Wife On Demand

by Alexandra Sellers

  Sex was a basic human need, as urgent as food and warmth. He did not want her. But when he remembered those moments, a year ago, when she would put down her brush and come to him, or he would get up from the bed or the floor and take the brush and palette from her hand...then his body made no distinctions.

  For Hope, the world was very, very different. The feeling that she had been betrayed had lasted only long enough for her to do maximum damage to Jude’s case. In the end, when the effects of shock had worn off, she had not really blamed him for not telling her about Corinne. They had hardly spoken during the short intense weeks of their love affair—why should he have wasted words on past history? She had not.

  What had been less easy to forgive was his refusal to understand the reasons she had failed him. Less easy to get over, too, was his rejection of her. She had been deeply and fundamentally hurt when he told her to go away, when he ignored her letters. That hurt, over time, had escalated into an anger that had sometimes seemed close to hatred. When he had not communicated even at her father’s death, that had been the final stroke for Hope. So when she discovered Gig Young’s résumé, she had gone to Jude not out of any desire to see him, but from an impersonal sense of justice.

  Later, driven into this sham marriage with him, sexually rejected when she had briefly weakened, she had really believed that her own angry indignation was now the sum total of her feelings for Jude.

  Bit by bit, however, the mask was coming off her feelings. Since they no longer had the escape of sex, the vital energy that was still between them began to express itself in words. A year ago, she had believed that she “knew” Jude, through the physical, better and more deeply than words could ever have expressed, but the trial had proven her wrong. If she had known him, she would not have doubted him, even momentarily.

  She was learning now, through words and silences, who he was. When he unconsciously revealed himself to her, she saw the terrain of a character that had been wary of trust until he met her, and then had broken down every barrier at once. To a nature like Jude’s her fumbling doubt of him on the witness stand had been the worst and deepest kind of betrayal because it had proved that she did not trust him, while he had trusted her with everything he was. In his eyes, she had shorn the lamb that was his soul and then thrust it naked into the lashing hail and storm.

  Because she understood that, she found it difficult to maintain the mask that hid her feelings from herself, even though she slowly began to fear that what was underneath would only bring her pain. To open herself up to him now, when he was a blank wall—that would be the act of a fool.

  She was most at risk because of the physical pull she still, and always, felt. She knew that he had conquered or destroyed whatever desire he had once felt for her, because if he had felt any shadow of the deep, painful need that washed over her whenever her guard was down, he would have come to her in the night.

  He watched her as she painted him, and she saw nothing to give her hope. His eyes were hard and wary, with no hint that the remembrance of things past ever assailed him.

  “Jude! Hey, Jude!”

  The voice called his name as Jude stepped down from the train into a blast of wind-driven rain. He turned in the direction the call had seemed to come from, but by then she was right beside him, small and confiding.

  “Hi, remember me? Don’t tell me we’ve been on the same train all the way from Toronto!”

  He did remember her, though not immediately her name. She was a volunteer, working with a prisoners’ help organization. Small and wiry, with a mop of tightly curling blonde hair, she was divorced, he knew, but that was all he could remember about her. She had poured out her heart to him during the course of a prison Visitors’ Day in June. He hadn’t seen her since.

  “Rita,” she said.

  “Hello.” He turned and together they fought their way along the platform against the driving rain.

  “Congratulations on making...parole!” The last word was hissed into his ear, so as not to be overheard by the other commuters. “It’s really great, eh? You must have been so excited!”

  He opened his mouth, but no answer was necessary. Rita leapt to the most obvious topic. “Gosh, this weather, eh? It came up so suddenly! I’m soaked to the skin! I’ve got the car here, can I give you a lift? You’ll never get a taxi in this!”

  “Thank you. I’d appreciate it.”

  They made their way through the station and then faced the storm again, Rita laughing as the wind blew her against Jude, hanging on to his arm as they struggled to her car.

  Inside the car at last, she ran a hand over her hair and face and shook the water off. “Wow! I feel like a drowned rat!”

  She didn’t look like a drowned rat. Her hair curled wetly against her scalp, and her lightly freckled skin, washed clean of make-up, and the remnants of her mascara, smudging the area around her eyes, made her seem young and vulnerable. Her thin blouse stuck to her, revealing tanned skin and small neat breasts inside a white bra.

  Jude’s shirt also clung to him, and his jeans were dark with wet. Water dripped off his face and hair, and he, too, wiped a hand over his head to take off the worst of it.

  “So, where’re you going?” Rita asked, starting the engine. “The halfway house?”

  Once a week, on Friday, Jude returned to Kingston and spent the night at the halfway house. The terms were light—he had to check in by midnight, and could check out again at six the following morning.

  “Thanks. If it’s not out of your way.”

  “It’s not out of my way,” she said, pulling out onto the road, “but—have they got a laundry room in that place?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never needed one.”

  “Well, mister, you need one tonight.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “How will you manage?” she challenged him. “Unless you’ve got your dinner packed in your overnight bag, which I doubt.”

  “I’ll eat in a restaurant.”

  “In soaking wet clothes, or your pyjamas?” She tossed him a grin, and, the windshield wipers doing hard labour, peered through the windshield to negotiate a turn.

  “In wet clothes,” Jude said. “It won’t kill me. The storm will pass soon.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you come to my place and dry your clothes in the dryer, and we can order in Chinese, or go out, or whatever. And I promise to get you home by midnight, Mr. Cinderella.”

  Her tone was light, but Jude got the message. He turned his head and they exchanged a glance.

  “That sounds good,” he said, and Rita smiled.

  She had an upper duplex in a pale yellow clapboard house with white shutters and trim. It was a nice enough neighbourhood, and the flat was big and airy, and decorated with an attempt at bohemianism. He did not know why he suddenly felt sorry for her. The place somehow made him think she was lonely, yet she seemed so cheerful.

  “Right, okay! Guest bedroom’s there, there’s a bathrobe behind the door, and if you bring me your clothes I’ll toss them in the dryer. Oh, and here’s a towel.”

  He didn’t need a towel, but he took it anyway. When he came out again, in the man’s white towelling bathrobe he had found, the towel tossed around his neck, the gas fire was alight in the sitting room, warm and welcoming against the weather, and Rita called from the kitchen.

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  Jude walked to the kitchen. She was wearing a dark blue velvet bathrobe out of a fifties movie, tight to the waist, the skirt deeply flared to the floor, with voluminous sleeves that fell back to reveal her arms as she reached into a high cabinet for glasses.

  “Just toss those in the dryer.” She nodded to where the dryer sat with its door open, and he bent and shoved his jeans and shirt inside, closed the door, and gave them twenty minutes on the dial. “Wine, beer, something stronger?” Rita pursued. “I’m having a glass of white, but there’s red open, and I have whisky and brandy.”

  “Whisky on the ro
cks, please,” he said.

  He looked at the slender athletic musculature of her arm, and then at the curve of her back under the bodice of her velvet robe, and thought of running his hand from neck to waist, but did not.

  She got ice from the fridge, keeping up a light chatter, but whether for the sake of his nerves or her own he couldn’t be sure. Her hair had been towelled dry and left attractively tousled, she had replaced her mascara but added no lipstick.

  “There!” she said, handing him his drink, then picked up her wineglass and a plate of chips and crackers and led the way back to the sitting room. “Isn’t this nice?” she demanded, settling on the sofa. She meant the fire, the cosiness of the room against the already diminishing storm.

  “Very nice,” Jude said, and sat beside her.

  It was exactly what he needed. It was what she wanted. He sat down eighteen inches from her and, under the excuse of setting the plate of snacks on the floor between them, Rita closed the gap to eight inches. Then she took a sip of her wine and leaned her head confidingly against his chest.

  Jude lifted his arm and put it around her. They sat in silence, staring into the flames that leapt and danced around the imitation coal, while outside the wind subsided.

  “I wish it would keep on blowing,” Rita said. “I love to be all cosy inside when there’s a storm. It makes me feel safe.”

  Then she lifted her mouth for his kiss.

  Her lips had a slightly bitter, slightly soapy tang that was not unpleasant to him, and he set down his glass and held her more tightly as the kiss moved into second gear, and he felt his loins stir.

  It was that stirring, oddly enough, that told him he could not go through with it. He didn’t know why. Perhaps because she was so clearly vulnerable and he was not. All he knew was that he lifted his lips and his hand came up to caress her cheek as he said quietly, “Rita, I’m sorry.”

  She smiled and snuggled against him. “Don’t be sorry.”

  In the kitchen the dryer stopped spinning and beeped. He cleared his throat. “I’ll get my clothes.”

  He saw the hurt, uncomprehending frown settle on her brow. “Jude?”

  “Rita, it’s just not...I’m sorry, I thought it would.”

  Now she understood. “Oh, Jude!” she wailed a protest, her face crumpling like a child who has learned to expect disappointment. “Why? Don’t you—I mean, if we went on a little it would work. I’m sure it would.”

  He smiled gently at her, feeling pity tear at his heart, another feeling that had somehow slipped through the barriers without him noticing. “It’s working just fine already, Rita,” he said. “But I—I can’t, that’s all.”

  “Aw, Jude, you’re such a decent kind of guy. The others get mean afterwards and say things, but you—I know you’d be different. Are you sure?”

  He hated himself for not having foreseen his own reactions. For not having recognized her vulnerability behind that slightly hard exterior. He’d had no right to think of using a woman like this for his own ends—one way or the other he had been bound to hurt her.

  He looked for the least hurtful excuse. “Rita, I’m married,” he said, thinking it was a convenient excuse until he heard his own voice. A part of him asked, Well, if that’s not the real reason, what is? but he turned a deaf ear.

  “Yeah, I heard,” she said despondently, sitting up straight. “Lots of guys, that doesn’t make any difference. They figure they’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

  The unspoken confession of what her life was stirred his pity unbearably. He said roughly, “Why do you live in Kingston? Why don’t you go to some other city, somewhere where you can meet men who aren’t ex-cons?”

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly, dropping her head. “I guess I just got used to it.”

  He stood up and moved into the kitchen, where he pulled his clothes out of the dryer. “I’d better be going,” he said.

  She jumped up. “I’ll drive you.”

  “The rain’s stopped. I can walk.”

  She stood looking at him, her head on one side, her eyes wistful. “Would you—you still have to eat, right? Could we just go for a meal together, and then I’ll drop you back? Please? That’s all, just a meal. I hate eating alone all the time.”

  He wondered how much of a fool he was being. “Sure. I’d like that.”

  Rita smiled at him, her eyes sparkling with what he knew were tears. “I’ll be ready in a sec!”

  Five minutes later they stood at the door, dressed and ready to leave. As he reached for the handle, she put her hand on his arm. “Jude,” she said, “would you just hold me? Not sexy or anything.”

  She came into his arms like a child, and he wrapped her and held her for a long time. At last she sighed deeply and drew away. “That’s so good!” she exclaimed. “That’s really what I miss, you know. Just being held like that.”

  Jude picked up his bag and opened the door. He felt torn from every direction. He seemed to have lost all his defences. He’d been so sure every feeling was dead in him, and now there was nothing but confusion.

  Chapter 14

  Roger Beatty leaned to open his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. “So far, we’re in luck,” he said.

  Hope leaned forward excitedly. “Really? You’ve found something?”

  Jude, his eyes on the detective, simply watched.

  “Something, yeah. We’ve found out the name of his wife.”

  “Oh,” said Hope, unable to keep the disappointment from her tone. She thought it would be more than that.

  “George Henry Young—” the detective took a sip of his drink and lifted the page “—is married to one Kimberley Bridges.”

  Now he had their full attention. “What?” said Jude.

  Beatty nodded. “Yeah, we should have guessed it. Of course they kept it in the family. Kimberley Bridges is Bill Bridges’ niece. Uncle gave her husband a job when the firm he was working for went under during the recession.” He drank again. “Looks like Uncle Bill called in his debts.”

  “You’re right, we should have guessed something like this,” Jude said reflectively. “What else?”

  “A few things. He’s got two kids, pre-teen. He hasn’t flown out of Pearson Airport during the past month. The address on the c.v. was false, but he was listed at that phone number up to a year ago. Young complained of hang-up calls and they got a new unlisted number under her name.”

  Jude’s eyes were narrowed, taking it in. “You’ve got the address,” he said.

  One eye consulted the paper again, but it was only for show. “We’ve got the address. Nobody there at the moment. The house is shut up. Not unusual in August, according to the neighbours—they go up to the cottage every year.”

  Hope’s heart was beating uncomfortably hard. It was a strange feeling, knowing that they were closing in on the man. She licked dry lips. “Do you know where it is?”

  “That’s next on the agenda. It won’t be too difficult.”

  “Do you think that’s where he is?”

  “If he’s not, the wife and kids probably are. It’ll be easy enough to throw a scare into her and get her to spill the beans.”

  “Pre-teen children,” Hope said. “You’ll be careful, won’t you? Don’t scare them.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said the detective.

  Jude frowned, catching the glibness. “She means it,” he warned. “Don’t talk to the mother if the kids are around.”

  Jude and the detective measured glances. Beatty lifted a hand in the symbol of surrender. “Right.”

  “They came and arrested my mother in front of me,” Jude said. “Kids don’t forget.” He didn’t know why he said it, except that everything was upside down in him. If he tried to say one thing, something else got said.

  When the detective had gone, Jude returned to where Hope still sat in the sitting room. He paused in the doorway and she looked up at him.

  “I didn’t know that,” she said. “How old were you?”
/>
  “Five,” he said shortly.

  “Did you ever see her again, after that?”

  “She died in prison.” It was something he never talked about. He was going to change the subject, but instead heard himself say, “They said a heart attack, but my father knew it was under torture.”

  She gasped. “Did he tell you?”

  “Not then. Later, when we had finally escaped from Czechoslovakia. I was twelve when I learned for sure what it was. But I knew from the first something terrible had happened.”

  “From the first?” she repeated.

  He shrugged. “When Stasi came to arrest someone it was not like an ambulance picking up someone ill. And when I asked my father when my mother was coming home he would not answer.”

  He walked over to the drinks tray and absently refilled his glass. He stood with his back to her, staring out the patio doors to the green and gold of the garden.

  She muttered something. She wanted to encourage him to talk, but couldn’t think of anything to say except to ask him to tell her what it had been like.

  It was enough. “After that, everything was cold.” He was caught in the toils of remembering now, he had no more thought of resisting whatever it was. “I don’t know why, but that’s what I remember. The flat seemed cold. Even food was cold. That’s what I remember, although that must be wrong. Why would it be cold?”

  “Maybe it’s not wrong. Maybe your father was so depressed he forgot to put on the heat.”

  Jude nodded. “Yes, I remember now.” He hadn’t thought of that period of his life for years. “He wasn’t there in the daytime the way my mother had been. Maybe the heating needed regular attention, maybe you’re right and it really was cold.

  “My grandmother lived with us.” He had almost forgotten that, too. “She was very old and ill, I remember, she could do nothing. We sat together in the flat, holding each other for warmth.” He frowned as distant images clarified behind his eyes. “She cried and talked to people from the past, she rarely spoke to me or saw me.”