The Pretence

by Linus Peters

  “Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go!” And I knew she meant away, out of my life, and not just free of my grip.

  I stood there gaping, knowing she was beyond any words or actions I could think of to restrain her. She opened her cases and laid them out on the bed, hastily throwing everything inside, disappearing to go from room to room to collect up her things.

  We crossed paths in the bathroom as I went to attend to the cut on my cheek. It wasn’t that bad. She’d got me right on the point of the cheekbone, splitting the skin open, but it wouldn’t need stitches or anything. Mind you, what I would be needing for the next week or so, was a damn good explanation.

  I helplessly uttered her name a couple of times, her ‘new’ name, as she threw all her toiletries into a plastic bag. But I didn’t dare balk her progress.

  “Juliana, please!” I begged, trailing behind her back to the bedroom. “We can work this out. No matter how this relationship begun, it’s about us now. No one else.” She never said a word, just went on throwing things into her cases. “It had to happen sometime.”

  She stopped for a moment and looked at me almost pitifully, as if I understood nothing. That same expression that had been on her face in the square at Covent Garden there again, when she’d been warning me about all the surprises she might have in store one day.

  “At least give it a chance?” I begged.

  “No,” she said, slamming shut the lids of her suitcases.

  “Why not?”

  She never replied, just continued to secure her cases. Two succumbed to the pressure, yet the third was overfilled, and wouldn’t close no matter what she did.

  “Fuck!” she cursed. “Fuck, fuck!” She heaved and pushed for a while, and then, as if it was the very last thing she wanted to do in this world, turned to me. “Will you help me, please?” she said, very formally.

  “Help you to leave me?” I asked.

  She sighed impatiently and looked away, like a frustrated animal that wanted only freedom. “Simon, you don’t fucking know me!” she repeated yet again.

  “I do!” I shouted back. “More than you think.”

  Finally, by actually kneeling on the lid of the suitcase and pressing down with all her might, she managed to close it on her own, and began to drag all three cases, one by one, to the front door.

  “Juliana!”

  “Call me a cab,” she said, opening the door, obviously intending to carry the cases down to the entrance of the building.

  “Please!” I begged. “What we’ve got is so good. This is just an opportunity to make it better.”

  “Simon!” she screamed, dropping the case and whirling round to face me. “Call me a fucking cab, will you!”

  She looked so hard. So mean. All that beauty poisoned as if it had somehow been polluted. This was the face that once lit up with love for me? Now it seemed filled only with an irrational hate; a fury that promised to be turned upon me at any moment.

  She seized up the heavy suitcase again and started to struggle down the staircase, bumping from one step to another, and I turned in the direction of the phone, though I had no intention of using it.

  I think I was almost in a state of shock. Everything had happened so suddenly. Only yesterday we’d been on the cliff-tops in Cornwall: laughing, fooling around, so much in love.

  Suddenly there was a crash as she, and her case, apparently went tumbling down the stairs. I ran to the front door, a horrible mournful wailing beginning even before I reached there.

  I found her slumped against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, half-buried by her suitcase, wailing and weeping, in such an agonised heap it went through my mind that maybe she’d thrown herself down there. Before I could reach her, the man from downstairs appeared in his doorway, and I realised he must’ve been listening to us for some time. Yet he never spoke, just stood there, his door open a few inches, trying to assess what was going on and what he should do about it.

  “Juliana!” I cried, ignoring him, grabbing hold of her, trying to work out where the pain was. “Are you okay?”

  She threw back her head in anguish, repeatedly banging it against the wall, tears streaming down her face.

  “What is it?” I asked stupidly.

  I think the man from downstairs realised before I did. He kind of nodded respectfully and closed his door.

  “Juliana!” I repeated, at last realising what this was all about, that she’d been so desperately trying to remain impassive, to pretend she didn’t care, but eventually had cracked. “Hey, come on! ... It’s okay!”

  We stayed there for some time, just hugging each other, her gradually calming, and, yes, I don’t mind admitting it, both of us drying our tears. Then I helped her and her suitcase back upstairs. As we went to enter the flat, to cross the threshold, she hesitated for a moment.

  “Simon ... you don’t know me,” she repeated yet again, this time rather plaintively.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told her, putting my arm around her and leading her inside. “Nothing matters, as long as we’re together.”

  But, of course, it did matter. It mattered a lot. I vowed that night that whatever secrets she was holding onto, I would give her as much time as she liked to tell me, that if she really wanted, she could keep them forever, but it wasn’t easy. Now I knew ‘who’ she was, I wanted to know ‘what’? What could there possibly be in her past that was so bad? And now that she’d admitted to it, would she be able to keep it locked as tightly away as she’d been able to up until now? Or would it slowly slither out and devour us both?

  I mean, the thing about people and their guilty secrets is that ninety nine times out of a hundred they turn out to be nowhere near as bad as you feared. The human race gets guilt-ridden by all manner of odd things. I remember this friend of mine at university, one night, after a little too much drinking of this, and puffing at that, he decided to confess to me what he’d never told anyone before in his life. He made such a big deal of it, swearing me to all kinds of oaths, making me promise I wouldn’t think any differently of him, in the end I decided I’d rather not know. I had all sorts of notions whirring round in my head. Murder. Rape. Incest. He seemed such an inoffensive little guy too - captain of the chess team. However, when I told him that maybe it would be best if he kept it to himself, he became hysterical. Bursting into tears, declaring it had to come out, that he just couldn’t go through life a moment longer without relieving himself of this terrible burden.

  It turned out that at the age of thirteen, in the middle of a long and listless summer holiday, and left all alone at home, he tried to wank off the family King Charles Spaniel. I mean, what could I say? Whether it was relief or what, I don’t know, but when he finally blurted it out, I laughed so much he lost his temper and stormed out.

  He never spoke to me again. Or only to threaten diabolical consequences if I ever told anyone. Sometimes I wonder where he is now? If he ever attempted to relieve his guilt elsewhere, or after his experience with me, did he decide to keep it to himself? Perhaps he’s achieved high office and every night has nightmares about me coming to knock on his door? That I might sell his story to the tabloids? The skeleton, as it were, out of the kennel.

  Yet with Juliana it was different. No matter how restricted my knowledge of her might be, I knew enough to know that anything was possible. Not that I’d ever sensed any guilt about her, but I had sensed a lot of damage. Like that haunted expression I’d seen on her face that first morning when she awoke. What the hell had that been about?

  I mean, it’s a difficult thing to know. What is there that if it was in your partner’s past would change your mind about them? No matter how much you loved them. Something they never thought fit to tell you. I suppose the truth is, none of us really know that until we’re actually faced with it.

  You probably won’t be surprised to learn that my cut and bruised cheek caused an undeserved amount of comment in the office. Charlie was away sick for a few days, but just about everyone els
e had a piece of me. Frankly, I feel sorry for anyone who ever does genuinely walk into a door. Or who goes for a pee in the middle of the night and inadvertently catches themselves on the edge of the bathroom cabinet. I thought I’d try for the double bluff, and say my partner had hit me, hoping that they’d then immediately latch onto the fact that I must’ve got drunk and fallen over or something. But they wouldn’t have any of it.

  Luca, not wanting to waste his time on the ‘official version’, said nothing until we were alone. Sidling up to me in the pub at lunch-time as I was about to order another beer.

  “She didn’t look violent,” he muttered.

  “She isn’t,” I replied. “People do have accidents, you know.”

  “Of course,” he agreed, accepting my gesture for another drink. “And how is the beautiful one?”

  “Juliana?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Juliana,” I repeated.

  He turned and stared at me. “You know?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Everything?” he asked eagerly.

  I shrugged. “Not yet, but I suspect I soon will.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Immediately he grabbed my hand and shook it for all he was worth, congratulating me as if all my worries were now at an end. “You really are a lucky, lucky bastard,” he said. “It’s the most incredible story I’ve ever heard. I envy you. I really do.”

  I paused for a moment. Don’t ask me why but I didn’t feel like being as open with him as usual. “What if there’s something about her I don’t want to know?”

  “Like what?” he scoffed.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s a war criminal or something?”

  “A what!”

  “Well .. something!” I cried, realising how stupid that sounded.

  He paused for a moment, shaking his head as if I was irredeemably hopeless. “Simon, why do you make everything so complicated? Is this getting too normal for you? What on earth could there be in her past that would possibly justify anything other than you going down on your knees every day for the rest of your life and thanking God for the miracle that brought her to you?”

  I paused for a moment, staring at his expression, the question he’d just asked me still frozen on his face, then finally let go and laughed at myself. “Luca. Why is it so simple for you and so problematical for me?”

  “Because you’re English,” he told me. “You can’t have a good time unless you analyse it first.”

  He was right, of course. Loving each other as Juliana and I did, what did it matter about the past? We’d managed without one up until now, why not just go on regardless?

  But the problem was, Juliana was patently dwelling on it more and more with each passing day. She became difficult, argumentative, especially when drinking; as if she was testing me, searching for my limits, trying to prove to me, or perhaps to herself, that there was no way I could take it.

  I did try fighting it for a while, taking her away again, spending a couple of days up in Norfolk with a little Suzuki 4-wheel drive. But suddenly it almost seemed as if there were three of us in the relationship, that the ghost of her past was now exerting as much influence over her as I was. And finally, I came to the conclusion that I was being selfish. That whatever this thing was, she needed to get it out, and I had no right to deny her, to pretend it wasn’t there, and that all that was being asked of me was to wait.

  Maybe it was because we were tired, our defences weakened, but it happened the night we got back from Norfolk. I’d always imagined it would come out piece by piece, over a protracted period, but, in fact, it was just a matter of her reaching the right moment, emotions being piled high enough to topple over, then simply the word or deed to trigger it off.

  All it took was for me to take her hand during a rather protracted silent moment over my famous Spaghetti Bolognese, to attempt to reassure her that everything was okay, and she immediately hijacked the moment as her provocation to finally let go.

  “What?” she asked, as I squeezed her hand.

  “Nothing.”

  She sighed. “Say it,” she demanded, though I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

  “What?

  Again she sighed, then pulled her hand from mine, turning it over, palm upwards. “I saw the way you reacted to them that first night.”

  For a moment I still didn’t know what she was getting at. Then I realised. She was right. It had always fascinated me how hard the skin was on the palms of her hands.

  “Are you really that naive? That innocent?” she asked. “Some men I know would’ve realised the moment they felt them.”

  I stared into her face, those china blue eyes openly challenging me. I mean, she was obviously right. I was naive. I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. The only thing I was aware of was, whether I liked it or not, she was finally ready to summon up her ghosts.

  “Do you know how you get this?” she asked, indicating the hard ridges across the bases of her fingers.

  I shrugged, having no idea, nor imagining it could be of any importance. “Lifting something? ... Manual work of some description?”

  She laughed slightly cruelly. “No. Not really.” Again there was a pause, she looked almost as if she was relishing her task. “Do you know what pole dancing is?”

  I shrugged. “Yes.”

  “Well, if you do enough of it, swinging round the pole, gradually you get this hard patch.” I nodded, now feeling even more lost. “Simon, I’ve never worked in a theatre in my life. That was bullshit. I work at private parties. Very exclusive and expensive ones. As a performer.”

  She paused for a moment, waiting for a reaction, but there wasn’t going to be one. Though, in fact, I was feeling just that little bit relieved. If this was all it was, the great guilty secret, then I could handle it, no problem. I mean, it is the 21st Century, for chrissake. People do stuff. It wasn’t exactly what I expected. She always seemed to have so much class, but I guess you get classy exotic dancers, too.

  However, she hadn’t finished with me yet.

  “I perform, men choose me, and then .....” There was a long pause and I prayed she wasn’t about to fill in what she’d just left unsaid. “I go all over: Europe, the Middle East, even China. In Japan you wear these little numbers and they pick you out like at the meat counter at the supermarket. Only the seriously rich, of course. Big businessmen, Arab sheikhs, sometimes even royalty. On a good night, I can make ten thousand. Twenty per cent goes to the agency. They really look after us. Fly us everywhere first class. Five star hotels.”

  That was about as much as I cared to hear. I wanted her to stop then and there. Yet for some reason she pursued me in exactly the same manner that she’d carried on punching Kerry that night in the gym, mercilessly, as if determined to find the knock-out blow.

  “I think the English expression is ‘I’ve been fucked more times than you’ve had hot dinners’. Only in my case, you’d have to add breakfast, lunch, and probably cups of tea as well,” she said, momentarily feigning a bad upper crust English accent.

  I felt sick. Even more so because I instantly realised that, amongst all the deceits and pretences I’d endured over the last few months, this was the first thing I’d heard that immediately rang true. Those two men that day in Covent Garden; the nudges and the winks. Her problems with sex when we first went to bed; in not wanting to give into, to give away, her profession. That haunted expression first thing in the morning; her initial lack of recognition of who she was in bed with, the aching void filled by hundreds, by the sound of it, thousands, of loveless encounters. Oh, Christ, yes, this is true all right.

  “So,” she said, pouring herself the last of the wine, “are you happy now you’ve finally got to know the real me?”

  I paused for a moment, floundering, drowning, isolated illogical thoughts floating past me on their way to the surface. “What about the scars?” I asked.

  She smiled wearily. “Boyfriend’. When I was
seventeen. He was .. oh, in his fifties, I guess. Very rich, very sophisticated. Took me all over the world. The ‘other’ world, that is. Private islands, luxury yachts, places most people don’t even know exist. I was ‘the most exquisite thing he’d ever seen’ ... After about six months or so I flew out to Mustique one day to meet him. When I got to the hotel there was a fax telling me it was all over and that any expenses I incurred from that moment on were my own.” She stopped and shook her head. “I loved him so much. Or I thought I did. But he’d taken me out of my league, shown me another life, how could I go back to teenage boys after that?”

  “So you tried to kill yourself?”

  “Kind of. I broke into his flat one night, lay down on his bed, and cut my wrists. Very romantic. Very tragic. I thought he’d find me there,” she said, running her fingers over her scars. “Turned out he was away. Never even knew about it. Not till the housekeeper told him.”

  There was a long pause. She left the table to go and sit on the sofa but I stayed where I was. The next question was undoubtedly mine, but some things are just too painful to say. “And that’s why you became ...”

  “A prostitute,” she inserted, yet immediately, rather to my surprise, began to laugh. “I had this discussion with a customer one night. Psycho-analyst. He told me I became a prostitute because I hate men, because I’m trying to get even with them and by fucking them, I emasculate them. I remove their penis. At the time I was nineteen. All I knew was it was the only way I had of maintaining the lifestyle I’d become accustomed to. Designer labels, luxury apartment, sports car. Sometimes, the right customer, a rich Arab or something - someone with a weakness for blondes - I can earn enough for a new car in one night.”

  At last she stopped. Maybe because she couldn’t bear to say anymore, maybe because she felt she’d finally finished me off. And that thing - that thing that if you ever found it out about your partner would change your mind about them - was staring me in the face.