A Perfect Husband

by Hilary Boyd

  Prem had obviously seen it coming, and had done a lot of resigned sighing and shaking of her head as she delivered muttered warnings – like David – about separate bank accounts and keeping her job. Lily could deal with that. But Dillon . . .

  ‘He’ll settle down,’ Freddy had said. But Lily wasn’t so sure, and neither, she could see, was her husband.

  ‘That’s good,’ the doctor was saying. ‘He’s got help, then.’

  ‘He goes to Gamblers Anonymous . . .’ Then she added, ‘I’m enjoying it, being with him again.’ She realized her tone was equivocal, guarded, that she didn’t go into detail about the last couple of weeks, as if Seth might mind that she had gone back to Freddy. Which she knew to be ridiculous. But it had been magic. And also manic: there was this constant pressure to show Freddy how happy she was. Today, just sitting quietly in the sunshine with Seth Kramer felt like a blessed relief.

  ‘I’m pleased for you, Lily. It’s never easy, coming back from a problem like that in a relationship.’

  Lily looked at him, ‘But you can, can’t you?’

  ‘Do you mean yourself or Freddy?’

  ‘Me. I can move past what he did, can’t I? People do . . .’

  Seth considered her question. ‘If you can both be honest about how you feel, free to speak your resentments when they pop up. It’s pretending things are perfect that’s the killer.’

  Which is exactly what I’m doing, Lily thought, resolving to stop the forced honeymoon in its tracks and impress upon her husband that she loved him without things needing to be endlessly sublime.

  ‘I said we had to draw a line. If I keep narking at him about what he did, it’ll never work.’

  Seth raised an eyebrow. ‘Very generous.’

  She caught a look of real affection in his eyes, concern, too. The ‘but’ she had sensed was to follow never materialized, however, and Lily changed the conversation back to work. She knew it was pointless trying to make people see what a good man Freddy was, pointless explaining that her love for her husband was not misplaced. The proof would be in the pudding.

  *

  Helen opened the door slowly to Lily’s knock. Her face was expectant, almost eager, but when she saw her sister her expression fell. Lily had texted that she was coming up to Oxford and would drop by to fetch some of her stuff, but had got no reply, so she’d walked over to the house after seeing Seth.

  Helen didn’t say a word in greeting, just stood back for Lily to enter, then closed the door and led the way into the kitchen, where she crossed the room to put the kettle on, still without a word. She was dressed in baggy black tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeved maroon T-shirt, her short auburn-grey hair untidy and in need of a wash.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Lily addressed her sister’s back, the silence leaden.

  Helen turned and gave her a puzzled frown, as if she were surprised Lily was still there. A small burst of apprehension made Lily shiver. ‘Helen?’

  ‘He’s gone.’ Her sister abandoned the attempt to make tea, which had got no further than picking the kettle off the stand and placing it on the work surface. She leaned forward on the kitchen table, propping herself on her hands as she stood, head bowed.

  ‘Gone?’ Lily’s heart contracted. ‘Kit?’

  Helen looked up, her expression sardonic. ‘Of course Kit.’

  Lily frowned. ‘He left?’ she asked, hoping that it wasn’t worse news.

  Straightening up, Helen gave a long sigh. ‘Yup. Disappeared in the night. Two days. He was only here two days.’

  Lily saw the tears and Helen’s desire to hide them by turning her attention to the kettle once more. Lily went to her and pulled her into an embrace. ‘Fuck. I’m so sorry. He’ll come back, surely he will.’ Even to Lily’s ears, her suggestion sounded naive.

  Helen didn’t reply, just buried her head on Lily’s shoulder, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, her fierce, self-contained sister was racked with sobs, clinging to Lily as if her heart would break. Lily felt tears in her own eyes. The cruelty of hope, she thought, as she held Helen in her arms.

  When Helen finally pushed her away, her tear-stained face was set in angry lines. Wiping her wet cheeks with her fingers, she glared at Lily. ‘Why did you bother to save him, Lillian? What was the fucking point? If you’d just left him to die we’d all have avoided a whole heap of heartache. Including Kit. He doesn’t want to live. He’s been trying to kill himself for nearly a decade now.’ She let out a small snort. ‘Strange, he used to be so good at everything. But dying seems beyond him.’

  ‘Don’t, Helen.’

  ‘Don’t what?’ She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and gave her nose a vigorous blow. ‘Mention the D-word? You’d rather I pretend everything is hunky-dory, would you? That one fine day my son will walk through that door, looking like he used to, all cherub curls and big grey eyes, and tell me he’s cured?’ Her voice broke, eyes filling with tears again. ‘I watched him lying in that bed, Lily, and I prayed and prayed with all my heart that he would live. I put every ounce of energy I had into that prayer, all day, all night.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘Be careful what you wish for, eh? The universe delivers.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want him dead,’ Lily said softly.

  Turning the full force of her fury on Lily, Helen, her face twisted in pain, almost yelled at her. ‘Really? You think anything – anything – could be worse than the way I feel right now? Do you? He lay in that bed and promised me over and over, “I’ll never touch a grain of smack again as long as I live, Mum.” I promise, promise, promise,’ she mimicked, in a grating, girly voice.

  Lily searched for something optimistic to say, found nothing.

  ‘And you know what?’ her sister said with a sick grin. ‘I was so damn stupid. Even after everything he’s put us through, I actually believed him again.’

  Silence fell as Helen filled the kettle and slammed the lid shut.

  ‘Where’s David?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ Helen snapped, as she splashed milk into the two mugs. ‘Out looking for him, of course. Keen as mustard to get the boy back, is our David, so we can go through the same old hideous charade all over again.’

  Helen’s bile was making Lily feel ill, as if actual poison were being released into the kitchen air. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, having no idea how to comfort her tortured sister.

  *

  When Lily got back to the flat that night, it was after ten. She had stayed with Helen till David came home, then felt it would be better to leave them to their grief. Freddy was waiting for her, the room softly lit, a spread laid out on the glass coffee-table: bowls with various dips, seeded crispbread, almonds and olives, baby tomatoes, strawberries – it was one of their favourite meals of old – with two sparkling new wine glasses next to the plates, knives and napkins.

  He welcomed her as if she’d been away for a year, holding her close, kissing every inch of her face and neck. ‘God, I’ve missed you.’

  She pushed him away, laughing at the tragic look on his face as she sank down on the sofa, kicked off her sandals and let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘You’re very late,’ he said, his look almost uncomfortably intense as he poured her some wine. ‘Good doctor keeping you busy? I texted you.’

  She explained about Kit and that her phone had run out of juice.

  ‘It was always possible he’d do that,’ Freddy said, throwing himself beside her and laying his head on her shoulder for a moment.

  ‘How was your day?’ she asked, not wanting to talk about her nephew any more. There was literally nothing to say.

  ‘Great. Yeah, really good. Things progressing on the launch front. Had lunch with a friend from Malta, generally bonded with half the Wolseley.’

  ‘Nothing new there. Which friend?’

  ‘An American called Shirley. She and I used to
hang out a bit, do the tourist trail.’ He pulled a face, ‘It was bloody lonely without you, Lil.’

  ‘Bloody lonely without you, too, Fred.’

  His phone rang and, still chuckling, he answered it.

  She heard the faint sound of a woman’s voice and watched as her husband’s face went very still. All he said was ‘Thank you . . . Yes, thank you . . . No, it’s fine . . . I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  Freddy turned to her, his expression unfathomable. ‘That was the nursing home. My father’s dead.’

  Chapter 51

  The news was hardly unexpected. He had imagined the eventuality a thousand times since he’d seen Vinnie in Malta. But the relief he’d hoped for felt more like panic. A cold, breathless panic building in the pit of his stomach. Lily had her arms round him, her words full of sympathy and love, but his instinct was to shake her off and run out into the summer darkness, be on his own. He took deep breaths, trying to get a grip on himself.

  ‘Will you have to organize the funeral?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who will, then?’

  ‘The home. I’m sure they do it all the time.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m not going.’ Freddy was barely keeping control. He pushed Lily off and got up, aware of his wife’s baffled look.

  ‘Not going to your father’s funeral?’ She sounded incredulous. ‘But you must. I know it’s hard when you love someone, but you have to go, Freddy.’

  Pacing the floor in the small flat, he turned to her. ‘He’s dead, Lily. He won’t give a fuck.’

  Clearly shocked, she got up and came to where he was standing, took both his hands in hers. ‘Look, it’s a terrible thing, losing your dad. I understand. And I know you were close before the Alzheimer’s. But you’ll really regret it if you don’t go.’

  Freddy avoided those loving eyes. His heart was pumping double time, as if he’d just snorted a long line of coke. ‘With all due respect, Lil, you don’t understand.’ He pulled away.

  She stood her ground. ‘Explain then.’

  Freddy didn’t answer, just leaned against the window frame, looking down on the crowd of people still milling with pint glasses outside the pub. He wanted to yell at them to fuck off.

  There was a touch on his arm. ‘Freddy . . .’

  It was all he could do not to flinch. But she sensed it anyway and he heard her walk slowly back to the sofa.

  ‘When did you last see him?’ she was asking. ‘Did you know he was so ill? Was it the Alzheimer’s?’ On and on she went, her words like needles in his skull. ‘I’ll come with you, Freddy. It won’t be as bad as you think. I can help you arrange things. You need to be there.’

  And suddenly he lost it. The carefully maintained silence he’d imposed on himself since he was a small child, the stoicism, the carapace behind which he’d hidden his feelings from every single person he had ever met – even Max and Julie, even Lily – erupted violently through his body with the force of a nuclear explosion. He felt his soul shaking from the very depths, and experienced an out-of-body moment where he watched from above the tall, dark-haired man in jeans and a blue shirt, twisted in agony on the floor below, an unearthly sound rumbling in his throat.

  ‘Freddy!’ Lily was beside him, but he didn’t want her. He didn’t want anyone. No one had helped him back then, no one could now. ‘Freddy, please.’

  He pushed her off and stood up as words – incoherent, even to himself – suddenly poured from his mouth, tears streamed from his eyes, his skin wet with perspiration, his breath coming in painful gasps.

  ‘Come on, sit down, try to breathe,’ Lily was saying, and he felt himself being led gently to the sofa and made to sit.

  For a moment he could do nothing but struggle for air, clasping his wife’s hand, like a drowning man. When he began to talk it was barely above a whisper, small phrases forced between his lips. Even now, the words seemed dangerous, like sacrilege, to the conditioned Freddy.

  ‘He was a monster. An absolute monster,’ he began. ‘He wasn’t . . . I was only young . . . It never . . . When I heard his voice . . .’ He took a few steadying breaths. ‘I used to shake so hard I could hardly stand . . .’

  Lily’s eyes were wide but she said nothing.

  ‘He had this chair. When I came home from school . . . when he was angry about something . . . or nothing . . . the chair would be in the centre of the sitting room, all the furniture pushed back. He would make me choose what he would hit me with. They were all displayed . . . on hooks behind the kitchen door. A riding crop, a bull whip he’d cut short, a wooden paddle, a leather shoe . . . like he was proud of them.’

  Lily’s face was still with horror.

  ‘It didn’t make much difference. It was how he hit me that mattered. He was a sadist, he relished it, Lily. His eyes would actually bulge and glitter with pleasure, he would be covered in sweat. The more violent he was, the more he got off on it.’

  Freddy’s voice became steadier as he began to recount his secret.

  ‘Christ, Freddy. Where was your mother?’

  ‘Mum? I don’t know. Out somewhere. But she couldn’t have stopped him. He hit her too.’

  ‘She never said anything to anyone? What about the bruises?’

  ‘You don’t understand. She wouldn’t have dared. He’d have killed her.’ He swallowed. ‘He was crafty. He’d wait till the marks from the last time had faded. But he broke my arm once, twisting it back, and cracked my ribs more than once – the chair was hard . . . I can still smell the chair seat . . . old wood . . . sweat.’

  Silence.

  ‘Nobody ever wondered how you got hurt?’

  Freddy shook his head. He remembered his mother’s face when she came back after one of Vinnie’s attacks. She knew. But if there was sympathy in her eyes for her son she never said anything, never did anything, never even tried to protect him.

  There was more silence as Lily presumably digested what he was telling her.

  ‘I was never good enough for Dad. He would play mind games with me, sometimes for days, weeks, torment me with the prospect of a beating. Make me wait. Anticipating being hurt is worse than the pain itself, you know. Sometimes I wet myself just hearing his feet on the stairs, coming up from the pub.’

  ‘The pub?’

  ‘My father was a publican. Not an actuary. I didn’t grow up in Nottingham. We had a pub in Leicester, the Three Bells. He wasn’t called Vincent March either, his name was Vinnie Slater. My father, Vinnie Slater: a brute, a bastard and a villain. But, oh, so popular with his shady clientele.’

  ‘You changed your name? When?’

  ‘In my twenties. I was scared he’d find me. I reinvented myself. Lost my Midlands accent, my name, my background, anything that linked me with my father.’ He gave a sigh. ‘But I couldn’t remove him from my head, of course.’ Freddy looked away: he couldn’t bear the pain on his wife’s face. ‘I’m glad he’s dead. I wish I’d killed him myself, but I’m way too much of a coward.’

  ‘I can’t get my head around this. You used to talk about him, the Alzheimer’s, the home . . . So that was why you didn’t want me to meet him.’

  ‘There was a man in a home with Alzheimer’s. Arthur March. He ran the corner shop where I got a job when I was fourteen, breaking up cardboard boxes and sweeping the floor, unpacking stuff, delivering bits and pieces to old people. He was a good man, he took an interest in me. Maybe he knew . . .’

  His wife was silent. ‘Bastard,’ she muttered. ‘Fucking sadistic bastard.’

  ‘I should have stood up to him. He laughed at me the few times I tried to fight back. I was probably laughable to him.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. What could you have done against a grown man? This isn’t your fault, Freddy, not even remotely. For Christ’s sake, the man sounds like an anima
l.’

  Freddy thought about when he had last seen Vinnie. Less an animal, more a pathetic, whining shell of a man. Blow and he’d topple over. ‘He paid in the end,’ he said. ‘Gasping for your last breath must be the worst form of torture.’

  ‘Not bad enough, by a long chalk,’ Lily retorted. ‘He should have had his balls cut off, been publicly condemned, rotted the rest of his life in jail.’

  Freddy smiled at her fierceness. Why was I so afraid of telling her? he asked himself. But he knew. Whatever she said, and however much he believed it to be the truth, he still retained the image of himself that his father had inculcated into him from his earliest memory: a spineless jessie.

  It was cathartic, though, as if a well of sticky black poison were pouring out of his body, down his arms and off his finger-ends as he talked on and on to Lily, as he recounted the hideous experiences of his childhood and watched the absolute horror on her face. Because part of him had always felt it couldn’t have been as bad as he remembered – he must have been exaggerating the fear and humiliation because he was a coward. That was what his father had always asserted – he was just trying to make a man of Freddy. And he had almost convinced his son, made Freddy believe the mind games and beatings were somehow acceptable, what he deserved. But he saw Lily was shocked into silence, appalled by the abuse. Pained and angry for the defenceless boy he had been, she spat vengeance on his dead father’s soul. She believed Freddy. She totally and utterly validated his distress.