Tess sat down onto a kitchen chair with a thump as Stephen pulled her back with unexpected force. There was desperation in him as he prevented her departure and made her stay. She found that she could not refuse him. She was still compelled by complicated forces in her that kept her there in his derelict cottage, being abused and now pleaded with. She found it difficult in her own mind to navigate the tortuous pathways of Stephen’s desires, needs and aversions, and her own for staying. His actions were beyond the realm of rationality, but she was aware that there was an indisputable logic to them. The rejections and revilements of the adult Stephen were at grievous odds with the need for comfort and safety that Tess could see in his frightened eyes. She understood such conflicts and suffering and succumbed to his unspoken and rough gesture, sitting quietly and in readiness in the chair, waiting for him to make his next move, wondering how it would come.
She was no longer physically afraid of him, cowed by any superior physical strength. She knew she had bettered him and so did he. He was no longer the invincible bully; rather he was a beaten shell, ruined by life, the life he had somehow chosen. She didn’t feel sorry for him but felt that she was helping a wounded animal that needed her, and while with Stephen such an inclination was hazardous. But she had a confidence that her caring was within bounds and that she could control the situation. She was prepared now for his unpredictabilities, his sudden flights of violence and pushing away, his involuntary aggression long since his master. She felt in charge of her situation, able to stand up to his ranting and anger.
He loosened his grip on her wrist, realising that she was not resisting the aggressive gesture that was asking her to stay. He dropped his hand and looked her in the eye, the first time that he had truly communicated with her since she’d arrived. His look was returned and he turned his head to focus on the wall behind her shoulder. Her answering look was alarmingly unfamiliar. He said:
“Why did you come back?” he was suddenly lucid and direct, his voice hoarse and uneven.
“Because you interrupted our conversation with your hateful violence,” she replied, surprising herself with her commanding tone. There was some anger behind her reply but, she felt, it was good anger, the anger that comes from feeling strongly about things.
“I came to see you, to see how you were and all you could do was accuse me of things that I’m not guilty of. That wasn’t fair, Stephen. Yes, I came because Mum had asked me but I also came because I wanted to see you, to see how you were. You’re my brother.” She found herself saying things she hadn’t expected, and she wasn’t entirely convinced by them.
He moved his eyes from the wall behind her shoulder to her face again. In his eyes was the look of an angry child who didn’t trust her. There was no place in his psyche for an emotion that would expose him to betrayal and abandonment. At some point in the past he had reached out and been rejected, the object of his supplication had turned their back. Eventually his need and capacity for trust had been replaced by the implacable stubbornness of mistrust and the deep need to be alone. It was this that was part of the merciless inhumanity of Stephen, of his ability to reject in turn all empathy in himself and cut off any link or connection he might have had with other people.
But the frightened part of Stephen had reached out for Tess’s wrist, grasped it and held onto it in a parody of strength that he knew he no longer had. It was as if he were still playing the role and Tess, out of her risky compassion, was allowing him some experience of effectiveness. Such was her needy humanity that she wanted him to feel that he could affect events. She knew what it was like to be helpless, powerless and humiliated. She could not have borne to see that vulnerability in Stephen. In adopting this position, in believing in the rightness of humane values, she felt strengthened and surprised at her own virtue. She said:
“You’re a violent bastard and you don’t deserve my help. I’m glad I got the better of you and maybe the state you’re in now is a taste of your own medicine.”
Tess stood up suddenly and towered over Stephen. She was angry and felt self-righteous. She was struggling with something vengeful and she was shocked and thrilled. She felt much bigger, as if she had physically grown and Stephen had shrunk. He was in her power, she thought, this weak, dissolute man. She made the mistake of losing her wariness of him and forgetting her caution. He came back at her:
“You bitch,” he spat. “This is your fault. If you hadn’t barged in here I would be dead by now. It would all be over and I’d be out of here. You and that cow have to interfere.”
He tried to stand but his weakness overcame him and he collapsed again onto the chair. He gave the impression that he couldn’t really be bothered to resist the advance of Tess.
“Just go, get out of here. You can report back what you’ve seen to her. And to him too. That bastard, that fucking bastard.”
Tess was shocked by her brother’s revelation that he wanted to die. It came in the same breath as his reference to William Dawson. The sudden reference to her father in Stephen’s diatribe caught Tess unawares and she realised that she’d known nothing of the relationship between her father and Stephen. The relationship between Stephen and their mother was familiar to her in its convolutions and unhealthy symbiosis. But with their father there was a curious blank in Tess’s mind. She said:
“I didn’t know you were so angry with Dad. What did he do to make you so angry?” She asked her question almost as a child would, mystified and surprised.
“You know nothing about anything,” he spat with venom.
He was convulsed with fury at what he regarded as her stupidity and her ignorance. She knew nothing, he believed, about what had happened to him in the relationships he had with his mother and his father. Stephen believed that everything had been alright for Tess. He clung to a self-righteous martyrdom, shutting away the memories. All he knew of them were the compulsive actions they led to and his slow self-destruction.
“What made me so angry?” he said to her through gritted teeth. “I got nothing from them, except beatings and insults and criticism. You were always the favourite. You had everything. You always had your father to look after you. He never cared for me, only you.” He screamed at her with a squeaky, weak voice as if in a last desperate attempt to make her hear.
Tess gasped and stared at Stephen, amazed and bemused. She realised how deeply he was immersed in bitterness and how violent that bitterness could be, expressed in hateful accusations and judgements. He couldn’t see himself and how he’d been reduced through his hatred. She felt that any response from her would stoke his rage and she was grateful that he was weak. She dropped her guard and said to him:
“Stephen, that’s not how it was. I had it no better than you. So you thought you’d been given nothing by them and you thought that I’d had everything? You’re a fool to think that. It isn’t true. But because you thought it and believed it you’ve spent the rest of your life grabbing and thieving and believing you should have whatever you want. It was your entitlement. And look where you’ve ended up. It’s not just physically that you’re living in a hovel with only scraps and wreckage around you. It’s not just that. This is what the inside of you looks like. And for the record, I had nothing either. And I had to contend with your hate and spite and your bullying. You were a monster to me and I lived in fear of you. But now I can see you for what you are. Unrepentant wreckage who’ll never see his part in his own downfall. You’re pathetic and sad and dangerous.”
She knew as soon as she spoke that she had made a mistake, that she should have simply let him be with his accusations and beliefs, but somewhere she was incensed by the injustice of his charge. Her anger and her need to stand up against what she knew to be untrue were her Achilles’ heel. Stephen never missed an opportunity to attack an open target. And by now she‘d realised the imminent threat. She had to find a way out. She was beginning to feel a darkness gathering round her as she sat there facing him with only the table between them. There was something malignant and menacing permeating the space around her. She couldn’t describe it but she recognised the effect it was having on her. She was feeling edgy and there was a growing anxiety that began in her stomach and which, before long, was filling her whole body.
There was something poisonous about Stephen, an atmosphere that he gave off that was so disturbing to her that she was afraid that she’d be overwhelmed by it. She didn’t know how to deal with her growing and urgent unease. Without thinking and responding to a nameless impulse in her, she stood up and turned away from him, trying to blot him out of her mind and defend herself with the armour of her back. He took this gesture as a sign of rejection and with the sinking and threatening sensation of being cast off. His fury rose again and this time propelled him into an uncontrolled fit of vengeance. His weakness was overcome by an explosion of adrenaline that propelled itself through his body like the eruption of a volcano.
He leapt to his feet, up-ending the table, and grabbed Tess by the neck from behind and began to throttle her in the crook of his right arm. His grip was unrelenting and Tess knew clearly in a moment of acute lucidity that he was intent on her murder. Once again she was shocked by the intensity and speed of his action. She was wrong-footed and grabbed on the out-breath. She had no oxygen in her lungs and faced the real prospect of not being able to free herself in time. In a second of insight before she fought back she faced the imminent possibility of death, recovered her senses and kicked back with her foot with all her strength, finding Stephen’s shin. It made no impression on his all-consuming fury. Using her weight again she dropped onto her knees in an attempt to loosen his grip. The move made some impression as his grip loosened slightly. She took her chance. In this extreme situation she had to take any chance. She twisted to one side, releasing his pressure on her windpipe and reached for something, anything, with which she might be able to hit him.
He was on top of her, bearing down, her body forced to give under his weight. As she got closer to the stone floor she saw a heavy iron poker lying on the hearth, not quite within reach but her only hope. She used her weight to fall in the direction of the poker and pulled Stephen with her. It felt to her as if he were losing his power, that his scanty store of energy was beginning to dissipate. At that moment she decided that she would not succumb. She lunged with all her strength for the poker and grabbed its brass handle in her hand. Stephen felt her do this but was unable to counter their momentum. She fell to the floor with him after her, his balance lost, and as she did so his grip came away from her neck. She rolled across the floor and got to her feet, bent at the knees, ready for his recovery. He got to his feet and came at her with a ferocity that belied his fragility. She was faced with his onslaught and in a fraction of a second made up her mind to strike. She raised her arm that held the poker and brought it crashing down on the side of her brother’s skull. He stopped dead, suspended for a second, his arm half-raised uselessly in belated self-defence, his eyes open in shock and incredulity. Then he fell like a stone to the hard, cold floor and lay still. Blood oozed from the side of his head.
Tess was shaking. She gripped the poker with her cold hand until it ached. She didn’t know how long she stood over her brother’s body holding on to the weapon. She couldn’t take her eyes away from his lifeless shape, head turned to the side exposing the bloody wound. Slowly she regained her senses and dropped the poker with a clatter onto the floor. It lay there, still, its brass handle gleaming dully in the dim light. She straightened and began to breathe again, pulling in air through her nose, recovering from the melee of blood, emotion and hormones that had raced through her body in her defensive spasm. She had felt not only Stephen’s primal violence but her own as well. She’d felt the wish to kill, fleetingly but real and unmistakable, flash for a fraction of a second through her brain. She’d responded with a violent, powerful blow and now regretted her loss of control. She had killed her brother. The whole elaborate structure of her personality felt as if it were slowly collapsing. She was shaken to her core. She couldn’t accommodate the enormity of her action.
She subsided onto the chair in the deathly silence of the cottage and watched the blood from her brother’s wound seep down the side of his face and onto the flagstones. There was nothing to be done. She stood shakily on her feet and, steadying herself against the wall, she made her way out of the kitchen and along the hallway. The darkness seemed to close in on her. She found the door and wrenched it open just before a wave of horror and terror swept over her and she vomited onto the coarse grass. Weakened and dizzy she staggered up the track back to the Glasnant Road, stumbling and fumbling in the darkness. She had lost track of time and peered at her watch. She could see nothing. She found her car still parked in the gateway and fell inside.
She put the key in the ignition and turned on the interior light and looked at her watch again. It was late. She started the engine and reversed giddily into the road. She began her drive back to the hotel, cautiously at first and then, as she felt her senses returning, she drove faster until she passed the town boundary. Making her way down the back road to the hotel she pulled up into the car park. She rubbed her eyes, stepped out of the car and walked slowly to the entrance. She had no idea how she looked but she imagined herself to be dishevelled and bruised, even bloodied. She felt as if she must look different, unrecognisable from the person who had left the hotel yesterday.
She entered the lobby and Geoff said, on his way to the dining room:
“Had a good time with your friends?”
She thought she could tell from his look that she must appear altered. She said nothing and climbed the stairs feeling every step as hard labour and opened her door. She took off her coat and fell onto the bed. It was after eight o’clock when she woke. She was starving and shocked by the speed of her own recovery as she undressed and walked into the shower, scrutinising the red weal on her neck. By 8.30 she was in the dining room devouring three courses, amazed at her own apparent callous indifference to the events she had just been through. She drank a glass of wine encouraged by the thought that it would help her sleep. She had no such need. As soon as her head touched the pillow she fell into a deep and silent slumber.