by Joan Barfoot
“The youngest complainant is fifteen, the other two are eighteen, although I understand there are some questions about how old at least one of them was when the offences occurred. Allegedly occurred, sorry.” That was nice of her; a kindness, that she was sorry.
Fifteen? Jamie’s age. Not much older than Alix.
“Now of course what we mean by sexual assault can be all sorts of things, and as far as I know, in this case it’s not rape. The charges at this point mainly have to do with aggressive touching, kissing, fondling, that sort of thing. Although rather forceful. These are part-time employees in your husband’s stores, did I mention that? After-school jobs, weekends.”
Like Isla. Who had watched James stride languid and liquid, in his bone-draping suits, through his father’s store two decades earlier, and had wanted him.
“It was the youngest girl, her parents, who made the first complaint. Allegation. The older two came forward after they heard about this other problem. They’re in university, both of them. They say they were trying to handle the situation on their own because they need their jobs to pay their way through. They work in different stores and apparently didn’t know each other, so the chances of collusion are fairly slim.”
How long had James known he was in trouble? Quite some time, surely. Days, anyway.
Was one of those girls, young women, even just one of them, attracted to James? Had she been deliberately seductive, alluring, brushing against him, wearing a special, radiant smile when he came into the store where she worked?
Would anything be better if she had?
“What they’re mainly saying he did was corner them in private places — an office, a storeroom — and force himself up against them. Manhandled their breasts and fondled them elsewhere with his hands. One of the three, so far, says he exposed himself and pushed her hand onto him. We’ve interviewed them extensively and taken statements. They’re quite detailed.”
All these words struck like hailstones. Each one made a dent. The trouble was seeing. The trouble was watching James in her mind.
Because she could see him. She wouldn’t have imagined such a thing, but now, yes, she saw James groping, forcing himself into the hands of young women. How could this be? She saw slim bodies bent backwards, or shrinking. She saw him demanding, overpowering, overcome by a mere desire — no necessity, just a desire — his features distorted into an expression she had not herself seen but did not suddenly find out of the question.
He had betrayed her in ways she couldn’t start to distinguish or begin to count, but here was this part: that she could see it. Which was also a fatal betrayal. She thought, “Well, that’s that.”
Some very cold part of her brain began to take over. This was useful. It helped grief start to settle itself into place. It helped displace shock. It got some necessary things done. Isla stood. She would have shaken the constable’s hand, if she’d been confident the constable would want to shake hers. Was it possible some people would think she collaborated with James, cooperated, encouraged his forays into young flesh? Perhaps. These things happened, and it could well be a direction in which police minds would turn. Others would blame her for other reasons.
If she were going to blame herself, it would be for inattentiveness; for not dreaming of anything very bad, much less this.
“Will you want someone to come and be with you?” This was like a death in the family. Did Constable Sylvia Donnelly think loved ones and acquaintances would come running with comfort and casseroles?
“No, thank you. Not now. I’ll have to talk to my children.”
“Would you like me to do that with you?”
“That’s very kind. It might even be a good idea, but I think not. I think we need to be on our own. So that I can tell them,” the first bitterness poking through skin like a broken bone, “that their lives are turned inside out. They were watching TV and doing homework an hour ago, you know. They were kids. We had an ordinary life an hour ago. Nothing special, just normal, a bit dull.” Her voice broke. She would not weep. “But I guess it’s special now, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so,” Constable Donnelly said softly. She touched Isla’s arm. So it seemed she didn’t feel too contaminated. “Do you want to know what will be happening to your husband tonight? The process?”
“Not especially. His lawyer will know, I expect.”
“All right. But one thing you should be aware of is that once he’s formally charged, some basic information becomes publicly available. Name, address, charges. His first court appearance will be tomorrow as well. Just brief, I expect. A formality. But there’s no telling whether someone will pick up on it. Reporters. It depends. But you might want to prepare yourself and your children for that. Maybe cancel the papers if you get them, leave the TV turned off.”
Oh James. Bad enough, what he could apparently feel able to do to those girls, those young women, but even if they worked in his stores, they had to be more or less strangers to him. Look, though, what he’d done to his own children! “Thank you,” she said, “for the warning.”
At the front door Constable Donnelly pulled a card from a uniform pocket. “Your lawyer will want our names and extension numbers. You might, too.”
“Yes. Thank you.” She closed the door firmly; but it did not seem, looking around, as if the inside of the house were now any safer than the outside. It was all polluted, all unprotected.
Alix and Jamie appeared from the kitchen, Alix holding carefully in both small, long-fingered hands Isla’s favourite blue pottery coffee mug. “Here, Mum. I think it’s how you like it.” She presented it with slow ceremony, as if she were giving a presentation, or a gift. Probably she felt, Jamie too, much as Isla had: needing to know, but still warding off knowledge with small, hopeless gestures.
Isla put an arm around each of their shoulders. “We’ll go to the living room, shall we?” She had a notion that the kitchen, communal and packed with family history, should not be spoiled for them. They rarely used the living room, so it would be no great loss if they found they couldn’t enter it again after this. The living room was where Isla and James read, watched videos and TV, sometimes shared late-night junk food, even sometimes held hands. The living room was already ruined for her. She thought how carefully and warily from now on she would be approaching and choosing parts of the house that might survive some of this. The least contaminated corners, these were what they would have to squeeze themselves into.
Wherever was she going to sleep? Not in that bedroom.
She sat, deliberately, in James’s chair, still warm from Constable Donnelly, for whom it had probably been warm from James. If Jamie and Alix, near the edge of the sofa, had any pictures of James in this chair, it was time to start erasing them. She wondered at how clearly she was understanding these small, acute matters, and how she had previously managed to miss much larger ones.
Under this ice, such a bonfire blazing! “Let me tell you,” she began, “basically what’s going on.”
Quite soon, Alix began crying. Jamie turned stony. Isla abandoned the chair and moved between them, cradling Alix with one arm, holding the other across Jamie’s back, gripping his shoulder. It didn’t take long to tell what she knew. She could feel things snapping, giving way, collapsing in on them. “Did he do it?” Jamie asked finally. Alix looked up, blotched and tragic.
“I think maybe,” said Isla. Should she not give them more room for hope? Lies made the air in the house thick tonight, repellent and musty, but he was their father. They had their own attachments to him. “But of course we don’t know, and sometimes the police make awful mistakes.” Alix brightened slightly, Jamie did not. Isla took a deep breath and felt the ice expand in her chest.
“What we have to do is stick together and just work things out one thing at a time. So now, you two can decide whether you’d like to take tomorrow off school, whi
le I call your dad’s lawyer. How’s that?” Small tasks, she thought, little steps, would be bearable. Any leaps and bounds and they’d go crashing right through the starred, flimsy glass under their feet. At least that was how she felt about it. She certainly didn’t want her children cut by any more flying glass.
Although they would be. There was no stopping that now.
She wished she knew the right thing to do. She wished the right thing to do had crossed James’s mind before he lunged at little girls in storerooms and offices.
“I need to call Bethany first,” Jamie said abruptly. Isla was surprised; she couldn’t even call Madeleine yet, or Martin, certainly not James’s parents, could barely contemplate reciting all this to James’s lawyer who, she realized, would have to hand the case on to one of his partners more adept at criminal law. “I won’t be long. I don’t want to talk to her, I just want to know if he did anything to her.”
Oh.
“Not Daddy, he wouldn’t do that!” Alix cried. “That’s gross!” It was like a mutation of Alice in Wonderland: Alix shrinking back into little girlhood, Jamie growing old. Isla wondered what she was becoming. Something not nice. But hanging on with icicle fingers.
“Go ahead, then,” she told Jamie. “The lawyer can wait.” She held Alix, stroked her flamboyant hair, feeling it spring up against her hand. “It’ll be all right, sweetie, don’t worry, we’ll take care of it, it’s all right to be upset, but of course it’ll work out.” She had no idea what she was talking about, except that she was lying.
Jamie knew, too. “Bullshit,” he said, and left the room to call Bethany.
Well, what was Isla supposed to tell a weeping child, a broken-hearted little girl? Was she supposed to be wise?
At least she was supposed to be something. At least performing acts of motherhood gave her something to do. “How’s Bethany?” she asked Jamie when he returned to the living room.
“Fine.” Which she supposed answered the question.
She didn’t have the strength to prevent him retreating blackly and silently to his room. She spoke, briefly, to James’s lawyer, gave him the skeletal facts, and the phone numbers of the cops. Alix was whimpering on the sofa, that child who once lay sprawled in her dreams, exhausted by joy. Isla covered her with a blanket and sat down to watch, and found herself waking, cramped and stiff in the chair, with the first dartings of light. Amazed they’d all slept; but sleep has its purposes: anaesthetic, forgetful.
Had James slept? Under what circumstances?
Alix and Jamie did not go to school. Alix, looking like a fawn, a puppy, something young and vulnerable to the bullet, the boot, refused breakfast. Jamie had orange juice, Isla dry toast. “Your father,” she said cautiously, opening the wound because it had to be done, “will be in court today, I think. If you want to see him, either of you, we can probably make arrangements.”
“No,” Jamie said. “Not me.”
Alix was watching her brother. “Me neither,” she said sturdily.
When Isla called Martin to tell him she wouldn’t be at work and, briefly, why, he said, “Jesus, I don’t believe it.” He was a better person than she, then. Except it was just an expression. He could as easily have said, “You’re kidding,” although she clearly was not.
She said, so he wouldn’t have to, “You should start considering what this is going to mean to us. How public it gets, for one thing. It’s not going to be very useful, having a partner who’s married to someone accused of serial sexual assault. On kids. If you can imagine. Not exactly a plus in the minds of most of our clients.”
He was good enough to say sharply, “Don’t even think like that, Isla. Just deal with what you have to deal with, we’re not going anywhere without you. Could you use a drink later, if I came by?”
She thought she might. “You’re a pal.” He might be an unfaithful husband, Martin, but he was no molester. That, today, ranked him high on her list of virtuous men.
She called Madeleine, who gasped of course and said, “Oh, my God. Oh, my dear. That’s incredible. Tragic. I’ll be there as soon as I can manage, can you hold on?”
“Of course. Thanks. I might ask you to stay with the kids for a couple of hours, would that be okay? They’re not in school, and I expect I’ll have to be out for a while.”
“Anything. Anything I can do. That son of a bitch.”
“Yes.”
He wasn’t a son of a bitch, though, he was the son of two fragile parents who had to be told. Was this her job, too? Plunk, plunk, plunk through the day, one dreary horror after another?
James’s lawyer phoned. Not the one she’d called last night, who handled his business affairs, but an expert in criminal matters. He introduced himself as Stephen Godwin. He said, “I’d like to see you in my office as soon as we can. I’ll be speaking with your husband at some length today, and he’ll be making a court appearance this afternoon. I want to raise the matter of bail then, so I’ll need to know how far you can go with that, and also a few things about him. That he has a home, solid member of the community, no history, faith of his family, that sort of thing. Later on we’ll need to talk more in-depth. More personally. His tendencies, for example, that you may have noticed. I know this must be a difficult time for you, but the earlier we get going the better, I think. Eleven? Eleven-thirty?”
What an invigorating conversationalist, this Stephen Godwin. Tendencies?
“Actually,” she said, “no. Let me see, how can I put this?” She was pacing the hall with the portable phone, up and down, up and down, click-clicking to the beat of her words and a quite refreshing anger. “Let’s see. He no longer has a home, there’s not a penny headed his way for bail, and it also turns out I have no idea what his tendencies might be.” The kids had stayed in the kitchen, but were probably listening. There was a limit to the number of things she could care about, or prevent.
His voice became soothing, as if she were a dangerously skittish large animal. “Now, I know how you must feel.” Really? “This is a terrible time for you and of course you’re upset, anyone would be. Believe me when I tell you, though, because you know I have a lot of experience in these matters, that later you’d regret not swinging into action today. You and your husband have been together a long time. And there are your children to think about. These things are more apt to get out of hand if they’re not dealt with promptly. The best defence is a good offence, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“I do not,” she said frigidly, “need instructions about giving some thought to my children. I made arrangements to hire you, and that’s as far as I go. Oh, and I also need to know if the media’s going to be interested. The police mentioned that possibility.”
“I see. Yes. Well, they may be. All I can say is, it depends on what else is going on, but very likely at some point. Respected businessman, young employees, all that. It would be very unwise to speak to the media, though, I should warn you.”
“I believe I’m aware of that. In any case, I’d have nothing to say.”
“Please, let me repeat, don’t let your anger, natural as it is, get in the way. If you don’t mind me saying, it rather sounds as if you’re assuming he’s guilty. Is there any particular reason for that?”
“No particular reason, no.” She could hardly say she had found she could picture James being guilty. Or that he had admitted it in his own disgusting way when the doorbell rang. She imagined Stephen Godwin shaking his head when he hung up, thinking no wonder James bent hard over more flexible women.
“Daddy can’t come home?” Alix asked back in the kitchen. So they were listening.
“Do you want him to?” Not a fair question. What was the kid supposed to say? She didn’t have time to say anything, because Jamie spoke up in a new growling, sort of menacing voice.
“He’d better not.”
Oh dear. Isla pull
ed out a chair at the table. It happened to be James’s usual chair. She was doing it again, she saw: already replacing his image with hers. Sunlight was making the maple tabletop glow golden; how could this terrible day be so painfully sunny? “Look,” she said, “I’m not sure what to tell you. I don’t really know how to help. You two are sad and angry and confused, and so am I. But I’ll tell you this, we are not going to let each other down here. Inside this house we can cry or yell or swear or whatever, and we will also take care of each other. I won’t tell you this isn’t bad, because it is, and I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, because I don’t know. But we will get through. And we’ll have to think of other people, as well. Your grandparents — your father’s their son, and I’m going to have to tell them, and that’s hard. The main thing is, we have to stick together and look after each other, and we’ll be okay.” It wasn’t much of a pep talk, but they wound up sitting taller.
Madeleine arrived then, opened her arms, and Isla, walking into them, finally felt herself at risk of breaking down into individual, collapsing atoms and molecules. She could have disintegrated entirely within her mother’s tight arms, but wouldn’t, of course. She had children, too. In a moment she straightened, said, just, “Thank you.”
Madeleine nodded, stroked Isla’s arm. “I know,” she said, and Isla thought maybe she did.
She left Madeleine with Alix and Jamie, the three of them playing an absent-minded game of Scrabble, with the TV on in the background. “No news, though,” Isla whispered to her mother.
It was awful, standing in James’s parents’ familiar living room, telling them. “Oh my God,” his father said, turning pale. He went, suddenly, from aging to old. Isla understood that he, too, had pictures. His mother was like Alix, features folding, face bending into her hands.