Chapter 6: Rag Doll
Emotions are loud and demonstrative - if you have no reference point.
You can read previous chapters here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Recap: As I waited to say goodbye to my dying father, my mother, Jocasta, lay naked beside him on the deathbed. Once this is over, I plan to leave The Florin, all its pagan lore, and return to London.
December 21st, 1992
When else would the green man depart but winter solstice? I could have done without that poetry, but he had a way with irony. As the snow fell in the darkness, we watched the slow fall of my father’s chest, and waited for his final breath, realising after a minute that we had already seen it.
Charlie Crowe curled out of the room like smoke and headed west. Maybe Netty saw him leave, she sees these things. But I. I peered over the precipice of grief and elected to go a different way.
Jocasta was in the bed with him, under the covers, as if it was Sunday night and he had simply drifted off. Not dead. Not waxen: blackened fingertips, mouth agape, sunken cheeks. His oak leaves were flat. The curls, empty. No bounce. No life. No Charlie. Jocasta sobbed but here’s the thing you do not know about Jocasta Crowe. She cannot cry. Not one tear. Whatever facility is needed to lacrimate, to cry, to produce saline fluid from her eyes, she lacks it. It is missing.
So, the whimpering bore into me.
“No,” she wailed into his neck, “Charlie, no.”
Emotions are loud and demonstrative - if you have no reference point.
White noise filled my head and all I could think was, “you killed him. You fucking killed him.”
And then I was saying it. Loudly. Netty’s eyes grew wide. Her hand was on my chest, urging me to stop. Eve moved to the bed to form a barrier between me and Jocasta, who was sitting up slowly. It rushed out of me like a demon I couldn’t stop.
“You pulped him,” I said, “you took his self-respect, and you made him hate his life. Little bottles everywhere. I have seen them. I know what you did. I bet he’s glad it’s over now. So, he can be away from you. I bet he was happy to just get it over with.”
“Cass no,” Eve said.
Jocasta threw back the covers and stood on the bed, her gown open to her nakedness, bouncing my dad like a rag doll.
“Stop it! Please, stop it!” said Netty.
I turned and ran.
Jocasta leapt forward from the bed, her bare feet hit the boards with a thud, and she rushed down the corridor after me, silk lifting behind her.
I reached the top of the stairs, sobbing loudly, tasting the salt that ran down my throat and it snapped me back to being five, six, eight, twelve, running in terror from my mother, wishing someone would rescue me, and it made me cry harder.
I could hear Jocasta’s growling threats behind me as I thundered down the stairs, throwing myself at the oak door, through it, out into the courtyard, not noticing the icy cold cobbles.
I screamed into the night air as loudly as I could. Then Jocasta plunged her nails into my arms and spun me round.
“You little bitch. I’ll kill you.”
“Fucking get on with it then!”
She threw me to the ground and stood breathing heavily.
“Lyle!”
He was already there, waiting for instruction.
“The minute he’s buried,” she said, “I want her gone.”