Mess
A story by Felix Holloway
Browse all of the stories produced at Guardian Summer School here
Dear Clare,
I’m told you can learn a lot about a person from their favourite colour. In much the same way as big, angry dogs are most often owned by big, angry men, and as squeaky-clean, well-groomed, look-at-me sports cars tend to be the vehicle of choice for squeaky-clean, well-groomed, look-at-me people, I’ve heard from the therapists and psychiatrists I occasionally bump into that one’s favourite colour reflects in a degree of detail the person they are, the things they feel and the shadows they leave behind on the rest of us. So the theory goes, anyway.
I mention this with my first meeting with the client, which took place yesterday at approximately 3pm (I know, Clare, I’m a pedant), firmly in mind. Given what others have said about his predilection for fine art, I thought it an obvious way to break the ice, a way to instantly tap into his interests and get us off to a positive start. Suffice it to say that it didn’t exactly go according to plan- uninterested in discussing his own actions, much less admitting responsibility or showing remorse, the client instead attempted to direct conversation toward my own personal life. I have so far refrained from humouring him, but I haven’t the courage to really impose my authority on him and maintain control over the situation. I really do wish I could be more supported, given more help, given more attention. I’ve been telling all my colleagues that I feel as though the client’s mental state should be reassessed; legal grounds for an insanity plea would be a sight for sore eyes because, for all I know, I could be wasting my time. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve requested psychiatric assessment from the doctors, though, and we’ve been consistently rejected on each attempt, as though there are ways in which a homicidal sociopath with a propensity for contorting and mutilating his victims could nonetheless be considered to be of sound mind. Oh well, you know the saying: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Now, allow me to cut to the chase, for I’m sure you’re too busy to read much more. I’ve been talking things over with Holden and the defence team and, off the back of some thorough analysis and confabulation with five court-appointed attorneys, we have all reached the same conclusion. Namely, that any attempts to clear the client’s name will, for better or for worse, be in vain. Believe me, I’ll try my very best, but barring an extraordinary blip in the system I can say with a degree of certainty that I will not be able to convince any sound-minded jury of the client’s innocence. That’s not to say I’d be disappointed to see him get the needle; on the contrary, after perusing the police photographs, reading his testimonies and, most importantly, meeting him in person, I feel as though capital punishment is the only fitting penalty for someone of his calibre. I have to be honest here, Clare –as I’m told more-or-less on the regular by the top bananas here, integrity in the courtroom, as well as behind closed doors, is the true measure of a lawyer- I felt terrified sitting opposite the client yesterday, the presence of the guards doing little to reassure me, and I’ll be more than happy when he’s out of my hands forever. His crimes scare me, he scares me, and, if you’ll allow me to be transparent, the whole conundrum scares me. To summarise, I’d like to communicate to you clearly that the client’s indictment is close as can be to inevitable. Couched in different terms, I’m looking at six long, exhausting months I’m unlikely to get back.
The client’s favourite colour is brown, by the way, which I must say is uncommon. It’s best I leave it up to the psychologists to decide what exactly this means, but just for the sake of it I’ll leave you with my own personal interpretation. Brown is basically a mess. A confused, muddled and unregimented mishmash of bolder, clearer colours, individual strokes of clarity that, when blended together, look ambiguous. I feel as though the client is a mess himself, a severely disturbed bundle of thoughts and feelings he can’t control, and that his bizarre ‘exhibitions’ are so jumbled, so tortuous on account of his own erratic, irrepressible madness.
Truth be told, Clare, I feel like a bit of a mess, too, at the minute.
Yours sincerely,
Helen
P.S.
Please, Clare, don’t respond unless you have to. I know you’re a little tied up right now and, believe you me, the last thing I want to do is pile more pressure onto you.
I’m seeing the client again in a few days, and I’m thinking of filing another report for the doctors to look at. I’ll make sure to keep you posted.
The taste of this morning’s Cappuccino still lingers on my tongue as I sit, patient as a statue, on a grubby plastic chair in the interrogation room. I stare with a blank expression at my plain, dull-as-dishwater surroundings, and push a wild lock of hair behind my ear for what must be the fifth time in the last three minutes.
I’m dressed, according to protocol, in an inoffensive but almost comically bland grey suit, my cheap high heels grating with what can only be described as malevolence against my toes.
The client, the one I have, despite myself, been fussing over for the past few days, is on his way; escorted, I can only assume, by highly trained prison guards. In spite of my attempts to maintain rigid focus on the client himself, our first and most recent session was a less than harmonious affair. Our dynamic was, of course, destined to be tense and fractious- as we spoke I couldn’t help but detect an atmosphere of indifference on his part, and, were he an ordinary person with emotional intelligence superior to that of a spoon, he would surely have detected an atmosphere of contempt on mine.
However, as much as I seethe every time I even think of the man and the atrocities he has committed, I realise it is vital for both of us, not to mention the general public, that I keep a cool head this time. I have been maintaining private correspondence with a few of my friends and a relative this past week, asking for advice and requesting fresh evidence from the client’s psychoanalysts, and I’m determined this time around to ensure it pays off.
A few more minutes pass and I’ve nothing but a hapless fly bumping against the ceiling window to keep me entertained.
Irritated, I check my watch, counting the exact number of seconds the client and his private entourage of prison guards are late by.
If I had been paying closer attention, it is likely I would have seen the man coming.
He arrives in complete silence, and it isn’t until an officer inserts his key into the lock and throws the door open that I even notice he is here.
Dressed again in his baggy orange jumpsuit, he emanates the aura of a predator, of a snow leopard, graceful yet savage, artful yet clinical. His hair is noticeably shorter than our previous meeting, and his scraggly beard has been reduced to neat, presentable stubble. Dragged in handcuffs to the chair, the guards having an easy time on account of his gaunt, wiry frame, the client is ominous in his reticence. Once he is sat down the guards back up against the wall and, according to protocol, it is now time for our meeting to begin.
I pretend to flick through a few of the papers on my desk, so as to give the impression I’ve dug up some new, highly conclusive evidence, and every few seconds I stare across the table to make sure he’s on board. He stares back, emotionless, almost on the brink of boredom. He seems to be examining me, looking me up and down as though he were combing my hair for nits.
I feel as though I should say something, but in the midst of all my preparations I somehow never afforded a moment of thought as to how I was going to start. And so, as I always do in times of crisis or discomfort, I revert to the basics.
‘Hello, Mr. Morton,’ I say, trying as best I can to balance conversational cheer with the unflinching meanness my colleagues expect of me. Mr. Morton scowls.
‘Drew,’ he grunts under his breath, oozing antagonism. In spite of his bluntness, his eyes seem almost glazed over, any hint of emotion sheathed as one would sheath a dangerous long sword. Somehow, I doubt he really cares.
‘Excuse me… Drew. Right then. Before we begin I’d like to give you a few minutes to express anything you’ve felt or experienced these past few days, as it will help me to come to understand your situation.’
Mr. Morton looks up from the desk and stares at me with unnerving intensity. I swallow my nerves and feel my throat convulse. I hope he doesn’t notice.
‘For a start,’ he says, ‘I’m thirsty.’
I’m momentarily thrown for a loop, but quickly gather myself to avoid looking unprofessional and put on the straightest face I can.
‘Very well’, I say with composure, ‘Patrick will get you some water.’ I signal to one of the prison guards standing outside the room and he promptly shuffles over to a fountain. I turn back to Mr. Morton, whose head is shaking with acerbic disdain.
‘Water again? What can a man do for some alcohol around here?’
I try, as before, to answer him straight, for I get the sense his comments are purposefully deconstructive. In order to make what he perceives as a leap from a monotonous, bureaucratic drone to casual conversation, he needs to set the pace. It’s all I can do to refrain from following his lead.
‘Not a lot, I’m afraid,’ I deadpan.
Mr. Morton chuckles, but with not even a hint of genuine amusement. ‘Shame. I think we’d both appreciate some at a time like this. We could have a little sit-down, a Martini apiece, chew the fat, settle our differences.’
I say nothing, adamant that there is no better solution to my predicament than to cling indelibly to what has been asked of me. Patrick returns with the water, offers me a mechanical nod and walks back out of the room, assuming his previous position, imperious behind the glass.
My emotions, meanwhile, are bubbling furiously in their attempts to reach the surface, kicking up an almost volcanic ruckus beneath my skin. At this stage, I feel as though I still have the willpower to resist them.
‘It sounds very appealing, Drew, but I suggest you commit it to fantasy,’ I say, intending to sound matter-of-fact and instead coming across as overbearing. ‘I’m here to save your life. The differences between you and me won’t be reconciled until well after the trial, so I suggest we focus on the task at hand.’
I flick my hair back again and sit up straighter, satisfied with my response. I ruffle my papers again to replenish the illusion of control.
Mr. Morton, though, just shrugs, that simple action giving off an air of hopelessness that penetrates my façade as effortlessly as a sledgehammer would a ceramic vase.
‘Don’t fuck with me, lady,’ he says, with sudden edge. ‘You may be a jumped-up, white-collar college grad prick, but you’re not an idiot. You know where the evidence is sitting, whose side it’s on. It’s not on mine.’
Mr. Morton leans closer such that I can see the gaps between his crooked teeth and the precise curvature of his cheekbones as he grins at me. ‘I kept journals,’ he slurs with considered emphasis. ‘You think I cared about being caught?’
The journals aren’t news to me. Indeed, they’re so explicit, so unsubtle, that they are the major reason why any semblance of hope for Morton’s innocence has by now vanished entirely.
We know they couldn’t have been fabricated. The investigators gathered forensics, found the fingerprints, identified the handwriting. As Mr. Morton suggests, the journals seem indicative of someone who didn’t care about being found out. I remind myself that I have copies of some of Mr. Morton’s journal entries filed away in a bright pink folder that, at this very moment, is sitting on my desk beneath the dense piles of paperwork. A subconscious impulse diverts my eyes towards it, and Mr. Morton notices.
‘They’re in there, aren’t they?’
I swallow again. ‘Yes.’
There is a natural pause, during which my mind, like a tank of piranhas, thrashes and pulses desperately to compute some kind of solution that doesn’t involve reading through some of the entries again. It can’t, or won’t, whichever is less shameful.
‘Okay,’ I say, composing myself as fluently and as naturally as can possibly be conveyed, ‘you only have one chance. There’s a chance I can pick up on a technicality in some of your journal entries that might allow us to, I don’t know, appeal to coincidence. We could reframe the whole thing as a prank, or maybe a science project, or-‘
‘A science project?’ Mr. Morton interjects, disbelieving.
I give a pathetic shrug, unable to hide my distress. My excuses are weak, childish, even, and the futility of this entire scenario is slowly unfolding before me, creeping tentatively out into revelatory light like a mole from its burrow.
‘I’m not the science type, Miss Sanders,’ Mr. Morton continues, ‘haven’t got the mind for it, never really got my head around all the kinks, all the gimmicks.’ He leans over the table again, this time with a primal hunger in his eyes, their dull brown coloration supercharged by a kind of carnal joy. He looks more effervescent, more animated, than I’ve ever seen him before. ‘What I made,’ he says slowly, intensely, annunciating every syllable, savouring each sound, ‘was art, Miss Sanders. Art.’
I return his glare, but with what I hope looks to him like stony indifference. Whichever way he perceives me, his excitement, his passion, is unaffected. He sits back in his chair and sighs, wistfully, apparently recalling some pleasant memory. ‘I really wish you could have seen it when it was all finished, Miss Sanders, when all the exhibits were together,’ he says distantly, his rude, blunt demeanour from earlier in our session all but gone. ‘It would have… taken your breath away.’ His tone of voice attains a sudden edge of malice as he utters this final clause, and I fight back a shudder.
There is another pause, during which Mr. Morton visibly returns to his body from his ethereal place of bliss, and his gaze returns to the pink file on my desk.
‘Open it,’ he says, ‘find your technicalities.’
Every muscle, organ, nerve and bone in my body tells me to resist, my brain most strongly, but somehow an invisible force prevails and my fingers find themselves clasping the folder and flipping it open, turning to the first page. Mr. Morton is on tenterhooks.
‘Read them! Go on, read them!’ he prompts with vigour, his childish expression bringing to mind a toddler anticipating, with infantile excitement, being read The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the millionth time. Having this picture of innocence imprinted on my mind as I unclip and begin reading the first of Mr. Morton’s journal entries is a small comfort. My stomach turns itself inside out as I begin reading, knowing what is to come but nonetheless sickened by the images it’s sure to conjure.
January 15th, 2013
Exhibition Report
Exhibit A is coming along well. Its fingers initially seemed problematic, but, as it turned out, they were nothing a good pair of bone shears couldn’t rectify. In terms of the angles, I’ve measured where exactly I want to make the incisions, where I want to make the breaks, and it’s all looking promising. I made a right old mess of one of its hands, pinned the whole thing on the secateurs and everything.
A bad workman blames his tools.
Here’s a gag for the grandkids. Earlier this month, when I first procured Exhibit A, I hadn’t counted on the amount of blood that would come spilling out when I drilled through its hands for the wall display. Ruined my fucking carpet. The more you know.
I finish, blink and a garish bulge fizzles somewhere behind my eyelids, a dizzy swarm of madness. I shake my head, shove aside the image, and, without looking even briefly at Mr. Morton, I toss the entry aside and pick up another.
March 4th, 2013
Exhibition Report
I’ve decided to do away with the vulgar stuff. The breasts, the long hair, you get the picture. Anything obtuse. I want my exhibits to look fluid, smooth, as if they were moulded from clay. Exhibit C, in particular, is coming along fantastically. It’s bent into the shape of a dancer. It’s beautiful. All I need now is a few accessories, a tutu and a backdrop and I’ll really be cooking with gas.
This time, when I finish the entry, I look up at Mr. Morton to see his reaction. He looks as though he’s frozen solid, paralysed, transfixed, seeing something before him that isn’t there. He hasn’t touched his water. ‘One more,’ he says, so abruptly after his period of stupor that it jolts me in my chair. I oblige, much as I know I’ll come to regret it.
April 23rd, 2013
Exhibition Report
It’s finished! The whole thing’s finished! It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, like nothing on this planet.
Exhibit E, my final entry, is pinned to the carpet with its spine split, so that its face is pressed against the floor, its arms on either side of it. It almost looks as if it’s praying.
I can’t take any more and hurl the folder, with considerable force, onto the floor beside the desk. Mr. Morton does not react, but rather maintains his tableau of bliss, his face relaxed, his mouth hanging open, his hollow eyes still and limp as a sleeping child. A long pause ensues as I try to restrain myself, try to suppress the rage that, as I moved at an accelerated pace through the documents, had begun to build, but it is Mr. Morton that speaks first.
‘No technicalities,’ he announces decisively. ‘No technicalities.’
I have to agree. Mr. Morton seemed doomed before, but now, as if it were possible, he is in an even more perilous position. But another thing has changed. Although I read the documents in preparation, reading them now before Mr. Morton himself has brought about a chemical reaction, a toxic blend of my suppressed emotions in combination with the weight of the job and the sheer manic evil of the man, and it’s threatening to tear me apart. Looking at Mr. Morton, his skinny frame, his shaven head, his intense, unflinching, heartless eyes, I realize what exactly has been altered. I don’t just want to not keep Mr. Morton alive anymore; I want to kill him. I want to scream at the top of the lungs, beat him into submission and avenge the families of the people he murdered for the sake of his sick project. I want to do all these things, tear off my ugly business suit, toss out my heels and pack it all in, but I can’t. I won’t. It’s against protocol.
Dear Clare,
When I last wrote to you, I was being perfectly candid in saying that all I wanted was for this whole terrible situation to end. I made it clear in every possible way I could. But after my last meeting with Mr. Morton (come on, we both know his name. I can’t be dealing with this confidentiality bullshit right now) some new feeling, some new intuition, entered my mind uninvited. I felt curious. Much as Mr. Morton sends chills down my spine, I can’t help but feel as if something was stirred inside of me as I spoke to him last time.
For the latter portion of our last session we discussed the trial, the evidence, the way the rest of the attorneys and I want the whole thing to go, and what struck me most about him was his silence. Initially he was bitter, cold, insulting, and when I got out some of his journal extracts and started reading them he seemed to ignite all of a sudden, as if, quite spontaneously, he’d stumbled upon a new lease of life. But then he became subdued and docile, almost vegetative, and it had me puzzled. I’ve been in this business for nigh-on two decades and this is the first time I have been given anyone truly difficult to dissect. Petty thieves, nightclub brawlers and one-time, spur-of-the-moment spouse killers are in a whole different ballpark, a lower tier. Mr. Morton is an enigma, as I see it, an inscrutable case.
I’m aware that it’s not in my job description, talking about him like this, and that you’d probably look down on me for trying to do someone else’s work for them. He has a therapist, after all, and I’ve got quite enough to be getting on with - the paperwork, the funeral plans, Holden – but I just can’t seem to help myself. For years I’ve taken refuge in the rules and so far it hasn’t come back to bite me, but what happens when the rules can’t help you anymore, when there’s no binding clause or contract or legislation for you to hide behind? You have no choice but to tear down the barricade and expose yourself.
Look, we all know the defence is a wild goose chase. He knows it too, revels in it, in my powerlessness. He’s grounded enough, at least, to understand his situation. So where else can we possibly go from here? Policy dictates I keep seeing him regularly until he’s tried, and I feel as though I might as well use the time I’ve got with him to forge some kind of relationship. Positive, negative, whatever works. Just something.
I just want to know what he’s feeling, Clare. If he even can feel. Perhaps it’s for myself, another form of reassurance or another façade. Maybe it’ll make it easier to stand up before a judge and defend Mr. Morton if I can at least peel away the mask and try and understand him. I’m fucking stuck here, Clare, in this position, and I’m trying my damnedest to make things easier for myself. I hope you understand.
Last night, before I went to bed, it occurred to me quite how ridiculous this whole thing is, how unjust it is. I can’t believe I’m saying this. Our justice system isn’t just, Clare! Doesn’t that worry you? This trial, this client, this whole fucking thing, is absurd, nebulous, a high-minded, abstract, nonsensical waste of time.
Like having a favourite colour.
Yours sincerely,
Helen
P.S.
As I understand it the doctors rejected my insanity plea again, for the fifth time, and at this stage I unfortunately don’t think this approach is going to bear fruit. I’m seeing Mr. Morton again on Tuesday and I’ll get back to you later with more info.
Tell me I’m going to get through this, Clare. Have a little faith in me.
‘I don’t know what came over me,’ Mr. Morton says in an austere tone, the graveness of his confession reflected with almost comical accuracy by his slouched posture and the sort of expression you’d expect to see etched on the face of a dog that’s just shat the carpet.
We’re sitting, for the third time now, in the interrogation room, and, having been on the fence before, I can now confidently say that its blankness and tendency to drain all feeling from its inhabitants is becoming more and more unbearable every time I’m here. The sun had been out in full force last time we were sat here together, but today rain is falling in buckets, and Mr. Morton’s speech is perpetually undercut by a metronomic pattering sound from the ceiling window. The day is overcast, and any natural light that might have crept into the room, perhaps injecting it with a fresh dose of optimism, has been well and truly snuffed out. As if it were possible, Mr. Morton looks even thinner that when we last met, and in stark contrast to the self-assured, cocky demeanour he embodied last time, he appears meek and dejected. He’s been in his cell all week, but with a croaking, crackling voice, a dishevelled appearance and bags beneath his eyes that look like bruises, he could have been to Hell and back.
‘What do you mean?’ I enquire, not knowing, for what must be the first time in my career, what kind of answer to expect.
A brief pause ensues then as he fingers his shirt and lets his head hang back.
‘I started getting bored,’ he says, dryly, the excessive delay betraying that he himself is clueless as to how to proceed. ‘I ran out of shit to do. Everything was monotonous, everything was dull, everyone was dull.’ He smiles slightly and looks me in the eye, his eyelids half-shut. ‘You must know the feeling, being a lawyer.’
I give an ambiguous nod, unsure as to what response to his taunt he’d best like to see.
‘When?’ I ask, simultaneously relieved and unnerved by his sudden onset of cheeriness.
‘Ten years ago, maybe. When I was still a kid.’
I give a similar ambiguous nod as I begin to consider what to say next. Over the weekend, I found something out that, although I’m no psychologist, seems pretty pertinent, an elephant in the room I’d be a fool to keep invisible. I consider playing the card, but given Mr. Morton’s highly unpredictable responses thus far, I don’t want to risk an upset. I remind myself that he’s shackled, that he’s harmless, but nonetheless I’m frightened of a tempestuous reaction, if only because I can’t bear the thought of my pride being dented. Instead, I decide to probe, find out the things I don’t know yet before laying out the facts.
I want to see whether he’ll play the card first.
‘Did something happen?’ I ask, trying to sound sensitive, realising immediately afterwards that he’s unlikely to be capable of detecting the effort.
‘No,’ Mr. Morton says dismissively, ‘that’s what I’m saying. Fuck all happened. Have you been listening?’
I know he’s messing me around, though I can’t think how it’s helping him.
‘What I meant, Mr. Morton…’
‘It’s Drew.’
My brows crease.
‘What?’
‘How many times do I have to tell you? It’s Drew, idiot. My first name.’
I’m lost for words again, and at this point that sense of hopelessness I picked up on last time is becoming clear once more. Somewhere between my mind and my mouth words struggle to form, and in desperation I blurt something out.
‘I…’
‘Look, Miss Sanders,’ Mr. Morton interrupts, ‘I couldn’t give a shit about the etiquette you follow, the policies you abide by. So go on, I dare you. Save yourself three syllables.’
I let this sink in. He’s right; referring to a client by their first name directly goes against protocol. But as I ponder this fact I realize that none of this discourse, not a word, has gone according to whatever elaborate plan they’re cooking up at head office. Conversations like this aren’t supposed to take place. Put another way, I’ve broken enough rules that breaking a few more won’t do any harm.
‘Drew,’ I say, starting over, effectively waving goodbye to the last vestiges of authority I’ve been stubbornly clinging to, submitting entirely to the will of a dead man walking, ‘I meant to ask whether something might have occurred before everything started to feel boring that, I don’t know, changed the way you thought?’
Drew leans forward in his chair and I can hear his shackles rattling underneath the table as he rocks back and forth, pondering the question. After ten seconds’ pause, he heaves his handcuffed arms onto the table and leans as close to me as he can. Instinctively I recoil, backing away in my chair until I’m almost at arm’s length from the table.
‘I want you to listen to me very, very carefully,’ Drew hisses with quiet intensity, his intimidation offset by a tiny sliver of hope I have that we might finally, an hour into our third session, be getting somewhere. I scoot back gradually to where I was before.
‘My dad was not a very nice guy, okay?’ Drew says, toeing the line between speaking and shouting. ‘You follow?’
I nod and rest my hands on the table, making sure he realizes I’m listening. I consider probing him again, but decide against it. I want him to feel relaxed, in a position of power. The chances are that’s what he’s familiar with, what makes him feel safe.
‘He used to hit me, Miss Sanders, when I was just a kid,’ Drew goes on, his teeth gritted. ‘I never understood why.’
Another long pause ensues as he ostensibly begins plotting his next move. ‘It’s never been my strong suit, understanding people. I’ve always tended towards more of a… methodical approach.’
I don’t see where he’s going, and I hope he isn’t leading me astray as he did the first time we met. I am able to get a few words in edgewise.
‘Go on.’
Drew sighs deeply and rolls his eyes.
‘So dad was a dickhead since the day I was born, downing vodka, tearing down the house each night. And it started to drone. On and on and on. He was like a… he was like a rubber band, my old man. The way he saw it, people just kept stretching him and stretching him, making him angry on purpose.’ Drew lurches closer, opens his eyes wider and raises his voice. ‘And one day he had to snap.’
He almost seems to be building up to something. I’m anticipating a big reveal and I sit forward, focusing all my attention on what is to come. Drew’s posture and mannerisms mirror the tension in the room. He is completely still, his delivery cold and emotionless. He’s out to shock.
‘So one night, when I’m just eight years old, I go downstairs to get a drink, and there are three people standing in the hallway. My dad’s there, down a few as usual, and my mom’s next to him, crying. I’m not sure what to make of it. There’s another guy who I don’t recognise slumped against the wall, a little bloody. He looks like a well-to-do business school snob, with a fleece and suede shoes, the kind of guy who might drink champagne at a music festival. You know the type. And so my dad’s standing over my mom and screaming, and I can’t hear what he’s saying. Nobody has seen me. Suddenly, dad storms out of the room and comes back twenty seconds later with his .45, points it at my mom’s head. And my dad, you know, he didn’t think. I’m not sure he even had a brain, just a malformed blob of mush that allowed him to swear, drink and take shits, but not much else. So yeah, he didn’t think. He just kept pulling the trigger. Over and over again.’
A deathly silence sets in. The hairs on my arms and on my back prick up. With alarming immediacy, my mouth dries up.
Drew, having played for suspense for a good thirty seconds, sits back in his chair and grins triumphantly, his story told, his excuse fully explicated. For a few seconds he appears rather aloof, tapping his feet on the stone floor and swaying drunkenly from side to side. Having gradually refocused on me, he offers a distant grin. ‘So it goes.’
I feel overwhelmed and take a deep breath, my heart pumping as though desperate to escape my ribcage. My head is swimming. I feel as if I’ve been picked up by a hurricane and spun until I can’t make sense of anything around me.
I feel as though I should say something, quickly if possible, but Drew, presumably aware of my discomfort, beats me to the punch.
‘I know, I know, even the lawyers have heard it before,’ he says with false informality, ‘the family tragedy. The innocent boy whose tragic childhood turned him into, how’d the media put it, a ‘heartless murderer’ and a ‘psychopath’.’ He winks at me. ‘That old chestnut.’
I return his smile, suddenly unsure of what to think. A small part of me can buy that he’s being genuine, but somehow his attempts at casual conversation seem showy and false, studied rather than natural.
‘What was you opinion of her?’ I ask, hoping to eventually shoehorn in somewhere the topic that is stinging at my mind like a nest of red ants and won’t abate until I blurt it out.
‘My mother?’
‘Yes.’
Drew takes a deep breath, another show of calculated pretence, and steadies his posture as he answers.
‘Merely functional.’
My first impulse is to believe him. He’s yet to display much emotional depth; much less any respect for human beings, and an apathetic attitude to his mother is not something I’d immediately think to call into question.
But there is something else there. As decisive and deadpan as his answer is, a sharp, noticeable flinch of his eyelid as he delivers the words gives me another, more profound impression.
This is a potential loose end I am willing to chase.
‘Is that really it?’ I ask softly, desperately steering clear of condescension. The last thing I want is for his perceived power dynamic to be threatened. I need to let him maintain control.
He doesn’t answer, a snarky retort that I assumed to be imminent apparently not forthcoming.
I see his silence, his inactivity, as my chance, and the mention of his mother as a way inside. I need to appease the ants’ nest as quickly as I can, and though this isn’t a perfect moment, I can’t afford the luxury of waiting for one. I sit straight up in my chair, look Drew in the eyes and play the card.
Your victims,’ I begin, checking to see if Drew has zoned out again. He hasn’t- his head is cocked to one side, his wild eyes wide open and fixed like crosshairs on mine. ‘They were all women, weren’t they?’
Drew nods in affirmation, apparently not seeing the need to elucidate. Merely uttering this question sends chills down my spine. What I can only interpret as a misogynistic tendency on Drew’s part forms a significant portion of what it is about him that I find unnerving, of why I feel he threatens me so. But I feel compelled to dig deeper. I decide to push my luck a little.
‘Why?’ It comes out as a feeble squeak, and I imagine Drew and I as rats in a cage, the former looming over me, hissing and spitting, as I whimper in the corner. Right now, he is the hunter and I am his quarry; by whatever means necessary, the tables need to turn.
Upon hearing the question, Drew shrugs. He looks placid now, looks incapable of the atrocities he has committed. I see, as he looks up at me, a kind of sensitivity in his eyes becoming of a dumped teenager, or somebody watching a sad film. He could be a young boy again.
There is another long pause, this one more uncomfortable than any I’ve had to bite my lip and bear with before. Drew looks nervous, and I hope it means I’ve struck a nerve.
That wistful look returns to Drew’s expression and, after a few minutes of rumination, he gives a disturbing, absent smile.
‘My father was ugly, Miss Sanders.’ He says, visibly full of fire. ‘Physically, psychologically, you name it. Ugly in every way possible.’ It looks as though some indomitable, volcanic rage is brewing inside of him, and he begins trembling.
‘He was filth, Miss Sanders,’ he reiterates, ‘a disgusting, worthless piece of meat. Vile. Unholy. Not worth bothering with.’
I fear an outburst and slowly slip off my high heels in case I need to leap out of his way. The guards at the back of the room also take a step forward; their hands, as though synchronised, both reach for their cudgels. There’s a very good chance this will get unpleasant.
‘But my mother,’ Drew mumbles, his mouth hanging open, his eyes weary, ‘was… exceptional.’ A spirit of exuberance, of passion, returns to his tone and all of a sudden his eyes ignite. ‘She was fantastic, Miss Sanders,’ he says, quivering with an electric energy like a faulty livewire, ‘a… magnificent… specimen.’
Drew begins to twitch, to seize up, to move erratically as though trying to sweat something out, something deep inside him. His choice of terminology alarms me and I am reminded of his victims, the young women he strangled to death and converted into sculptures. A sick feeling creeps up me surreptitiously from the pit of my stomach.
‘I missed her,’ Drew says, his jaw clenched, his eyebrows now forming a harsh scowl. ‘I missed her after they buried her in the ground outside our church, after they dragged him, the bastard, to jail.’
He breathes heavily to calm himself down, exercising a kind of self-restraint I wouldn’t expect someone of his extreme volatility to successfully deploy. His fists tighten and his knuckles, bruised and swollen, go a sickly shade of beige. He leans forward again.
‘And I wanted her back.’
He pauses, out of steam for the time being, and I take a moment to introspect, absorb the things I have just heard. I feel as though a memory is squirming inside me, fighting to be free, its energy replenished by the things Drew has just divulged. I can’t say I’m anywhere near recalling it, but it’s growing closer, digging its way up like Lazarus.
‘Her gravestone looked small, sheepish, from where I was standing,’ Drew says, aloof and bleary-eyed once more, quietening down to a whisper. ‘Like it didn’t deserve to be there.’
I sit there, completely motionless, my body frozen as all its energy is directed towards my brain. I must look a little terrifying.
‘My mother,’ Drew says, genuinely fervent, ‘was beautiful.’
As I hear this sentence the memory bursts upward, and I hear a sound reverberating manically around my brain, a sound that’s not unlike a child bawling. I feel nauseous, dizzy and unable to concentrate, and Drew’s slurred musings begin to blur together. Within seconds they are lost, fade into the background as the pattering of the rainstorm has done by this point. It is all I can to do focus, hoist up this memory from the pit it’s trying to scale, but something’s getting in the way. Drew has quietened down now, and there no more obstacles in view. This could be the moment where this memory, whatever it is, finally clicks. I start thinking about the emails I’ve been sending, about Clare, about…
‘I was always interested in beautiful things,’ Drew continues at last, derailing my train of thought, ‘even when I was a kid. Not ugliness. And when I was older, when I began planning my exhibition, the exhibits were to be special, hand-picked, chosen with close attention, with care….’
He trails off and looks down at the table; I take this opportunity to look at him closely, examine his body language. His eyes, for the first time, appear reddened.
He looks at up at me pleadingly, his shackled hands out in front of him as if he were opening himself up to the world.
It almost looks as if he is praying.
‘You don’t understand, do you?’ Drew barks, despairing, his eyes taking on a newfound hostility, a rage that makes my hackles rise and my limbs stiffen. He rises to his feet suddenly and I move with him, the guards at the back of the room taking purposeful strides forward. ‘You’re just like all the others…’
‘No!’ I interrupt, alarmed, my fear, for what must be the first time, evident in my voice. ‘Please…’ I say, holding out a hand to calm him down. ‘Keep talking.’
Drew takes a few minutes to relax. I hope to steady myself as he does so; my heartbeat tries to settle and my rasping breath attempts to ease itself into its ordinary rhythm. Neither succeeds.
‘I said I wanted her back,’ Drew says coolly, each word an explosion in my head, ‘and so I took her.’
I freeze, chilled all of a sudden to the bone. My pulse races as if it were running for its life. Sweat trickles down my cheek.
‘I took her because I needed that beauty again, that… artistry.’ Drew snarls, ‘because all I could see was ugliness.’
I feel as though fireworks must be firing off inside me. These reactions aren’t normal for me and they certainly aren’t protocol. My dynamo is malfunctioning, my gyroscope skidding across the table.
‘You people put me in jail,’ Drew says darkly, his face desolate, his eyes open wide such that their whiteness transfixes me. He gazes, not at me but through me, with the closest thing I can conceive of to total despair.
‘You put me in jail,’ he says again, close to tear-stricken, ‘when all I wanted to do was make something beautiful.’
It is then, with this simple utterance, that the fireworks stop, the gyroscope steadies and the dynamo starts chugging away. My mind becomes a calm sea, and amidst the tranquillity another chemical reaction is taking place. Rather like when I read Drew’s journal entries, I strongly feel as if I am being torn apart, my body, my revulsion, tussling bitterly with my empathy. What Drew said about his childhood, what he called an old chestnut, admittedly was one. It struck close to home, though, somehow, touched me in some irreparable way, in a similar fashion to the sickening, destructive quality of the murders, of Drew’s exhibition. On a human level, Drew’s madness, his actions, the furious colours, the messy brown of his mind, make complete sense. His mother, something about his mother, is the key to everything- to everything Drew did and to everything I’m thinking.
From a rational standpoint, it seems silly to empathize with someone who cannot even understand the term, but as I look at Drew, jarring, haunting and almost zombie-like in his numb indifference, pity rises to the surface.
‘You can’t defend me,’ he growls, oblivious to my thought process, still hostile. He’s right. I can’t. But, disturbingly and for the first time, a small part of me wants to. ‘We’re not idiots,’ he goes on. ‘I’m going to die- you people are going to kill me- when I’ve done nothing wrong.’
If he truly believes this, it saddens me to the core, but at the same time the fury I felt towards him yesterday is being gradually alleviated. The relief is euphoric, like pulling off your backpack after a ten-mile hike. I can’t blame him now, but the doctors have pronounced him sane and there’s nothing I can do to change their minds. The helplessness blues begin to set in.
Drew visibly relaxes; he sits back in his chair and laughs weakly, presumably at himself and the hand he’s been dealt, the injustices he believes he’s suffered.
‘Sometimes,’ he murmurs in an oddly chirpy tone, ‘life is just not fair.’
I sigh and become, once more, immersed in thought. Somehow, in spite of our differences, we seem to have found a common ground. Neither of us wants to be near the other. Neither of us thinks we’ve put a foot wrong. We both need help, redemption, from somewhere.
I can’t save Drew and he knows it. He’s not trying to earn my sympathy, trying to get me on his side so he stands more of a chance come the trial. He’s thought this through.
I feel I need to say something, anything to break the silence. False or not, spontaneous and thoughtless or not, I need to get a point across to Drew before our session ends. Patrick and some of the other guards outside are approaching the door. Time, it would seem, is up.
I look at Drew and think what he wants to hear most, what would satiate his frustration most besides being set free.
‘I understand.’ I say quietly. ‘I get it.’
Drew looks taken aback. He recoils at first, shrinks back into himself, but as he computes my statement he seems to calm down. The desolate look is once more etched across his face.
I realise a slow transformation has been taking place inside Drew Morton since he’s been locked up here. Behind his gaunt, spidery exterior and his thick coating of madness, earnestness has been growing, and now burrows its way out, his eyes and expression reflective of the fact.
He swallows hard; I’d like to think he’s blinking back tears.
‘Thank you, Miss Sanders.’
‘Please,’ I say, offering him the closest thing to an amicable smile I’ve yet been able to manage. ‘Call me Helen.’
Dear Clare,
To say I’m not sure about how best to begin this update would be an understatement. There’s so much happening- inside my head and outside of it- that it just seems impossible, so many restless flies swarming before me that it’s tasking to fixate on just one. I suppose I’ll just have to bury my hand in and pull out the first thing I can clasp my skinny fingers round, leave it up to chance. It seems mundane and a little predictable, but I think I’ll start by covering the facts.
Drew and I had our latest conversation last Tuesday, and it was a significant one (at least for me, but I’ll get to that later). His trial is in a few weeks and, truth be told, he’s all but resigned to his fate. The jury is out, but it might as well not be. The other attorneys have thrown in the towel, too. They’re trying to keep the whole thing under wraps, not wanting to look as though they’ve been involved. Holden back home is tearing out his hair over the whole thing; he’s convinced I’m wasting my time. It’s miserable, really. We’re all just waiting for the inevitable.
Yes, Clare, I am calling him Drew now at his own behest. There’s no other moniker he’d have me use. Believe me, it’s just out of respect; there’s no sentiment to it. It’s rather like how, over the years and as I’ve grown into an adult, I’ve taken to calling you by your first name. As people and relationships evolve, so do terms of endearment. I hope you understand.
Anyhow, our last session, which took place yesterday, made me reconsider what I’ve said before. A wave of empathy washed over me as I spoke to Drew, and still lingers now with no real reason to leave. It’s weird, I know, and it weighs heavily on my conscience, but I can’t suppress it, Clare, I can’t. My sympathy (let’s call it that) for Drew disturbs me, but somehow I can’t bear the idea of him being sentenced to death now. Not when I’ve heard him speak, when I’ve listened to him, when he’s got me thinking about you and me.
I really do think you’re the crux of it, Clare, you being my mother and all, as well as what happened when I was a kid. That part of Drew’s story- his mother’s murder- was what struck me most, what etched deepest into my heart, and I can’t ignore it. The death, the sense of being forsaken, I felt it as he spoke, stuttering and ineloquent as he was, and it helped me to recall something. I’m not all the way there yet, but give me a few days to pore over it and I’m sure it’ll spring to mind.
You’ve probably realised now that this is about more than Drew. As I spoke to him, I began digging, and digging deep, into his psyche and into mine, trying to understand the cancer of madness that had spread through him, that may well be spreading through me. Forgive me if you feel I’m being dramatic, but I couldn’t help but think of you, Clare, when he mentioned his mother and the way he felt about her, and I started to miss you. It has been a while since we last met, after all. I don’t think it’s right for a mother and their child to be separated. It isn’t fair.
Funny, isn’t it? The way investing time in others’ lives can shed a little light on yours. I guess the more you listen to somebody, the more you end up listening to yourself.
Yours sincerely,
Helen
P.S.
I wrote two emails to you this past month that I decided not to send. I didn’t feel the need. I’m coming to see you next week- Holden is taking me – and I’ve got a good mind to print this one off and bring it to you in person. Closure, Holden says, is very important, and, although we rarely agree on anything anymore, I can’t help but feel he’s got this one right.
I’m bringing you flowers, a giant bouquet. I assume it’s to commemorate something. It looks a bit of a mess, to be honest, Clare, a hodgepodge of colours. Drew would like it. The most beautiful ones are the agapanthus, and frankly I wish I could bring you a whole bouquet of them. Blue, as I’m sure you know, Clare, is my favourite colour. It always has been, and always will be.
And I’m told you can learn a lot about me from that.
