Wife On Demand

by Alexandra Sellers

  “What is it?” she asked in concern. “If you’d prefer another room—”

  Jude shook his head and stepped into the room after her. “No, this is fine,” he said. But she was sure there was something.

  “Please tell me. There are other rooms you could use.”

  “This is fine. It’s a big room, that’s all.”

  “What?”

  “And there are no bars on the windows, Hope! That’s all it is, I’m just not used to space or freedom!” he said impatiently. He did not like expressing his feelings to her. It made him feel vulnerable.

  She stood in silence, hating what had been done to him but knowing it would be futile to say so.

  “His—your study is through here.” She crossed the room and opened another door. “I guess you’ve been in here before.”

  She had removed her father’s personal effects, but had left his books and the paintings on the wall. Even without signs of occupation, it was a comfortable, warm room, and this space brought her father back to her more than any other. Hope had spent many evenings with him in here after her mother’s death, doing her homework while her father worked or read. This room had become their shelter against loneliness. Here they had had each other.

  Even now she was not sure why she had given it to Jude. Perhaps to prevent herself making a shrine out of it.

  On the desk were piled all the papers and drawings that she had culled from the office files. Jude crossed to the desk and slowly riffled a pile of papers. “Right,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  “Do you want some lunch? I promised to go into the office this afternoon,” she said.

  He had involuntarily picked up a sheaf of papers and was reading. He looked up. “What?” he asked absently. “Oh—no, I’m not hungry. Thanks,” he added, as an afterthought.

  When she got home that night he had cooked dinner. Ham, corn and scalloped potatoes. “This is a luxury!” she said.

  It was no lie. Some of her loneliest moments in the past year had been at mealtimes. Mostly she had eaten in the kitchen, often on her feet, not liking to be reminded of her father’s absence by sitting alone in the dining room. Jude had set the table there, and it was a funny kind of inner relief to sit at the table with him, sharing a meal.

  It was a long time since Jude had cooked a meal for her. In that other life, when she had been practically living at his apartment, he had prepared meals, but that was a fact that she had almost forgotten. She had lost so many things.

  “I’d forgotten you used to cook,” she said, to fill the silence.

  “So had I. I’d forgotten how enjoyable it is,” he said.

  “Where did you learn to cook?”

  “From watching my father. But whether he learned to cook only after my mother was killed, or always did, I’m not sure. He was a good cook later on, anyway. Did your father cook?”

  She shook her head. “My mother could cook. I guess I learned some things from her. But after she died, Dad hired a cook housekeeper. I don’t mind cooking, but I don’t usually cook when I’m on my own.”

  “You don’t? What do you eat?”

  “Oh—bread and cheese, or a salad. In winter I heat up soup. I don’t need much food to keep going. If I ate like this every night I’d get fat.”

  What was weird was the absolute ordinariness of the scene, of the conversation. When they had finished the main course, Hope put her chin in her hand and looked at him.

  “Do you know we never, ever talked like this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Just—plain, everyday stuff. Who you are, who I am. What we like and don’t like. We never talked about things like that.”

  “We didn’t?” He looked remote.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Don’t you remember? We sort of grunted at each other, we were always touching instead of talking. Sex seemed to say it all. We never found out who we were.”

  “We found that out later,” he said deliberately, and that shut her up, because the look of absolute mistrust was back in his eyes again, and she knew she couldn’t fight that.

  One area might be safe. When they sat over dessert and coffee, she asked, “Jude, what do you think happened?”

  “Bill Bridges perjured himself at my trial. That much I know.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  His face was grim as death. “Because he had something to hide. He lied to protect himself. If I find what he was trying to hide, I have the whole answer.”

  “I’d like to help. What are you—”

  He interrupted. “There is no reason for you to concern yourself, Hope. It has nothing to do with you.”

  The injustice of it ignited a spurt of anger in her blood. “Do I have to remind you that we are married?” she demanded harshly.

  One eyebrow went insolently up. “No.”

  Her liver curled at the tone of his voice as he spoke the word. But she stood her ground. “Well, then.”

  “Is it relevant to anything, this marriage?”

  Never had any marriage been so contemptuously dismissed. Hope plonked her elbows on the table and leaned forward furiously. “Is it relevant? Is it relevant? How long does your parole have to run, Jude?”

  “You know it. Three years.”

  She nodded. “Three, years in which you are expected to reside with your wife and maintain this house as your address. Do you imagine that I’m enjoying this charade, Jude? Do you think I’m looking forward to spending three years with a man who blames me for the destruction of his life with every glance?”

  “We can get divorced any time. We can divorce now.”

  “Oh sure, after your parole officer has conducted a little enquiry into our reasons and granted his permission! Thanks but no thanks! I’m not going to discuss invented marital problems with a...with a...and anyway, which one of us would get to stay in the house? You have no income, have you forgotten?”

  The heat of her fury had arrived at the kindling point of his. “What is your point?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice level.

  “My point, Jude, is simple. You know perfectly well that you can’t afford to divorce me now, on several grounds. I understand that, and I’m willing to put up with this situation for as long as it takes. But not one minute longer. I do want a divorce, Jude.” She stared at him. “In the paranoid fantasy you’re creating about what I’m getting out of this, try and remember that you forced me into this marriage and I want out of it as soon as possible!”

  “You made a choice. I did not force you.”

  “Oh yeah, I made a choice!” She began counting on her fingers. “I had the choice of doing nothing until I was arrested as accessory to your escape attempt, grassing on you—that’s what they call it, isn’t it?—or marrying you. If that’s your idea of a free choice, it isn’t mine!”

  “What do you want?” He was losing the struggle with his temper.

  “I want you to recognize common sense! There are two of us in this, and it’s stupid not to work together. It’s stupid and self-defeating if you don’t let me help.”

  “So, now, you want to help. You must forgive my surprise.”

  Hope lost it. She scrambled to her feet, meaning to leave the room, but instead, suddenly, she was shouting at him. “I always wanted to help and you know it! How dare you accuse me! You were so cool on the stand—why can’t you understand what they did to me? They put your girlfriend on the stand and told everyone she was your fiancée five minutes before me—I felt like such a fool!”

  Jude shouted back. “Why had you no faith in me? How could you believe this stupid woman with her stupid story?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me she existed if she was so unimportant? That’s what I kept thinking. Why didn’t you warn me?”

  He got to his feet opposite her. “Do you know how much I had on my mind? She was completely unimportant to me! Why should I think of her, why should I tell you about a woman I stopped seeing before I met you?”

  “She came
to visit you!”

  “I had no control over who came to that place, Hope! I couldn’t go to the toilet without permission, I couldn’t see the sky except one hour a day! I was told to go to the visiting room and I went, expecting maybe to see you, or Nicholas! And instead Corinne with her games. I thought, well, she has now an exciting part to play with her friends! My boyfriend is accused of a dreadful crime, darlings, it’s simply too awful!” he mimicked brutally.

  “You should have told me it was coming!”

  “Yes!” he agreed violently. “Yes, we didn’t think of this! I told Nicholas there was nothing anymore between us, and he said he would deal with her on the stand. Neither of us thought of what use they might put her to—but if we had thought of it, how could I have dreamed that it would work on you! If I had known how deep your trust of me went—as deep as your pretty skin!—maybe I would have thought to warn you. There is a woman who will tell lies about who it is I love. Don’t believe her. Should I have said those words to you? Should I have had to tell you that, after what we had?”

  She did not understand her anger’s sudden transmogri-fication. All she knew was that she was trembling with sobs that seemed to come from nowhere.

  “I wish you had,” she sobbed. “Oh, Jude, if only you had!”

  But with equal suddenness his anger had retreated behind the wall of ice. He gazed impassively at her, his lips compressed into a thin line. Then he turned and left the room.

  Although nothing was ever said, after that moment Jude accepted her into partnership in his attempts to find the truth.

  “I think the original testing on the glass was flawed, but Bridges didn’t find out about it till the glass was already manufactured and on site,” he explained to her a day or two later. They were sitting over coffee in her father’s study, Jude behind the desk where her father always used to sit, Hope in the big leather chair that had always been hers. “He was faced with a dilemma. If he told me the truth, it would cost money to fix. Maybe a lot of money—if I had to redesign the whole primary structure, all the glass already manufactured might be useless. But there might never be a problem, or not in our lifetimes.”

  “But he had to cover himself in case there was one in the future.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he planted someone in our office to steal the original test results and plant the other set.”

  Jude nodded.

  “But then why did he have the glass re-tested? Why didn’t he just fake the figures in the new document? If a disaster happened ten years down the road, who could prove anything?”

  “I don’t have the answers to that yet.”

  “And you think it was Gig Young’s job to steal the original test documents and plant the new ones?”

  Jude shrugged. “But there’s a problem with that, too: his last day was July twenty-second, and the letter attached to the new figures was dated August first. So it would be easy enough to take the original document, but how did he plant the other?”

  “I wonder if he ever came back?” Hope said softly, as the idea came to her. “I wonder if he just dropped in one day to say hello or pick up an umbrella he’d left behind...”

  “Do you remember anything like that?”

  “No, maybe I was absent, or late, or at lunch...but somebody would remember if he had. The receptionist or Lena. He wouldn’t have been able just to walk in, he’d have had to talk to someone.”

  “It may be that he stole the office keys. Who had the office keys?” Jude asked.

  “You and Dad and Lena each had a set. Eleanor did too, but I didn’t bother to get them from her. I never went in before Dad in the mornings, so I didn’t need keys.”

  “If anyone came to the office after hours, they had to sign in with security downstairs. I’ll check that out. But the important thing is to find Gig Young and ask him some questions.”

  “He’s not at the phone number listed on his résumé. The man who answered said they’d had the number about six months.”

  “Did you ask Directory Enquiries for a new listing?”

  Hope sipped her coffee. “Young is too common a name. Without an address I had no luck.”

  “There might be another way to find out where he is now. I’ll check that tomorrow. Will you check with the old employees to ask them about your theory? I’ll take a look through last year’s security sign-in book when I’m at the office.”

  It was curious how well they worked together in this, Hope thought the next day, as she spent her lunch hour phoning her father’s old employees at their new jobs to ask if anyone remembered Gig Young turning up again a week or two after he’d left, to pick something up or say hello. Every other area of their mutual lives seemed full of pitfalls and dangers, but once Jude had accepted her involvement in this, they had had no trouble.

  No one could remember Gig Young returning to the office. While she had Lena on the phone, Hope asked her about her keys.

  “Hope, if you’re asking if anyone could have got the keys from my bag and copied them and put them back without my noticing, I have to say it’s nearly impossible. Don’t forget how paranoid everybody is about computer chip thieves. Your father was absolutely rigorous. I carried the keys in my bag and I locked my bag in my desk drawer.”

  “Good afternoon, Environmental Glass Systems, Lucinda speaking. How may I help you?”

  “I would like to check on the references of a former employee of yours.”

  “Thank you, I’ll put you through to Human Resources.”

  “Good afternoon, Human Resources. Jennifer speaking, how may I help you?”

  “Jennifer,” said Jude. “I want to check on a former employee of yours. What can you tell me about Gig Young?”

  “Oh!” A note of surprise threaded Jennifer’s voice. “Just a moment, I’ll get his file. I’m afraid everybody’s at lunch and I’m...but just a moment, please.”

  Jude was happy to wait. It was exactly in the hope that something like this would happen that he had called at just after one. He waited through several minutes of a bland melody, before an apologetic Jennifer returned.

  “I’m sorry it’s taken so long! But his records just aren’t in the file, and I can’t find him on the computer either. It’s really weird! But I’m a clerk, my supervisor is at lunch. Maybe she could help you, if you’ll phone back in an hour.”

  “But you know that he did once work for you?” Jude pressed, unwilling to let his advantage go.

  “Oh, yes, I remember doing his termination documents, I really don’t understand why he’s not on file. Gosh, I hope it wasn’t anything I did!”

  “I’m sure you’re too efficient for that. Do you remember the date he left?”

  “Well, not exactly,” she said apologetically. “I guess it was—two weeks ago, maybe? Maybe only one?”

  Jude blinked in stunned silence for a moment, and then forced his brain to recover. He cleared his throat. “Right. And he says on his résumé that he was there from 1991. Would you agree with that?”

  “I know it was quite a few years; he was here before I started. Probably if you phone back Isabel will be able to tell you exactly. Or Mr. Bridges, maybe.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m really surprised he’s looking for another job. He left so suddenly—I’m sure someone said he’d had an accident.”

  “That’s right,” said Jude quickly. “We’re his insurers, he has applied for temporary disability benefit. We’re just checking his history.”

  “It must have been that article in the paper!” Hope exclaimed jubilantly. The Globe had run a tiny item mentioning Jude’s release. Jude Daniels has consistently maintained his innocence, and is said to be determined to clear his name, it had said. “You’ve got him spooked!”

  “It might have served our purpose better if he were not spooked,” said Jude. “How the hell are we going to find him on the run? He might be anywhere in the world now.”

  “He’s bound to have left a trail. You can’t jus
t disappear anymore, can you?”

  “A trail a professional could follow.”

  “Can’t you go to the police? I bet they could find him.”

  He looked at her. “Do you imagine that the police are eager to find the evidence that would prove they had run a slipshod investigation and got the wrong man convicted?”

  “No, you’re right,” admitted Hope.

  Jude laughed. “What? I expected a comeback that this is Canada, Jude! What’s happened to your faith, Hope?”

  “I’m not Pollyanna, Jude. There’s a big difference between individual police officers trying to cover their incompetence and the entire system conspiring to injustice. And you have to admit I was more right than you were about your parole.”

  He was silenced. “Yes, you were,” he admitted at last. With the words he felt the earth move under his feet. He had never admitted it before, had never allowed the reality of his release from prison and the probable reasons for it to enter his soul. This simple acceptance that the whole world was not against him shook him, frightened him, as though something in him knew that the entire structure of his world view was now at risk.

  Chapter 12

  Nicholas Harvey leaned back in his chair. “There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll win the appeal, Jude. The judge was wrong in failing to declare a mistrial after Corinne Lamont’s extremely prejudicial testimony, and also wrong on several points in his address to the jury. So you can put your mind at rest. The conviction will not stand.”

  Jude looked at him. “Win, how?”

  “Good question. The Court of Appeal will have two choices.” He held up two fingers. “It can declare a mistrial and order a new trial, or it can quash the conviction and give a directed verdict of acquittal. Now, in the first case, since you’ve already served your sentence, the order for a new trial would be a technicality, and the court would seek the agreement of the Crown Prosecutor’s office not to proceed to a new trial. In those circumstances, it would be as if the case had never come to trial.”