(Part 1 of April 2006 coming soon.)

(CONTENT WARNING: Unpleasantness from the get-go.)

*

(On the back wall of a building across the road from the university)

Don’t fall for the diversity deception- kill the parasites.

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

(A poster on the wall of the Student Union)

We the undersigned demand that the university make a statement condemning the recent “Kelpie and Silkie” graffiti found in and around the campus.

These messages express disgusting anti-disability ideas.  As well as making disabled students feel unsafe, they are in direct contrast to everything the university stands for.

We call upon the Berrylands administration to prove that they genuinely care about the needs of their students and stand with us against this hate.

*

(On a cubicle wall in the women’s toilets near the front entrance)

Feeling suicidal?  Just Do It ©

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

“I know you didn’t have anything to do with those messages, Rosalyn, but given the current climate…  I mean, I always liked your article.  I’ll be sorry to see it go.  But, you know, needs must.  My hands are tied.”

*

(On the back of a chair at the Lion and the Unicorn)

Darwin wants you gone!

-Kelpie and Silkie

*

“It was the fucking Oakmen.  You know it and I know it.”

“Mariam…”

“They found the one perfect way to hurt Peps, and they just went for it!”

“It… it could have been somebody who’d read her articles and wanted to cause trouble.”

“We should never have started digging.  We should have just been satisfied with them leaving us alone.”

“They…  I don’t think they would have.  Pinder gets fixated on things.  Groups like the Oakmen work best when they have a target.”

“Well, they’ve got one now!”

“Mariam, none of this is your fault.  We could make a case for my fault, but not yours.”

“Yeah?  You were the one who wanted to lie low in Brighton.  I was the one who went poking about on the internet.”

“Laying low in Brighton wasn’t getting us anywhere.  We’ve agreed on that.”

“I didn’t want to get us anywhere!  Not if ‘anywhere’ means that Peps gets posters condemning her in the Student Union!”

“It wasn’t condemning her.  People know she wasn’t the one who…”

“Do they?  Do they, though?  You really think people are smart enough to make that distinction?”

“I…  I think we ought to talk to Rosalyn.”

“Grovel on our knees to Rosalyn, more like.”

“She’s the one being affected, so she’s the one in charge of deciding what to do next.”

“I…  Fine.  If she says drop it, we drop it.”

“Exactly.”

*

It was a nice enough day for Denny and Rosalyn to sit out in the garden.  Octavia had poured them some lemonade and then made herself scarce.  (Denny never knew in advance how much time Octavia was going to spend at the house.  Sometimes it seemed as if she could disappear at will.)  It had taken a few minutes to get Rosalyn to talk about what was bothering her, but eventually- sluggishly, bit-by-bit, almost apologetic- she told him about the messages.

“I mean, I know it’s just someone trying to cause trouble,” she said, “I got that as soon as I calmed down.  They’re new messages- it’s not like they’ve been there this whole time and I never noticed.”  She looked down at the table, fiddling with the straw.  “But it’s like the universe wanted to slap me in the face with what a bad idea it was to get emotionally invested in some anonymous graffiti.”

“It’s not the universe,” said Denny, “It was just some guys causing trouble, like you said.”  Rosalyn had said that Alex and her other flatmates thought it might have been the Oakmen, trying to intimidate everyone, but she thought it might just have been somebody who’d read her articles and seen an opportunity to upset someone they didn’t know.  “It’s not your fault for finding something interesting.”

“I guess.”  Rosalyn chewed on her thumbnail.  “It just gets to me.  I don’t want them thinking of Kelpie and Silkie like that.”  She paused.  “And I don’t want to worry that everyone I meet secretly thinks I hate disabled people.  So there’s that.”

“They won’t,” Denny reassured her.  He was very aware that he wasn’t much use in this conversation.  All he could do was repeat things that she’d probably heard before from people who’d put it a lot better.  All he could do was act as an echo.

Rosalyn smiled.  “You know what Natalie told me?  She said that if the Oakmen were going after me, then I must have done something right, because it meant they saw me as a threat.”  Rosalyn looked down at herself, and back at Denny.  He took her point.  It was hard to imagine anyone being threatened by someone like her.  “And she seriously thinks that’s a good thing.”

Rosalyn wasn’t threatening.  Rosalyn was small and trusting and she liked people, and Denny was scared that if he had one of his blackouts around her, she wouldn’t stand a trust.

“Yeah,” said Denny, “Being a threat definitely isn’t a good thing.”

*

It took Isaac two days to get through to Judith.  He’d probably have had better luck if he’d actually thought through the times she was most likely to be available instead of just punching in her number at random moments in the day, but Isaac wasn’t in any state to think things through this week.  It seemed like every twenty seconds, his train of thought would be derailed and he’d be stuck thinking about how unfair it was.  The Oakmen (Alex was saying that they didn’t know it was the Oakmen, but yeah, the Oakmen) had taken Kelpie and Silkie- their thing, his and Rosalyn’s thing- and used it to punish them for not letting them into their heads.  Every thought just led back to that, which just led to stewing in your own bile until you wanted to scream.

So when Judith finally answered the phone, all he could get out at first was, “There’s something up with Rosalyn.”

It turned out that Judith hadn’t seen the messages (probably because the Oakmen had focused mainly on the university and the area around it).  “Poor Rosalyn.”  She sounded as if the news had knocked the breath out of her.  “That must…  It must really have affected her.  I know she’d never have wanted…  That’s the last thing she’d sign her name to.”

“I’ve got a plan,” said Isaac.  It was one of the few thoughts that had managed to stick, and Isaac had no idea whether or not it was any good, but it was all he had.  “We need to pull out all the stops and find the original message.  The one Ben Sugar told me about.  If people know where it came from, then they’ll know it’s not about what the Oakmen are making it about.”  He was probably talking complete nonsense.

Judith took a deep breath.  “I think that’s a good idea.”

Isaac blinked.  He wasn’t prepared for that.

“After all, there’s a finite amount of woodland around London, isn’t there?  It isn’t as though we’re dealing with the Amazon rainforest.  We should be able to narrow it down.”

“Right,” said Isaac.

“We can meet up sometime this week, if you like.  Pool our resources, write down all the information we have, that sort of thing.”

Isaac swallowed, and got his voice back.  “Sounds like a plan.  Wednesday?”

*

Josette had wanted to write a memoir- had, in fact, started one time and time again- but apparently nobody read books anymore.  It was a wrench, having to pander to illiterate electronic hordes, but she had no choice.  To stay relevant, one had to move with the times, no matter how distasteful.

Natalie, the girl Jonathan had found for her, was bent over a box in the attic where Josette kept some of her old papers.  Magazine articles, society pages, and gossip columns.  She said she was going to collect as many as she could, and scan them into her laptop, then use them to create Josette-Lambton-dot-com, or whatever it was eventually called.  It felt so sordid, but maybe Jonathan was right.  Maybe a website did increase the likelihood of some young person coming across Josette’s pictures and being inspired.  There was always hope.

“Is this you?” asked Natalie, holding up a sheet of paper, ragged around the edges from having been cut out of a magazine long ago.  A Christian Dior advert- Josette had worn ten thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds on her neck and wrists.

“Yes,” said Josette, “1956.  I was twenty.”  Natalie, Josette recalled, was a year younger than that, but already the rot had set in.  In the photograph, Josette was youthful, fresh and elegant- clad in a silk evening gown, her waist cinched in to a tight eighteen inches, and a look of regal sophistication on her face.  In contrast, Natalie was a mess.  Her hair hung in tatters and tangles around her shoulders.  Not a speck of makeup on those tired bags under her eyes.  And Josette doubted that Natalie even owned an evening gown.  More likely, her idea of dressing for dinner was an outfit that would show off her thong to its best advantage.

It was a shame.  Josette had always believed in a woman’s duty to be beautiful.  All it took was a little discipline- but discipline, of course, was out of fashion at the moment.

“How about this one?” asked Natalie, holding up a newspaper cutting, “It’s smaller than the others, but…”

“Absolutely not,” snapped Josette, as soon as she saw which one it was.  That godforsaken party, six months after Bobby’s death.  The photograph showed Josette in the centre, desperately feigning a smile, flanked by Jonathan and Octavia, as she should have been.  But there was an extra person there, someone who should never have been invited in the first place.  “I’d like it burnt, if anything.”

“How come?” asked Natalie.

Josette hesitated.  How much should she share?  Could she possibly make Natalie understand the shame of it all?  It had been an official event, after all.   Their family had been representing the theatre to its patrons.  Her father’s legacy on the line, and Octavia had dragged that creature in just to rile everybody up.  She might as well have spat on his grave.  “There were people at that party I would rather not have invited,” Josette told Natalie, “The event was supposed to be a sort of memorial to Jonathan and Octavia’s father, and it was turned into a mockery.”  Octavia hadn’t done it out of charity- no friendship had ever existed between the two girls.  She’d done it to shock and get attention.  Josette could have slapped her.

Natalie was still examining it, reading the names in the caption.  “Is Niamh Denny’s mum?”

“Don’t talk to me about that boy,” said Josette.

If Natalie had continued to press the issue, Josette would certainly have had some sharp words for her… but, wisely, she didn’t.  She put the accursed clipping to one side and continued to look through the box.

They were coming to the clippings from the society pages, Josette noticed.  She’d enjoy looking through them.  Perhaps Natalie would, too.  Perhaps she would learn something, comparing the pages of the past to those of today.  Perhaps Natalie, like Josette, would find herself saddened by the fact that newspapers no longer discussed people of quality and significance, preferring flash-in-the-pan pop stars and women famous for their breast implants.  But all that remained to be seen.