but he split from that scene and didn’t come back for a day and a half. And ever after that she was drinking more and saying weird things to him like he was her baby, she’d felt him kick and shudder in her belly, under her heart, she’d talk to him inside her belly for months before he was born she’d lie down on the bed and stroke him, his head, through her skin and they’d talk together she said, it was the closest she’d ever been with any living creature and he was embarrassed not knowing what to say except he didn’t remember, it was so long ago, and she’d say yes oh yes in your heart you remember in your heart you’re still my baby boy you do remember and he was getting pissed saying fuck it, no; he didn’t remember any of it.
And there was only one way to stop her from loving him he began to understand, but he hadn’t wanted to, he’d asked could he transfer to school in Boston or somewhere living with his dad but she went crazy, no no no he wasn’t going, she’d never allow it, she tried to hold him, hug and kiss him so he had to lock his door and barricade it practically and she’d be waiting for him half-naked just coming out of her bathroom pretending she’d been taking a shower and clutching at him and that night finally he must’ve freaked, something snapped in his head and he went for the two-iron, she hadn’t had time even to scream it happened so fast and merciful, him running up behind her so she didn’t see him exactly—“It was the only way to stop her loving me.”
Marina stared at the boy’s aggrieved, tearstained face. Mucus leaked alarmingly from his nose. What had he said? He had said… what?
Yet even now a part of Marina’s mind remained detached, calcu-lating. She was shocked by Derek’s confession, but was she surprised?
A lawyer is never surprised.
She said, quickly, “Your mother Lucille was a strong, domineering woman. I know, I knew her. As a girl, twenty-five years ago, she’d rush into a room and all the oxygen was sucked up. She’d rush into a room and it was like a wind had blown out all the windows!”
Marina hardly knew what she was saying, only that words tumbled from her; radiance played about her face like a flame. “Lucille was a smothering presence in your life. She wasn’t a normal mother.
What you’ve told me only confirms what I’d suspected. I’ve seen other victims of psychic incest — I know! She hypnotized you, you were fighting for your life. It was your own life you were defending.”
Derek remained kneeling on the carpet, staring vacantly at Marina.
Tight little beads of blood had formed on his reddened forehead, his snaky-greasy hair dropped into his eyes. All his energy was spent. He looked to Marina now, like an animal who hears, not words from his mistress, but sounds; the consolation of certain ca-dences, rhythms. Marina was saying, urgently, “That night, you lost control. Whatever happened, Derek, it wasn’t you. You are the victim.
She drove you to it! Your father, too, abrogated his responsibility to you — left you with her, alone with her, at the age of thirteen. Thirteen!
That’s what you’ve been denying all these months. That’s the secret you haven’t acknowledged. You had no thoughts of your own, did you? For years? Your thoughts were hers, in her voice.” Derek nodded mutely. Marina had taken a tissue from the burnished-leather box on her desk and tenderly dabbed at his face. He lifted his face to her, shutting his eyes. As if this sudden closeness, this intimacy, was not new to them but somehow familiar. Marina saw the boy in the courtroom, her Derek: transformed: his face fresh scrubbed and his hair neatly cut, gleaming with health; his head uplifted, without guile or subterfuge. It was the only way to stop her loving me. He wore a navy-blue blazer bearing the elegant understated monogram of the Mayhew Academy. A white shirt, blue-striped tie. His hands clasped together in an attitude of Buddhistic calm. A boy, immature for his age. Emotional, susceptible. Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. It was a transcendent vision and Marina knew she would realize it and that all who gazed upon Derek Peck, Jr., and heard him testify, would realize it.
Derek leaned against Marina, who crouched over him, he’d hidden his wet, hot face against her legs as she held him, comforted him.
What a rank animal heat quivered from him, what animal terror, urgency. He was sobbing, babbling incoherently, “—Save me? Don’t let them hurt me? Can I have immunity, if I confess? If I say what happened, if I tell the truth—”
Marina embraced him, her fingers at the nape of his neck. She said, “Of course I’ll save you, Derek. That’s why you came to me.”
English Autumn — American Fall
MINETTE WALTERS
Minette Walters (b. 1949), born Minette Jebb in Bishop’s Stortford, England, to an army captain and an artist, attended Godolphin and Latymer School and spent six months as a volunteer in Israel before attending Durham University, where she took a degree in French.
The mother of two sons with husband Alexander Walters, she lists her pre-writing careers as magazine journalism in London, PTA work, and standing for local elections in 1987.
Walters is one of the most critically acclaimed new writers to debut in the 1990s. Indeed, her first three novels were all award-winners: The Ice House (1990) won the British Crime Writers’ Association’s John Creasey Award for Best First Novel; The Sculptress (1993) won the Edgar for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America; and The Scold’s Bridle (1994) won the Gold Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association for best novel. Most frequently compared to Ruth Rendell, to whose success she attributes her own opportunity to be published, Walters is a traditionalist with a difference, emphas-izing family relationships and the importance of a puzzle but dis-claiming, indeed denouncing coziness.
Walters has written few short stories, apart from some romance novelettes done in her magazine days under unrevealed pseudonyms. “English Autumn — American Fall” is an example of the short-short, demonstrating how much character and suggestion can be packed into a very brief tale.
Iremember thinking that Mrs. Newberg’s problem was not so much her husband’s chronic addiction to alcohol as her dreary pretense that he was a man of moderation. They were a handsome couple, tall and slender with sweeps of snow-white hair; always expensively dressed in cashmere and tweeds. In fairness to her, he didn’t look like a drunk or, indeed, behave like one, but I cannot recall a single occasion in the two weeks I knew them when he was sober. His wife excused him with cliches. She hinted at insomnia, a death in the family, even a gammy leg — a legacy of war, naturally — which made walking difficult. Once in a while an amused smile would cross his face as if something she’d said had tickled his sense of humour, but most of the time he sat staring at a fixed point in front of him, afraid of losing his precarious equilibrium.
I guessed they were in their late seventies, and I wondered what had brought them so far from home in the middle of a cold English autumn. Mrs. Newberg was evasive. Just a little holiday, she trilled in her birdlike voice with its hint of Northern Europe in the hard edge she gave to her consonants. She cast nervous glances toward her husband as she spoke, as if daring him to disagree. It may have been true, but an empty seaside hotel in a blustery Lincolnshire resort in October seemed an unlikely choice for two elderly Americans.