Living with Shadows

by Annette Heys

  If Jim had not have been having an affair, he would never have remained silent after reading something like this. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t say much. His own deceitful behaviour decreed that he must ignore something about which he would normally have seized the high moral ground. It made her realise how easily self interest can override principles and that you can never be sure of what someone is capable of even when you think you know everything about them.

  Picking up the blankets, Jim crept downstairs and slipped silently into the darkness of the living room. Helen’s confession had left Jim reeling. Never in his wildest dreams could he have guessed she had been living with such a dark secret. That day, the day she told him, he struggled to take in the enormity of her confession, a revelation which was now a burden on his own conscience. At first, because of the manner in which she explained the events of that night, Jim had felt nothing but sympathy for her. He understood her predicament, or thought he did, but since he’d had time to reflect on the whole terrible business, he began to have serious doubts about her motives and her culpability. He played around with different interpretations of her story and asked himself what had made her take such a desperate course of action; would her life have been so greatly damaged had she told the truth? Each time he went over her story he distanced himself further from her account of why she had acted as she had and gave more consideration to his own ideas of how she ought to have acted.

  ‘You remember I told you I was separated from my husband?’

  Jim nodded. He also remembered it was the second version she had given him about her marital status.

  ‘It wasn’t exactly true. My husband is dead.’ There was a long pause before Helen continued. Jim remembered thinking he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any more. ‘It was an accident . . . but it was an accident that had to be covered up.’

  Jim frowned. ‘You don’t generally need to cover up an accident.’

  ‘No, but if I’d told the truth it could have ruined my career. I panicked. And apart from that, Howard Roberts was a nasty man, a control freak. People were taking notice of me in the fashion world and he didn’t like that. He was the big man, the one who was successful and no woman was going to undermine him, especially his wife.’

  Jim noticed a cold look had entered her eyes. He remembered seeing it when she had talked about her mother, a complete lack of emotion. It was the same now.

  ‘The night it happened we’d been out for dinner with a couple of his business associates. Things didn’t go according to plan and he believed he’d been swindled out of a contract for building some new office accommodation. It meant a lot of money to him, and Howard loved money. When they left, he started drinking, whisky. We’d already had a fair amount of wine and liqueurs with our meal and I knew how violent he could be when he’d had too much.’

  Helen took a sip of coffee. She held the mug in both hands and stared at the table, her face contorted as if remembering something vile and painful.

  ‘Was he ever violent towards you?’ Jim was now hooked on her story. He sensed the tension in her voice and wanted to know where this was leading.

  Helen looked up. ‘He didn’t have to be drunk to raise his fists but, believe me, when he’d been drinking I learned to keep out of his way. Anyway, I tried to ring for a taxi but they were all booked up for at least an hour. He was happy to stay and drink himself stupid but I just wanted to go home so I rang for Carl to come and get us. Carl was eighteen and lived with us but that’s another story. I told him what state Howard was in and asked him to drive over in the Merc. It was less than an hour’s drive away and I hoped Howard would have drunk himself sober or fallen asleep by then.

  ‘By the time Carl arrived, Howard was neither sober nor asleep; he was just angry. So when Carl told him he’d had a prang in the car he went berserk. He was intent on driving home himself until I told him he was incapable. Big mistake.’

  ‘So what did he do?’ Jim’s mind was racing ahead, trying to anticipate what happened next but when she finally got the story out, he realised he wasn’t even close.

  ‘He told me to drive. I refused, of course. I knew I’d had too much to drink but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He took great pleasure in telling Carl to give me the keys. If I’d refused he would have made sure I paid for it when we got home. So I did as he asked.’

  Again, Jim tried to imagine the scenario. If it was a choice between taking a risk or being beaten, he believed he would have done the same as Helen in her shoes. He made a stab at the outcome. ‘On the way back you crashed the car and your husband was killed.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what happened. But none of it was my fault. Why should I be the one to get the blame for his . . . his cruelty? So we decided to make it look as though he’d been driving.’

  ‘We! You mean Carl went along with covering up his brother’s death?’

  Helen looked at him in disbelief. ‘Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said? Howard was a brute and not just to me. Whenever Carl stepped out of line, Howard would give him a good beating.’

  ‘So why did he stay?’

  ‘Because his father was a drunkard and even more violent than Howard. Their mother had walked out on them years before. Besides, Howard’s moods were changeable. If he’d had a bit of luck, he wasn’t averse to spreading a little largesse and Carl liked nice things.’

  Jim gave a derisive snort. ‘So I notice. You must have made a pretty quick decision about what to do?’

  Helen shrugged. ‘It happened on a quiet country lane. I took a corner too fast and went through a fence. I think we must have rolled a couple of times. When we finally stopped and gathered our senses, we realised Howard was dead. His neck was broken. Carl was a bit battered and bruised but apart from that he was OK. I was in shock. I’d gashed my forehead open and was bleeding badly.’ She broke off and looked Jim square in the eyes. ‘I just kept thinking that none of it was fair. I never wanted to drive. I was scared. I just asked Carl if he was prepared to help me. Howard was dead. Nothing could touch him now, but me . . . I’

  ‘You wanted to safeguard your career.’

  ‘You make me sound callous and calculating. It wasn’t like that. All I did was to try and make the best out of a terrible situation. I needed to look after myself . . . you do see that, don’t you?’ Her eyes pleaded with him, and then she put her head in her hands and wept.

  Jim got to his feet and went and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Yes, of course I do,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t suppose you had much choice.’

  Later, those few words initiated an evaluation of not just Helen’s but also his own actions. Of course she had a choice, he thought. Everyone makes choices every day of their lives but it’s the significance of the choices we make that define us. These generally fall into two categories, integrity or self-interest. Jim was ashamed to admit that for the past few months he had chosen the latter. All those reasons he had given Kate to justify his actions amounted to nothing more than excuses for his self-indulgence.

  Jim switched on the reading lamp, poured himself a large whisky and set it down on the coffee table next to the sofa where he intended to spend the night, or what was left of it. With so much running through his mind, he doubted whether he would sleep at all. Since Kate discovered he was having an affair, he had felt like a condemned man, and to be found out on the same day he had ended it only added to his anguish. Yet he knew it was no more than he deserved when he thought about the suffering he had caused both his wife and mistress . . . no,—Helen; for to call her his mistress seemed a slight to the deep feelings they had for each other, feelings that would not be extinguished overnight regardless of his desire to do the right thing. He thought of his naivety in believing Helen would be more understanding if he used his family as the catalyst for his decision. She knew how things were with Ben and then Sharon coming back into
his life, Sam’s marriage. He was too much a part of it all. But she hadn’t fallen for it. She knew that the real reason he wanted to end it was because he could not continue knowing what she had done. This was apparent in her message, ‘I gave you the truth.’ But the truth was too much for him, was something he couldn’t live with. And he was too much of a coward to tell her what he really thought. Instead he had concocted a story about being a family man. He felt ashamed now knowing how false he must have sounded as he remembered his clumsy attempt to put his reasons for finishing it into words. He had held her close, breathed in her perfume, felt the softness of her hair on his cheek, tried to keep his own emotions in check as she sobbed pitifully in his arms. Her pain was distressing to him and he hated himself for what he was doing to her.

  And then he was running up the drive, escaping from the hurt he had caused, while at the same time wondering how he was going to explain to Kate why he was no longer working at Mrs. Duncan’s.

  The bright September sun streaming through the window was at odds with Kate’s mood when she awoke next morning. As soon as she opened her eyes the harsh reality of Jim’s infidelity flooded her being once again. It was all she could think about, yet she still did not know what she should do. Coming to terms with the fact that her husband had cheated on her was enough to be going on with. She hadn’t suspected a thing and would probably still be none the wiser had she not picked up his phone by mistake. But it was little wonder she hadn’t noticed what was going on right under her nose. Jim had been right about one thing; she had spent too much time worrying about other people, trying to find a way to help them face reality, to exorcise the shadows that invaded their lives, when all the time it was she who was living with shadows. She had been too stubborn to listen to advice, too blind to see the reality of her own situation.

  Kate managed to deliver her lesson in spite of her battered emotions, and the wasp. It found its way into the classroom at the beginning of the lesson and could not have caused more disruption than if it had been the deadliest of creatures.

  The room was stuffy and Tommy asked if he could open a couple of windows. Given the word, he jumped up from his seat, put his hand through the bars and twisted the catch. The windows were tall and narrow, just wide enough for an arm to fit through, and glazed in a thick, durable plastic for obvious reasons. A fresh breeze drifted in and the men settled down. It was about two minutes into the lesson when Andy jumped up from his seat swishing the air with his folder like a demented swordsman. Next, Action Man was on his feet, followed by two or three others, all jumping around like crickets. Kate could hardly believe that these so called macho criminals were running around the room to escape a tiny wasp.

  ‘If you keep still, it won’t bother you,’ she told them trying to restore calm.

  ‘No way! I was stung by a wasp once and it bloody hurt,’ Andy said darting to one side as it circled around him.

  ‘Not as much as a jellyfish,’ Action Man, chimed in. ‘Got stung in the Azores by a jellyfish once. It give me ‘ell for days.’