by Hilary Boyd
She met him at the cafe in the park after she shut the shop. The habit of worrying whether they would be spotted together no longer seemed relevant.
‘Like old times,’ he said, as he dangled the tea bag in his cup.
‘Can we run away? We could go to Rio or somewhere they don’t have an extradition treaty. I could get a cafe on the beach – they’re supposed to be lovely, the beaches – and serve English sausages and Marmite. You could give aikido lessons to the Brazilians. We’d drink rum, or whatever they drink there, and just be happy.’
‘Caipirinhas. They kill you but you die happy.’ Ray laughed. ‘You’re on, let’s go.’
They both went quiet.
‘Don’t say anything.’ Ray held his hand gently to Jeanie’s lips. She took it and held it between her own.
‘I wanted to see you once more before . . .’ he hesitated, ‘before the shit hits the fan.’
‘You make it sound so final.’
‘George?’ Jeanie called up the stairs. No answer. She mounted to the second floor and knocked on the door of George’s clock room.
‘Come in.’
He was sitting in the usual place at his workbench, the wooden surface strewn with tiny, intricate pieces of clock mechanism. The one he was mending had a pretty art deco case in smooth, grey marble.
‘Hello, darling, what can I do for you?’ He dropped the magnifying lens from his eye, caught it in his palm, pulled his spectacles from the top of his head and turned to greet her.
‘Are you all right? You look worried.’
‘George, can we talk?’
She watched him get up and stretch his long limbs, raising his hands above his head and yawning. He glanced at one of the twenty or so clock faces at his disposal. ‘Gracious, is that the time already? I meant to get out in the garden and sort out the magnolia this afternoon.’
He turned Jeanie gently round and steered her towards the door. ‘Let’s get a glass of wine and sit outside. It’s a lovely evening.’
Jeanie’s hand shook as she took the glass of chilled white he proffered.
‘Come on then, tell me what’s up.’ He took a leisurely sip and settled back in the garden chair, the look on his face one of pure pleasure. ‘I hope it’s not another rant about the country,’ he added, his eyes, so like Ellie’s, alight with mischief.
Jeanie, by contrast, sat bolt upright, her wine held away from her as if it were an unwelcome distraction. What she was about to say was so beyond anything she could ever have imagined herself saying that she almost laughed at the sheer implausibility of it.
‘George . . . there’s no easy way to tell you this, but I’ve fallen in love with someone else.’
There, it was done.
For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard, or perhaps that she hadn’t spoken after all. The sun didn’t fall from the sky, George went on lounging there as if nothing had happened. Then he blinked, stared at her.
‘What did you say?’
She put her wine down, frightened she might drop the glass on the stone terrace. It seemed very important not to do so.
‘I met this man, a few months ago . . . and . . . well, we’ve become very close.’ Even to her own ears this sounded coy, like a line out of some trite romantic melodrama.
George sat up.
‘Jeanie, don’t be ridiculous. You can’t be in love with someone else . . . it’s . . . well, it’s ridiculous.’
She held his gaze.
‘This is a joke, right?’ She heard the anger building.
‘I wish it were, George.’
Now he stood, smacked his glass down on the table and stood staring down at her.
‘Stop it, stop this at once.’
She dropped her eyes.
‘Who is he?’
‘His name is Ray Allan. I met him in the park with Ellie.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ His tone was stubborn and final. He began to walk away, back through the French windows into the kitchen.
‘George, come back.’ Jeanie hurried after him. ‘Where are you going?’
Her husband went on walking towards the hall.
‘I’m not going to stand around listening to this drivel,’ she heard him mutter.
‘George!’ She reached him and grabbed his arm, swinging him round to face her. He tried to pull away, but she, in that moment, was stronger. ‘We have to talk about this.’
Then he looked her squarely in the eye and she saw the pain. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
But Jeanie had spent a decade giving in to her husband’s powerful denial, and it wasn’t going to happen any more.
‘No. No, George. We are going to talk about it. We have to.’ She began to drag him back into the kitchen and pushed him down in a chair. Sitting down on the other side of the table, she watched his eyelids flutter across his blank, shuttered stare.
‘There’s nothing to say.’ He wouldn’t look at her, and began to flip the edge of his clock magazine back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. It was the only sound in the kitchen except for the clocks themselves. She snatched it away and threw it to the other end of the table.
‘So you’re just going to pretend nothing’s happened?’
‘Well, what do you want me to do? Shoot myself? Shoot him?’ He paused, raised his eyebrow at her. ‘Shoot you, even?’
‘Please.’
He got up and stood for a moment watching her. ‘Jeanie, I don’t know what’s been going on and I don’t want to. I trust you to sort it out. Meanwhile I don’t see the point in talking about it.’
And with that he turned on his heel and left her.
Halfway to the door he stopped and faced her again, a question, a comment obviously on the tip of his tongue. But whatever it was he couldn’t say it.
Instead he nodded his head twice, briskly, and went on his way.
She sat at the kitchen table in the gathering darkness, numb. Once again he had refused to believe her, negated her feelings, leaving her in the limbo of the unheard. Yet he had heard her, she knew he had; she saw the pain, but it was as if nothing had changed.
The sound of her mobile roused her.
‘Mum, it’s me. Are you alone?’
‘Yes, Dad’s upstairs.’
‘About last night: you haven’t told Dad yet, have you?’ Before Jeanie had a chance to speak, Chanty rushed on. ‘Because you shouldn’t, it would hurt him so much. I was being selfish. You shocked me and I wanted to get back at you, I wanted to blackmail you into dumping Ray. But that’s not fair on Dad, is it? I was drunk and upset about everything. Don’t tell him, Mum, please. I’m not condoning what you and Ray are doing, but if it’s a passing whim then get on with it and don’t ruin what you have with Dad.’
Jeanie heard her breath coming in short bursts as if she were climbing stairs. In the background was the ping of a lift. She heard her daughter say goodnight to someone. ‘I’ve already told him, darling.’
‘Oh no . . . oh God, this is my fault. What did he say?’
‘He didn’t believe me, then refused to talk about it. The usual. He said he was sure I’d sort it out. Chanty, this is not your fault. None of what has happened is your fault.’
‘So are you saying Dad wasn’t particularly upset?’
‘He was very upset, of course he was, but he wouldn’t admit it, probably not even to himself.’
‘Don’t say I know, will you? He’d hate that.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You sound miserable.’
‘I am, but it’s my own doing. I just wish he would talk to me, even if it’s to say he hates me.’
‘I hope he doesn’t hate you. Better go, I’m at the Tube. Talk later. Bye, Mum. Give Dad my love.’
Jeanie waited, hoping to catch George. Then she realized he was right: there really was nothing to talk about. What did she want him to say? Awkward questions about the detail of how, why and where were not George’s style. So she went to bed, despite it being hardly ten, and
attempted to read a novel that Rita had lent her. It was an epic set in India, but there were too many characters for Jeanie’s tired brain to get a grip on. She kept having to turn back to the beginning, and very soon she gave up, switched off the light and fell into an exhausted sleep.
She awoke to an odd sound. It was almost like a kitten, a sort of stifled mewling, and it was coming from the other side of the bed. Jeanie froze, her brain whirring with possibilities. Very slowly she slid her left hand out of the duvet and found the light switch. As she clicked it, the bedside light shone out, and there, lying curled in a foetal position on the end of Jeanie’s bed, was her husband.
‘George?’ Jeanie, horrified, reached out to touch him. But he seemed catatonic, the rigid body tight-curled, the almost mechanical cries not coming from a conscious mind. He was icy to her touch, his hands clutched to his chest, eyes shut in a white, drawn face. Her heart racing, she automatically reacted without panic, as her long-ago training had taught her, quickly wrapping him in her duvet, dragging his long, pyjamaed body from the edge of the bed.
‘George, darling . . .’ she lay against him, cradling him in her arms and rocking him to and fro like a child. ‘It’s all right, come on, open your eyes. Open your eyes, George.’
She gently brushed his hair back from his clammy forehead, as she so often did with Ellie, stroking his face and body firmly and repeating loudly, over and over, any words that might rouse him from this state. In time she felt him stirring in her arms and the whimpering stopped, but as he attempted to uncurl himself from the clenched knot of his distress, he began to shake uncontrollably.
When he opened his eyes, his gaze was blank and uncomprehending.
‘Jeanie? Help me . . . I’m so cold . . . what’s happening to me?’
‘You’ll be OK, you’ve had a turn.’ She began to inch him round so that he was propped against her pillows and wrapped him more tightly in the duvet. ‘Do you have any pain anywhere?’
‘No, no pain . . . why am I shaking? I can’t seem to control myself . . . I’m frightened, Jeanie.’
After a while the shaking lessened and colour began to return to his face.
‘How did I get here?’ His voice was breathy and faint.
‘I don’t know. I woke to hear this noise and it was you. You didn’t seem conscious, you must have been in shock.’
‘Shock . . . shock?’ He looked at her, bemused. ‘Why would I be in shock?’
Jeanie’s heart sank. Please, she thought, please don’t make me have to repeat everything all over again. She didn’t reply, just held him close. He seemed to doze off for a while, his head sunk on his chest. He looked so old suddenly, naked and vulnerable without his glasses.
Jeanie waited for him to wake, guilt sitting heavy on her heart. For months now her feelings for Ray had made everything George said or did seem faint and lacking in reality. But now, lying in her arms, he was intensely present, his face almost as familiar to her as her own.
Jeanie left her husband in her bed and went downstairs to make tea. He had been awake for half an hour, physically recovered despite looking drawn and weak. She had gone up to fetch his glasses for him, still neatly folded by his unmade bed, and wondered at the mental processes that had led him, in the still watches of the night, to lie mewling at her bedside. She had never seen George cry, not once in the thirty-five years she’d known him.
‘Jeanie, we must talk,’ had been his first words on waking, as if he had fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation and was taking up where he left off.
Making tea was delaying the inevitable, she was well aware of that, but she hadn’t had much sleep and felt hardly strong enough to hear what he needed to tell her.
She sat for a moment at the kitchen table, gathering her energy. It was six-twenty and a bright, sparkling summer morning, one she would have relished under other circumstances.
‘Thank you.’ George accepted the tea almost formally. ‘Sit with me, Jeanie. I need to tell you something.’
‘George, I’m sorry. I feel so responsible for last night. You were in such a state, and I know it’s my fault, but why don’t we leave it for now, wait to talk until you’re feeling stronger.’
He shook his head firmly. ‘This can’t wait. It isn’t about you. Please, listen to me, or my courage might fail me.’
Jeanie looked questioningly at him, but his face was set as he waited for her to settle on the bed.
‘None of this is your fault. I’ve let you down badly because I’ve been such a coward.’ He sat hugging his legs to his chest in an uncharacteristically childlike pose, his eyes, poking over the top of his knees, washed out and solemn behind his glasses. As Jeanie watched his face, she realized George had never looked young even when he had been. Measured and responsible in everything he did, he often seemed shut away from Jeanie and the rest of the world. Now his look was resolute; there was no longer any whisper of fear.
‘Jeanie.’ His gaze met her own puzzled one. ‘I can find no easy way to say this, no way of making it more palatable . . .’ he made a short, harsh sound, ‘more palatable to you or to me.’ She watched him take a deep breath and found her own heart beating loud in her ears, as if she too shared the as-yet unnamed dread. ‘I was abused as a boy. It was my father’s friend, Stephen Acland, the one who took me for the school holidays when I didn’t fly home to wherever my father was being a diplomat.’ The words, clearly rehearsed, came in a rush.
Jeanie stared at him. ‘Sexually abused?’
George nodded.
‘But . . . you went there for years.’
‘And he abused me for years. From ten to fourteen.’ His face twisted in what looked like long-suppressed rage.
‘God! Why didn’t you tell me, George? All these years you’ve kept this horrible secret and felt you couldn’t tell me?’ She thought for a moment. ‘But you said how wonderful he was to you . . . you said he was so clever, so cultured, so funny . . .’
George nodded again. ‘Oh, he was. He taught me so much. Jeanie, it was my fault. I let him. I went to his study after supper when he asked me to – he was teaching me chess.’
Jeanie snorted angrily; her head was spinning. ‘Ha! is that what he called it? The bastard, the sick, sick bastard.’ She glared at her husband. ‘Abuse is abuse, George, and it is never anyone’s fault but the perpetrator’s. Christ, this is terrible! Terrible that it happened at all and even worse that you felt you couldn’t tell me. What did you think I’d say?’
George shrugged, ‘I was just so ashamed. I didn’t want you to think I was gay. I’m not gay.’
‘I didn’t say you were.’
‘And I thought you’d be disgusted. I’ve always thought it was my fault and I assumed you’d think the same. But there was no way I could tell my parents. My father would never have believed me in a million years anyway. Stephen was a fellow officer in the Gunners. They served together in Burma and were in the siege of Malta. Stephen was a war hero; he got the DSO for rescuing three men from a blazing tank in North Africa. My father thought he’d be an inspiring role model for me.’
‘And his wife?’
‘Caroline had no idea, I’m a hundred per cent certain of that. It was a different age, Jeanie. Nowadays it’s talked about all the time; you’ve only got to speak to a child these days to be accused of abuse, but the fifties were more innocent. Someone like Caroline would probably hardly have known what it was, let alone suspected her adored husband was buggering me in the study after dinner. It was a large house, and she never disturbed him in his study. I’m sure she was tucked up in bed with cold cream on her face and a good novel from Boots Lending Library.’
Jeanie smiled. ‘Boots Lending Library, I’d forgotten that.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry . . . All this time . . . what, fifty years? And you never said a thing. God, George, I don’t know what to say, except I wish you’d told me.’
They were both silent for a minute.
‘So what happened? When did it end? Have you seen
him since?’
George stretched his legs out in front of him, blinked a couple of times.
‘It ended when Pa died. I was fourteen and at Sherborne by then, and my mother came home to the house we’d always had in Dorset.’
‘But didn’t you still see him? If he was so close to your father?’
‘They went to live in South Africa. I suppose Ma might have met up with them when they made trips over, but people didn’t fly about so much in those days. Anyway Ma, as you know, was the most antisocial woman on the planet. Always a joke that she’d been an ambassador’s wife.’
Jeanie had liked Imogen. She was charming in a quiet way, gentle, very vague and never happier than when left alone to tend her beautiful garden. She’d died nearly fifteen years ago from complications after a fall. George had been devastated.
‘Did you ever tell her?’
George laughed sadly. ‘Can you imagine it? Anyway, even if she had believed me, what would have been the point? It’d just have upset her.’
‘I suppose . . . but you could have told me. Didn’t you trust me?’
George reached over and took her hand. ‘It wasn’t to do with trust. I thought I’d lose you.’
‘Lose me? You thought I’d stop loving you because you were the victim of child abuse? That’s ridiculous.’
‘It may seem so to you . . . and maybe now it seems stupid to me too. But at the time it was still so much a part of me. I thought about it all the time, every day of my life, and I thought you’d hate that, being made to think of it too, of me and him . . . but mainly I was ashamed. I still am.’
Jeanie was suddenly overwhelmed by such fury that she wanted to hit something. She got up and stamped around the bedroom, not knowing what to do with her emotions.
‘You were so young. Ten years old. How did you cope with it alone? You can hardly have known what was happening.’
‘He made it into a game.’
‘Sick, sick . . . vile bastard.’ She couldn’t deal with the image, with the young boy in the study, vulnerable and without the necessary know-how or support to reject this man’s manipulation, his casual pleasure.
‘You see?’ George was watching her. ‘Don’t you wish you didn’t know?’