The Catalyst

by Angela Jardine

  He pushed himself into her with an urgency that had both startled and hurt her, and even though she had not known exactly what to expect, she had not anticipated pain. He had hurt her and she felt invaded by him, her closest friend had become a stranger to her and she began to be afraid of him. Her need to get away from him became urgent and in a panic she tried to push him away but for all his obvious care of her at any other time he now seemed oblivious of her struggles beneath him.

  Then he had started to move gently and she had felt something stir within her making her gasp at its unexpectedness. Suddenly, instead of pushing him away she began to pull him closer, desperately holding him to her. Despite the passing of time she could still vividly remember her own responses, remembering she had wanted the sensations to go on forever. Suddenly he was shuddering on top of her and for a moment she had thought with terror he must have been having some sort of seizure.

  She smiled to herself now as she remembered this, her first experience of the very special seizure of male orgasm. She had not known what to expect then, never having experienced the intensity of a climax of her own and so had no way of knowing what she missed but what she had experienced was enough for her.

  Afterwards, his tenderness towards her, his whispered promises offered in the gratitude he felt then, his concern at the blood he had caused and his reassurances that this was normal, all created a warm feeling of being loved within her. It was a novel feeling and she remembered every detail of this, her first sexual experience, with a feeling of gratitude that it had been Jasper who had taken her virginity. Even so, there had been a price to pay.

  The next day she had felt shy of him, remembering how he had seen her last, a mixture of wantonness and vulnerability. Jasper too seemed awkward, his usual self-mockery and joking taking on a preoccupied, disjointed quality. They were both very much aware this first encounter had disturbed something delicate between them and the balance of a shared trust and childhood innocence had now been weighted unevenly by the very adult act of sex.

  What had been an expected rite of passage for him and a metamorphosis from girl to woman for her had threatened the special rapport between them and, now the physical experience was over, they became aware of an emotional discord. Both of them were aware they had jeopardised something far more valuable and were anxious to regain it.

  A sort of tacitly understood agreement arose between them and they had never again attempted any further physical intimacy. They knew without words such a relationship endangered their much more important emotional link. Physical relationships could end and neither one of them could afford for that to happen.

  It had taken time before their sense of total ease with one another was fully reestablished and in time their romantic lives had taken separate paths. Such love affairs never disturbed their deep need for one another although their closeness usually led to misunderstandings on the part of their new lovers. These romances lasted only a short time and seemed ultimately doomed as neither of them was willing to break their bond to ensure that another relationship might flourish. That was, until the day Jasper left.

  He had been working as a diver for a salvage company since leaving school. Marking time he called it, until he really knew what he wanted to do with his life. Then one night he had stumbled into Jenny’s bedsit, battered and bloodied after one beating too many. He had stayed at the farm at his father’s insistence as the old man was in need of help to keep the place running.

  Now Jasper was fully grown his father was no longer a threat to him, so he had stayed to help out on the farm before and after his diving work. But even though Jasper was strong and fit, his brother Jem had some sort of rage bottled up deep within him and after a few drinks he lost what little ability he had to control it. As with all bullies he needed a soft target and his fists usually fell on Jasper, who had never understood the concept of violence, especially towards a brother.

  This last beating had been Jem’s handiwork and it was the deciding factor in Jasper's decision to leave. He knew now he was risking his life living at the farm and it was a life that could not remain on hold for other people, not for his Father, not even for Jenny. He had long had a need to do something for himself and now, thanks to Jem, it was time to do it.

  Jenny had patched him up, wincing with him at his pain and vowing fiercely to do unspeakable things to Jeremy Carne for this latest cruelty and as his body eased Jasper had outlined his determination to leave for London. She had wanted to beg him not to leave but only half believing he could really leave her behind she had managed to stay silent.

  He had slept on her sofa and left early next morning without waking her. The note he left said simply,

  ‘Couldn’t face you to say goodbye. I love you. I will always love you. J.’

  Although she had seen the necessity for his leaving the night before it did not ease the shocked hurt she felt as she read his words and she had stormed at him in his absence as she paced about her bedsit, her anger fuelled by the fear of a life without him. It wasn’t until she had broken several plates that she had come to a standstill and wept, realising she was now, physically and emotionally, totally alone.

  Jasper had not contacted her and she had found it hard to manage without him, often wondering where he was and what he was doing. She could not know she had dominated his thoughts for years, or that he did not dare let himself contact her for fear he weakened and returned to her. He knew she needed to find a love elsewhere, a proper fulfilling love with a husband and children, not this strange, otherworldly thing they had between them.

  Eventually she had succeeded in putting him on a back-burner in her mind, comforting herself with the thought that maybe he would return to her one day, sure that she would know if he was ever in need and unable to get to her.

  So her life had drooped along on boring and predictable lines via a succession of boring and predictable jobs and a succession of boring and predictable men until she had met and fallen for Jimmy Fisher.

  And Jimmy Fisher had been different, impossibly different.

  Chapter 6

  Now, as she thought of Jimmy, she wondered if some unseen force had returned Jasper to her in her time of trouble. She smiled ruefully at the fanciful notion just as Jasper brought the car to a halt outside the back door of the farmhouse.

  ‘What?’ he said, seeing her smile.

  She shook her head, it would keep. Right now she wanted to see how Jasper responded to his old home. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad although something told her that was unlikely. This was a house of ghosts and she suspected he would need all the support she could give him.

  The farmhouse door creaked as if it were auditioning for some B-list horror movie, jamming against old mail stuck damply to the bare brick floor of the kitchen. The air was chilly, rank with the smell of mould and fleetingly she had the superstitious fear that the shade of Jem Carne might be balefully watching them. She jumped at the sound of Jasper’s voice.

  ‘Both Dad and Jem died in hospital.’ He guessed her thoughts as he had always done. ‘I buried both of them in Dehwelyans cemetery.’

  She looked at him sharply and he read the shock in her face.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jen. I know I didn’t contact you to tell you I was around but there was just so much … stuff … going on in my head at the time. I was not in a good place in my mind and I didn’t think it would have been a good idea ... for either of us … to meet up.’

  She was silent, trying to work out how she felt about this explanation. Had he made a sensible decision or was it just another wound for her to bear?

  ‘Then why did you…?’

  ‘Why did I stop and talk to you outside Sacha’s today? Why didn’t I just drive on by?’ He shrugged, avoiding her eyes. ‘Ah well, telling myself it was for the best if we didn’t have any contact only worked if I didn’t actually see you.’

  She felt a little surge of some emotion then, something she could hardly identify, something that could have been tri
umph that she mattered to somebody. It was a heady feeling but, not sure she had identified it correctly, she turned away in case something showed in her face.

  Silently she took Jasper’s hand and they wandered through the gloomy rooms of the farm both of them dismayed by the devastation caused by leaking window frames and missing roof slates. When they got to the cold and tiny room tucked into the roof space where Jasper had slept she was aware of his grip unintentionally tightening on her hand.

  The old bond between them suddenly grew more tangible in the silence and she knew he was remembering the frightened boy huddled in the cold and dark, trying to be invisible, trying not to be there for the next beating. The memories still had the power to cast their spell over him and she was shocked at how easily she could feel his emotions in this room with its lingering air of misery. She became desperate to get him away from it.

  ‘Jasper, I think we should leave.’

  He didn’t answer but he allowed her to lead him away. Once back in the kitchen he let go of her hand, turning away to stare silently through the grime of the windows at the overgrown shrubbery. She understood his rejection of her and left him to his thoughts.

  It had been wrong to come, there was still too much of the past here. They were here because of her and it made her feel guilty. He had suggested they come here because she had wanted to confide in him but now was hardly the time to tell him about her problems.

  ‘Shall we go back to town?’ She found she was whispering.

  ‘No … I’ll be okay … just give me a minute. I have to face this place sometime.’

  Finding an old newspaper on the kitchen table and a few sticks of kindling that must have been put to dry in the rusty oven of the old kitchen range, she thought about trying to light the fire. There were logs stacked on the hearth and despite the coldness of the room they seemed dry enough. Perhaps a fire might make the place seem more welcoming, more as it had been before his mother died.

  The initial blaze faltered and she propped an old coal shovel between the grate and the top of the fireplace to spread a sheet of newspaper against it. The flames roared into life as the draught pushed up from underneath, intensifying the heat until it lit the wood but, watching Jasper’s back as the fire blazed, she didn’t notice a large scorch mark appear on the paper in front of her. Suddenly aware of flames she hastily scrambled to get the burning paper onto the fire before she set fire to herself and the farm.

  The next instant Jasper was beside her, grabbing a kitchen chair and lifting it as if to smash it down on the floor and break it into little pieces.

  ‘Here, let’s burn this too … in fact, why don’t we just burn the whole sodding place down.’ His unexpected rage alarmed her and she rushed to soothe him.

  ‘Jasper, no!’

  She wrested the chair away from him and tried to calm him with a hand on his chest. She could feel the furious thudding of his heart beneath it before he pulled her towards him and clung tightly to her. They stood like that for a long time, each wrapped up in their own thoughts, almost unaware they held each other close, aware only of the comfort that contact afforded.

  Gradually the gloomy kitchen became transformed by the firelight and, as if in a trance, Jenny watched their combined shadow waver against the back wall of the kitchen. She waited until she could feel his anger had truly subsided before speaking.

  ‘Jazz, y’know … this place ... maybe you should get rid of it. It’s obviously far too painful for you to keep coming back here.’ Gently she pushed him away from her, holding him at arm’s length to look into his face.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He slumped down wearily into one of the battered old armchairs that stood either side of the fireplace. ‘I think maybe I’ve underestimated just how painful the memories were going to be. It just feels as if I’ve never been away.’ He paused as they both absorbed the truth of his statement. ‘And I can’t see Amanda ever wanting to come down here with me … it’s way too far from Harvey Nicks.’

  The attempted humour was to reassure Jenny. The shock he had seen on her face had upset him and he felt he needed to get back some control.

  ‘Amanda … that’s your partner’s name?’ she asked. He gave a brief nod. ‘Want to talk about her?’

  ‘Nope. I think it’s far more important that you should tell me why you wanted to talk to me alone.’

  She looked at him doubtfully, wavering against her own self-interest. Did she really want to lumber Jasper with the pain of her own life when he already had so much emotional stuff to deal with? You need help, an inner voice told her, Jasper is that help.

  ‘The man I live with ... Jimmy Fisher ... is an artist.’ She felt like she was starting some sort of group therapy. My name is Jennifer Lawrence and I’m a Jimmy Fisher addict, she thought bitterly, finding that once she had started to talk about him she was unable to stop. So she told Jasper everything. Her first meeting with Jimmy, making love for the first time (his idea), moving in with him (her idea), not having children (his idea), and the other women in their life together (very much his idea).

  When she totalled up the women she knew about it came to at least thirty and she wasn’t sure she hadn’t lost count somewhere. She was also certain there had been many more extremely brief liaisons she did not know about. Jimmy had a very strong sex drive and a very low boredom threshold where women were concerned and the realisation of this combination had been painful to her.

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to excite him or keep his interest in her alive. These secrets were the only things she didn’t share with Jasper. He didn’t need to know what she had done in an attempt to keep Jimmy interested in her as a sexual partner but it had all been in vain. It hadn’t even slowed his interest in other women.

  Now, talking about their relationship gave her a strange clarity into the role she played in Jimmy’s life and she suddenly understood she was what kept him afloat. It was her who fed him, kept his home ticking over, marketed his work and generally shielded him from the boring generalities of everyday life so he could immerse himself in his work. What she could not know was that Jimmy too now recognised these facts.

  As she told Jasper of the latest outrage, the sexy email from some woman called Rosie, she was aware her voice was getting increasingly shrill until, no longer able to contain herself, she leapt up and paced about the kitchen. The anger, still latent inside her and lying just beneath the surface of daily life, spewed from her mouth like molten lava.

  Now she realised just how much she had needed the catharsis of talking about it to help her ease all that was eating away at her and, wisely, Jasper let her talk herself to a standstill. Only when she finally stood still, breathing hard and trying to damp down her fury, did he speak.

  ‘Jen, it's pretty obvious to me you can’t go on living like this … and I think you know you have got to do something about it.’

  ‘Oh God, I know ... I know...’ she said, sinking down into the chair opposite Jasper’s. It was true, the time had come when she had to deal with things but just how she did that she did not know. Obviously she had to leave Jimmy but she had invested so much time and energy in the relationship that to walk away from it seemed somehow wasteful.

  She was also painfully aware that despite all her hard work there was precious little in the way of material goods to divide up. So not only would she be totally alone if she left him, or worse than that, middle-aged and alone, she would also be living on the breadline. Even more on the breadline than she already was with Jimmy.

  ‘C’mon ... think. What would you lose if you left him? He’s just some jerk who doesn’t appreciate you, who constantly wipes the floor with your feelings. If it’s money you need I could help you financially and I’m sure you have other friends who would help you find somewhere else to live. You’d soon find someone else … someone who would care for you properly.’ Jasper made it all sound so possible and she struggled to believe him.

  For his part he could see her wanting
desperately to believe such a life could happen for her and wondered why on earth she held back from it but then it was obvious she loved the man and Jasper knew he had never really been in love, not that sort of love. How could he hope to be the right person to advise her? Perhaps one did things differently in the state of love? He watched her distress, trying to remain dispassionate and failing completely.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Jen, you’ve got to regain your self-esteem!’

  ‘I know it all seems so simple to you but I’m scared … at least I know where I am with Jimmy even if I am miserable.’

  She had answered without thinking and was instantly shaken by the truth of the words that had forced their way out of her.

  She stared at Jasper until he abruptly turned away to busy himself with the fire, frustrated by what he saw as her weakness but wanting to stay in control of himself. She knew he was angry at her but felt unable to say anything to appease him. He was oversimplifying things, making the solution seem easy and she knew she disappointed him. It was a lesson in how far they had moved away from one another and it shook both of them.

  Jenny was now aware the gentle boy she had once known had become a tough and forceful man and Jasper was sadly aware of how much more emotionally damaged Jenny had become in his absence. It was damage he had added to by leaving for London, he thought uncomfortably, remembering the street urchin of a girl he had known as a child, all long, black, tumbling hair and eyes that has always seemed much too big for her face.

  He had never understood her parent’s neglect of her. The basics had been provided, she had been fed and clothed but somehow that had been all. They had never seemed interested in her and had usually left her to her own devices. There has been no help with schoolwork or exams, no praise or encouragement given for any of her small victories and no support given when life threw up its inevitable tribulations.

  Her father had worked long hours and was often away from home so there was some mitigation for his lack of involvement but her mother’s behaviour was harder to explain. It had been almost as if she had watched the process of Jenny’s growing-up with a clinical detachment, as though viewing some sort of social experiment. Her lack of enthusiasm for her daughter had been evident, especially to Jenny who had felt this lack of interest keenly.