I put the light on. The study.
It was cluttered and full, stuffy and warm. The light in the centre of the ceiling had no shade, and was very bright. There were two desks, a bureau, and a camp bed with a mess of sheets lying twisted on it. There was a bookcase, two large tables standing together covered with various bottles and pieces of chemical apparatus; test tubes and bottles and a condenser linked to a sink in the corner. The place smelled of something like ammonia. I turned, stuck my head out of the door into the hall, listened, heard very distant snoring, then took the key and closed the door, locking myself in and leaving the key in the door.
It was as I turned away from the door that I saw it. A specimen-jar standing on top of the bureau, which was placed just to the side of the door and would be hidden from the hall outside by the door when it was open. In the jar was clear liquid — alcohol, I assumed. In the alcohol was a tiny, torn set of male genitalia.
I looked at it, my hand still on the key I had been turning, and my eyes filled. I felt something in my throat, something from deep in me, and my eyes and nose seemed to fill and quickly burst. I stood and I cried, letting the tears trickle down my cheeks and into my mouth, salting it. My nose ran, and I sniffed and snorted, and I felt my chest heave and a muscle in my jaw tremored uncontrollably. I forgot all about Eric, about my father, about everything except me, and my loss.
It took me some time to pull myself together, and I didn't do it by being angry at myself or telling myself not to act like some stupid girl, but I just calmed down naturally and evenly, and some sort of weight left my head and settled in my stomach. I wiped my face on my shirt and blew my nose quietly, then started searching the room methodically, ignoring the jar on the bureau. Maybe that was all the secret there was, but I wanted to be sure.
Most of it was junk. Junk and chemicals. The drawers of the desk and the bureau were filled with ancient photographs and papers. There were old letters, old bills and notes, deeds and forms and insurance policies (none for me, and all expired long since anyway), pages from a short story or novel somebody had been writing on a cheap typewriter, covered in corrections and still awful (something about hippies in a commune in the desert somewhere making contact with aliens); there were glass paperweights, gloves, psychedelic badges, some old Beatles singles, a few copies of Oz and IT, some dry pens and broken pencils. Rubbish, all rubbish.
Then I came to part of the bureau which was locked: one section under the roll-top hinged at the bottom with a keyhole in the top edge. I got the keys from the door and, sure enough, one of the small ones fitted. The flap hinged down and I took out the four small drawers set behind it and set them on the working-surface of the bureau.
I stared at their contents until my legs got shaky and I had to sit down on the rickety little chair which had been half-undemeath the bureau. I put my head in my hands and I was shaking again. How much was I going to have to go through this night?
I put my hands into one of the little drawers and took out the blue box of tampons. Shaking fingers brought out the other box from the drawer. It was labelled "Hormones — male'.
Inside it were smaller boxes, neatly numbered in black biro with dates going about six months into the future. Another box from a different drawer said "KBr', which rang a bell somewhere in my mind, but only at the very back of it. The remaining two drawers contained tightly rolled bundles of five- and ten-pound notes and Cellophane bags with little squares of paper inside. I had no spare capacity for trying to work out what any of that other stuff was, though; my mind was racing with an awful idea it had just formed. I sat there, staring, mouth open, and I thought. I didn't look up at the jar.
I thought of that delicate face, those lightly haired arms. I tried to think of one time I had seen my father naked to the waist, but for the life of me I couldn't. The secret. It couldn't be. I shook my head, but I couldn't let go of the idea. Angus.
Agnes. I only had his word for anything that had happened. I had no idea at all how much Mrs Clamp could be trusted, no idea what sort of hold either of them might have over the other. But it couldn't be! It was just so monstrous, so appalling! I stood up quickly, letting the chair fall back and whack on the wood of the uncovered boards. I grabbed the box of tampons and the hormones, took the keys, unlocked the door and charged out, upstairs, stuffing the keys into one pocket and drawing my knife from its sheath. "Frank'll get you," I hissed to myself.
I stormed into my father's room and swtiched on the light. He was lying on the bed with his clothes on. One shoe was off; it lay on the floor under his foot, which dangled over the side of the bed. He was on his back, snoring. He stirred and flung one arm over his face, turning away from the light. I went over to him, took the arm away and slapped his face twice, hard. His head shook, and he cried out. One eye, then the other, opened. I put the knife up to his eyes, watching them focus on it with drunken imprecision. The smell of drink off him was foul.
"Frang?" he said weakly. I jabbed the knife at him, just stopping short of the bridge of his nose.
"You bastard," I spat at him. "What the hell are these?" I brandished the tampons and the hormones box in front of him with my other hand. He groaned and closed his eyes. "Tell me!" I screamed, and slapped him again, using the back of the hand holding the knife. He tried to roll away from me, across the bed under the open window, but I pulled him back from the hot, still night.
"No, Frang, no," he said, shaking his head and trying to push my hands away. I let the boxes go and got hold of him by one arm, tightly. I drew him near to me, pointed the knife at his throat.
"You're going to tell me, or by God…." I let the words hang. I let go of his arm and moved my hand down to his trousers. I slipped his belt out of the little guides round the waist. He tried to stop me in a fumbling way, but I slapped his hands back and prodded him in the throat with the knife. I undid the belt and pulled the zip down, watching him all the time, trying not to imagine what I might find, what I might not find. I undid the button at the top of the zip. I pulled his trousers open, pulled his shirt up and out. He looked at me, lying on the bed with his eyes red and gleaming, and he shook his head.
"Wha" you goin" t'do, Frangie? Am sorry, am really really sorry. Was an experimen, sall. Juss an experimen…. Don" do anything" t'me, please, Frangie…. Please…."
"You bitch, you bitch!" I said, feeling my eyes start to blur and my voice shake. I pulled his/her underpants down with a vicious tug.
Something screamed outside, in the night beyond the window. I stood staring at my father's dark-haired, large, rather greasy-looking cock and balls, and something animal, out there on the landscape of the island, screamed. My father's legs were quivering. Then came a light, orange and wavering, where no light should be, out there, over the dunes, and more screams, bleatings and baas and screams; everywhere screams.
"Jesus Christ, what's that?" my father breathed, turning a shaking head towards the window. I stood back, then went past the bottom of the bed, looking out of the window. The awful noises and the light on the far side of the dunes seemed to be coming closer. The light was in a halo over the big dune behind the house, where the Skull Grounds were; it was flickering yellow with smoke-trails in it. The noise was like that the burning dog had made, but magnified, repeated and repeated, and with another edge to it. The light grew stronger, and something came running over the top of the big dune, something burning and screaming and running down over the sea-face of the Skull Grounds dune. It was a sheep, and it was followed by more. First another two, then half a dozen animals came charging over the grass and the sand. In seconds the hillside was covered with burning sheep, their wool in flames, bleating wildly and running down the hill, lighting up the sandy grass and weeds and leaving them burning in their fiery wake.