Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books. Sally Bayley

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      6

       Behind Closed Doors

      Some houses have no chance in hell of becoming homes. Thornfield Hall is one of these. It is home neither to Jane Eyre nor Mr Rochester; both come and go from it like fairies.

      ‘In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!’ says Jane Eyre to the housekeeper soon after she arrives.

      ‘Why Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester’s visits here are rare, they are always sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.’

      In our house, rooms were never ready. We didn’t have a Mrs Fairfax to dust and pull back the curtains, to hoover up the filth or scrub down the surfaces. We didn’t have a Mrs Fairfax to let in the light.

      Mr Robinson was the only person we could ever imagine visiting. Mr Robinson who lived on the third floor, right at the top, with his wife, Mrs Robinson, who we never saw. Mr Robinson was the only person who would poke his head through our door if we left it open; Mr Robinson suddenly standing in our front room with boxes of farm eggs in his arms; Mr Robinson suddenly at the window with his long scraggy dark hair and cracked-tooth smile.

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      But anyone can barge into your dreams.

      One night, Jane sees a woman in her room, a woman with long dark hair. Birds circle around her head; wings cover her lips and eyes, her nose and mouth, her face.

      Suddenly Jane sees a garish red face and startling black eyes bearing down on her. A dark cavern opens up, and at the back of the cavern is a red serpent lifting its head and hissing. The woman begins to scream. She drops to the floor and begins to writhe. She writhes and she writhes and then she opens her mouth wide.

      Jet-black rocks tumble from her mouth. Black rocks spill across the room and hit Jane on the face. Before long there is nothing but the cold dark and black sea, the sound of waves against her ear.

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      Mr Robinson had murdered Mrs Robinson. We knew this because we never ever saw her. Not once, not ever, not after all these years.

      Maisie said she had seen her, just the once, early one morning when she was coming in with the milk. But we never had. We’d never seen Mrs Robinson and we were sure that Mr Robinson had killed Mrs Robinson. Mr Robinson was a big fat liar!

      Mr Robinson, we decided, needed watching. So we climbed to the top of the house to listen for the sound of his breathing. We wanted to see if we could hear anyone breathing behind that dark door.

      We pressed our ears to the door. But the door was thick. We strained and strained to hear something. My brother stuck a piece of string through the keyhole and wiggled it. He tugged and tugged at the key to try to make it fall. Then he stuck his fingers under the bottom of the door until he felt the silver key. The key was hard and cold. He squeezed and squeezed his fingers into the narrow crack until they were red and torn. Then he shone his torch on his fingers, and that’s when we saw the blood. Blood all over his fingers. We screamed and ran downstairs and Mum came out and said, Shhhhh! For Pete’s sake, I’m trying to sleep!

      But after a while we went back up. We went back again and again. We peered through the keyhole until our eyes hurt because we were absolutely sure of this: Mrs Robinson had been lying on the kitchen floor with blood caked to her face for years. Mr Robinson was a big fat liar!

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      I have at several times in my life recognized that there was evil in the neighbourhood, the surroundings, that the environment of someone who was evil was near me, connected with what was happening.

      Miss Marple (Nemesis)

      Where were you when it all happened, that’s what you need to know. Where were you, and where was everyone else? If Miss Marple wanted to find out what had happened she would start by asking some questions, some very particular questions.

      ‘What happened, dear? Can you remember where you were when it happened? Who were you standing next to? What were you wearing? Were you holding anything in your hands? What happened the moment, the very moment, when the man with the dazzling light and the gun said “Stick ’em up”?’

      And I would say: ‘I remember the back door standing open and Mummy with a pale face and her hair lit up like a lamp. Mummy’s face wasn’t moving; she looked like a ghost. Mummy was a ghost come back from the dead and the man next to her was saying something in a language I couldn’t understand. He had a red face and no hair and Mummy wasn’t moving at all. Mummy was as still as a statue. The man with the red face was the only one talking, and all the time the light kept shining through Mummy’s hair, shining and shining and shining. And that is all I could look at, Mummy’s hair, which was as neat as a haystack.’

      The only word I remember from that day is ‘hospital’. Mummy and the man with no hair said they were going to the hospital. And I thought, hospitals are for sick people or for children who have bashed their heads.

      That day Mummy went into her bedroom and shut the door. She went into her room and closed the curtains. She got into bed with her clothes on. Mummy stayed in bed for years, until the day the lady in brown came round with her notepad and began to ask questions.