Turmoil, A Novel

By Cassandra Malcolm

What makes a survivor?
Can she overcome madness, murder, and a horrible family secret?
Set in San Francisco and London from the 1940s to the 1970s, fiction blends with historical facts to unveil the truth behind dysfunctional family dynamics. Experience the aftermath of a war ravaged country, the counter-culture of the 1960s, and the devastation of the AIDS crisis amid the defiance of irreverent humor as seen through the eyes of a woman struggling to survive an unspeakable betrayal.

READER REVIEWS:

“Turmoil is sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, sometimes harrowing and totally fascinating.”

“I have never before read a novel in one day, but I couldn’t put it down.”

“Turmoil is amazing! Sometimes bizarre, sometimes funny, and unexpectedly uplifting. The author is an excellent writer.”

“Turmoil takes the reader through a full range of emotional experiences. It is completely unique.”

“I like the way she brings to life an array of unique characters who are totally believable. I like the way she tells a story so that you are captivated and enlightened by events that actually happened in the recent past. I like the way she does not spare herself when writing about personal “stuff” and the way in which an enormous amount of research has gone into her writings. I also like very much the grammatical accuracy with which she writes.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cassandra Malcolm
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463241615

Cassandra Malcolm

Cassandra Malcolm is a fiction writer. She is a reclusive person who envies tortoises for their ability to retreat into their shells at will. Like Cassandra in Greek mythology, she is cursed to prophesy truths that are seldom believed.

Book preview

Chapter One

ME

This is about my bizarre life. It is possible you might not find my life bizarre at all, but you will need to decide that for yourself. Like my life, this work is presented in an unusual format full of twists and turns and unexpected detours. My mind tends to jump around in time, as most minds do, and I have allowed it to follow its path. It may seem erratic at times, but like a jigsaw puzzle all the pieces fit together and when it is finished you will see the whole picture.

From as far back as I can remember I have always been considered different. I have heard the phrase You’re very different, over and over again and felt it in the instant wary distance from strangers. Sometimes I would ask, Why do you think I’m different? What do you mean? and they would answer I don’t know. You’re just different. Truth be told, I would have to admit that I felt the difference too. I knew I was separate from them, but I did not know why. I still feel a separation from people while being completely comfortable with animals. As a child, when people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up my immediate answer was always, I want to be a hermit. That reply usually surprised people and stopped the conversation in its tracks. The idea of living in a cabin in the woods far from people with only animals as friends still seems so appealing, but life had other ideas which led me to have a great affinity for the unwanted outcasts of world, perhaps because I am one.

Do you wonder who I am? Do you want to know what happened to me? Then let’s get started....

Chapter Two

JOE

The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen was a guy named Joe. We met in a musical theater production of Affair Exchange at the Playhouse Theater in San Francisco which was located next door to the Buena Vista Bar, the birthplace of Irish Coffee. Joe played a Mod and I played a hooker with a heart of gold. You know the old story. I was often cast as a hooker, the plight of a female blessed with a good figure. Still, it was a job and far better than my previous job of scanning the obituaries for people who had donated their eyes to science.

Joe and I quickly became fast friends. He had just arrived in San Francisco from his family home in Mt. Diablo. He was new to the city and excited by its possibilities and at having finally reached the age where he could leave home without running away. When I say he was gorgeous, I am not exaggerating. He was tall, slim and had natural platinum blonde hair, turquoise eyes and amazing skin. I think I envied his skin more than anything because I had battled terminal acne since I was nine. We had been given strict instructions by AJ, the play’s director, not to leave the theater when we were in costume, but Joe and I found a little known back door so we could sneak out and go to the Buena Vista for the famous Irish Coffee minus whiskey, and a whopping plate of their crispy french fries, always managing to sneak back in time for our cues. AJ and the play’s writer, whose name escapes me, had taken two years meeting in parking lots to write Affair Exchange. Some wealthy and possibly misguided angels had put up the cash to produce it. Amazingly, it ran for several months, during which time Joe’s and my friendship grew. The play only ran on weekends which gave us both an opportunity to work on other projects.

I worked as a band singer at several different clubs. Joe got a gig as a female impersonator at the Fantasy. He invited me to see him on my lone night off and he was amazing. He did Jean Harlow and you would swear you were looking at a reincarnation. He was also perfecting Marilyn Monroe. He did not lip synch. He was talented enough to sing, dance and act well so the illusion was complete. Basically, he blew the other drag queens out of the water in his white satin 1930s gown with his natural blonde hair styled to match the eras.

The days passed with both of us working, rehearsing, performing and running to auditions. Still we found time to meet for lunch, or take a walk at one of my favorite places, eerie and desolate Fort Point at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.

We were at a cast party where Joe was trying to teach me to do the Temptation Walk, when he told me he had met a man who was very nice to him, an older guy but very handsome. Joe had moved into his lavish home which had spectacular views. One morning as I was vacuuming, the Beatles came on the radio doing Day in the Life. It was the first time I heard it and I was riveted. I had never heard anything like it before. It totally blew me away so much so that I barely heard the phone ringing. I grabbed the receiver. It was Joe.

He was happily jabbering away about how much his life had changed since leaving Mt. Diablo and how his parents had warned him about coming to the City but he was so glad he hadn’t listened to them. I was still distracted by the music so I was only half listening, but we agreed to meet for lunch in a couple of days so we could have a good talk.

I went to meet him but he didn’t show up. That was very unlike him. He always kept his word and I was a little worried. I would have phoned him but he hadn’t given me his new address so I had no way of contacting him as this was long before cell phones became everyone’s obsession. Two days passed and still no word. Then I saw it in the morning newspaper, not a headline, but discreetly tucked away on page three.

The body of a young man dressed as a woman had been found in the men’s room at Golden Gate Park. Witnesses said he had been beaten to death by several men dressed in army camouflage. The news was shocking yet somehow expected. Joe was nineteen.

The police never found his murderers. They never looked.

Chapter Three

MURDER IN VARIOUS FORMS

Iam no stranger to murder. It first entered my life when I was six years old. I was living in London after the war. My parents, grandparents and I were all crammed into a tiny two room apartment in Pullman Court, Streatham, SW2. Because of the huge post-war housing shortage we also had to live with a lodger assigned by the government, an Indian man from Bombay. I saw little of him as he was gone before dawn and arrived home long after I had gone to sleep. The atmosphere indoors was as violent as the outdoor ravages of war with its constant reminders of bombed out buildings and destroyed lives. In fact, I was born near the end of the war during a bombing raid where the buildings on either side were completely destroyed. The building where I was being born was miraculously spared from damage.

I often played with a toddler who lived with her young single mother in one of the apartments. I can’t recall her name but I do remember well her mother whose name was Joyce Jarrett. She was very pretty with a halo of blonde hair. I had not seen my little friend for several days and asked my mother why we had not been able to play which resulted in a disinterested shrug. I began noticing a very unpleasant smell when we passed their door and mentioned this to my mother several times. She said she had lost her sense of smell when she had whooping cough while she was pregnant with me. She told me to forget it, but the smell kept growing stronger until it became a stench that I will never forget. I gave up trying to get my mother’s attention and turned to my grandfather instead. He walked me over to the apartment where she lived and said, Christ! before hustling me back home again.

The police arrived soon, followed by an ambulance and social workers who took charge of my friend.

I never saw her again and have no idea what had happened to her. The next day my mother and grandfather got into an argument about what to tell me. My mother wanted it hushed up. My grandfather thought I should be told the truth. They both seemed to ignore the fact that I was right there in the room and heard everything they were saying. While they were arguing, I read a copy of the Daily Mail newspaper with the headline that read, Murder in Streatham followed by an article that began, Today the blood and hair of Joyce Jarrett were found. but my mother snatched the paper away before I could read anymore. I had pretty much figured out what had happened and what I did not suspect was soon filled in by the gossip grapevine. Neighbors buzzed about it endlessly for weeks with their primary hypothesis being that Joyce had been having an affair with the married neighbor in the apartment below hers. He quite suddenly disappeared after her murder and was said to have gone to Southern Rhodesia. It was all speculation, of course, but his sudden disappearance did spark a lot of wagging tongues.

Murder also played a role in our family. One day my mother confessed to me that she had tried to kill her brother, my Uncle Tony. I have no idea why she decided to share that piece of information with a child but then few of her actions ever made sense to me. Anyway, she said she was tired of caring for him. I wondered if that was some type of warning to me since it did seem to aggravate her that she had to give up any of her time to caring for me. I always suspected there was something wrong with her but it was a suspicion I kept buried deep inside myself because the prospect of it being true was terrifying.

My grandmother had been forced to marry my grandfather. It was not a love match. She had been in love with a young Irish man called Albert Donnelly who had proposed marriage to her but, being Italian macho men, her six older brothers would not hear of her marrying anyone but an Italian so they locked her in a room for three months until she agreed to marry the man who became my grandfather. She gave birth to my mother when she was seventeen and five years later to my Uncle Tony. Right after that my grandfather left and refused to have any further contact with any of them. My mother resented bitterly that she was put in charge of her brother while her mother had to work to support the family. When my mother was twelve and my Uncle Tony was seven they were out walking by the River Wandle in Wandsworth when she had the sudden impulse to drown him.

How wonderful it would be to be free of him. He was always clinging to her, keeping her from her friends, making her feed him and play with him and she was totally fed up with it and with him. It would be so easy to just nudge him closer and closer to the river bank. He couldn’t swim and it wouldn’t bother her to watch him drown and then, finally, freedom.

It was a gloomy day, its grayness mirroring my mother’s state of mind. They got to a fairly secluded spot and after carefully viewing the landscape to make sure no one was looking, she gave him a push. He hit the water with a big splash. It was so easy. Now it was just a matter of a few minutes more of having to deal with him. He was sputtering and splashing around, hitting at the water with his hands and trying to find anything on the river bank that would let him grab hold of it. She thought he might be able to pull himself out of the river so she moved to the edge and was fighting with him trying to hold his head under water. Out of nowhere, a policeman came by and thought she was trying to save him. He immediately jumped in the river and pulled out my uncle. My mother was internally furious at the intervention but she camouflaged it well by thanking the policeman for saving her little brother. Tony was too afraid to contradict her. He knew he would suffer greatly at her hands if he did. She never did try to physically kill him again. She chose the path of a psychological killer. She decided to kill his spirit instead.

I had the dubious distinction of being born with high intelligence which can be both a blessing and a curse. As she told me about trying to kill her brother, I had no doubt that it was being related as a warning that something similar might happen to me. It was the first time I realized she enjoyed manipulating me, tricking me, and making me feel uneasy, if not downright terrified, a state in which I lived for most of my childhood.

She had been sent to a convent school at one point, perhaps in the attempt to polish up her soul which was extremely tarnished and rusted. The nuns had her pegged right away and cast her as the Devil in the school play. She got to sing a song and do a little dance which she would perform for me quite often. It went like this:

Malignant is my name and I’m a demon deep of dye I have a speciality for making children cry

When they get into my clutches, they’ll wish they’d never come For I tease them, oh I tease them ‘cause I like to have some fun.

I didn’t know at the time that it would become the theme song for a large portion of my life. Just thinking about her now twists my stomach into knots, but I thought if I got it down on paper it might dissolve some of her residual venom.

There was another murder that touched our family although I did not find out about it for decades. I learned of it through the Internet when a family member I did not know contacted me through one of the ancestry sites. She told me about my male cousin who had been shot dead in London’s Soho district in the 1940s while trying to stop a robbery of a jewelry store. It became big news in Britain. Even a best selling book was written about it having the same magnitude in England that Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood had in the USA. I bought the book and read about his bravery. There was a grainy black and white photo of him lying dead on the autopsy table. It was the only photo of him I ever saw.

People are very selective about what they consider to be murder. Killing humans is generally considered murder unless it is accidental, during a police action, or the result of war, in which case it is generally acceptable. People do not often