Present Tense

by Gil Hogg

  “He’s going to ruin my reputation, and my job, if I don’t go to bed with him!”

  “I think that’s a bit fanciful, my dear. I mean, how could he ruin your reputation if you refuse?”

  “By misrepresenting what happened in the past. Talking to people.”

  “Well, if you have something to hide…”

  “I don’t!”

  I had lost my way with Eve Chadwin. She was stony, and completely unmoved. I’m not a mousy person. I can debate quite well. But on this subject, I was a puddle of mud. However, my wrath was rising, as much at my own ineptness as at Eve Chadwin.

  “Look, Mrs Chadwin, get your ape of a husband to stop phoning me. I’ll never, never have sex with him, and if he approaches me one more time, I’ll complain to the police!”

  Eve Chadwin fingered her gold makeup compact contemplatively. She had removed it from her hand-bag as a signal that she was waiting to freshen up, and move on. “Are you sure you haven’t been bothering him?”

  “After what I’ve said to you!”

  Eve shrugged carelessly. “That’s what he says.”

  “He’s a filthy liar!”

  “There are always two sides, Loren, my dear – sometimes more!”

  Eve Chadwin, brassily bright, was sitting straight-backed in her chair, watching me sharply. I had made not the slightest impact. I felt the tears coming, and I rushed out of the room.

  I told Greg when I got home.

  He considered glumly for a moment. “She’s just playing for position,” he said. “She’s not going to admit her husband is a shit in front of a stranger. You put the message across, Loren, and Chadwin will certainly get the acid from his wife.”

  He made me feel I’d done something useful. Then he broke into a big grin.

  “I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve been in touch with an executive search agency. There’s a top corporate planning job going in Buffalo, in an electronics company about the same size as Insel. I had a look at them on the internet. Could be right for me. I need to find out more, but if I could get it, it would be a step up.”

  I was astonished by his decision, and the speed of his move – not like him at all.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

  We talked for a while, and eventually agreed that he should apply if the job seemed appropriate. It would do no harm. It didn’t necessarily mean we were committed to leave Cedar Falls. We hadn’t actually said it aloud, but both of us were inclined to run. What was most important to me was to try to recover the peace of mind we had before Chadwin appeared in Cedar Falls. Alongside that contentment, the idea of courageously facing Chadwin down seemed unimportant. We weren’t fighters for truth.

  In normal circumstances, if Greg and I were changing jobs, mine would be the first consideration, but I hadn’t the spirit, or the will, to face job interviews. We decided I would take my chances of landing work, if and when Greg had a new post.

  The proposal to move from Cedar Falls, which became more explicit between us day by day, freed me in a sense. Greg said we had to accept it like the wind and the rain, and stop asking why. Our home could have burned down, Insel or Ulex could have gone bust. Lots of uncontrollable forces could have moved us out of the district. Unfortunately, the arrival of Chadwin was one of them.

  With this tentative decision to run, I found it easier to go to the office. I stopped worrying so much about whether any dirty gossip which had passed between Chadwin and Marty Kutash had seeped out to a wider audience. In a few months I could be out of this job, and out of this town.

  On Saturday morning Grace went to her art class, and I did some shopping in Chesterfield. It was unseasonably warm enough for Greg and I to have a leisurely coffee and croissants in the garden at eleven. We sat under the sun shades, and started to talk about the move to Buffalo; it was disturbing to be enjoying the garden, and thinking of leaving it.

  Greg said that the Buffalo job might fall through, but our intention to leave wouldn’t. The head-hunters had told him that there were a number of corporate planning vacancies in the state at the moment. Greg wanted to try to sell the Chateaugay place now, before the winter. Otherwise it would have to wait until spring, and we might not be here to deal with it. There was usually a steady demand for the limited number of places on the lake, and I agreed. We anticipated that Park Drive would also sell quickly.

  It eased the aggravation to make a practical move toward leaving. We decided I would go to the lake when Greg was in Baltimore, inventory the contents of the house, and instruct agents in Clayburg and Rochester to put it on the market. Later we would have to arrange transport for the things we wanted to keep, probably the sailboats, and our outboard speedboat.

  Greg was unexpectedly late home from the office the next night, and when he came in his skin was grey, and he was without the slightest touch of humour as he embraced me.

  “What’s the matter?”

  The children were upstairs with Grace, and he sagged down on a chair in the kitchen.

  “I’ve seen Chadwin.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to do that…I mean, our plans to move…”

  I couldn’t help showing that I questioned this.

  “I had to do it Loren…”

  But I did have a feeling of relief. I hadn’t wanted to drag Greg into the mess actively, but the idea that I had my husband out there, supporting me, was very comforting. Greg seems to be an easy-going person, but there are times when he can insist on a point, no matter what.

  “You didn’t tell me, Greg.”

  “It wasn’t a matter for agreement between us. You’d only say what you’ve already said. That I should leave it to you. But seeing the Chadwins was what I had to do, and I did it. It’s a gut thing, Loren. I have to hold my head up.”

  “What happened?”

  “I snagged Chadwin when he was over at Insel, visiting Marty, being shown the works. I had been thinking how I was going to see him. You know … it’s a difficult thing to discuss anywhere. Anyway, there he was. I took him aside. Marty and others may have noticed. I didn’t give a damn. We talked outside the john. The only place I could find. I said, “Stop bothering my wife. Stay away from her. If you don’t I’ll get the police involved. What do you think he said?”

  “I’ll guess he blamed me in some way, twisted the facts.”

  “You’re right. He laughed and said, ‘Get her to stop bothering me.’ He said you were chasing after him, phoning him, asking for meetings. He treated it all as a joke.”

  “I did phone him to make a meeting.”

  “Everything you do will be construed against you, Loren.”

  “Do you wish you hadn’t talked to Chadwin, Greg?”

  “No. I had to do it, whatever the outcome. He’s a smooth-tongued liar. I ended up saying, ‘I’ve spoken to you now, and if I find you’re getting in touch with my wife again, there’ll be trouble.’ Chadwin just sneered, and said I should take my wife in hand.”

  “So it’s done no good,” I said disconsolately.

  “Yes, I think it’s done some good. However arrogant and confident Chadwin is, it’s a warning.”

  It may have been wishful thinking, but I believed Greg was right. Then Greg surprised me again.

  “And I’ve spoken to Mrs Chadwin. I got her phone number from the club on a pretext about a game, called her, and went to their home by invitation this afternoon.”

  I was astounded. “What good could that do after she had rubbished me…?”

  “It’s a matter of piling on the pressure, Loren. We’ve both complained to these people now, and I think that’s better than having kept quiet, whatever line they take. Chadwin will get an additional needle from his wife as a result of my visit, and whatever she says to us, she’s going to be suspicious that there’s something in what we say.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Oh very civilised, offered me coffee, and pooh-poohed it as silly talk, suggesting as she did with you, th
at her husband had complained too, and maybe you were over-sensitive or had something to hide.”

  “I sure have got something to hide; a dead rat in the closet.”

  We agreed that in both facing the Chadwins, we had made some small positive steps toward putting up a bulwark against Dwight Chadwin, and that we had to do this, whether we were leaving town or not.

  Greg and the twins had left for an early plane to Baltimore. I sat for a while in the lounge with the windows open, a chill breeze coming in from the garden. At this time on a Saturday, the neighbourhood around the house, so quiet during the week, came alive with the sound of children, lawnmowers, dogs, radios and neighbours doing odd jobs and yarning on the lawns.

  I dressed in a sweater, an old grey roll-neck, and a pair of jeans whitened at the seams with washing. I tied my hair in a pony tail. No makeup. No perfume. I ate a little muesli with strawberry yoghurt for breakfast, and left a note for Carrie about the cleaning, and an envelope with Carrie’s pay on the kitchen bench. I was ready well before I needed to leave. I could hear Grace moving around upstairs. I wandered through the comfortable, well-used downstairs rooms of the house, thinking how happy we had been here.

  My sister was getting ready for her art class. I called goodbye. Grace came quickly downstairs looking pale.

  “Tell me what’s happening, please Loren.”

  It wasn’t any use trying to fob her off. Grace had overheard snippets of talk between Greg and me over past weeks. She knew something serious was troubling us, and she probably connected it with the past.

  “We’re going to sell ‘Pine Hill’ and this house, and we’re going to move to Buffalo. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “It’s those awful men, isn’t it?”

  I hesitated.

  “They’re here… and they’re going to do it again.”

  “No, never. You’re perfectly safe, Grace.”

  “But they are here.”

  “One of them is.”

  “Which one?”

  I told her about seeing Chadwin at Abbott’s Point. I said it didn’t mean anything, but in any event, Greg and I had worked out a way of dealing with the situation, and we would all come through without any trouble. But I left a very morbid sister.

  I went outside and I was about to climb into the Jeep when I thought that I should make arrangements for Grace to have some company over the weekend. I knew that the Fredericksen’s next door would be pleased to invite Grace for supper. I went back inside and found Grace. I asked her if she would like to go to the Fredericksen’s.

  “I’m going to a film with friends from my class this afternoon, and we’re going to have a bite in town. If you think I’m afraid of being alone here, you’re wrong.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Loren, I’ve had a long time to think what I would do if I met those men again.”

  She spoke the words in an expressionless way.

  “Uh-huh. What would you do?”

  “Don’t let’s talk about it.”

  She stared at me unfeelingly as I kissed her on the cheek and said goodbye again. She worried me a lot.

  I drove to the Tremorne Street gas station and filled up. I bought a pack of chicken salad sandwiches for my lunch, a TV dinner, and a bottle of orange juice from the convenience store. As I headed the car toward the highway, my spirits lifted – two tranquil days ahead, and all quiet on the Chadwin front. I would settle down, and come back to Greg and the twins like my old self.

  I entered ‘Pine Hill’, leaving the front door open. The air was still, and warm compared to Cedar Falls. The house needed fresh air. I followed my routine of opening windows, and then going to the kitchen and fixing a coffee. I sat down by the window in the thinking seat. My cherished simple life was weighed down by Chadwin, but there was a possibility that as a result of our last conversation, he would abandon his pursuit of me. And there was Greg’s certainty that despite Eve Chadwin’s haughty disdain of me, she would have given her husband hell. It would all help. These possibilities, and the knowledge that I was packing to leave anyway, expanded warmly, and absorbed me in a reverie.

  I was interrupted by a noise, a creak of the dry timber floor under the weight of a person. It could have been the house, which is constructed of timber on the upper floor, flexing itself in the sun, and the wind. I listened. Nothing, except the sighing of the pine forest. I began to relax again.

  As I turned my head I could see, through the kitchen door, a section of the shiny cedar floor in the hallway. I thought that there was a shadow on the surface. Could somebody have entered the front door, and be standing in the hall, blocking the light? A quiver of fear and anticipation rose within me.

  In a jagged moment, the imagined became real. A figure moved to fill the kitchen door-space. It was a man, with one hand resting casually on the frame, the other in the pocket of his grey slacks, grinning at me. He wore a smart tweed jacket and a light blue cashmere polo necked sweater.

  7

  “Hi, Loren. The door was open. I take it I didn’t startle you.”

  I jumped to my feet. In the silence, he continued to lean casually against the door-frame, looking around, taking his time. “Nice position you’ve got. No trouble finding it. Eve and I fancy the Chateaugay area… I think I’ll take a good look while I’m here.”

  My voice croaked, “You have a nerve, after what I’ve said to you.”

  “Whatever,” he smiled carelessly.

  I was left breathless by his effrontery. I couldn’t measure a person who handle himself like this. He was outside all the bounds of propriety without seeming to have an inkling of it.

  “Just remember I’m very close to keeping the promise I made,” I said.

  It would take the police half an hour on an emergency call, and Chadwin probably knew this.

  “I thought we ought to talk. Understand each other. Like reasonable people. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” he shrugged, making his plump features look miserable.

  “We’ve talked. I’ve said all that I can say. The only thing we can do now is to understand how it works out in practice!”

  I fixed my eyes on a blue jay on the lawn without really seeing it. I had to deal with Chadwin, get him out of my life. I couldn’t let what had happened in the past hang in the air above us, a deadweight like a packing case swinging from a faulty crane, a load that might crash down and shatter my life at any moment. There had to be an understanding. The past had to be stashed away by agreement – forever. Chadwin might be over-indulged, and primitively chauvinistic, but he was also smart, and the one redeeming glimmer in his present intrusion was that he at least seemed ready to listen.

  Although I was apprehensive about Chadwin because of the uncertainty of what he might do, I felt I was stronger than him. My strength was the knowledge of the wrong he had done, which he must know, however much he rationalised and diminished it. I loathed him, and while I was alarmed by his peculiar behaviour, I had no physical fear of him. I had suffered the ultimate pain years ago in the back of his car, in the courthouse, and with poor Grace afterwards. Beneath my outward apprehensions, there was a metallic hardness in my belly about all of this. I had made my decision. I was clear. I had been forced to empty my problems over Greg like a bucket of slops, but I wouldn’t shrink now from trying to settle with Chadwin. I launched into him.

  “I want things to be crystal clear between us. I want your promise to keep away from me. I’ll make the same promise to you. I’m the woman you raped.”

  My tone was frigid but level, and Chadwin looked at me patronisingly.

  “Right. Right. You’ve said your piece. I drive all this way for five minutes of your time?”

  He looked out at the darkening sky through the kitchen window, considering his response. He shook his golden head in rejection.

  “Now I’m going to have my say. I’m going to screw you Loren. I’m going to redress the balance for Yonkers. And for you and your wimp of a husband blabbing to my
wife. A goddam good screw. It’s what you deserve. It’s what you want. It’s what you need. And it’s what you’re going to get.”

  I was paralysed. I couldn’t feel my feet on the floor. I was sure he meant it. In a few seconds, he had cast me back fifteen years to the rear seat of the Chevrolet Bel-Air.

  “Are you going to break my jaw too?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you. It’s up to you.”

  “You better think again. My husband will be here soon.”

  “Marty told me your husband is going to see his folks in Baltimore this weekend,” he smirked.

  “What have you been saying to him about me?”

  “Marty even suggested I drop by here when he knew I was interested in getting a place. He thinks Eve and I would enjoy the lake. We talked about the area. I’ll be seeing the Kutashs later. Marty’s going to show me around.”

  “Don’t you care about the police?”

  He brought the broad palms of his hands up with a flash of amusement. “What can they do? You know me. You’ve been fucked by me. You invite me up here. We start to make love. You change your mind. What will the cops say? Not much.”

  “You’re scum.”

  “Words won’t do it, Loren.”

  I began to sweat. I was running with moisture, yet cold. I had to get out of the house, into the woods, make my way to the nearest cabin. I’d been wrong about Chadwin. He wasn’t merely looking for an erotic thrill, but for an unconscionable revenge. I persisted in appealing to reason; there was nothing else I could do.

  “Don’t you care about your reputation? You’ve come to a big job at Hudson. You have your wife…”

  “Don’t you care about your reputation?” he snarled.

  My resentment boiled, but I had to keep control of myself. He seemed to be gambling that I would cave in. I was calculating the chance of getting past him to the door, and thinking at the same time that he could easily outrun me.

  “Is there anything to eat here?” he asked suddenly, in a mild and pleasant voice.

  I saw this could be my opportunity to get into a more favourable position to escape. I turned to the tray on which I had placed the chicken sandwiches and orange juice.