So, she spent two weeks planning her own death. She’d already put the finishing touches to her artwork and her next job was writing the suicide note. Predictable as ever, Jennifer showed up one morning with a mind to fix things between them—now Philippe was gone.
Jennifer knocked on Claudia’s locked bedroom door—Claudia inwardly cursing Claire and Dirk for giving the woman hospitality. She’d happily hid up there for almost two weeks, living off packs of biscuits and bottles of wine she’d had hidden beneath the bed.
“Claude, I’m here. Come on, now he’s gone, what’s stopping us being close again?”
The fact I am content in killing myself.
Very soon, in fact.
When Claudia first became locked in that house with only a narcotics sideline and her failure as an artist for company, Jennifer used to telephone and warn that unless Claudia threw him out, she’d eventually regret the day.
Philippe, with his own chaos, was the only one who’d made her feel less dirty. Now, with him gone, what she had in mind was a clear purpose to end something that was no good. She could see no other way out whatsoever. The terrors of her mind were always chasing her tail and always would be. She considered all her options and knew The Plan was her only option.
After refusing to open up, Claudia determined that Jennifer went downstairs to the kitchen, speaking with Claire and Dirk for some time. The suicide note written, there was nothing else to achieve.
Except maybe that she wanted to look good to go. So she had a wash in the sink, brushed her hair, put on some make-up, and pulled on one of her nicer shirts and a skirt that didn’t look a hundred years old.
Not long later the key she had in the lock was pushed out and another opened the door.
There Jennifer stood, dressed in some garish suit, her hair finely styled.
“How’s you?” she asked so breezily.
“I have been better,” Claudia admitted.
Jennifer let herself in the room, never standing on ceremony. She’d gotten where she was from never standing back, always making herself known. She wore the gloves she always wore, but few knew why she really set that trend.
“He was no good for you so maybe now you can start again, properly launch yourself as an artist. Help Cai find a school, open this house to visitors or something… so you can pay for some repairs on this poor, neglected home.”
“Maybe you could launch yourself,” Claudia responded mockingly, “off the same bridge as Philippe.”
Jennifer sucked in breath. “I don’t know how you ended up becoming so lost, so underused. You were once… immense. I looked up to you.”
“That’s touching, Jennifer,” Claudia gritted out, the plan disintegrating before her very eyes. The sight of her little sister, annoyingly revitalising.
Jennifer spoke softly, calmly. “I can help you, now. Let me. I have so many connections, we can make you a success. I want to help.”
Claudia remained unreadable. “I don’t want help. First rule… you’ve got to want to be helped. I know… as clear as I see you now… my son is better off without me. I know it.”
Jennifer pinched the bridge of her nose. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” Claudia watched as those two words broke her little sister’s heart, but they were words she was sure of. I do: I mean it.
“I’ve missed you so much… but you and Willem broke my heart. You left. You came here… and for what? To start again?”
Claudia refused to fall for this sob story. “You’ve done alright for yourself. Don’t give me that. You’ve done fine without me.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Even so, I’ve sold my soul to beat everyone else… only when I get to the top might I be able to regain something of me, you know.”
“Sold your soul? Don’t make me laugh.” Claudia begged, disbelief still gripping her throat like an iron fist. You don’t know what it means to sell your soul.
Jennifer nodded, a hand running through the thick fringe she’d given herself. “Hmm. Bitched, clawed, stabbed… many people in the back. To get where I’m going… right to the top. To the top, Claudia. I’ve only got one more step to close in on ’til then.”
“That’s nice. I’m glad to know you’ve had such a hard life. Getting to your pedestal… I’m sure it’ll be a triumphant day for you.” Claudia forced a smile.
“How did you become… this? This…” Jennifer didn’t seem to be able to find a word for it.
Claudia eyed her sister with a sinister grin. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me, Jennifer, so don’t come over all high and mighty. I’m still the elder sister even though you think you know everything about life.”
Jennifer suppressed a nervous laugh, some truth hitting home. She didn’t know Claudia like she used to. Those days, whatever they were, they were gone. Days when they were girls, when they shared a table full of patterns and papers, ideas and hopes.
Perhaps Claudia grew up knowing how to function as a sound member of society, but had lost that ability somewhere along the way. As it stood now, she was a lost cause.
Jennifer told Claudia wearily, “If you’d only let me in your life, then maybe I’d know you again. I’d be able to help my sister… if only she opened up to me.”
“Do you want to know the truth or are you here just to try and save my soul? I think there are a few things I need to tell you,” Claudia advised and Jennifer nodded, a small smile on her face.
Don’t smile. You won’t be smiling in a minute, thought Claudia.
Claudia gestured to the other woman, “I could do with a drink so we’ll go down to the drawing room and talk there.”
They left the bedroom, heading down calmly. Jennifer hadn’t noticed that Claudia had stolen a pistol from her dresser, stashing it in the pocket of her generous skirt.
Jennifer refused a drink but Claudia took a scotch just to take the edge off. They sat in the window seat together and Jennifer remarked, “You’re still pretty.”
Claudia knew she was and ignored this totally, sniffing indifferently.
The elder sister began, “I want to ask you… if you were to guess why Father left us, what would be your understanding of that?”
Jennifer stared blankly and responded, “He had an affair and Mum found out?”
She really thought it was as simple as that, yet Jennifer was functioning in the world while Claudia wasn’t. Most probably, the younger sister didn’t even know a small per cent of the real truth.
“I want to tell you a story now and I want you to listen. You need to know the truth.” Claudia shifted uncomfortably and breathed deeply, more raggedly. A rash crept up her neck.
“I was walking home from a friend’s house one day. I was 11, you were ten. I spotted Father’s car outside a house in Baker Street. You remember that E-type Jag he had? He never could fit anything but himself and his medical bag in that thing. His pride and joy. I remember standing in the street and staring for I don’t know how long. It wasn’t a neighbourhood he knew anybody in, as far as I knew. I assumed he was carrying out his rounds perhaps, you know? The old ladies who couldn’t make it to his surgery? I talked myself out of my suspicions and started to walk home, passing on the other side of the street with the whole intention of going straight there.”
Claudia looked from her lap straight into Jennifer’s green eyes and knew her younger sister probably wouldn’t believe a word of what she was about to say. It was superfluous, but better said than not.
“A moment after deciding to leave and forget I ever saw his car there, I saw a woman in a doorway with only a loose robe covering a silk slip. Her arms around a man, she kissed him goodbye with a great smile on her face. I’ll never forget that look she had, not a care in the world. No idea that the man’s daughter stood across the street watching.
“I got going before he turned around, so he didn’t see me… but I knew it was our father. He was wearing that wax jacket he had, you know, the country gent one. I knew from the dark ha
ir to the way he stood it was him.”
Claudia had always known their parents weren’t happy but it was still a shock to see him with his mistress in broad daylight, not a shred of shame. The young girl she was turned down a corner of that road and hid against a gate so he wouldn’t see her as he drove away.
“When I knew he’d left, I went home and tried to pretend that what had happened hadn’t happened. I couldn’t contain it, though. I went straight to Father one night while Mum was out with her friends at the bingo. He was smoking in the parlour and I asked if I could join him.
“In short, I asked him if he had any lady friends he kissed in doorways and he stared down as if it were nothing. He said it as if it was no big deal… that it was getting harder to lie. He admitted the whole thing, saying Mum was a cold woman who had been difficult to live with ever since she’d given birth to the both of us. I said I found her to be difficult too but that for our sakes, shouldn’t he try to make it work? Or be honest with her?
“You might remember, that was the night that he told her he was leaving. That he was in love with someone else and was leaving. It was the night she throttled him for it and sent him packing without a shirt to his name. That was the night our lives as we knew it ended.”
“I remember,” Jennifer recalled dolefully.
“That isn’t where it ended for me, the repercussions I mean.”
“Repercussions?” Jennifer appeared fearful.
“We know it got hard after Father left, money was tight. She was miserable, unable to work, nobody to help. The rheumatoid arthritis… it took from her, like it has taken from you too, but where you never gave in she did… to depression. Dark, bitter, horrible depression. For me, the decision I made to tell Father didn’t end with that. There’s things about Mother you need to know.”
“What things?” Jennifer appeared defensive, twisting her hands in her lap, the reminder of their shared condition a difficult one. Jennifer and her mother had once been people who used their hands but had that liberty taken away from them.
“She blamed me for everything. When you weren’t around, she’d tell me that it was alright until I stuck my beak in. She’d known about the affair but me telling him I knew had pushed him to finally leave. She said it was all going well until me, the stupid little bitch, got involved and ruined everything.”
“I’m sorry,” Jennifer said, wiping a tear, breathing hard.
“That’s not where it ended,” Claudia hastily added. “When times were bad in Brixton, she started turning tricks. I interrupted her one day when I came home from school sick… and she knew I caught her. She spoke to me after the man went and said that it was my fault, that I had made her start doing these things. I screamed and said it was her fault for not seeking medical help… even suggested she could get a job that didn’t require any physical exertion. You know? I don’t know… a docent or something! She beat me with her shoe until I was black and blue and after that… after that… on the nights when you were at hockey practice, she had men over and she made me stand in her closet and listen to every sordid grunt and groan. Sometimes I’d get so scared as the men slapped or fucked her, I couldn’t help but watch to check she was okay.”
Jennifer’s look was one of horror; she’d been totally oblivious to it all.
“The sights made me so physically sick sometimes that I had to will myself not to make a sound while she was dealt with badly. Each time the man went, she showed me what these men had done to her and blamed me. Always blamed me. ‘This is what you have done, Claudia,’ she would say.”
“No,” Jennifer whispered, tears falling from her eyes.
“I know you don’t want to believe it but it’s true. It’s all true.” Claudia stood and lifted her shirt to show her sister the ribs that had never healed. She stretched the skin to show her. “I lost count of the amount of times she broke them. Remember those shoes she used to wear, those wedge platforms? She was wearing them every time.”
“No,” she asserted again, in denial, her eyes blazing with rage.
“Yes, yes, she kept you ignorant so she could at least let herself believe she got one thing right. I kept you safe too, in not telling you. If you’d known, you’d have been dragged into it.”
“No,” Jennifer repeated, not willing to have her view of their downtrodden mother wrecked by that awful account.
“Yes, sometimes there were even two men if she needed to get us new uniforms or pay the rent. She got extra for two at a time.”
“No,” she shook her head.
“I started getting into trouble at school, remember? Do you remember? So they sent me to a counsellor. I told them and they said I was insane… for suggesting such things… for suggesting my own mother did that to me. They even hauled her in, sat her down, and she denied all of it. That’s when I went away that time to a mental hospital… that’s when things happened. That’s when I started thinking about ways out… ways out of my own head. In and out… I was in and out, wasn’t I? In and out of hospital… they did things. It got scary when I couldn’t remember certain periods of time.”
“You’ve always been ill, Claude. Now I see. Now I see, you truly are ill!”
“Yes, and now you know why.”
“I don’t believe you,” she snapped. “Mum would never have done that! Never!”
“I don’t care what you believe. It’s true. It happened to me… and I carry the scars! Me! So when you come into my house, don’t judge me and how I live my pathetic life. It’s a wonder I’ve lived this long.”
“She sacrificed everything for us!”
“Oh yeah, you thought she did… didn’t you? You thought she was working at her sewing machine all day when actually, she was earning via another method. As far as I know, the only thing she sacrificed was what little dignity she had and the young daughter who knew no better.”
“You could have… just left! Gone! We’d have been fine without you!”
Claudia stood and growled terrifyingly loudly, “Don’t you see, you stupid girl! She’d have turned to you next! You stupid girl! I was protecting you!”
“I don’t understand!” Jennifer began pacing while Claudia sat down on the window seat once more.
“Neither did I, but it happened. I’m not lying. You know… when Willem offered us work, she refused to let us go… stating we were too young. Do you want to know the real reason why we weren’t allowed to go, huh? Do you want to know?”
“Just tell me then! Tell me!”
“Because she needed me for the family firm to stay alive, that’s why!”
Jennifer turned on Claudia with a look in her eye, one that reminded Claudia of their mother. She spat, “I. Do. Not. Believe. You. I. Hate. You.”
Chapter 44
Past
CAI HAD BEEN hiding beneath the window seat. Tears slowly rolled down his cheeks as his mother told her sister the sad story nobody ever imagined. He sure never imagined it either. His mother sat above him, stifling the air around the tiny box he now struggled to get his frame into.
He never knew fear until that day, nor pity, or sadness. How did these things happen to her? Why? He wanted to raise these questions and beg for answers but he was terrified of showing himself, of admitting being curious about what went on.
Some of the conversation he pretended he didn’t hear. It didn’t escape his understanding though—the reason why his mother was always trapped in a closet while his father was engaged with other women. Something about that still didn’t seem black and white, but it went some way to helping Cai understand why his mother might have let Philippe have his sex games—just so long as she didn’t have to participate in them.
How will I ever be able to talk to anyone about this?
About the things they did to each other and the reasons why?
Even with Claire and Dirk, who must have had their own thoughts on what transpired between his parents, he felt embarrassed just at the thought of how he might ask them to explain certain
idiosyncrasies of his parent’s lives. Why do adults take part in these games?
Cai’s father, dead—he wasn’t there to answer questions, not anymore. A part of Cai realised he never knew his dad and now never would. He couldn’t even mourn his death because for so long, Philippe seemed to be a contributor to Claudia’s illness.
“I hate you,” Jennifer repeated again, in a gravelly voice.
So many must have pinned the tortured artist label on her, but it was never as simple as that.
“You don’t know what hate is, Jennifer. If you ever experience it, which I hope you don’t, you’ll suffer for the feelings so close to love that are tainted with rage and denial. Hate… hate? I hated our mother yet I loved her. Hated what she’d become, yet still loved her. I put up with her because of that. I wanted her to change and be the mother to me that she was to you, but she never was. She couldn’t put aside her feelings to see that I was just a child, too. So, no, Jennifer, you don’t know what hate is when the only thing you’ve ever really loved is yourself!”
“You’re spiteful, just spiteful! I don’t believe it… I can’t! If you loved me at all, you’d have kept this to yourself!”
“Can’t, or won’t… those are two very different things.”
Cai heard Jennifer’s difficult breathing as she moved nearer the window seat once more. He wished he had the guts to respond to what was going on, because if he did, he’d tell Claudia that it didn’t matter anymore—they’d get her the help she needed and he’d be there for her. He’d never leave her side and she wouldn’t ever have to fear being alone again.
“She’s dead in the ground and so is our father. They can’t answer for the things they did but you, you’re still alive, and you can make up anything you like, can’t you? You can say or do anything you like, just as you always did. Any excuse! Claudia the rebel, Claudia the freedom fighter, the campaigner. You know… I always envied you your freedom, your artistic expression… your, god, your beauty and your talent. Me… I’ve had to work for everything I got, you know? While you, huh, you,” Jennifer breathed hard, “you never even had to try, did you? You got this place,” she drawled sarcastically, “you got a hot man, you got a son and a ton of money—”
Unbind (Sub Rosa Series Book 1) Page 33