Dare to Love

by Penny Dixon

  He could play me any colour he chose; red, yellow, pink, green. He’d say, ‘today is a red day my beauty,’ and for the whole day he was passion personified. Not just in the way he made love to me but in everything he did. Digging the garden, making the salad, practising his horn. Passion dripped from his finger tips, seeped out in his sweat, lingered in the air around him. On yellow days he’d talk; tell me again about his childhood, how he came to be obsessed with the sax, what he wanted for our future, his, mine, the kids. Orange days were when he wanted me to tell him about my work. How did I know what to say to a client that would make the difference? He’d say he envied my skill of getting into people’s heads to help them. He’d say he picked the right woman for his children. On orange days he validated me, endorsed all my choices, especially the one to marry him. On orange days I knew I’d picked the right man for my children.

  On blue days he was a different man. He didn’t need to tell me when we were in a blue day. On blue days everything I did was wrong. The way I spoke to the kids, the way I wore my hair, the way I cooked, the way I was trying to use my psychology on him to get into his head and mess him up. On blue days I’d lay low and pray for a red day. Then blue days began to extend into blue weeks and blue months and red days were few and far between.

  Then blue changed to purple; he added red to his blue. That’s when the mood swings were most extreme, the shouting most forceful, when I was the worst whore in the world and an unfit mother for his children. When the paranoia became most severe, I suggested help from one of my colleagues.

  ‘And have them feed everything back to you?’ he’d said with venom.

  I knew he was on the brink of a breakdown but he wouldn’t share whatever it was me. When he could no longer communicate verbally, when he disappeared for days without notice or explanation, I knew it was time to wrap up my rainbow in tissue paper and file it in the cupboard marked “memories”.

  I was ten years in self-imposed love exile. Ten years of raising my boys Chet, Lowell and Lewis. Of helping them come to terms with their father’s illness, assuring them they wouldn’t develop his condition. Ten years of helping them maintain their love for him and building my business. Moving on from schools counselling to self employed therapist. When I met Richard I was tired of being on my own, of doing everything by myself.

  He was everything Curtis wasn’t. Even, stable, dependable, reliable, steadfast, responsible. I met him at a business networking meeting. We’d exchanged cards and arranged a meeting to see how we could help each other. Although I was happily established with my own accountant, I thought I might have clients who would be interested in his services and he knew one or two people who could do with an MOT for their head.

  He was amusing in an understated kind of way. He had two failed marriages so wasn’t ready to rush into another, but liked to go out for meals, the theatre, cinema; and he liked to walk, ramble for miles across the English countryside. Curtis had been a sprinter. I could picture Richard walking slow measured steps, sure and steady, getting there in his own time. I thought of the tortoise and the hare. He was definitely not a hare.

  That’s how we began. I joined him on a few long walks, went for a few meals, the odd theatre visit and slowly we drifted together. No whirlwind. He was no saxophonist. Didn’t play an instrument but if he did, it would be double bass. He kept the rhythm of our relationship. I discovered green with Richard; a steady step. There were no red days, but no blue or purple ones either.

  I got to know him slowly, tested him out on my friends and finally introduced him to my children. Everything about us was measured. I was taking no chances. When Lewis left for university, it seemed logical for us to move in together. They’d all flown the nest, all confident young men making their way in the world. Job done. Marriage made sense. I accepted I was marrying someone who wouldn’t light up the sky but who I could rely on to be there when I needed him. I’m not the first person to choose stability over passion, and I’m pretty certain I won’t be the last. Yet here I was, six weeks into my marriage with my world upside down. Living with a man I no longer knew. Waiting for the man I’d grown to love to come back home and tell me I’d made a mistake, that those photos weren’t him.

  So I grieved my missing husband in silence. After three days I came home to find him in the kitchen cooking. He’d changed out of his suit into jeans and a T-shirt, his tan from our honeymoon still strong against the white T-shirt.

  ‘I’m cooking.’ A redundant statement, as I could smell the lemon and ginger chicken. His speciality, the one he makes for me on special occasions. I dropped my keys into my bag.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Yes I know, that’s why I’ve come back.’

  He was a small contrite child. I wanted to hug him, to tell him everything was going to be all right. Then I thought of my sons. What if it had been one of them? I shuddered, but managed to keep my voice even. I’m used to being the soap that coaxes the dirt out of people’s laundry, the private Jerry Springer, Ricky Lake, Jeremy Kyle, Trisha, for those who can pay. But I’ve learned how to leave it at work. At the end of the day, I wash my hands and re-apply my make-up. It’s my ritual to sever the links between my client’s issues and my own. I don’t take it home. I haven’t learned how to do that when it’s in my house.

  ‘I’m going to change.’

  ‘Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.’

  I change out of my suit then lay on the bed looking up at the ceiling, at the glass and steel lamp shade I didn’t think would work in this room, but which fitted the clean lines of the walls and the slate and blue soft furnishings. There were so many questions I wanted to ask. So many things I wanted to say to him, but I couldn’t think of where to start. What one question could I begin with that would extract an acceptable truth. And where to go from there? I was jumping the gun; trying to do in a few minutes something I hadn’t managed in the last three days. Seeing Richard again made it even more implausible. How could it have been him?

  ‘It’s on the table,’ he shouted up. Like he always did. Like everything was normal. I made my way down to the dining room. He’d plated the meal. Chicken, broccoli, carrots and Charlotte potatoes. Amazing what details we choose to remember. The potatoes were a bit too crunchy, could have boiled for a few more minutes. I didn’t mention this; there were more important things to discuss.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ I launched straight in. I had no appetite for the food; couldn’t eat while this massive elephant’s dung sat on the table between us.

  He pushed a potato around with his fork, gave it his full attention.

  ‘Like I said, I was at a party, I was drunk, was probably high. I could never take the smokes.’ His head dropped lower with each word till he was barely audible.

  ‘What happened?’ He wasn’t going to get away with the “I don’t remember” line.

  ‘Mick invited me to a party some of his friends were giving. I didn’t…’

  ‘How long ago?’ I was impatient.

  ‘About 20 years.’

  ‘You’ve had those photos for 20 years?’ I was almost speechless. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that at least it wasn’t while he was with me or angry that he’d held on to them for so long.

  ‘Please, Josi, I’d forgotten about them,’ he pleaded to be understood, to be believed.

  ‘Why did you keep them?’

  ‘When I got them in the post, the first thing I thought was that someone was trying to blackmail me.’

  ‘So you kept them. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would you keep them?’

  ‘I didn’t know where they’d come from, there was no note in the envelope, just the pictures.’

  I still didn’t get it. ‘Why keep them?’

  ‘I panicked, just thought it best to hide them. That’s why they were up in the loft.’

  ‘But you’ve carried that box from one house to the other, had that box through two marriages.
Did it never occur to you to get rid of them?’ I knew I was shouting, knew as I mentioned his other wives that I was angry that they didn’t have to live through this. Or did they? Then the question I didn’t want to ask flew out like a stray bullet.

  ‘Are you gay?’

  ‘What! God no! How could you think…’

  ‘Bi?’

  ‘No, Josi, I’m not bi, not gay, never fancied men.’

  ‘Just boys!’ I couldn’t stop myself. ‘You couldn’t deal with the real thing so you had little boys suck you off.’ The knife was in and I kept twisting. ‘Did you do anything else with him?’

  ‘Like what?’ His face was wide open with innocence.

  ‘Like bugger him. Did you bugger him Richard?’

  ‘Please don’t shout Josi,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Why, afraid the neighbours will find out what a pervert you are?’

  ‘This isn’t working.’ He got up, threw the serviette onto his plate of untouched food, grabbed his car keys from the kitchen and left.

  I stared at the space where he’d been, looked into where his head would have been and admitted, ‘I didn’t handle that very well, did I?’

  He came back two days later. He hadn’t been to work, had gone to stay with his parents in Weymouth. Had told them he was on a job down there that was taking longer than he’d planned. I was beginning to see the side of him that could lie, albeit not very well. I didn’t know whether his parents had been convinced.

  We had another go. In the lounge opposite each other, me in the armchair, him on the settee. I had a glass of white wine, him a glass of water. I was calmer. He’d had time to refine his story.

  He’d been invited to a stag night. He was a little apprehensive but decided to go.

  ‘You have to understand Josi, I didn’t have many friends. Still don’t for that matter. I’d never been invited to a stag do before. I didn’t really know what to expect.’

  ‘There’s always drinking, lots of it.’ I could feel myself becoming irritated. I didn’t want to hear his excuses masquerading as reasons.

  He took a deep breath, blew it out hard through his mouth, clenched and released his fists, searched his mind for the right words, like he was trying to explain it to himself as well as to me.

  ‘We went to a few pubs. I was on halves but they were taking the piss out of me so I moved up to pints. I just couldn’t get them down as quickly as the other guys. By the time the pubs were closing someone suggested a party. I’d rather have gone home but everyone else was going so I went.’

  ‘You could have called a taxi, could have made up a reason to leave.’

  ‘Josi, I was trying to fit in. I knew I had a reputation for being a geek, head always in figures. For once I wanted to just do what everyone else was doing.’ He took a sip of his drink, breathed in deeply again.

  I watched him over the rim of my glass, trying to decide if I believed him.

  ‘When we got to the house where the party was, there were about three or four boys watching TV in the lounge. There was no music, no balloons, no food, none of the things you’d expect at a party. Mick introduced us to the boys as special friends of his who were staying with him for a while.

  ‘Didn’t you think it was odd that a man was introducing boys as his friends?’

  ‘I was drunk by then, he could have told me they were Martian babies and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain how you came to…’

  ‘Let me tell this as I remember it Josi,’ he interrupted me.

  ‘Mick went to got some beers from the fridge and handed them round. He gave some to the boys.’

  ‘Didn’t you think that was odd? The boy looked so young, not more than ten.’

  ‘I don’t know what I thought. Someone passed round a joint and I took a drag.’

  ‘You don’t smoke!’

  ‘I used to.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘I’d given it up long before I met you.’

  ‘But you never told me you did. You’ve never had a good word to say about smokers.’

  ‘Because I know how weak smokers are. I was one of them, lacking will power.’

  ‘So what made you give up?’

  ‘Can we stick to this please, Josi?’ His eyes were closed tightly, like he was watching a film and didn’t want to lose his place.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Mick explained that the boys were Boy Scouts and were trying to earn some money for Bob a Job week.

  ‘Was it Bob-a-Job week?

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’d done lots of jobs around the house and garden but they were trying to bring in the biggest amount this year and had offered to do something very, very special. We would be helping a good cause by supporting them.’

  I was still. He was tense; his long back straight, erect, like a pole had been inserted into his spine. He kept his eyes closed and looked straight ahead. I guessed he didn’t want to see the look of disgust on my face.

  ‘Mick explained that they were looking for big donations as this was a very special job.’ He squeezed the words out.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A hundred pounds.’

  ‘What! Didn’t you smell a rat?’

  ‘Josi, I don’t have your background. I’m an accountant and one who’s lead a sheltered life to boot. There were things I didn’t know about. Things that didn’t come into my world.’

  ‘But they did though, didn’t they?’

  ‘Do you want me to go on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Two of the boys left the lounge and two of the guys followed them. They came back a while later. The other two boys left the room. Mick nodded at me. “Your turn mate, room top of the stairs and turn right.” I raised my eyebrows. He just said, “Don’t keep the boy waiting.” Then as I staggered out of the room he shouted, “Enjoy!”

  I took a gulp of wine. Richard opened his eyes and closed them again, back to his movie.

  ‘The rest is a bit blurred.’ He squeezed his eyes tight as though trying to see more clearly.

  ‘It was a small bedroom with only a night light. The boy immediately started to take off my belt. I backed away and asked him what he was doing. “This is the job, sir,” he said.

  “What job?” I stopped his hand. He looked surprised. “The bob-a-job sir. It’s a blow job.”

  I started to leave the room. I think I told him he wasn’t doing that to me. He started to cry, said he would get into trouble and wouldn’t get the same amount of money as the other boys if I didn’t let him do it.’

  He fell silent. He was struggling to breathe. This is the point at which I’d offer a sympathetic word to a client, tell them to breathe, to take their time, to let it go. But no words came out. I watched my husband in horror, trying not to picture him in that darkened room with that crying boy. The silence stretched out like a long road before us. Finally I asked the question I knew the answer to.

  ‘So you let him give you a blow job?’

  The pain of the moment was carved into every line on his face. His mouth twisted into a strange contorted mask from which escaped the muted, almost indistinct ‘Yes’.

  The pole was yanked from his spine as he crumpled into the settee, folding in on himself like a detonated building, collapsing from the inside.

  I got up and went to wash my face. When I came back he hadn’t moved, looked like he could have stayed there forever, drained of the will or the means to move. I imagined if I lifted his hand it would flop like a rag doll. I sat in his silence for a while before eventually asking, with a little more compassion than I expected, ‘And the photos?’

  It took him a while to focus, like he was dragging himself up from a very deep dive and had to wait till he could breathe normally again. That too quick a return would give him the bends, wrack his already ravaged body with more pain. I waited till he returned to the room and as
ked again.

  ‘And the photos?’

  ‘They arrived a week later. They must have got the camera set up somewhere in the room because no one came in.’

  ‘Richard. Look at me.’ It came out as an order, harsher than I’d intended. I needed to see his eyes when he answered the next question. I saw the slight film of tears which magnified the blue of his eyes threatening to spill over but I still asked, ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  I didn’t feel good seeing the pain drift across his eyes, like so many storm clouds building and dissolving and building again. The pain that said, ‘I don’t know how you could ask me that?’ Although I could see the answer in his eyes, I still needed to hear him say, ‘No, Josi. I didn’t enjoy it.’

  He found his will to move. Said he felt claustrophobic, needed some fresh air. He was gone for over three hours. When he returned, I was in one of the spare rooms, told him I needed some space to work out what I felt and what I needed to do.

  In any relationship we accept there’ll be things we don’t understand but will accept. I tell my clients if they have eighty percent of what they want in the relationship, in the person, then it stands a good chance of being successful; if both parties are prepared to put in the requisite effort, at worst to keep it at eighty percent, but better still to keep increasing the percentage.

  At the point we got married we were on a workable eighty-five percent, with the anticipation of building and increasing our fraction. Now there’s a big dent in that sum. This wasn’t just something we could ease into over time. Like new shoes, rubbing along with each other till we found a good fit. The shoes are too tight now, not fitting either of us. We could shoe horn ourselves into some form of fit, but from experience I knew that ill-fitting shoes eventually deform feet, necessitating major remedial surgery. A good number of my clients come to see me when, after years of shoe horning, their relationships have malformed them, squeezed then into smaller and smaller lives, crushed their dreams, shrivelled their hopes, withered their plans, twisted their soul and desiccated their spirit.