Cat and Mouse

by Vicary, Tim

  She said: ‘It doesn't matter, Johnny, I'm sure you can deal with the man on your own. He looked to me as though he hates women, anyway. And I've got some shopping to do, I'll be all right. You'll tell me all about it when you get back, though, won't you?’

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, of course,’ he lied.

  It was a lie, not because of what he hoped to learn about Sarah, but because of the place he was going to before. Jonathan was very regular and organised in his infidelity. He made appointments days, sometimes weeks ahead, and wrote them in his diary. Often they were like the notes Sarah had found: Dr Armstrong, 6 p.m, but there were others too. Dentist 2.30. Or Visit tailors for first fitting. All very drab, uninteresting to anyone who might pick the book up. But to Jonathan, the entries glowed with secret meaning.

  When he walked up the steps and rang the bell outside the quiet, respectable house in Kensington, a maid opened the door. She smiled demurely, took his top hat, coat, and gloves, and showed him up the pink-carpeted stairs into a small sitting room. Everything here was furnished in comfortable bourgeois taste. There was a thick soft blue carpet, net curtains on the windows, pale pink and yellow flowery overstuffed armchairs, a piano, standard lamps with tasselled fringes, expensive china dogs on the mantelpiece, a comfortable warm fire burning in a black-leaded grate.

  The maid smiled at him. It was a friendly smile, not in the least inappropriate to their surroundings. Unless one counted the way her gaze held his for a little too long, as though she were measuring, assessing what he would be like.

  ‘If you will wait a moment, sir, I'll tell Mrs Burgoyne that you're here.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jonathan sat down, feeling the excitement spark up and down his spine. Of course he should not be here now, with Sarah in prison, but the appointment had been made over a week ago. What difference could he make to her in the next hour or two? Anyway, if it had not been for Sarah, he would never have been here at all.

  And he would have missed so much.

  He had been married to Sarah for eleven years now, and for the first nine of those years he had not been unfaithful to her once. Indeed, he had not even considered it. He knew how much she had been hurt, as a child, by the death of her father. The cause of that death — syphilis — seemed to him, as to her, a dreadful, terrifying scourge. At first he thought it a punishment of God on the wicked — a cruel Old Testament punishment which afflicted not only the man who sinned, but also his family. A man could infect his own wife, his children could grow up riddled with the disease, die of it. Sarah and Deborah were lucky not to have inherited it from their own father. Jonathan had promised Sarah it would never, ever, happen to their children because of him.

  But they had had no children. Three times Sarah had miscarried. That, Jonathan felt sure, was why everything had gone wrong.

  In the early years of their marriage there had been no question of unfaithfulness. Aware of her fears about sex, he had been kind and caring and gentle in bed, and she had responded more than he had hoped. He had been helplessly in love with her — with her long dark chestnut hair and her smooth soft skin and the way she responded to his kisses and caresses. At first she had been shy, skittish, trembling like a young deer. Then, after a few weeks, she had nestled into his arms more trustingly, purring softly like a cat. Finally, as the months went by, she had come to respond to him with a passion that was equal to or greater than his own, wrapping her long, slender legs round him and pulling him down on to her while her hands roved up and down his back and she covered his face with kisses and then arched her back and moaned . . .

  Jonathan had thought God must have singled him out to be especially blessed among men.

  Then Sarah had become pregnant. He had watched her body change and bloom as their child grew inside her. He shared the excitement of laying his palm on her stomach to feel the first kicks, and he had worshipped her more than before. She had wanted him to make love to her more than before, too, and they had found ways to do it which seemed safe and gave her greater satisfaction than ever before, and then...

  The baby had been born dead.

  Sarah had descended into a sudden, black depression. Jonathan tried to help her but it was as though she was in a deep pit with smooth sides and no way out, and she was deaf as well so she did not hear what he said. She rejected him because she felt he was part of the cause. I should never have allowed you to make love to me like that, she said, we killed our baby with our lust. One doctor they visited said this was nonsense, but another one, a portentous man with a long beard and rheumatic eyes and horrible pickled things in jars on shelves behind his head, said it might indeed be possible. And he was the one Sarah believed.

  So when she had become pregnant the second time she had resisted all Jonathan's advances, and he had kept away from her and slept in his own room. But once or twice this abstinence was too much for him, and he persuaded her to relent. He came into her room to feel her stomach reverently and cup her ripening breasts, and she allowed him to slide gently into her once again.

  The day after the third time they did this, her waters broke and her nurse helped her to deliver a six-months' child in great agony on the floor of the bathroom, in blood and screams and bitter, bitter, tears.

  Jonathan had been delivering his maiden speech in the House of Commons. When he left the Chamber, to warm handshakes and pats on the back from his fellow Liberals, he was handed a note by his secretary.

  After that it had been as though the child's open grave lay in bed between them. It had been two years before she conceived again. During those two years Jonathan had been as gentle and kind as he could, but it made no difference. Sarah appeared to feel that God had cursed her for her earlier wanton passion. He spent more and more time away from home, in court or in the House. When they did make love it was an embarrassing parody of their former passion, which left them hot, irritable, and ashamed.

  Nonetheless, she became pregnant a third time. Praying that the baby would bring them together again, Jonathan moved out of her room entirely, and did not come near her bed once.

  Perhaps because of this, she did not miscarry until the eighth month.

  Since then they had lived in the same house for three years, but she had not let him touch her. They had tried to discuss the matter, but neither could see any way forward. She could not bear the pain and disappointment again, and he did not want to inflict it on her. So they slept apart.

  Their marriage became a matter of respect and politeness and regret, for something beautiful that was dead. Sarah was silent, bitter, aloof. It was like sharing a house with a ghost. Jonathan found more to occupy him in Parliament and in court, and there were long, empty absences. He was aware of her suffrage activities and, at first, he supported the women's vote in the House, but the issue did not move him as it did her. It was one of many issues of social justice. It would not bring back their love.

  There were times when he was very depressed. He knew that many men of his social standing had quite open affairs with other men's wives but he found the idea contemptible, cruel. He knew that it would not take long for news of such an affair to get back to Sarah — and that would destroy her. Besides, she was his wife, he did not need another one. He still liked and admired her from a distance. He had no desire to court some other man's wife, buy her flowers or jewellery or spend time going to the theatre with her. All that would just provide material for gossip which would hurt and destroy everyone involved, in the end.

  But he was lonely and restless in bed.

  One day he sat up late in his club with his friend, Martin Armstrong, and somehow the conversation made its way from the headaches he had been suffering to sex. Martin explained to him, man to man, that in his view this was a medical matter. Men were different to women: to maintain a satisfactory state of health they needed regular sexual intercourse. It was a common problem, Martin said. There were ways it could be solved. He understood absolutely the need for total discretion.

  That was why, now, J
onathan was here in this living room in Kensington. Martin had been right, up to a point, he thought. Over the past two years his sex life had become almost as interesting, as exciting, as it had been in the early days of his marriage. With this crucial difference — he hardly ever made love to the same woman twice.

  This made for tremendous, tearing excitement beforehand, and also avoided the slightest possibility that Jonathan might fall in love with anyone else. Emotionally, Jonathan was still married to Sarah. But sexually, his needs were taken care of by others.

  There was a slight danger of disease, but Martin assured him that all the girls were regularly checked by him personally. This, and the constant turnover, made it very expensive, but Jonathan could afford it.

  It was a pleasure that had entered his bloodstream now. He did not want to give it up. He had made love to so many women that he now looked upon all of them — shop assistants, waitresses, typists, actresses, servants, fashionable housewives, debutantes, even his own sister-in-law Deborah — in an entirely different way.

  Mrs Burgoyne came into the room.

  Mavis Burgoyne was the lady who looked after the girls for Martin. A rather blowsy middle-aged woman, in a flowery pink dress that went with the furniture and wallpaper. Very feminine — a little too much powder and frills perhaps for his taste, but then she was well past her prime. An ordinary face; nothing hard even about the eyes. Certainly nothing lewd or suggestive. Everyone's maiden aunt.

  ‘Tea, Mr Becket? With perhaps a little something, to take out the chill?’

  ‘Please.’

  She smiled and pulled a scarlet bellrope behind her.

  ‘A busy week in court?’

  ‘So-so.’ For a few moments he entertained her with an edited version of a recent, rather amusing case, and then the maid brought in the tea. It was on an elegant wooden tray, with a single red rose in a jar and bone china tea service. Mrs Burgoyne poured, adding a slight dash of whisky from a silver flask beside the milk jug. She sipped, her little finger crooked elegantly.

  ‘So now, to business. The young lady whom I told you about has arrived, and is waiting to meet you. I will send her down in a moment. In the meantime, perhaps you would like to consult the book for your next appointment. It is fully up to date. Here.’

  She put her cup down, and took a thick, leather-bound volume from a shelf behind her. It was one of the few things in this feminine, chintzy room that looked out of place. Like a lawbook, perhaps, or a volume of Parliamentary reports.

  ‘Have a look through. I'll be back in a moment.’

  She handed him the book and went out. Jonathan put down his teacup and lifted the book on to his knee. His hand was trembling slightly with suppressed excitement. So foolish, he thought. Such wicked fun.

  Inside, the book was more like a photograph album. On every page there was the photograph of a young woman. Some of them Jonathan recognised, others he had not seen before. Most wore skimpy, suggestive dresses. One or two wore nothing at all. Besides each photograph was a brief biography, and a description of the things each girl, apparently, liked doing.

  All the things were shocking. Some of the things were very shocking indeed. Jonathan thought he might like doing them all.

  He leafed his way slowly through the book. One or two of the girls were extremely young, he noticed. At first he had felt qualms of conscience about these, but then one day he had tried one, and found a strange pleasure in it. The child had been young, skittish, afraid, anxious to please — it was not necessary to be cruel, just gentle and firm. It was like breaking in a young horse; there was a pleasure in bending the creature to your will. And, after all, these were girls born to the life, who would profit by it. They could become richer this way than in any other that was open to them, and most of them knew it.

  Bernard Shaw had a play on in London this year, called Pygmalion. It was about a gentleman — a professor — who picks up a girl from the streets, and takes her to his house to teach her the King's English, so that she can enter high society. Jonathan had gone to see it, and laughed all the way through with the rest of the audience. But all the time he had been thinking: of course there are plenty of girls from poor backgrounds who rise in society this way. But it is not by exercising their vocal organs that they do it.

  Mrs Burgoyne came back in, and Jonathan gave her the book, open at the photograph of a young woman of about eighteen. She had dark curly hair, a mouth with soft pouting lips, and a very generous bosom indeed.

  Mrs Burgoyne glanced at the book and put it back on the bookshelf behind her.

  ‘Certainly, Mr Becket,’ she said. ‘Next Friday, at six-thirty, as usual?’

  Jonathan nodded.

  Mrs Burgoyne smiled. ‘I'll note it down, then,’ she said. ‘Now I must leave you to finish your tea in peace.’

  Again she left the room, tugging the long red bellrope as she went. For a moment Jonathan sat there, feeling the blood course through him. He did not feel guilty. He had got into the trick of leaving thoughts like that behind him like an umbrella at the door. In this place he was a different man.

  A maid came in to collect the tea tray. It was a different maid, but, like the last one, she wore a frilly mob cap and a starched white pinafore. The pinafore looped over her neck and was tied with ribbons behind her waist.

  But under the pinafore, Jonathan noticed as she smiled at him, she had no other clothes on at all . . .

  ‘I have seen her, Jonathan, yes.’

  Martin Armstrong sat back behind his desk in his thick, leather swivel armchair. He hoped he did not look as nervous as he felt. He thought he had found a way of dealing with the danger Sarah Becket presented. He did not like it, but it was better than the alternative. Prison, exposure, disgrace.

  Jonathan isn't going to like this either, Martin thought. But then he isn't going to find out all the details straight away. I shall have to lie to him. When he finds out about that, our relationship will be over for good.

  But then it's his own fault. If the bloody man could control his own wife none of this would have happened at all!

  As he leaned back in the chair the expensive leather creaked, and Martin's thick, capable hands were clasped comfortably over his ample stomach and watch chain. The look on his face was benign, mellow, comforting. Like a doctor about to reassure a difficult, anxious patient.

  ‘You have seen her? Good! And?’ Jonathan was impatient for him to go on.

  ‘And I am pleased to tell you she is well.’

  ‘Oh! Really? Thank God for that.’

  For a man who has spent the last two hours in the rooms upstairs, he gives a good impression of concern, Martin thought. But then, lust is one thing, concern for wife and reputation, another. He smiled reassuringly.

  ‘Not only well, but she is eating normally. In fact, after my little talk with her she is co-operating with the prison authorities in every way.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Jonathan stared at him, temporarily speechless. ‘What on earth did you say to her, man?’

  Martin's smile broadened. ‘What do you think? I told her of your concern, and explained to her as a medical man that if she did not eat she would do herself irreparable damage, and that that would be no good to anyone at all. I told her that she had already struck her blow by slashing the picture. It was in all the newspapers, she need do nothing more to help her movement. And I explained to her that if she ate now and completed her sentence then you, as her husband, would take full care of her when she came out. I hope that was not going too far?’

  Martin frowned and peered at Jonathan over the desk. There was just the faintest hint of a conspiratorial twitch at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘No, of course not. Not at all. Do you mean she made no attempt whatsoever to starve herself?’

  ‘Oh yes, she did at first. For two days in fact. But I think it was giving her some pain and my visit . . . persuaded her.’

  Martin smiled, his thick lips peeling back briefly to reveal strong teeth only
slightly yellowed by tobacco.

  ‘Then — if she is obeying prison regulations, can I see her?’

  ‘I'm afraid not.’ This was the difficult part. Any communication between husband and wife at this point would expose his lie straight away. Martin shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Not for the first month, at least. I tried to persuade the governor but he is adamant. You can try to put pressure on from above, but I think it would be unwise. If . . . I don't pretend to fully understand the female psyche but I get the impression that if Mrs Becket believed she was being granted special treatment she might well begin to starve herself again in some perverted form of protest. I grant it is a strange way of thinking but that is what we have to suffer these days, it seems.’

  He watched Jonathan carefully across his desk, the professional frown still thoughtfully in place. There was a slight throbbing pulse in Martin's neck which betrayed his anxiety, but he judged correctly that only he himself was aware of it. If Jonathan accepted this, it would be all right. No suspicions would be aroused; there would be time for the next step. If Sarah could be kept in prison for even part of her six month sentence, he would have time to cover up every trace of what he was doing in the rooms upstairs. Then she could shout her head off all she liked. No one would believe her.

  Jonathan hesitated. ‘Well, if you're sure . . .’

  ‘Believe me. In my profession, even more than yours, one gets to see more than one type of human behaviour, and what you and I might consider logic is . . . not universally accepted. But if we play it her way I am convinced Mrs Becket will come round without harming herself further. And that is what you want, Jonathan, is it not?’

  ‘Of course I do, man. She is my wife.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Martin relapsed into silence, guessing the conflicting tides of emotion that were coursing through Jonathan's mind. Jonathan had come to him because his marriage was in trouble, but that did not mean that he was not still fond of the woman, however oddly she behaved. And he was fonder still of the institution of marriage — and his own reputation. He did not want that destroyed, whatever he did with the girls upstairs. So far, Martin believed, Jonathan saw him as a confidant, a helper. But the relationship could easily turn the other way. And now, above all times, he could not afford to let that happen.