"I did it for your own good. You were behaving like a spoiled child."
"How odd," I said with a laugh. "That's exactly what Dad said about Sam."
"That's nonsense. Your father and Sam used to get on like a house on fire until you insisted on jeopardizing your marriage over that wretched Negro." She paused. "Dad's worked hard to restore their relationship, which is why it's so unkind of you to persuade him to go behind Sam's back like this."
I cocked an ear to the rumble of relaxed conversation outside. "They're certainly not at each other's throats yet, so let's hope you're worrying unnecessarily."
"For how much longer? You can't have forgotten how upset Sam was in the wake of that woman's death. What on earth induced you to raise the whole sorry business so soon after his coronary? Do you want to cause another one?"
I filled the carafe with water and put it on the tray. "It doesn't seem to have worried him so far," I said mildly, "but feel free to ask him yourself if you don't believe me." I lifted the tray. "That's everything, I think. Could you bring the lemon?"
"Is that the only reason they're still together? Because your father has a sense of duty?"
I shook my head.
"What else is there?"
"Love," I said. "He's a very affectionate man and he never gives up on anyone."
"Like father like daughter then?"
I turned to look at him. "Is that how you see me?"
"Of course. How else would I see you?"
We talked about everything under the sun except Annie Butts, yet her presence was powerfully felt-in my father's refusal to meet my mother's eyes, in Sam's obvious discomfort every time the subject of Dorchester was raised, in my mother's dreadful attempts at flirtatiousness to reestablish a hold on her menfolk. When it became obvious that I was de trap as far as she was concerned, I took the hint and vanished inside to make lunch. Ten minutes later a monumental row erupted on the terrace. I caught it only in snatches but so much heat was generated, particularly between my parents, that their rapidly rising voices carried through to the kitchen.
It does me no credit to say I enjoyed every minute of it. But I did. It was the first of my petty little revenges and I raised a silent cheer when my father told my mother it was a pity her life was so bereft of interest that her only joy came from stirring up trouble within her family.
The silence that followed my reappearance on the terrace with trays of salad was interminable. I remember thinking there was a multitude of wasps that summer. I watched them drone in their black and yellow stripes around the spirit-sugared glasses, and wondered if there was a nest nearby that needed destroying. I also remember thinking that wasps were less harmful than people, and that a sting was a bagatelle compared with the poison of a long-suppressed grievance.
"Why does your father stay with her?" Sam asked me in bed that night.
"Once he signs up to something he always sees it through."
Letter from Dr. Joseph Elias, psychiatrist
at the Queen Victoria Hospital, Hong Kong-dated 1980
QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL
Hong Kong
Dept. of Psychiatry
Mrs. M. Ranelagh
12 Greenhough Lane
Pokfulam
February 14, 1980
Dear Mrs. Ranelagh,
Thank you for your letter of July 3. I'm sorry you feel that a follow-up visit would be of no benefit, particularly as your reference to "a new calm" suggested that our previous conversation had been valuable. However, as you so rightly point out, there is no compulsion on you to attend further sessions.
I have pondered deeply on the question you posed toward the end of our session. Why should your husband escape punishment for raping you? And I pass on some wisdom I received as a child in Auschwitz concentration camp when I asked a rabbi if the Germans would ever be forgiven for what they were doing to the Jews. "They will never forgive themselves," he said. That is their future and also their punishment.
Should you not have asked, however, whether it was right for Sam to escape your punishment? And are you so free of guilt yourself, Mrs. Ranelagh, that you feel comfortable standing in judgment on your husband?
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
J. Elias
Dr. J. Elias
Letter from Betty Hepinstall in answer to a request
for information about animal cruelty in the UK-dated 1999
THE CHESHIRE CAT HOSPITAL
CHEADLE HULME, CHESHIRE, UK
Mrs. M. Ranelagh
Jacaranda Hightor Road
Cape Town
South Africa
December 3, 1998
Dear Mrs. Ranelagh,
In response to your detailed inquiry about the ill treatment of cats in the UK, I enclose a copy of a leaflet we produced last year to boost interest in a fund-raising drive. As you will see, it makes grim reading, but I make no apology for the contents. The work we do is costly and time-consuming and would be entirely unnecessary were it not for the terrible cruelty that is regularly inflicted on defenseless animals.
I have no difficulty in believing that someone would put superglue in a cat's mouth and tape its muzzle with Elastoplast or parcel tape to stop it from eating or crying. In the past, we have seen cats with their paws dipped in quick-drying cement to prevent them walking; cats with their back legs paralyzed by broken spines; cats with their claws and teeth pulled out by pliers; cats blinded with red-hot pokers; and cats with rubber bands wound so tightly round their muzzles that the flesh of their mouths had closed over the band. And all, apparently, to the same purpose: to stop them from catching birds and mice.
I would like to be able to tell you that a person who pursues this sort of vendetta against cats is easily identifiable, but I'm afraid I can't. There is considerable evidence-largely through behavioral-science studies in the U.S. and the UK-to indicate that cruelty to animals in childhood leads to sociopathic behavior in adulthood. However, cruelty is far more common in adults than it is in children, and such cruelty is usually the result of an obsessional dislike of certain animals or an uncontrollable temper-often drink-related-which lashes out at anything it finds irritating.
Sadly, I cannot say with any certainty that because Miss Butts treated her own cats with kindness she would not have inflicted cruelty on strays intruding into her house. I can only draw parallels with people, and people are notoriously unwilling to show the same charity to foreigners as they show to their family and friends.
Yours sincerely,
Betty Hepinstall
Betty Hepinstall
*10*
The following day I drove my mother to Kimmeridge Bay on the Isle of Purbeck. It was a beautiful summer morning with puffs of white cloud dotted across the sky, and we climbed the cliff path to the Clay Tower on the eastern arm of the bight. Larks sang in the air above us, and the occasional walker passed us by, nodding good day or pausing to look at the bizarre folly behind us that some long-dead person had built as a permanent sentinel to guard the ocean approaches. Mother and I conversed with the strangers but not with each other and, in the silences between, we stared as resolutely across the channel at the tower, unwilling to speak in case we started another argument, locked in mutual ignorance despite the genes and experiences we shared.