The Gift of Shame

by Sophie Hope-Walker

  Night after night she had revelled in knowing his eyes were on her and, goaded into even more daring acts, she had felt like a latter-day Scheherazade and found fuel for her own fantasies. One night her mother, looking out from another room, had discovered the man spying from a tree to which her exhibitions had lured him, and called the police. The man had been dragged into court and lost his highly placed position with the local authority. He had, to his honour, never mentioned what must have been obvious to him – that she had known and conspired with him – while shame had prevented her saying a word about her own repeated complicity, and he had been hounded out of town, his reputation in ruins. This incident was known to no one but themselves and remained her most shameful secret. From time to time she would calculate how old the man must be by now, and by what standard he must judge her own behaviour. While that man lived, the only other guardian of her guilt, she knew she could never be truly free. Not even now, not even with this man who had brought her to the edge of paradise, could she share it. Instead she sought to divert him.

  ‘I used to run an airline,’ she said and then waited as he absorbed her meaning before reacting precisely as she had hoped he would.

  Raising himself on one elbow he stared down at her. ‘You what!?’

  She laughed, delighted by his reaction. ‘I did!’ she insisted.

  ‘An airline?’ he asked.

  She nodded, almost unable to contain her happiness that she had managed to surprise him.

  ‘A real airline? I mean, one with aeroplanes that flew?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Which one?’ he demanded.

  ‘Well, all right,’ she confessed, ‘it wasn’t exactly an airline, but we did have planes and they did fly.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘A club. There was this small airfield near where I used to live. The owners would sometimes rent their planes to other people and sometimes, if they were qualified, they would fly them as air taxis. I used to run the office.’

  Sinking back onto the pillows he sighed with relief. ‘For a moment I thought I was in bed with the Chairman of British Airways!’

  Her laughter rang round the bedroom.

  ‘I always wanted to learn to fly,’ he said, and when she stayed silent, went on. ‘Never had the time.’

  Her silence had become palpable and, curious, he looked across to see that tears were flowing from her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked with immediate concern.

  ‘That’s where I met Kenneth.’

  ‘Kenneth?’ he asked and then immediately felt stricken as he remembered. ‘Your husband?’

  Her chin trembling now, she nodded.

  ‘Christ!’ he said feeling an idiot. ‘I’m sorry. Look, I blundered into that! Millie had told me what happened, of course. The last thing I wanted was to upset you.’

  Her shoulders were shaking now, and she turned away, murmuring into the pillows.

  He reached for her but she, now openly weeping, shrugged him off.

  ‘Look, there’s nothing that’s happened between us for you to be ashamed about.’ He felt helpless seeing her pain and feeling he had nothing to offer. ‘You’re a young woman. No one could blame you. Please don’t …’

  She spoke savagely into the pillow. ‘You don’t understand! I killed him!’

  Her words jolted him for a moment until he understood they couldn’t have literal meaning. Now he reached for her more positively and forced her anguished face to look at him. ‘That’s crazy!’ he told her. ‘How could you have killed him?’

  She threw off his hand which sought to placate her, and fled to the bathroom. He would have followed and caught her but, as he moved, he found his foot tangled in the sheet and was held long enough for her to have shut and bolted the door.

  ‘Open the door,’ he pleaded. ‘Please. I want us to talk.’

  Her only reply was a muffled: ‘Go away!’

  Reluctantly, he forced himself to give her the time and space she so obviously needed.

  Using a guest bathroom, he found himself making a mental inventory of his own bathroom for anything with which she might harm herself. With relief he concluded there was nothing. Not even aspirin, for which he had a lifelong aversion. The windows were fixed against the air-conditioning so it was impossible for her to hurl herself down the eight floors of the building. Even so he was concerned enough to come silently to the door and press his ear against it, listening for any sound inside.

  His worst fear was that he would hear nothing so he felt almost pleased to hear the shower noisily gushing.

  Dismissing his fears as melodramatic, he turned to dressing. She was, he assured himself, far too sensible a person to do anything like that.

  Finally, remembering that this was a business day, he went out to the office section of the apartment, still cursing himself for having brought Kenneth into their bed.

  ‘Idiot!’ he yelled at himself, before picking up the telephone to tell Annabel that he was ready to start his working day.

  She sat huddled in the corner of the shower cabinet and let the water pound down on her naked body. Not all the waters in all the world would be enough to wash away the self-disgust that gripped her. How could she have so piled treachery on betrayal? Even, back then, when Kenneth was dying, choking, drowning, she had lain, pleasuring herself on the deck, sensuously aware that the Diving Master was looking at the breasts she had bared to the sun.

  When they had brought up Kenneth’s body and she saw the agony of his dying in his face she had felt cursed by all the gods that ever were. Had she not panicked and left him she would have been, as she was meant to be, there to summon the help that would have saved him. She had been sickened then as she was sickened now.

  Emerging from the bathroom, wrapped in an oversized robe – a reminder that she had come to this flat practically naked – she hesitated as she heard voices. His, and then the answering voice of a girl or woman. For a moment she shuddered at the memory of Lesley, and, then, as she came closer, she heard they were talking about the claim on the stolen Maserati.

  The girl was tall. Her black hair was cut so dramatically close to her head it looked almost like a cap. She was strikingly attractive, perhaps a year or two older than herself, and when she looked up she revealed the most beautiful eyes Helen could ever remember.

  ‘Ah,’ Jeffrey cried, following Annabel’s eyeline. ‘This is Annabel,’ my personal assistant.’

  The two women smiled and then warily waited for some sign that the other intended to shake hands. Neither did.

  ‘Let’s all have some breakfast. Annabel, would you?’

  Annabel picked up the telephone and spoke quietly in the background as he came to her. ‘You all right now?’ he asked, and when she nodded, went on, ‘I feel a complete idiot. I’m sorry.’

  Looking at him she managed a smile. ‘It’s hardly any of your fault.’

  ‘It was my fault for blundering in like that. Especially then, at that moment.’

  ‘What moment?’ she asked.

  He looked at her awkwardly. ‘Well … just then I felt we were so close. You know,’ he finished artlessly.

  Looking at him she suddenly realised that this assertive, dominating man could also be vulnerable. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she told him. ‘It was a passing idiocy on my part.’

  He was holding her now but not so close that they couldn’t look into each other’s eyes. ‘I know that’s not true. I know the memory of him is still an agony. I just want you to know that I will do anything to make it easier for you to bear.’

  Laying her head against his chest she let the tears flow again, now a blending of gratitude and a feeling that his solicitude was welcomed but misplaced.

  Annabel, coming to announce that breakfast was on its way up, was stilled by the intimacy embodied in their embrace. Silently, and a little in awe, she turned away, unable to disturb them.

  Later that day as she lay in the solarium, listeni
ng to the distant voices of Jeffrey and Annabel as they worked, she found that she had regained some of her confidence. Having worked through the self-hatred of the early morning, she had concluded that if she was of no worth to herself she could, still, be of use to others. A category which was hastily reduced to an exclusive one. Jeffrey. He had shown concern. Consideration. Appreciation. She was capable of lighting his eyes with delight. If that were not a worthy function then she couldn’t imagine what else might be.

  Naked, she went to where he worked at his desk. Annabel was at a distance feeding paper into a fax machine, as Helen willed him to look up.

  When he did, she saw with pride how his eyes flickered from her face to her breasts, to her naked pubis and back again.

  ‘You don’t demand enough of me,’ she told him. ‘If you want a whore then you have me.’

  Jeffrey’s mouth quivered, his lips tried to form words but none came.

  Peripherally aware that Annabel was openly watching her, she turned and walked away across the deep-piled space to the bedroom.

  It had been almost an hour since her declaration to Jeffrey. An hour she had spent staring into a mirror and asking, over and over again, the same question: ‘Who are you?’

  The real question she was asking of herself was ‘Why did you do that?’ Why had she made such a determined attempt to close down all her previous life and throw herself so totally into Jeffrey’s hands? Chillingly, she realised it was not the first time she had made such a gesture.

  When Kenneth had asked her to marry him she had been excited less by the culmination of a romantic dream but rather as a means of escape from her mother. For as long as she could remember, her mother had terrified her just as she had dominated her father.

  ‘Extravagance!’ was her mother’s verdict on every birthday present, every Christmas gift, her doting father had ever bought her. From an early age she had been aware that her mother thought of her as a rival and that never once, during all those years of her growing, had she ever managed to gain her approval. Kenneth’s proposal had given her ammunition against her mother. An act of defiance to counter the many years of helplessness as she watched her beloved father sink further and further under the yoke of domination. How many times had she seen that smiling acceptance of his subservience and wanted to shake him, force life into him, because his acceptance of her mother’s domination robbed her of any chance of successful rebellion. That was why she now sought out strong-willed men. Men behind whom she could find shelter from her mother’s wrath.

  Guiltily, she now saw that Kenneth had not been that man. He had simply been the means of escape and she doubted that she had ever truly loved him. Whether or not he would have developed the strength to provide the protection she so desperately craved, had never been put to the test. The accident had ended any such hopes and, instead, returned her to her mother’s unrelenting pressure. The question now was could Jeffrey be that man? In going to him as she had, speaking as she had done, she now realised it had been an act not of submission to Jeffrey but another attempt to distance herself, to shut out forever, her mother.

  When the door to the bedroom opened she saw Jeffrey coming into the room and, standing, she turned to face him.

  ‘You are not my whore,’ he told her. ‘When you are free I will love you.’

  ‘Free – of what?’ she asked.

  ‘Of your guilt.’

  ‘You mean Kenneth?’

  ‘There’s a great deal more troubling you than simply Kenneth,’ he said with finality.

  His words struck so directly into her own thoughts that she felt almost elated that he could be so understanding. For confirmation she sought to challenge him. ‘What makes you think you know so much about me?’

  ‘I’ve been there,’ he told her in the flat tones of confession. ‘I know what it is to have guilt tearing into your guts. My father …’ His words trailed away like water spilt in a thirsty desert. ‘Let’s just say: “I know”.’

  ‘So what do you propose doing about it?’ she asked.

  ‘I told you yesterday that the best way to beat a nightmare is not to run away but to turn and face it. I propose that we test that theory together.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By means and times of my choosing. If you put yourself in my hands I think we could work it out. Are you willing to try?’

  It was another demand for commitment. Once more he was asking for her submission. She had now, in this time and place, to make a decision which she knew would be irrevocable. As she stood there facing him across a room, which seemed suddenly a continent wide, her mind raced through the alternatives. If she refused this man she might be turning her back on her one salvation. If she submitted she had no idea of where it might lead. Remembering his earlier, milder, challenges and his talent for bringing her to previously unimagined heights of pleasure, she knew what her answer was going to be.

  He was offering her a voyage on an uncharted sea but beyond the fear lay the possibility of undreamt of discovery. Excitement gripping her in a rush, she slowly, deliberately, nodded.

  ‘You have to say it,’ he urged.

  Looking him directly in the eye for the first time in many minutes, eyes flaring, she said: ‘Yes. Do what you will.’

  6

  STANDING BEFORE THE mirror and staring at her gilded nipples, Helen was appalled by the commitment she had made. Five short words had condemned her to whatever dark fantasy might lie in the darkest recesses of Jeffrey’s mind. Fear and excitement had always been close allies in her fantasy subconscious but she had declared herself to a man in open acknowledgement of what she was doing and left herself no escape clauses, no excuses she could make, and no means of dignified retreat.

  Along with these fragile certainties came doubt. What had he thought of her? After hearing her declaration he had said nothing but had stared at her for what seemed an agonisingly long time. His lips had moved but the thought had withered before being spoken until, still wordless, he had turned away and out of the room.

  The dull echo of her unanswered words, intended to be a challenging submission, now echoed in her mind like mere bravado, the garishly decorated breasts no more than a clown’s make-up. Had he seen it as such? Had she assumed, too soon, that she had some hold on this man she, even now, barely knew? Was he now trying to grapple with the dilemma of what to do with a woman who had offered up a commitment he didn’t want?

  Her thoughts lashing her, she realised that what she dreaded most was total rejection. The thought terrified her. She knew that, should he do so, her confidence would be crippled and her soul seared for life. Once more she trembled on the edge of a precipice knowing there was only one person in the entire world who could save her.

  When the door opened again she turned fearfully towards it, to see Jeffrey standing there smiling.

  ‘We have a visitor,’ he said, his voice light with confidence. ‘Someone I know you will want to meet.’

  The words had no real meaning – it was the melody with which he spoke them that warmed her. Had he said ‘we’ have a visitor? Had he said ‘I know you will want’? Somewhere in her relieved mind the other words ‘visitor’ and ‘meet’ only signified that she had not been rejected and that there was something he wanted to share with her. At that moment she might have run to him, thrown her arms about him and sobbed with relief, but, instead, she simply smiled and murmured: ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’ he asked.

  His puzzled face warmed her. The ice slid from her, melting before the beat of a renewed heart that reminded her she lived. Confidence surging back, she sought to challenge him. ‘Shall I come naked?’

  ‘Why not?’ he asked.

  Excitement triumphing over doubt she came, eyes fixed on his, slowly towards him, hoping perhaps that he would back down, deciding, she might, after all, cover herself. When she realised he was not going to back down before her challenge she felt a liberating thrill – as if passing through the bedroom door, licensed by
Jeffrey to go naked to greet a stranger, was the threshold to a new dimension in her life. One thing was certain – her commitment could now be nothing but total.

  The visitor was short in stature but huge in presence. A man, completely bald but vibrant with the simmer of a fulfilled life, he stood burned dark brown by endless summers whose aura of warmth he seemed to carry with him. Disdainful of the season, he was dressed for the sun in a light cotton short-sleeved shirt and white linen trousers, while on his feet he wore open espadrilles. His eyes, looking large in so small a face, widened as he saw her and she knew immediately who he was even before Jeffrey spoke the introduction.

  ‘Qito, I’d like you to meet Helen Lloyd.’

  ‘Magnificent!’ cried Qito holding up both his hands as if to prevent her coming any further forward. ‘How wonderful to meet a beautiful woman naked! Like a goddess! Such beauty should be brazen! The goddesses knew that but it is rare in mortal woman.’

  Coming forward, Qito took her hand and, with a courtly bow, kissed it. Helen unconsciously squared her shoulders while his kiss travelled the length of her arm, creating ripples of pleasure. His touch seemed to infuse her with some part of this extraordinary man’s energy and, when he looked up at her with his sparkling eyes, she felt disconcerted – as if she had shamelessly initiated some form of intimacy with him – while his open admiration filled her with a fierce pride.

  It was then that her eyes fell on the glass-topped table on which she had been sodomised the night before. There lay scattered the sketches Jeffrey had made of her before bringing her here. How distant that time seemed now. It was the time before commitment. Was this to be Jeffrey’s first ‘test’ of her?

  Her thoughts were brought from reverie by words which resonated with future promise. ‘I shall paint her!’ Qito cried, then, coming even closer, his perfect teeth gleaming unnaturally white against his walnut skin, he smiled into her eyes. ‘You are deserving of immortality.’ She felt, uneasily, as if his piercing gaze could see deep into the wanton soul that now lived behind them. ‘Come, child,’ he said, and taking her by the hand led her to stand before him as he sat on the couch and brought her hips square to his eyes. ‘Open yourself to me,’ he murmured.