Would You Believe Him?

by Jack Hollinson

  Charles left the house feeling better for doing his evil deed. He would teach Barry not to get the better of him.

  Barry had tried very hard to forget his worries about the house whilst he was at his mother’s and had, to a large extent, succeeded - that was until they were on the way back. His little car was buzzing quite well and they made the 140-mile journey in just under three hours. However, Barry was still worried - had the house burnt down? Had they been burgled?

  They drew up outside and Barry was relieved to see that everything seemed to be in order. They went in and unpacked and got back into their normal routine.

  The next day Shu went to work, Dongmei to school, Sara to the childminder and Barry worked in his office. Things seemed to be fine for the next few weeks until Barry started noticing Dongmei and her movements. Every morning, she would come to breakfast after the family had eaten theirs and this gave her the chance to secretly slip something into the milk.

  Barry noticed that his love life was again deteriorating for he wasn’t getting the usual feeling when climaxing and Shu seemed particularly frigid at that time. He had a strange pain when taking some vitamin pills and he felt quite bad so he sent the pills back to the manufacturer - no reply. He then went to a chemist to ask them what could be wrong and he was told that the pills should be in order but he might have been affected if he was also taking other medicine. That was it! Other medicine! Dongmei must be poisoning his food, but how could he catch her?

  First of all, he tried searching her room for the drug, but it was in such a mess, with women’s toiletries everywhere, that he found nothing. Next, he tried to catch her putting the drug into the milk at breakfast-time by darting into the dining room when she was alone. After a few days, she seemed to be waiting for him to come in, so Barry thought it would be better to limit the amount of milk on the table at breakfast by putting just the quantity she required in a jug and throwing away the remainder.

  This seemed to work and Barry’s pains disappeared but the act of chasing around watching Dongmei and controlling the milk became too much. He went to Shu and told her of his suspicions.

  ‘What are you talking about? Why would Dongmei want to hurt you?’ Shu had a look of disbelief on her face.

  ‘One reason - money. I’ve told you how Charles uses people and that’s what he is doing.’

  ‘But how would he know about Dongmei?’

  ‘Carol is one of his ex-wives relations so she must have told him,’ Shu looked away, not wishing to say anymore.

  ‘I’m getting the same pains, Shu, pains that I last had when I was at Triton’s. Oh, don’t tell me - I can see that you don’t believe me. Don’t you feel any slight pain?’ Shu shook her head.

  ‘Well, you’re lucky. Why don’t you ever believe me? What a marriage! A wife who thinks her husband is always lying!’

  ‘I don’t think you’re lying - just wrong.’

  With that, Barry stormed out of the room and went up to his office. There was no chance of getting Shu’s help again - so what could he do? He couldn’t go on like this, so why not confront Dongmei and try to force the truth out of her?

  He decided that this was his only option so he waited until a few days later, when Sara was in her cot. Shu wasn’t home and Dongmei was in her room.

  Barry summoned up all his courage and burst into her room, startling Dongmei.

  ‘Dongmei, I have a question to ask you and I want the truth. Why are you putting a drug into the milk?’

  Dongmei had a puzzled look on her face.

  ‘I don’t understand,’

  ‘Ever since we came back from my mother’s, I have been getting funny pains. Now what have you been doing?’

  Dongmei’s face was as tough as a rock.

  ‘I’ve done nothing, nothing.’

  ‘Look, I know how you do it at breakfast. When nobody is around, you poison the milk.’

  Barry could see that Dongmei was not going to budge. If only he had had Shu’s support he would have had more power to threaten to throw her out, or make her stay in her room, but now, he felt that he’d lost. Dongmei was too good at deceit to buckle

  Barry turned to go.

  ‘Besides, you never saw me,’ said Dongmei, gloating. Barry turned on her.

  ‘So you admit it. You did it but I didn’t see you!’ Dongmei looked slightly rattled.

  ‘No, no, I mean if you had seen me, you’d have proof but you didn’t, so no proof.’

  ‘Bitch!’ said Barry, as he walked downstairs. At that moment, Shu came home.

  ‘I’ve been speaking to Dongmei and she as near as dammit admitted that she’s been poisoning the milk.’

  ‘Oh no. What have you done?’ Shu was worried, not about what Barry had worked out, but about how Dongmei felt.

  ‘Listen, she said that I didn’t see her, meaning that she did it but I didn’t see her do it. Can’t you understand?’

  Barry had forgotten Shu’s idea of always wishing to seem nice to others. She would often do lots of things for a stranger to leave them with a good impression of herself and so she could remain in their good books. This was what Shu was like now and she felt that she had no honour in front of Dongmei.

  She dashed upstairs to talk it over with her leaving Barry feeling betrayed, once more.

  He just sat in the lounge feeling so alone, but he knew he was right.

  Shu returned.

  ‘You must go and apologise for she is deeply upset.’

  ‘But I know she’s lying’

  Shu burst into tears.

  ‘She wants to phone home. What will my family think?’

  Barry could see that things never worked out like the detective stories on the television. He looked at his weeping wife and could do nothing else but to go and apologise. Maybe, he thought, if he piled on the misery of the accident and the brain damage story that might make Dongmei confess. He tried this - to make her feel sorry for him, but he looked at her hard face - no chance.

  That little episode brought more grief into his and Shu’s lives and she rang Japan from work and tried to explain the situation. She felt angry and upset with Barry so the bank, unknowingly, paid for a thirty-minute international, private conversation.

  The incident had one good outcome, however, because Dongmei said that she felt embarrassed and she had decided to move out to other digs. Barry was so pleased that he even helped her and took her by car to her new address. He took her belongings to her room and said a very relieved ‘goodbye’ and hoped and prayed that he would never see her again which almost came true except that Dongmei’s mother came over from Japan and Shu invited them around for tea.

  Barry wasn’t too worried and enjoyed the mother’s company. She even had him singing a nursery rhyme to Sara and complimented him on his voice. They left with the mother hoping to see them again. Fat chance, thought Barry.

  Barry’s clients were quite a long way from him so when he went to see them - about twice per year - he liked to stay overnight at a bed and breakfast.

  ‘Hello Barry,’ said Rod on the phone, one day. ‘I would like to see you to discuss our recent marketing campaign and what we could use for the next one. Could you come down to see me, next week?’

  ‘Certainly, Rod. Let me have a quick look at my diary, um, here we are, would Tuesday be alright?’

  ‘Would prefer to see you on Wednesday, actually. Could you make that day?’

  ‘Yes. That’s fine! I’ll look forward to seeing you at 10 in the morning.’

  ‘OK. When will you come down? You’ll have to start out very early if you drive down on the same day.’

  ‘Yes - it would be a ‘crack of dawn’ start, wouldn’t it? No, I’ll stay in a B&B somewhere close to you.’

  ‘Do you have a favourite place where you usually stay,’ said
Rod inquisitively.

  ‘No, but I have got hold of this book that has details of a wide selection of Guest Houses in your area, so I’ll just pick one at random.’ Barry was taken aback, a little, at this interest by Rod of where he would be staying. Why was he so curious?

  ‘Ok, then, I’ll see you next week.’ Rod hung up.

  Barry puzzled, for a while, but then put the matter to the back of his mind and found a cheap guest house in the local area of his client. When Shu came home, he toyed with the idea of mentioning the telephone conversation with her. No - he thought - it was just his ‘idea’ - no proof so he had better keep quiet.

  On the next Tuesday, he set off in the afternoon and had quite a comfortable journey down. He found the guest house easily and was made very welcome. He’d had a bite to eat on the journey so he just lazed the night away and had a good sleep in a very comfortable bed.

  The next day, he went down for breakfast and saw that he was the only guest and there was a huge jug of milk on the table. Barry looked at the jug and thought of the other times that he had ‘felt pain’ after drinking tea or coffee at his previous job and suddenly became suspicious.

  ‘I don’t think that I’ll have any cereal, today’, he told the owner of the guest house, ‘just toast’. He had an unusually small breakfast, for him, and finished it off with some orange juice. He got ready to go and paid for the stay and was off to the clients. He tried to see if he had any strange feelings to see if anything had been put in the food that he ate, but felt nothing so presumed that, if anything was there, it would have been in the milk.

  His meeting with Rod was fairly normal, just going through past marketing campaigns and planning some more for the future.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ said Rod. ‘I have got to go to a meeting, now so you can have an early start home.’

  ‘Oh, it’s good to get on the road - out of the office,’ said Barry. ‘I’ll have to come down again, soon!’

  With that, he made his way to the car and travelled the 200 miles back to his home.

  The next day, he was just sorting out all of his papers when the phone rang.

  Barry answered it and it was Rod.

  ‘Hello Barry, its Rod.’

  ‘Hello, Rod. How can I be of service?’

  ‘Well, I just wanted to check that you got back, safely. I mean, how did you feel?’

  Before thinking, Barry said, ‘Oh I felt great, driving down all those dual carriageways and motorways with the sun shining down and my favourite music playing on the CD. Yes, it was a pleasant drive, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, good, I just wanted to check. I’ll speak to you soon, goodbye’ and Rod hung up.

  The moment he put the phone down, Barry started thinking. Why was he so interested in ‘how Barry felt’? Was Rod in-league with Charles? Barry had to discuss it with someone so he had to talk with Shu.

  Barry relayed the story trying to make her feel just that bit suspicious.

  ‘Oh, not again, Barry!’ Shu scolded. ‘You are letting your thoughts run away with you. Look, I can’t take any more of this. If you have suspicions, please keep them to yourself. I can’t deal with it - alright.’

  Barry felt almost betrayed. Why did she not see the obvious truth? He went up to his office. Better wait until I have concrete proof, he thought to himself then. I’ll show her.

  Life continued without further changes for several months. Sara was ten months old and just starting to show her own unique character. Barry thought that the first child looked like the father and acted like the mother and the second was the reverse, so he studied Sara carefully to see if she looked like him. He couldn’t see a resemblance so decided to wait and see if any similarities would show themselves. He continued to take Sara to the child-minder but she was, also, a very talkative lady and would keep Barry chatting for five or ten minutes both morning and afternoon. Barry didn’t mind at first, but it was when her conversation included talk of ‘It’s best to leave your wife while the children are young’, that got him thinking. Not another female who fancied him, he wondered in disbelief.

  He had made a promise to himself to stay with Shu and saw no reason to break it. He’d heard of so many people leaving their partners to go off with someone else who they didn’t really know. When they had found out the bad as well as the good points, they had realised that they would have been better off staying with the first partner.

  Barry had spent two years finding out about Shu before he married her and there was no way he would go with anyone else after such a such a short time and besides, no one he’d met looked as stunning as Shu!

  Barry wondered if the nursery had any vacancies yet and so he decided to ring them to find out. His luck must have been in as one space had just become vacant. Barry was overjoyed and eagerly told Shu the news. She couldn’t understand the reason for the joy, but, then again, she wouldn’t.

  ‘Barry,’ she said, the same evening. ‘I would like to take Sara to Japan to see my mother.’

  ‘Why? She saw her when she was born, didn’t she?’

  ‘Well, she’s getting older now and I would like her to see Sara again.’

  ‘When do you want to go?’

  ‘This winter when it’s not so cold in Japan - we’ll have a good time.’

  Barry worried over this for a few days and then decided that she wasn’t going, but how could be persuade her? He made this decision, mainly because he no longer fully trusted Carol. She had sent Dongmei to them, who he thought had put the poison in the food, so what would she do to Shu and Sara? No, he wasn’t going to allow it.

  ‘I don’t really want you to take Sara to Japan. She’s too young,’ said Barry one evening, trying to exert some authority.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be okay. Oh, come on, Barry, please. Your mother has seen her often enough, so why not mine?’

  ‘My mother is a little closer, isn’t she?’

  Shu sat with a grim look on her face.

  ‘I want to take her, just once, and then not again for a long time. Oh, please, Barry.’

  Barry didn’t have much ammunition left up his sleeve and wondered how he could stop her.

  ‘I would like to try for another child soon,’ he said. ‘You are over thirty-five, now, when it starts to get more dangerous for women to bear healthy children.’

  ‘The doctor said I was made for having children. I’ll be fit to have babies until I’m forty-five!’

  ‘Bloody doctor,’ murmured Barry, but he made up his mind to try for a child again straight away. If Shu still believed that Charles wasn’t to blame for having delayed Sara’s birth and that it was just their problem, she wouldn’t worry about not using any form of contraception to prevent her from getting pregnant. She would probably expect another wait of a year or more before she was successfully fertilised but Barry knew otherwise.

  He timed the love sessions to coincide with her ovulation and although Shu was not too eager, she responded to Barry all the same.

  A month passed.

  ‘Shu, how are you doing? Any sign of your period yet?’ was the question always asked by Barry.

  ‘No, not yet, but it might just be a late period.’ Shu didn’t want to believe that she had fallen pregnant again so quickly. She would not be able to go to Japan if she was because she would then be five months into the pregnancy and not eager to fly so far in case there were any problems.

  Eight weeks passed.

  Shu decided to have another test at the doctors and she was pregnant. Barry was over the moon at hearing the news for he thought that everyone must believe his accusations now. Shu was the first to squash those thoughts.

  ‘No, I’m sorry Barry, but he’s your Uncle - family. He couldn’t have done this.’

  ‘But it’s so obvious. I was working with him... feeling pain
s... no child. I stopped eating at Triton’s and you got pregnant. Now I don’t see him and you get pregnant - first time!’

  ‘Well maybe it was something in the food...’

  ‘Yes - exactly!’

  ‘... that you’re allergic to.’

  ‘What - something peculiar in the water? Then why don’t others have this problem? I’ve not heard of any pollutants in the water supply in that area!’

  Shu turned away - turned her back on him - and concentrated on something else so Barry then telephoned his mother.

  ‘Yes, okay dear, but you must remember our friends, Ron and Lisa, who had the same problem as you conceiving the first child and the second was quick. It was only when Lisa changed jobs that she became pregnant the first time. You see, she was very nervous in one job and this prevented her from becoming pregnant and then she was at home, so the next baby came along quickly.’

  ‘But Mother, in our case, the opposite is true. Shu had just found a new job and I was just going to start working on my own and we both couldn’t have been in a more nervous state - and Sara was conceived and now, she gets pregnant again, first time. Oh, why don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Yes I do, darling, I do. Just be glad that you’ve been so lucky in getting your second child started.’

  Barry was beginning to feel lost and patronised. He had last spoken to his two brothers when they were all up at his mother’s. They had been in Ivan’s car going home from a pub and Ivan had clearly stated his feelings.

  ‘Listen, he’s my Uncle. If he actually comes to us and says that he did these things, I’ll believe you, but not until then.’

  Barry had looked at Anthony. ‘Yeah, I’ll go along with that,’ he said.

  But it’s so clear, so obvious, thought Barry as he sat in silence until they had reached his brother’s house. He had a clear decision to make. He could forgive his brothers for their naivety or he could make a scene, shout at them and make permanent enemies so he decided upon the former course of action. He thought it may be best to keep speaking to both brothers for any possible help in the future that they may be able to give.