by Penny Jordan
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Looking back, Faye acknowledged that she had been lucky, in some ways at least. Her foster parents had been marvellous, giving her far more love than she had ever been able to give them. In some ways it was as though the shock of discovering that her mother had known all along what was happening to her, had known and done nothing to help her, to save her, had traumatised her to such an extent that that part of her which had once responded emotionally to others had been totally destroyed.
She was conscious of the love and care she was being given, but it was as though an invisible wall separated her from other people, preventing her from reaching out and responding to them.
Shockingly perhaps in some ways, her anger and bitterness against her mother were far stronger than her feelings against her stepfather.
For the remainder of her teens she lived in a kind of limbo… a state of nothingness during which she went to school—a new school where no one knew what had happened to her—worked hard, and did so well in her exams that she was able to apply to go to university.
During those years she knew that on the surface she must have made all the right responses, done the normal things, but inside—inwardly… Ah, that was a different story. No doubt from the best possible motives, her past and what had happened to her was something that was never discussed by her foster parents, and so as she grew towards maturity, and her male peers made advances towards her, Faye had no way of dealing with the disgust and fear she felt towards these boys.
If she went out at all it was only with a group of girls, and only when she was completely sure that she was not going to be paired off with someone.
Only once since she went to live with her foster parents did she allow anyone male to touch her, and that was by accident at the eighteenth birthday party of a school-friend, when she was caught off guard and found herself in the clumsy embrace of a fellow pupil, who attempted to kiss her.
She went rigid in his arms, paralysed with fear and sick disgust. Fortunately he was too inexperienced to be aware of her feelings, and when she pushed him away he let her go.
She went home immediately afterwards, locking herself in her bathroom, showering and scrubbing her body, until her flesh was almost raw.
Up until then she had not allowed herself to think about her future… about what her life would be; but now for the first time she did, and, lying in bed, the glimmer of the night light she could not bear to be without illuminating the darkness, she allowed herself to confront the truth.
She could never be as other girls; she could never tease, flirt, or indulge in sexual experimentation. She could never make love. Make love… the very words made her want to scream with savage fury.
None of them, not one single one of her friends when they giggled over who had done what and with whom and what it had been like, and what it would be like really to 'do it', had any idea of what sex actually was…of how men used it…of how filthy and degrading the whole thing was… How could any woman actually like it, actually want...?
Faye was an intelligent girl. She read widely; after all, she had the time… when other girls were out on dates and she was on her own. She knew that her view of men, of sex, was warped by her experiences. She knew that what she read, what she heard could not all be made up, but the thought of allowing anyone, any man at all to do to her what her stepfather had once done made her sick with loathing and disgust.
But worst of all was her own feeling of guilt, her destructive inner belief that somehow she had been responsible for what had happened, that somehow she had invited it, encouraged it… As though somehow deep inside herself she was bad, wicked…as though those heated, thick, disgusting words her stepfather had moaned as he punished her for her wickedness were the truth.
It was while she was at university that other people first started noticing her aloofness towards men.
When she discovered what was being said about her— that she was frigid, that she was a lesbian—she withdrew further and further into herself, concentrating on getting her degree.
While she was in her final year her foster parents were killed in a car crash. She mourned their deaths, knowing how much they had genuinely cared for her, yet unable to feel anything more than a distant regret. That was the trouble, she acknowledged: she was unable to feel anything, anything at all.
Halfway through Faye's final year at university, one of her tutors left. His replacement, Jeremy Catesby, was thirty-five years old, married with two young children.
Right from the start Faye felt uneasy with him without being able to specify why. There was nothing in his manner towards her to make her feel threatened or uncomfortable. On the contrary. And unlike some of the male tutors he made no attempt to conceal his married state. There were family photographs on his desk, and he talked about his wife and children with warm affection.
Her fellow female students considered him dreamy and talked daringly about what it would be like to go to bed with him. As always during this sort of discussion Faye kept silent. She had a tutorial with Jeremy Catesby in the morning. She was beginning to dread them, but she was determined to get a first-class degree. She would need it in order to get a good job, since she was going to have to support herself through her life. Marriage was not for her. Nor children…
That latter knowledge hurt, but she dared not allow herself to dwell on why. Logic told her that it would have been impossible for her, a fourteen-year-old, to have brought up the baby she had conceived… that the decision of her doctor and social worker had been the right one…and yet she knew that something inside her would always ache for a child. Not just because of that child, but because it was an essential part of her nature. She had a deep-rooted need to nurture, to protect… and being denied the ability to satisfy that need brought yet another burden of bitter resentment.
Her tutorial went smoothly enough; she was a conscientious worker and once she obtained her degree she hoped to find work as an archivist, preferably in a capacity that meant she could withdraw from other people as much as possible.
When the tutorial was over she got up, collecting her books and papers as she did so. She was just walking towards the door when Jeremy Catesby said softly, 'No, don't go yet, Faye. There's something I want to discuss with you.'
Immediately she started to tremble, some deep prescient knowledge alerting her to danger. She wanted to run to the door and fling it open but she couldn't move.
Jeremy had come round from behind the desk and was standing in front of her. He was a tall, heavily muscled man with large sharp teeth which gave him a predatory, dangerous look, and he moved lithely and quietly. He smiled at her as he held out his hand.
'Come and sit down,' he invited her.
She wanted to refuse, ached to be able to do so, but he was standing between her and the door. If she didn't move he could easily reach out and touch her. The very thought made her shudder sickly, her knees almost buckling as she obeyed his instructions, picking the chair furthest away from any of the others.
'There's no need to look so apprehensive,' he told her, smiling at her, and then added, 'You know, Faye, you puzzle me. You're one of my best pupils. Conscientious… a hard worker. Normally when one of my students looks at me the way you're doing, it's because they know they're about to get a lecture on the standard of their work; but there is another side to being a tutor… a side concerned not so much with a student's academic life… but more with personal issues…'
He knew. Somehow or other he knew… Faye had started to sweat heavily, her heart pounding with sick horror. This was the fear she had carried around with her almost all her life. That somehow, someone would find out the truth about her and would use it, in the same way her stepfather had used it.
'You're a pretty girl, Faye… a beautiful girl, in fact, and yet… how shall I put this…? Well, let's just say that you appear to live the life of a nun.'
Faye felt her face burn. She wanted to scream out in protest at his invasio
n of her privacy… She hated the way he was looking at her… the rueful and yet calculating male smile that curved his mouth… A smile that suggested that her supposed nunlike state was a situation he had the power to remedy, and that she would be grateful to him for doing so.
'As your tutor—or one of them—I feel that it is my responsibility to ensure that my students derive much more from their time here at university than mere academic knowledge, and if they have any problems, any difficulties that prevent them from doing so then naturally I am concerned for them, and want to do all I can to help them.'
Faye couldn't bear to look at him. She felt hot and cold at the same time, burning up with hatred and anger, and yet frozen with fear. She wanted to hiss and spit at him like a small cat, to tell him just how wrong he was, to throw in his face the information that she wasn't the ignorant virgin he seemed to think; to tell him just how she had gained her sexual knowledge and how the gaining of it had made her feel about his sex; and yet at the same time she wanted to run from him and go on running, to hide herself away where she could be safe… where no one could pry and poke into her past… her pain.
'Sometimes in life we get ourselves into a situation through no fault of our own which becomes irksome… Sometimes we become the butt of unintentional, perhaps, but nevertheless cruel comment, and when we're young and just beginning to find our feet in the world, that's when we're most vulnerable. Especially in matters to do with sex…'
He was looking at her, Faye knew, but she could not bring herself to look back at him. She was terrified that if she did she would see in his eyes the same look she had seen so often in her stepfather's. She could hear already in his voice the purposefully mesmeric domination of the sexually aroused male, thick and hot like the male emissions of sex; and like those emissions the sound of his own voice seemed to give him immense pleasure.
'Of course you find it embarrassing… shocking perhaps to discuss such problems… even perhaps with your friends… You feel that they might laugh at you… make fun of you, and your virginity, which perhaps you've been brought up to think of as something you must retain until marriage at all costs, becomes a burden.
'What can you do? You're an intelligent girl. You know that among the male students there are bets being laid as to who could be the first to have you, and yet you've become aware that once you leave here… once you move out into the wider world, your virginity will become more irksome than ever.
'There is a solution.'
Faye could hear the amusement in his voice, the certainty, the assurance, the confidence… and beneath it she could also hear the hot feral note of male desire.
Somehow she managed to stand up, but as though he anticipated her he moved faster, coming to stand in front of her, to grasp her shoulders so that they were standing body to body.
Her books slipped from her hands, panic and nausea overwhelming her as he lowered his head towards her.
She reacted instinctively, raking his face with her nails, not once, but over and over again, so that he let her go almost immediately, swearing at her.
Faye barely heard him. She ran to the door, wrenching it open, almost colliding with the man coming down the corridor towards her. Behind her she heard Jeremy Catesby saying thickly, 'You stupid little bitch!'
But it didn't matter what he called her. Nothing mattered other than that she had escaped… that he hadn't done to her what her stepfather had done… that he hadn't touched her… hurt her… punished her.
In her room, she collapsed on her bed, shivering with reaction. She had made herself a dangerous enemy, she knew that. Jeremy Catesby was a vain man and wouldn't forgive her for what she had done, nor for rejecting him. But she didn't care. The thought of him touching her body… of anyone touching her body was so nauseating that anything was worth enduring to prevent that from happening.
Jeremy Catesby did punish her, tormenting her subtly and not so subtly. She heard a rumour circulating that she had propositioned him and that he had had to reject and reprimand her. She became the butt of the kind of jokes that made her soul cringe, and she was relieved rather than anything else to discover that she had been transferred to another tutor.
She was spending more and more time on her own, wanting only to get her degree and then to be free to conceal herself somewhere where no one could ever hurt or damage her again.
She met David for the first time four days after sitting her finals. She was in the university library looking up something when he came in and, obviously mistaking her for a member of the staff, asked her if she could help him.
Despite his height and breadth of shoulder, there was something about him that instantly reassured her. Something at once so gentle and unthreatening that she was drawn to it, like someone drawn to a soft cool breeze on an overheated day when the air was thick with sulphur and the promise of a storm.
Without even being aware of how it happened, Faye took a step towards him and then another.
He was looking, David told her, for books on medieval England with particular reference to village life. He went on to explain that it was a subject which particularly fascinated his mother and that he had promised her when he took up his lectureship that he would root around the university library to discover if there was anything which might be of interest to her.
So he was a lecturer. He didn't look like one. In fact, he didn't look like anyone she knew, Faye recognised. There was something about David that set him apart from others… something special… something she couldn't analyse, except to say that for the first time in her life she found herself wanting to reach out to another human being.
After she had directed David towards the appropriate shelves, she watched him discreetly and curiously, wondering what on earth it was about him that drew her so powerfully.
When he had his books he smiled at her again and thanked her, leaving her to wonder what magic he possessed that made him seem so different from other men.
She soon discovered that she wasn't alone in thinking him 'different'. 'Saint David' was his nickname among the students, who seemed to regard him with a mixture of contempt and affection.
His subject was geography, something which surprised Faye. She had automatically assumed that he must lecture in something like philosophy, without really knowing why.
What she didn't realise was that he had been the man she had almost run into when she escaped from Jeremy Catesby's room. David had recognised her, though, quickly realising his mistake in believing her to be one of the library staff. He too had heard the rumours circulating about her, but he knew of Jeremy Catesby's bad reputation at Oxford, and he also knew that his departure from his previous teaching post had been brought about by the rumoured pregnancy of one of his students.
Jeremy wasn't alone in having a penchant for teaching his female students more than mere academics, but there was a brutality about the man, a selfishness, a desire to dominate and inflict mental pain that went way beyond sexual desire.
David had heard about Jeremy's womanising at Oxford, where as a student his scope to indulge in his vice had been limited. Now, as a tutor… He felt sorry for Faye and viewed the circulating rumours with distaste and a growing dislike for Jeremy.
Unlike his colleague, David had no taste for seducing his students. One day he would marry. Cottingdean would need an heir… He smiled a little to himself at this thought. Cottingdean, so important in the lives of his parents, so much loved and cherished. One might almost have supposed he was the heir to a feudal kingdom, from his parents' attitude towards the house and its land.
Once, very gently, when he was in his teens, he had pointed out to his mother when she had been talking about the future, about the children he would have, that it was not essential that he should marry… that there was after all Sage, and that her children could just as easily inherit Cottingdean as his own.
His mother's reaction had been instantaneous and revealing. No, she had told him. Only his children… his son must inheri
t. Her vehemence had made him feel uncomfortable. He knew, of course, that he was her favourite child… knew it, and felt uncomfortable with that knowledge, doing everything he could to make up to his younger sister for the disparity in their parents' attitude towards them.
Yes, one day he would marry, and when he did he would like his wife to have the same cool reserve exhibited by the girl in the library. He sometimes found modern young women a little overpowering, especially sexually.
There had been a time when David had wondered if his lack of the sharply keen sexual hunger of his fellows sprang from some unadmitted preference for his own sex, but no matter how much he searched his heart and mind he could find no indication that this was so. There had never been a time when he'd felt any kind of emotional or physical desire for another man.
He liked women, and he admired them. It amused him sometimes listening to his students. He often compared them with his mother, who had done so many of the things they now dreamed of doing, and at a time when women were not expected to make careers for themselves, to be innovative and energetic in the world of commerce.
He had lost his virginity at university to a fellow student, who had teased him about his ignorance and who had been only too pleased to enlighten him. He remembered her with affection and gratitude, while acknowledging that he was no partner for a woman with a highly motivated sex drive.
Perhaps his parents' marriage was partly to blame for that. It was obvious to him that, no matter what their relationship might have been in the past, now his parents did not have a sex life; but what impressed him far more than their apparent mutual celibacy was the fact that his parents' marriage, based not on mutual sexual desire but on friendship, respect, compassion, had thrived and survived where the marriages of their peers had not, although the strain of having an invalid husband had shown from time to time in his mother's controlled face.