With that, she stood, a little unsteadily, and rested her cane against the arm of the chair as she unbuttoned her blouse. I suddenly wondered what she was doing, and what the hell she was going to show me, but then she turned and slipped her blouse down to her elbows, exposing her shoulders and bare back. I stared in fascinated horror at the network of criss-crossed red welts and white scars lacing her upper back, shockingly vivid against her honey-gold skin.
“Did my father…?” I began weakly, shocked and disgusted by what had been done to this woman, and Ayesha pulled her blouse back up, and, still with her back to me, buttoned herself up again.
“Your father put those on me, Richard, he did it to me, he did it to Nicky, much worse that what he did to me, and he did it to your mother, and he enjoyed it; that man is a sadistic demon, no Hell is too much for him to suffer!”
I sat in silence while my head spun; I didn’t want to believe these things, I tried not to believe them, but I’d seen what I’d seen, and I felt sick that dad had done that. As I sat in stunned silence I heard the front door open, and two girls’ voices chattering and giggling. I looked at Ayesha and she pointed an admonishing finger at me as she murmured “my daughters; behave yourself, I mean it!” emphasising with her heavy cane what she would do if I stepped out of line.
The door swung open, and two girls came into the room, the smiles on their faces dying away when they saw me. They were both tall, slim, each with a mass of wavy, bright, mahogany-bronze hair tumbled over their shoulders, and the younger one, who looked to be a little younger than me, had green-hazel eyes like her mother’s, while the other, who I thought was maybe the same age as Bobby, had large, expressive grey eyes. They both had delicate, heart-shaped faces and clear, fine, porcelain-doll features, and olive complexions, with just a tinge of their mother’s golden skin tone, both of them exotic-looking and, to me, at least, quite the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen.
“Mummy… who’s this?” asked the older girl, her eyes narrowing and her tone sharp and suspicious. The younger girl moved closer to her, putting her arm through her sister’s as she too stared distrustfully at me.
“Richard, these are my daughters, Yasmin and Shereen… your sisters, God help them… ”
The two girls gasped, as did I, at Ayesha’s blunt statement.
The older one, Shereen, was the first to recover.
“What are you saying, mummy, do you mean he’s that… fucking piece of shit’s son? Is that why he looks like him? NO! This piece of filth is NOT my brother, I am NOT his sister, take it back, mummy, say it’s not true!”
Ayesha slowly shook her head, tears glinting in her eyes.
“No baby, I can’t; he’s Robert’s son, he came looking for us; he’s your younger brother. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Shereen’s face twisted in rage, and in a blink of an eye she’d grabbed Ayesha’s heavy walking stick and raised it over her head, obviously ready to crack my skull open with the thick metal finial; in my mind’s eye I clearly saw that bird-beak splitting open my skull as she hit me with it, and I stayed motionless, not wanting to provoke her further.
“No, don’t, stop it Shari!” shouted Ayesha. Shereen looked at her mother and shook her head.
“I thought we were free of that stinking piece of shit, now his dogshit son shows up here, in my clean house, and it’s going to start all over again! We’ll never be free until that dog-fucker and all his dog-fucker family are dead, and it starts here!”
“No, Shari, don’t, please, don’t!” begged Ayesha, but Shereen shook her head vehemently, her eyes glittering with hate.
“I don’t care. That whole family deserves to die in fucking agony, I don’t care if I go to jail just as long as I get to see this piece of shit dead on my floor! Fuck him, he dies, now!”
The other girl, (Yasmin?) stepped in front of me, her hands up, shielding me from Shereen’s fury.
“Get out of the way, Yaz, can’t you see who that is? That whole family are filth, nothing but pieces of shit, get out of my way, after what they did to us he owes us this, and I swear to fucking God… ”
“Shari, no! Enough! He didn’t do anything, leave him alone!” she barked, making Shereen blink in shock.
“But… but… look at him! Don’t you know who he is? LOOK AT HIM!” she yelled.
Yasmin shook her head.
“Enough, Shari, leave him be! He’s just a kid! Just let him say his piece, then, if you still want to, have at it, I won’t get in your way; just let him talk first!”
Shari stared at her for a long moment, her chest heaving and her nostrils flaring, while the angry flush in her face slowly faded. She glared at me and pointed at me with the lethal-looking metal head of Ayesha’s walking stick.
“Five minutes, that’s all, then you better run back to whatever shit-hole you escaped from, because when your time’s up I’m coming after you! Start, damn you, say your piece then fuck off out of my home!”
I was appalled at the hatred this beautiful girl had for me, for my family; Ayesha had already intimated how much she hated us. What the Hell had we done, what had dad done to her, to all of them, to create this much poisonous hatred for someone she’d never met before?
“Talk, you fucker, talk, then get out!” screamed Shereen, jarring me out of my astonishment. I hurriedly explained why I was there, I only had five minutes and she still had the lethal-looking walking stick raised, ready to crush my skull.
“My name’s Richard, I found your mother’s name and address in a box of my dad’s papers, so I came here to find out who she is, I didn’t know what my father did, I still don’t, all I know is I came here looking for my mother, I hoped that I’d found her, all I wanted was some answers, please, that’s all I want! I didn’t know what we did to your family, all I wanted was some answers, then I can go home and you can forget me. Please don’t hate me for what my father did, I didn’t know, I never even suspected what he was doing, neither of us did, just tell me what he did and I’ll leave and never trouble you again, I promise!”
Shereen stared at me mistrustfully, still tense and angry and ready to hit me, but then the other girl, Yasmin, stepped in front of her, her expression unreadable, but definitely not as hostile as Shereen’s.
We stood like that, a silent tableau, all four of us frozen for long, endless seconds as Yasmin’s eyes locked with mine, before she turned to Shereen and put her hand on the walking stick, pushing it down.
“I believe him, Shari; look in his eyes, he’s telling the truth, he really has no idea what we’re talking about, or who we are. He’s not here to hurt us, Shari. Let him talk.”
Shereen lowered the cane and pointed at me, her expression still mistrustful, but some of that furious hate had gone from her eyes.
“You want to talk? Then talk, now!” was her terse instruction, so I did, telling her all about me, my life, Bobby, dad, Barbara (I choked a little over that, but right now I had nothing to lose, so I told her everything, every mean, nasty little thought, every spiteful, malicious little trick we’d pulled on Nicky, how he’d disappeared, about Barbara, Nicky’s mother, and how my father would beat her and Bobby and I would grin heartlessly and ignore the sounds of her mistreatment.
When I finally ground to a halt, Shereen just stared at me contemptuously.
“Your whole family is rotten to the core; you just told me how worthless and disgusting you are; the only one of you who was maybe ever worth anything was driven out to die from his injuries somewhere far away and all alone, and that’s down to you, too; you let it happen, you shoved him away and left him to die, so know this; if you died by the roadside tomorrow I’d step over your carcass and keep walking, be sure of that.”
She drew a shuddering breath as her eyes flamed with anger and revulsion.
“After what your father did to us, to my mother, I would gladly watch Robert Davies twist on a spit with you two roasting with him; that you and I share a father means nothing. I want him dead, I want to see hm dead, I want to watch rabid dogs feed on his rotting carcass, and if you and that brother of yours were rotting there with him, then well and good; the world doesn’t need the likes of you. The harm your family has done mine will never be washed away, with blood, with tears, with all the remorse in the world, do you get that, now, Richard-fucking-Davies?”
I sat open-mouthed at this tirade, shocked at the depth of her hatred for us; just what had dad done to make her hate with such passion? And then I pulled up short; what had Nicky ever done to me that I should hate him just as passionately? I was no better than her in my unreasoning hate, and now I started to realise how Nicky must have felt every day of his life. I had to find out, I had to know what we’d done, and if we had somehow done to her family what we’d done to Nicky and his poor mother? How?
“Shereen, I… ” I began, but she shut me up with a raised hand.
“Save it; I don’t care. I’m going for a walk, the air in this room is rancid with your family stench, I thought we’d cleaned it out and now it’s back. When I get back, you be gone, or else, understand?”
With that she stood, handed the cane to Yasmin with a curt “watch him, and get him out of here!” and left the room, followed a few seconds later by the slamming of the front door.