He stared at her and saw the sadness in her eyes. This was the first time she wanted to talk about it, to understand how he could do what he had done. He had to handle this right.
He shook his head, slowly. “There is no excuse that holds up to scrutiny, Jules. There is nothing I can tell you that says x plus y equals z. But it’s taken all of this for me to know that while at the time I blamed you, it was never you, it was me. When it started with Angie, you and I seemed to be arguing a lot, and we hardly ever found time to be intimate. I thought you were nagging me: I was drinking and smoking too much, going to the pub with the guys, and working too many hours. It was crap for you, and you tried to make me see that, but all I did was expect you to take the shit I dealt out. I see now that you were trying to save our marriage, not end it. But at the time…it felt different.
“Anyway, when I interviewed Angie, she had seen a mugging go wrong, and the guy attacked her, and she stood up to him and fought back. God alone knows what she saw in me, but suddenly a young attractive woman wanted me at a time when you didn’t. Pretty much as soon as it started I came to my senses and tried to stop it, and you know the rest.”
The silence dragged on between them. Rick had no idea what Juliet was thinking, but he knew he felt better for having tried to explain. At least they weren’t arguing.
“You know Jules, the stupid thing is that I deal with people who don’t think of the consequences at the time; they just react, and someone dies. And here I did the same bloody thing. I could never say sorry enough to you, and I will never stop regretting what I did.”
She blinked away tears that had appeared, making her eyes twinkle. “What ever happened to us, Rick? Life used to be fun. we went out, we shared things, we laughed, and then it all stopped.”
He leaned forward, in his chair, trying to convince her of his sincerity. “I think like a lot of other things in life, it was a combination. You might think it was Angie, but it wasn’t. She ended the marriage, but if I had been more mature, more understanding, then she never could have tempted me away. It was, and always will be you I love, I lost you through my own stupidity.”
“God knows things were not great before Angie. Jesus, I can’t believe I can even say her name. But since we broke up, I’m scared all the time. I don’t sleep well, and you’ll think me stupid, but under my pillow is one of your T-shirts. It’s there so I can smell you in bed with me. Sometimes when I wake up because I heard a noise in the house, the only way I can get back to sleep is to hold it over my face. Amy asks about you all the time, and that hurts. And then, on top of all that, there is this thing about the Y2K bug.”
Rick had to bite his lip. In the old days, he would have ridiculed her for being silly, he was fed up with the whole doom and gloom thing that bordered on mass hysteria. “What about it?”
“Well, what if everything does shut down, like some are saying? They are warning that all planes will be grounded, and trains won’t be running. Power could go off, gas supplies could end, the list is endless what if all the computers that look after the American and Russian nuclear missiles go haywire and we have World War Three?”
He stared at her, dumfounded. Is she for real?
Rick watched as she held back real tears, and he was reminded what a gentle soul she was. He stood and walked around the table and her eyes never left his. He squatted beside her and wrapped his arms around her and she cradled her head in the crook of his neck. He felt her tremble as she cried, she was obviously scared and lonely.
More than ever Rick realized how wrong and bad he had been, to have mistreated her, and not just over the affair, it had been lots of other things too. He could smell her shampoo, and body spray, and the essence that was her. She shuddered slightly, and he could feel it throughout her body.
“Baby, you don’t need to be scared, everything will be all right. We’ve got government IT guys working on our computers at work, and I was talking to one the other day. He said it’s all a load of rubbish, and that it’s all scare tactics by businesses selling solutions. With all the brains that they have with the US and Russian governments, do you honestly think we would go to war because the clocks stop working inside missile launch controllers? Honestly, love, you don’t have to worry.”
She lifted her head off his shoulder and blinked back tears. She looked at him before answering. “Rick, I gave up my life and career to be with you. We had our daughter, and yes it wasn’t perfect. But, at least you were here at night, and I felt safe. Then my secure little piece of the world was destroyed, by you, and I hated you for what you did to me. But the worst thing was that after you left I felt scared all the time, especially at night. Every little creak and groan the house made. Every time Amy fell over and hurt herself, every time I see you on the TV with the re-enactments, looking for this killer. At night, I would lock the house, then I’d have to get up out of bed and check to make sure I had done it properly. This used to be my haven, Rick, and now it’s my worst nightmare.”
“Let me come back, Jules. I’ve learned my lesson, believe me I have, I will never let you down again.”
“But, how will I ever be able to trust you? If you call me to say you are working late, how will I know you are? I will think of you off with another Angie, giving you whatever it is that I can’t.”
He shook his head. “I know trust will be an issue, and probably there isn’t anything I can say that will make that better overnight. Trust is earned, never given, but I swear to you, I will never allow another Angie to happen.”
Another tear rolled down her cheek. “I know you missed the sex, I suppose I’m wired differently. I miss the closeness, the intimacy, and the talking to each other. My days are boring being just a mother and housewife, but yours…you chase criminals, and are trying to make the world a safer place, and I love that about you. I don’t want to be shut out of that.”
“I understand that now. Take me back Jules, please? I’ve missed you and Amy so much.”
She nodded, and he cuddled her again, not daring to speak, not trusting his voice wouldn’t break, and worried that he would say something to ruin his chance to find his balance in the world again.
Chapter 4: My Memoir Entry - I Spy, With My Little Eye
So, there it was, me: a super star, featured in all the papers and on TV. I can’t describe, dear reader, how it all made me feel, but I shall try.
They said she was my first; the body in a suitcase. What a laugh I had at that. There had been others. Because I know you are paying such close attention, dear reader, I shall tell you about all of them.
****
My father’s moods got worse as I got older. Previously, Dad got into his more distant and violent phases once every two or three months or so. Well, slowly, they became more frequent, and unpredictable.
During the days, when he worked in the shop dealing with customers, he was often friendly, even flirtatious with the housewife customers, sometimes. I thought people came in for a chat with him, rather than because his meat was cheaper, or even particularly good; after all, within reason, meat is meat, right? But when he was alone with me, he would often get a faraway look in his eyes and tell me how lucky I was. That was always a precursor for a beating.
There was no rhyme or reason to it. It wasn’t as if I did one thing that set him off. If it had been, believe me, I would have been very careful not to do it. No, it could be all manner of trivial things that set him off, from asking him a question about the weather, to getting a word wrong in a book.
I think I was probably about six or so when I did that. I had brought home from school that day’s reading book, which was to be done with a parent. The story was about a caterpillar who ate cake, lots of different types, and I think it was a lemon one I called orange. I admit I didn’t read the word, I wasn’t that dumb, I guessed it from the picture, and, I guessed wrong.
It was summer, and I had my summer pajamas on, as I was ready for bed. That meant it was shorts and a T-shirt. That’s why the first slap on my bare
thigh hurt so much; I didn’t have any covering over the skin. It took me by surprise. There was no faraway look or any warning. I was reading, and suddenly SLAP. It took my breath away, the pain was so sudden and intense, I wet myself right there on his lap.
That made him worse. The slaps became punches, before he carried me to my room and threw me on the bed before storming out. But the next morning it was as if nothing had happened. At breakfast, he told me to cheer up: it was a beautiful day, or some such thing. That, was even scarier than the beatings. One time he took me to the hospital with a suspected broken arm, but all the way there he chatted like it was a sporting injury. But, I never had any interest in playing sport; I was studying when he grabbed my arm and dragged me into the living room because I had left a cup on the coffee table which had made a wet ring. Thankfully it wasn’t broken, just bruised and sprained, but I remember thinking, he didn’t know he had hurt me so badly.
I never knew what that day’s father would be like: loving and friendly, or distant and violent, with him telling me I was lucky. It got to the point, where I began to think that I was lucky. There, now you’ll agree with the newspapers when they tell you I’m insane. But, I stress that growing up, I didn’t know any different, for me it was my life, and, so far as I knew all kids were brought up that way. No one ever asked me if my father was abusing me, in fact, it’s true to say that even the word abuse, was not one which was used at school back then. No one cared, really, and so it continued with me thinking I was the one at fault, not my dad.
It’s not something that was discussed at school, and generally I could keep the bruises hidden from view. On occasions when I couldn’t for some reason I always lied: I had fallen over, been play fighting in the park, a ball hit me in the face, and so on.
It was just before my twelfth birthday when life as I knew it came to an end. On that Sunday morning, I got out of bed, and couldn’t find my father anywhere. I thought he must have been in the shop working, though that would be unusual for a Sunday. But, I soon discovered there wasn’t anywhere else he could be, so I went to look.
The family home adjoined the butcher shop through a long passage, which ran along the side of the cool room through a solid timber door with opaque glass panels. I entered the shop but he wasn’t there, so I turned to look at the massive door to the chiller, which was about ten centimeters thick. It was secured by a large chrome handle that took all my strength as a child to unlatch. Once I navigated the handle, it was quite an effort to open the door, because of its weight. The handle and latch had a hole which lined up, and dad kept his big sharpening steel hanging through. I don’t know why he did that, because it wasn’t as if he needed to keep the door locked; the carcasses couldn’t escape after all could they?
I think he kept the steel there just because it was a convenient place for it to hang, being within reach of the wooden carving block. But, in doing that, it effectively locked the door, and that was one of the combination of things that stuck in my memory. The image of the permanently locked door, led me to think that the cool room would make an excellent prison. The walls, being so heavily insulated, meant it was soundproofed; all the better to hide the screams. My dreams had a home, and they came thick and fast, with people I disliked I imagined hanging from the chain, as I cut them up with my knife.
Dad and I had been watching horror films together on Friday nights since I was nine, and they helped fuel my imagination. They had always been his favorite, and he let me stay up till very late at night, I think to keep him company, it was as if we were best mates, and I enjoyed those nights.
He had never just not been there when I woke up before, and I was scared. I searched the house twice before wondering if he was working in the shop, though why he would do that was beyond my comprehension; he’d never done it before on a Sunday. When I ventured to have a look, I noticed the steel wasn’t hanging through the handle, it was on the butcher’s block, and that was strange.
Is he in the cool room? If he is, should I go in?
I agonized over that question quivering with fear. You see, I knew that if I upset him he would hurt me again, and I certainly didn’t want that. I stood there, in my pajamas, with slippers on my feet, pondering for what seemed like ages. Eventually, I sighed. I needed to know, so I yanked on the door handle and flung it wide.
Oh, my God! There in the middle of the cool room hung a pig carcass. It had been stabbed, hacked, and chopped until it was just a bloody obliterated ghost of its former self. Bits and pieces of meat had been left hanging from what once was a carcass, and a long-bladed carving knife stuck out of its flank. It looked for all the world as if dad had tried to murder the pig.
You, dear reader, are probably thinking I was horrified? Shocked and surprised, yes, but horrified I wasn’t. It was, somewhat inspirational, and more than anything else I wanted to go and pull the blade out of the side of the pig and plunge it back in a few more times. So, I could be more like my father.
I did go and remove the knife, out of respect for dad. He would never intentionally leave one of his favorites like that, if he had been thinking straight. I closed the cool room door as I left, knife in hand, and slipped the steel sharpener back through the handle out of habit. Holding that piece of Sheffield Steel’s finest was a comfort, as I was alone, and frightened by what had happened to him.
Quite likely, though I can’t remember exactly now, I thought the knife would help me to be able to protect myself in a house where Dad had vanished. The monsters that had abducted my father could return for me at any moment and I could ward them off with it. Was I being melodramatic? Possibly. Having been drip fed a continual dose of horror films it was easy to think the worst.
So, there I was, in the house, with a mutilated pig carcass in the fridge, and a knife in my hand, alone for the first time in my life. My mother had run away while shopping, and my father had vanished.
I went back through to the house, sat on the couch where dad and I watched Zombie Terror and Dracula’s Minions, two nights before. The former was such a good movie; we had watched it a second time the night before. I thought about my options. Firstly, I could make my own breakfast, and wait it out. But if I did that, and dad came home with Croissants, it would lead to a beating for not waiting, so that was out. I looked up at the clock, and it said nine twenty-three, so I knew he wasn’t at church. At that thought, I broke out in a fit of the giggles. My dad in church? Now that was funny.
Then, out of the blue, I thought about the shed in the garden.
The back shed was a place that I was not permitted to go. Dad had threatened me with a fate worse than death if I did. A fate WORSE than death. How bad could that be? Did that mean that my eyes would be poked out, or my legs put through the mincing machine, or that I’d be hung upside down on dad’s cool room chain, and hacked to pieces like the poor pig? Was that realistic or even feasible? Of course, it wasn’t. But remember: I was a child who had a violent upbringing in conjunction with a vivid imagination fed by regular doses of horror films.
Still holding the knife in my hand, I went to the kitchen, put my hands on the sink, and hoisted myself up to look through the window out into the garden. I use the word garden with a certain amount of poetic license. Outside, a concrete path dissected two beds which had become long-since overgrown with weeds. The only other thing of note was a very old and overgrown lemon tree.
In the back corner stood an access gate which led out to the lane, which was shared with the neighbors. Fifty meters along that exited into the street. The gate hadn’t been opened in years. Over on the right-hand side sat the back shed I had been forbidden to enter. Constructed of corrugated iron, long since showing rust, with a window that had been boarded up and painted over with white enamel paint by dad a few years before. It always looked mysterious, especially in the dark. It was secured by an old oak door which had always been permanently padlocked with a big brass Yale. I knew inside resided dad’s big freezer, in which, he kept cuts of meat he had fro
zen before they had reached their use by date. This we sometimes ate, when dad felt like cooking a dinner, such as steak, lambs fry, or pork chops; the list went on. Dad never liked to throw anything away, as was evidenced by telling me how lucky I was to have toast and jam to eat for tea. If I was lucky to get toast, how fortunate was I to eat rump steak which had been frozen the day before its best by date?
I noticed, perched as I was high on the sink, that the shed door was open, wide open. And then my heart just about stopped. No one was supposed to leave dad’s shed door open, not even dad. All sorts of ridiculous fears raced through my head. What if criminals had come to break into the shed, and he had gone out to investigate, and been hurt? Maybe he was bleeding, close to death, laying just inside the shed door from a violent beating. How would I know if I didn’t investigate? But then, if I did, and dad was inside, working away, it would be another beating, or worse, for me. A fate worse than death, came back to me.
Unsure what to do, I went and sat back on the couch; my tummy rumbling with hunger. I agonized over going to investigate or making some toast. What seemed like an hour later, I realized that my father couldn’t be working out there. Firstly, he only worked in the shed while I was at school, and secondly, he would have been out long before, if he was just moving meat in or out of the freezer. There was nothing for it. I had to go and look.
Carrying my knife, just in case, I opened the back door, realizing as I did it had been unlocked. Therefore, my dad had to have come out that way. I was so scared though, that didn’t sink in through my subconscious until much later. I crept across the weeds in the beds, rather than the path, not daring for my foot steps to be heard. Lifting my feet high before bringing them down softly, I slowly made my way across to the shed. Even then the weeds made a scrunching noise.
Dad and I had watched a film a couple of weeks prior, I think it was called Killer Marines, and that morning, I felt and acted like a US Marine. When I reached the outhouse, I stood flat-backed against the wall, alongside the door, which was swinging in the breeze, twisting the knife in my hand. If someone other than my father had have come out, I swear I would have stabbed them, without blinking an eye.
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