still sober enough, the man had written ‘HOMELESS & HUNGRY’ in green marker pen on a square of cardboard placed carefully in the ruffles of his coat, next to an empty polystyrene coffee cup that still had faint brown dregs of coffee in it.

  I felt suddenly, overwhelmingly sorry for him.

  I put my hand in my pocket for change and he looked up, appeared to jump within himself and smiled suddenly, his whole face transfigured with such a look of pure joy, I could see the handsome young man he must have been before the booze turned his skin to leather and rotted his teeth into ancient standing stones.

  ‘Soon now, my darling,’ he said in a voice of such bliss it sent shivers down my spine.

  He appeared to be speaking to someone behind me.

  I spun round, but there was no-one there.

  And when I turned back to him, he was chanting softly to himself again, his eyes unfocused, as the dog rested its head on its front paws and drifted safe beside him into sleep.

  The Ladies’ Final

  Tradition is tradition, so despite my growing doubts about my mental health, and even though Martina had been knocked out of the Wimbledon semi-finals, on Saturday afternoon I settled down with Kay in front of the TV – a bottle of champagne on ice – strawberries chilling in the fridge – and a buzz of excitement mounting on the overheated air that snuffled fitfully through the open windows of our North London semi.

  I’d slept badly again and woken early fretting about the incident in the Underground. The feeling of impending disaster nagged at the corners of my mind. I felt sluggish and worried that I’d fall asleep, as I’d been known to in the past, the moment the hypnotic to and fro motion of the tennis started up on screen.

  As it happens, I didn’t get the chance.

  Graf and Novotna were just squaring up to each other when the telephone rang.

  ‘Leave it!’ grunted Kay.

  ‘No... I’d better see who it is!’

  It was Turner, and judging from the amount of background noise, she was phoning from the car.

  ‘I’d like to see you this afternoon. I could come round and collect you if you’re free.’

  I hesitated, but honour won out.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s Wimbledon. I always watch the Ladies’ Final with Kay. How about tonight?’

  ‘Can’t do tonight. What if I come and watch the tennis with you both?’

  ‘Brilliant! You don’t mind?’

  ‘No.’

  It was a mistake, of course. Kay resented our quality time together being hijacked and Turner had absolutely no intention of watching the tennis.

  She was vibrant - more so, even, than I’d remembered. She wore a white dress that just about covered her backside and set off her tan to startling effect. It had taken her about twenty minutes to get to us, and I’d completely lost it with the tennis.

  ‘Who’s winning?’ she whispered.

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest.’

  ‘Ssh!’ hissed Kay, handing her a strawberry. ‘Graf’s down. Now, pay attention, will you?’

  How could I, with my body pounding like that?

  Turner settled into one of our Ikea chairs and crossed one leg over the other, rocking backwards on the frame. She knew the effect she was having. Her eyes settled on me, amused, as I tried to concentrate on the TV. Between sets, Kay poured champagne for us as the players towelled their heads.

  The tension mounted, and not only on court.

  ‘Who’s winning now?’ asked Turner, right in the middle of a particularly spectacular volley.

  Kay’s patience snapped.

  ‘Oh for goodness sake Gill!’ she flashed. ‘Haven’t you got any etchings you could show her?’

  Not etchings, but other things maybe...

  I felt shy as she undressed me.

  Over the past year I’d become very conscious of growing older. Aware that the woman who looked back at me from my mirror was more mature than I’d ever imagined I would be.

  The changes had crept up on me gradually. More grey in my hair. A change in the texture of my skin, around my eyes first, then on my neck and now, more recently, at my waist; a slight loss of resiliency, so subtle I could almost have missed it, except that overall I looked different. There was a look of midsummer about me now. The kind of look, ironically, that would have attracted me in my youth, imagining something mellower, wiser, more experienced than I’d ever felt myself. It was strange to realise that even that had been an illusion.

  Turner pulled off her own dress and unhooked her bra, shrugging herself out of it, and drawing me down onto the bed.

  ‘You’re perfect,’ she whispered, almost as if she could read my mind.

  ‘If only... I keep wishing I’d joined in with Kay’s fitness videos instead of just ogling the women.’

  I could hear how nervous I was. My breathing was all wrong and I was babbling to cover my awkwardness.

  ‘I like you as you are.... Do you... feel okay with this?’

  I guess she’d been wondering about my not wanting her to make love to me in the woods. I wondered what conclusions she’d drawn about all that. Maybe she saw me as a challenge.... a virgin stone dyke for her to love into life.

  Her breasts brushed lightly against mine as she leaned over to kiss me.

  My nipples felt so tight as they touched her, it was almost painful.

  I ran my hands over her breasts, then round and down her back to the tiny band of the white cotton pants she’d kept on - stopping there for now, wondering why that felt so much more exciting than if she had taken them off with the rest of her clothes.

  Her tongue ran down the exact mid-line of my body; down my throat, between my breasts, over my tummy button, pushing and swirling there for a moment, sending electric pulses through to a deeper place, then down again, parting my legs to fit herself between them as I raised my knees and twisted my fingers into her hair, wanting to pull her away, wishing she had chosen something less intimate, less exposing of me the first time, but much too excited to ask her to stop.

  ‘Is this okay?’ she asked again, looking up at me as she slid her hands under me.

  I wondered if she would be rough, like she’d wanted me to be in the woods. But she wasn’t. She was gentle, as if she knew I hadn’t made love for years.

  Slowly, I felt myself relaxing in her hands and only then realised how much I had braced myself. I had a sudden flash of how hard Corinne had been with me the very last time. It was something I’d always tried not to think about. I bit my lip to push the memory away and tried to stay with the sublime sense of this new woman who actually wanted to make love to me. I focused on her lips, muzzling against me and her tongue making long, slow, languid excursions into my most private places. It was beautiful, feeling myself swell and grow in response to her, sensing that she loved the taste, the smell, the feel of me.

  When I came, it was in waves that lapped quite gently, like a memory of the sea splashing against a Cornish harbour on a late summer’s afternoon.

  I gasped in wonder at the gentle beauty of it. I wondered briefly if I’d actually come home at last.

  ‘I feel like I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time,’ she said contentedly, lying with her cheek against my stomach.

  I stroked her hair.

  ‘It was beautiful...’ I hesitated. Something about her made me feel that I should ask. ‘Do you want me to make love to you?’

  ‘In a minute. I just want to feel you close for a while.’

  I was glad because I wanted that too. For some time we just lay there quietly, listening to the strimmers out in the gardens, the distant thump of someone’s car radio playing Ragga.

  Eventually Turner said, ‘I hoped you’d
ring. I’ve thought about you a lot.’

  I didn’t answer, mainly because I didn’t believe her. People said things they didn’t mean in bed, didn’t they?

  ‘Make love to me,’ she said.

  ‘Mm.’ I felt so languid, half asleep but very turned on. ‘Kneel over me then, I’m feeling lazy.’

  She smiled at the very idea that I might be ordering her about.

  ‘Okay, you’re the boss!’ Her eyes twinkled as she slid her pants off and knelt, her hands gripping the bed head.

  She smelt delicious, like ripe guava fruit. My tongue was hot in her, tasting salt. I was like a swimmer in the sea now, gripping her thighs with my hands – to steady her or me? I don’t know. Both of us, I guess. I needed to hold on to somebody for God’s sake, if only for that moment.

  She came almost immediately – her body jerking as she collapsed into my arms. And the gentle laughter of a moment ago had turned to tears that flooded down her cheeks. I held her tight, aware of her breathing and mine moving in and out of time, feeling suddenly infinitely tender towards her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, not wanting her to be embarrassed about crying.

  ‘Yes,’ she looked up after a while, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

  I took a tissue from the box I kept beside the bed and handed it to her.

  ‘Thanks.’ She blew her nose softly ‘This room is so bare,’ she said, gazing around her at last. ‘You lead quite a spartan life, don’t you?’

  I glanced around me, trying to imagine how it must look through a stranger’s eyes.

  Perhaps it was bare – dove grey walls and carpet – white fitted wardrobes – any untidiness stashed away behind closed doors.

  ‘I’d have thought a photographer would have prints,’ she said. And it was true, there were no pictures. I hadn’t noticed before.

  She stroked her hand along my thigh, hesitated... then took the plunge.