Sidney Chambers and The Persistence of Love

by James Runcie

  ‘What did you say, Malcolm?’

  ‘I insinuated – I didn’t say outright, mind, I promise – that perhaps she shouldn’t have got herself into the situation in the first place . . .’

  ‘Oh dear . . .’

  ‘And that maybe she was a little drunk . . .’

  ‘Does she admit to that?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then she wasn’t. You have to trust your wife. And whatever happened in the hotel restaurant, I’m not sure she can be blamed for what went on afterwards.’

  ‘I can’t help worrying, in my heart of hearts – and I know it’s wrong, Sidney, believe me, I know this is very wrong, but I just can’t help it, call it insecurity or anything you like – that Helena might be making all of this up to excuse her actions.’

  ‘You know that’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking it.’

  ‘But if that is the case, then why did she need to tell you anything at all? She could have said nothing and got on with the rest of her life. Why put herself through all this? She must be innocent, Malcolm, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to the police. You have to believe her. Otherwise your marriage has no future.’

  ‘I’m not sure it does anyway.’

  ‘You can’t give up so easily. Remember the vows you took. Helena needs your help.’

  ‘She doesn’t want it.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s because you haven’t been offering it in the right way.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sidney. If you should see her . . .’

  ‘I will. But you need to talk to her too, Malcolm. She will feel very alone.’

  ‘She has her parents; her sister.’

  ‘Having met them in the past, I’m not sure they are the best people to help.’

  ‘They’ll get her a good lawyer.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. She needs you, as well as everyone else, to believe her. You have to trust her; you more than anyone else. That is your job as a husband.’

  ‘But what if I don’t? What if I can’t stop worrying about it?’

  ‘Then you must stop thinking that this is all about your reaction rather than the event itself. This is about Helena, Malcolm, not you – or your lack of confidence – or your trust in your own marriage. It requires total understanding, an utter unbreakable confidence, a solidity that cannot be broached or weakened. Anything less than the complete love and support of your wife will be a failure. Wouldn’t she do the same for you? Don’t doubt her, Malcolm. Love her.’

  Sidney finally saw Helena at her parental home in Maida Vale. She was snuggled up under a blanket on an old sofa listening to Leonard Cohen, holding a mug of tea and wearing a loose baggy jumper and jeans.

  ‘I was just thinking of you, Sidney.’

  He remembered the first time he had met her, when she had just finished university, and was investigating a series of unusual deaths amidst the elderly in the winter of 1954. Helena had had a cold at the time and, despite being a young up-and-coming journalist, still looked like a student who wore a duffel coat not just as protection against the winter but also to hide herself against the world. Since then she had come out of her shell. Now she had been forced back into it. It didn’t take long, Sidney thought, to ambush a life.

  Helena said she was worried that the more she explained what had happened, the more lasting the memory would become. She had given the police three statements already.

  ‘You don’t have to go over it all again with me,’ said Sidney. ‘In fact you don’t need to tell me anything. I am just here to be with you. You know that I will never doubt you.’

  ‘I have asked enough of you in the past; that time when my sister had her necklace stolen on the Meadows in May Week . . .’

  ‘That was nothing. This is something far worse. And I am here. If you want me to stay, I will. If you’d like me to leave, I’ll do that too.’

  ‘We’ve known each other for such a long time.’

  ‘We can just sit here, if you like.’

  ‘And it’s easier to talk to you. I’m more used to it.’

  Helena confessed that she had forgotten to lock her hotel-room door and was pretty much comatose when Frank had let himself in, climbed into her bed and raped her.

  ‘I let my guard down, Sidney. As a journalist I’d been trained to protect myself. I made sure people always knew where I was; I didn’t draw attention to myself. I didn’t wear flash clothes or jewellery or anything anyone would ever want to steal. I always wear flat shoes so that I can make a run for it. But when you’re with a colleague and you’re back in the hotel and you’ve knocked off for the day, you think you’re safe.

  ‘It wasn’t the most challenging assignment, and we could do it quickly; payback for all the crap we’d both had to go through, like knocking on doors and getting people to tell you about the death of their children. And so I changed for dinner and was off duty. More fool me.’

  ‘You think you were too relaxed?’

  ‘I probably drank a bit too much, if that’s what you mean, but I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know if he added anything.’

  ‘You think he might have spiked your drink?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Sidney. All I do know is that I should never have got into the situation in the first place. Then, by the time I tried to stop it all, it was too late.’

  ‘It’s horrible.’

  ‘It’ll be my word against his. But I can’t let him get away with it.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’m not sure that you do. Men always look after themselves.’

  ‘Not always.’

  Helena’s mother popped her head round the door to ask if they wanted any more tea or if she could provide Sidney with ‘something stronger’. It was clear that this was just a ruse to see how the conversation was going. Hermione Randall, so often the confident, expensively dressed, charity-lunching pillar of the community, now carried a look of helpless disappointment. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in a family such as hers.

  Sidney politely refused all offers of hospitality and Helena continued. ‘They make you go over the story again and again. And the people asking the questions have no idea what it’s like. You have to keep remembering it, reliving it even if you can’t bear it, and all the time you’re cementing the memory, making it last. If you make the slightest change to your statement they think it proves you’re lying.’

  ‘They probably just want to get it right.’

  ‘Or they want to catch me out. How can I tell the story again and again in exactly the same way? They keep you for hours in a brightly lit room. It goes on into the night. You might as well have murdered someone. They give you cups of tea. A succession of different men come and go before disappearing to do something important. Sometimes you can smell their contempt. They think I asked for it. They think it’s my fault. Already there have been so many times when I wanted to give up and stop and tell them they’ve won. There didn’t seem any point in going on.

  ‘Then one of the policemen asked if it ever felt good to be possessed so violently. Didn’t women always secretly want that? He suggested that we all had intense fantasies and only claimed to have been raped because of the guilt that followed. And that was someone who was supposed to be on my side.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  ‘I walked out.’

  ‘But you still want the police to press charges?’

  ‘Malcolm made me go back.’

  ‘You’ve told him everything?’

  ‘I did, Sidney. And I heard you’d spoken to Downing. I know you’re trying to help. But I also have to ask – what the hell did you think you were doing seeing that bastard? You know what he’s done.’

  Sidney looked down at shoes that were in need of a polish. ‘I thought I could help.’

  ‘Well you’ve made it worse. Talking to the man who raped me: whose side are you on?’

  ‘I’m not on anyone’s side, Helena.’

  ‘
You can’t sit on the fence, Sidney. You once told me that silence was consent. If you don’t speak up for me then I will have to assume you are sympathetic to the man who attacked me and, if you are, this is the last time we will ever speak.’

  ‘I’m not on his side, Helena.’

  ‘Frank is still in his job. I’ve had to take time off. The paper can’t afford to lose their star photographer but they can get rid of me.’

  ‘There’s only one thing I wanted to ask you, Helena.’

  ‘Don’t you dare doubt me . . .’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘Why bring the charges now? Why did you wait?’

  Helena put down her mug of tea, stood up and walked to look out of the window, as if what she saw could lessen the impact of what she was going to say or make her think about something entirely different.

  ‘Because I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  ‘As a result of the rape?’

  ‘It’s not Malcolm’s. We can’t have children. We only found out last year.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Why would I make that up?’

  ‘I’m not accusing you of that.’

  ‘This, it seems, is the only way I can have a child. We had talked about adoption. There was that possibility. But now there’s this. I don’t know what to do. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘And have you thought about the alternative?’

  ‘An abortion? I’ve already had one, Sidney, before I was married, and I don’t want another. Malcolm doesn’t know about that and I don’t want him to know. Besides, even if I went through with it, I can’t abort the experience. And if the courts ever find out that I was pregnant before I was married then there’s probably no hope for a “loose woman” like me at all.’

  Sidney returned home and was just about to walk Byron when he discovered that the Keatings had paid a visit while doing some Christmas shopping. Cathy and Hildegard had shared a pot of tea while Geordie made a few enquiries with regards to a different investigation and left word that he would be up for a quick pint at six in the Prince Albert.

  When Sidney arrived he found his colleague in conversation with their old friend Dr Michael Robinson. They were discussing the nature of rape, the examination of women by male doctors, the problem of alcohol and consent, and the difficulty of prosecution. Dr Robinson was arguing that sometimes it was better for women to forget these things in order to avoid the further trauma of a court case and a destructive cross-examination.

  ‘That’s why so many women give up,’ said Geordie. ‘They can’t face their attacker. It makes everything worse.’

  ‘But then the perpetrator gets away with it,’ said Sidney.

  The doctor picked up his pint. ‘It was possibly just a drunken fling.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Rape is an offence.’

  ‘As is a false accusation.’

  ‘But Michael . . .’

  ‘I’ve seen it time and time again . . .’

  Sidney hesitated. Was this the man who had been so compassionate as to take the palliative care of his patients to the limit of the law? Why was he being so unsympathetic? Could he once have been similarly accused?

  On the third Sunday of Advent, Sidney offered to help celebrate at Malcolm’s parish carol service. This was an opportunity to show his support in a practical way without making his anxiety too obvious.

  ‘Helena’s angry with me as much as with the man who attacked her. She keeps going on about why men have to punish women for their own inadequacy, and every time I try to comfort her she flares up. I wish we could stop the prosecution, but my wife wants justice. She can’t think of anything else. Perhaps it stops her dwelling on the child.’

  ‘You must let her have the time to work out what she wants to do.’

  ‘There isn’t much time left if we are going to take action.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were thinking of that?’

  ‘It’s hard not to, Sidney. I know it’s a terrible thing and Helena doesn’t want to pursue it. I can understand why. I went to the synod debate on abortion last year. But the child will be a constant reminder, not only of the rape but of my own inadequacy.’

  ‘As far as we can tell.’

  ‘And if we decide to keep the child then I will always know that I am not the real father.’

  ‘There’s always adoption.’

  ‘It’s hard to work out what Helena wants apart from justice. There’s something else going on, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘This is your adversity. This is your test of love and faith,’ said Sidney. ‘How will the real Malcolm behave?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ his friend continued. ‘I just wish everything was how it used to be. Sometimes I feel like a little boy who has been asked to sit his A levels. I look at all the questions and I haven’t got a clue how to answer them. All I want to do is to leave the room, put my head under a pillow and hope that everything goes away.’

  ‘But we can’t live our lives like that, Malcolm. We have to be active in the world, no matter how much it troubles us. There’s no escaping it.’

  Outside, tinny Christmas music came from the town centre: from Tesco and the Co-op, Edis and Cutlacks; Crocks, Babie Care and the Ely Trophy Shop. Men in sheepskin coats carried model train sets and that year’s must-have Christmas game – Mousetrap – past displays of women in low-cut Santa Claus tops and silver hot pants with glitter leggings. The New Seekers sang ‘You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me’, Wizzard wished ‘it could be Christmas everyday’ while Mott the Hoople made the almost Easter-like suggestion to ‘Roll Away the Stone’.

  The streets were filled with crowds, slush and winter fog. Sidney found it hard to feel a part of the enforced seasonal cheerfulness, the hope of a newborn child, a light in the darkness. Over Christmas drinks in the Prince Albert, as Byron stretched out and slept by the fire, he reported to Geordie on his conversation with Malcolm.

  ‘Is she talking to him again?’

  ‘He says she’s frightened of intimacy.’

  ‘You can hardly blame her.’

  Keating picked up his pint and changed the subject. ‘Do you think there’s such a thing as knowing too much?’

  ‘About our friends? There has to be a level of discretion, especially with marriage. I’m sure our wives wouldn’t want us talking about intimate matters in a place like this.’

  ‘I don’t have to worry too much about that kind of thing these days. Cathy’s lost interest.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  Geordie’s wife had given up smoking, bought in extra vitamin pills and was taking something called Laetrile. ‘Do you know what that is, Sidney? Is it for the menopause?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask?’

  ‘She said it was nothing. But there’s something she’s not telling me. What do you think it can be?’

  By New Year’s Eve, Sidney was filled with trepidation about the year ahead. A national state of industrial unrest, a three-day week and a heating ban in public places did not help. The Chambers family had just the one hot meal a day, didn’t use the washing machine, shared their bath water and walked round the house covered in rugs and blankets, with candles to light the way at night.

  His parents were coming to supper (sautéed liver with orange and a rice pilaf) but any chance of an improved mood was ruined by another power cut. Sidney took his father to one side and told him about Helena.

  He was worried about her volatility and her loss of confidence; how the trauma of the event had been amplified by the stress of the investigation, and the fact that the longer the case took to come to trial, the harder it would be for her to survive a prolonged interrogation in the witness box.

  Alec Chambers confirmed Doctor Robinson’s belief that it was going to be difficult to get the jury to believe her. In the eyes of many of his fellow professionals, Helena had put herself in a dangerous situation. The people involved were journalists – isn’t that what they do
? The drink, and the clothes that she was wearing, had not helped either. He only hoped that no one had access to her medical records.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Even finding out what age she was when she went on the pill . . .’

  ‘They can find that out?’

  ‘If she’s signed a consent form. It’s easy enough to agree. They make you think that you are helping. Most people are trusting when it comes to medicine. And that, of course, can be a great mistake.’

  ‘Helena needs understanding. She has to be innocent. I can’t believe that she would be putting herself through all this if she wasn’t.’

  ‘I’m sure you do. But it’s difficult, isn’t it? One word against another. I always think infidelity is like a batsman going after a ball outside the off-stump and then getting caught out when he should have left it well alone.’

  Sidney wondered whether there was any situation in human existence that his father could not explain without reference to cricket. ‘It’s not a case of infidelity, Dad. It’s rape.’

  ‘Very hard to prove, if she let him into her room. That’s not an innocent act. Is there evidence of undue pressure? Bruising?’

  ‘She took too long to report it.’

  ‘It was an afterthought?’

  ‘She’s pregnant.’

  ‘And it’s too late for a termination?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s a termination?’ Anna asked as the lights came back on.

  ‘The end of a conversation,’ her grandfather replied. ‘I am terminating this conversation with your father in order to speak to you. How is your pony?’

  ‘I don’t have a pony. Mum and Dad never gave me one.’

  ‘But there is one that you ride, isn’t there? Don’t you have a friend called Sophie who has ponies?’

  ‘It’s too cold.’

  ‘Just like this supper,’ said Hildegard. ‘I might as well start again.’

  ‘By the way,’ Sidney asked his father as they searched for a warming bottle of whisky, ‘I forgot to say. Do you know about Laetrile?’

  ‘Why do you want to find out?’