by Anne Bennett
‘Promise?’
‘You sound like Angela,’ Hannah said with a laugh. ‘I promise.’
But Arthur knew two days before Friday. He’d received a letter he’d not mentioned to Hannah from a well-wisher who thought he ought to know about the number of times the doctor’s car stood outside their house of an evening and the times Hannah left the house after he’d gone out, sometimes in the doctor’s car and sometimes in a taxi. It even had gone on in the holidays when he’d taken the little lass away for a few days.
Did he care? Yes, he bloody well did. He cared about being made a laughing stock, so that even the neighbours knew and were probably sniggering behind their hands at him. Damn and blast her to Hell’s flames! He knew he had to emerge from this whole thing whiter than the driven snow. But then reason took hold – her and the doctor. There was a law about a doctor and women patients, wasn’t there? By God, he’d find out and if he was right, he held the trump card.
He was waiting for her Wednesday night. He had returned for the two previous nights and seen the doctor’s car outside just as the anonymous letter writer had said, but he’d retreated those nights, not wishing to confront Vic until he’d spoken to Hannah on her own.
That night, though, the house was in darkness when he let himself in, having parked his car around the corner so that Hannah wouldn’t know he was there.
She came in happy and warmed through by Vic’s gentle lovemaking. She was smiling and humming a little tune to herself as she filled the kettle.
‘Where have you been?’
The words, though quietly spoken, almost made Hannah drop the kettle as she faced Arthur, framed in the doorway.
She took her time answering, putting the kettle on the gas and lighting it before she spoke. Excuses flew into her head, but to use them was only putting off the inevitable and she felt Arthur deserved the truth, so replied, ‘I’ve been with Vic, you know, the doctor, Vic Humphries.’
‘Whore!’
Arthur took a step towards her and she retreated. ‘No! No! It’s not like that. We love each other, we’re getting marr …’
She got no further, for the fist slammed into her face with such ferocity that she staggered. ‘You filthy, dirty harlot! Laughing behind my back, you sodding whore!’ Arthur almost screamed. ‘Half the neighbourhood knows of your carry-on – you and the doctor shagging each other.’
Out of swollen and bleeding lips, Hannah pleaded, ‘Let him come round – explain it. Arthur, believe me we had no intention for it to be this way.’
‘Whatever you intended it is this way,’ Arthur said. ‘And he’ll come around when I decide and by then he’ll not be able to recognise you, because I’m going to beat you to a pulp.’
Hannah knew Arthur meant it for a demonic light shone in his eyes and there was froth on his lips – it was the angriest she’d ever seen him. She fought like a wildcat, but she was no match for Arthur and he at last beat her down so that she crouched to the ground and tried to protect her stomach as much as she could. He gave her a violent shove so that she overbalanced.
He was astride her in seconds and Hannah remembered with revulsion that violence had always aroused Arthur and she looked at him with eyes just mere slits and said, ‘Please, Arthur, no – I’m pregnant.’
Pregnant! Pregnant with some other man’s bastard and living in his house, cooking his meals, talking and laughing with his daughter, tainting her innocence!
‘Pregnant, eh,’ he said with relish. ‘Well, I can do no harm then.’
‘No, Arthur, please.’
‘I’m your husband in case you’ve forgotten,’ said Arthur, pulling up Hannah’s skirt as he spoke. He yanked her knickers down and unzipped himself. Hannah couldn’t believe it. He was going to rape her and she was helpless to stop him.
‘Has he a bigger cock than me?’ Arthur said, spittle from his slack lips spraying her. ‘Is that it?’
She didn’t answer, but let out a groan of pain as he entered her. ‘Can he do this and this and this?’ Arthur cried at every thrust, sending arrows of pain shooting through Hannah. And then he was unable to speak, taken up as he was by excitement, and his thrusting got wilder and faster.
Hannah lay passive and told herself eventually it would be over. She just had to lie and wait. It couldn’t last forever and the pain would go. Everywhere ached and throbbed anyway, particularly her face. But what Arthur was doing was making her feel degraded and dirty.
Arthur gave a shout, a final thrust, and lay still for a moment, spent. Hannah wriggling beneath him roused him to get off her, zipping up his trousers. ‘Get up.’
Hannah pulled up her knickers and stumbled painfully to her feet. ‘Come into the breakfast room, I wish to speak to you.’
Hannah moved to obey him as if she was a robot and sat opposite him. She could only guess what she looked like, she felt like death and wished she could sink into a soft bed and sleep forever.
Arthur was talking to her. ‘You can take all you can pack into one suitcase,’ he said, ‘and that is all. Once you leave, it will be as if you are dead. I don’t want to hear or see you ever again and you will have no contact with Angela.’
‘You can’t do this,’ Hannah cried. ‘I’ll go to court.’
‘I don’t think so, my dear.’
‘Don’t you “my dear” me, you vicious sadistic brute. I want Vic here. He’ll sort you out.’
‘Your Vic will do nothing,’ Arthur said. ‘That is if he wants to continue as a doctor.’
‘What are you on about now?’
‘I see he hasn’t told you,’ Arthur said. ‘Well, let me put you in the picture. By starting a relationship with you, a patient of his, Vic has broken the law and it would be hard to deny any sexual relations took place when your belly is full.’
‘You’re lying. It’s something you made up,’ Hannah cried. But then she remembered the odd way Vic had reacted to the news that he was to be a father. He’d said he’d just been surprised by it all and she’d accepted it at the time.
‘I assure you, I am not lying and I have made nothing up,’ Arthur said. ‘Vic will say the same – phone him.’
And Vic did say the same eventually. The frantic telephone call roused him from sleep and when he drowsily answered, ‘Erdington 3501, Doctor Humphries speaking,’ he couldn’t at first understand the message mumbled through Hannah’s swollen lips. ‘Vic, it’s Hannah. Arthur knows. It’s bad. Please come.’
That she was crying registered with him. ‘What is it? What is it? Oh, damn it! Hang on, Hannah, I’ll be there in a jiffy.’
He was out of bed as she spoke, searching the floor for his clothes.
When Hannah opened the door to him and he saw her face, he was rendered speechless for a moment. Tears of relief ran down her face. ‘Oh, Vic, Vic.’
‘My darling.’ Vic’s arms were around her and despite the bruises all over Hannah, she leant against him seeking comfort.
Vic’s shock at Hannah’s condition was receding to be replaced by raging anger. ‘Where is he?’ he said.
‘In the breakfast room,’ Hannah said. ‘But it’s no good.’
‘I’m sorry, Hannah, I can’t let this go,’ Vic said, putting her gently from him. She tried to catch at his sleeve and when that didn’t work she ran down the corridor after him and arrived at the door to see him holding Arthur against the wall with his powerful arms.
Arthur appeared completely unafraid. ‘I should take your hands off me if I were you,’ he said calmly. ‘If you value your job, that is.’
Vic’s hands sank to his side. The bugger knows I’ve broken the law by sleeping with Hannah, he thought, and as the supercilious smile slid across Arthur’s face, he had the idea to send his teeth down his throat and hang the consequences.
And what then? Not only would he be out of a job, his parents disgraced and ashamed, but possibly behind bars. What Arthur had done to Hannah would be judged by some circles to be acceptable – a man deceived and now to have his wife
admit to be carrying another man’s child. Well, what was a man to do in the circumstances but give her a good hiding? And for the one who’d wronged him in the first place to then set about him. If Arthur was to take it to court, and he would, Vic knew, they would throw the book at him.
He couldn’t do that, not to Hannah, nor his parents. ‘I see you’re sensible about all this,’ Arthur said, as Vic relaxed his hands and Arthur stood straightening his tie and rearranging his jacket that Vic had rumpled.
‘What about Hannah? What right have you to beat her?’
‘The right of a husband,’ Arthur said. ‘She promised before God to love, honour and obey me in sickness and in health, till death do us part. Do you call what she did loving me, honouring me?’
‘You have led her a life of hell.’
‘In your opinion,’ Arthur said. ‘And of course you’ve helped her, by sleeping with her, making her pregnant.’
‘Will you both stop talking as if I wasn’t here,’ Hannah said angrily. ‘Look it’s over; Arthur’s had his revenge, I’m going to pack now ready to leave.’
‘One suitcase remember,’ Arthur said. ‘You’ll never get a penny piece from me and you’ll not see or speak to Angela again. You’re not to contact her by letter or phone, or send her birthday or Christmas cards or presents.’
Hannah gasped in shock and she looked at Arthur out of horrified eyes. ‘I can’t believe you can be this cruel,’ she said, forcing the words through her swollen lips.
‘Well, now you know,’ Arthur said.
‘Please, Arthur, for God’s sake, don’t do this,’ Hannah pleaded. ‘I promised Angela I’d go to her confirmation.’
Arthur shrugged. ‘You’ll break that promise and when she hears nothing from you, not even a card for her birthday, she’ll know what sort of mother she has and I will tell her that her mother cares nothing for her.’
‘Come now,’ Vic said, catching sight of Hannah’s anguished face. ‘This is inhuman.’
‘I don’t care for your opinions,’ said Arthur. ‘Those are my conditions. Break them in any way and there will be a call made to the Medical Board.’
Hannah looked at Arthur and knew he meant every word he said. She’d burnt her boats anyway. Her life now lay with Vic and from the moment she left, she’d cease to exist as far as Angela was concerned. Without another word, she stumbled from the room and went upstairs to pack her life up in one case.
Vic felt frustrated at his helplessness. Arthur should pay a price for the punishment he inflicted on Hannah and yet he could do nothing about it. Then, later that night as they lay together in Gloria’s bed, Vic’s arms encircling Hannah for comfort only, she told him of the rape and he felt rage pound through his body.
The man was vindictively, inhumanely cruel, he realised. Hannah’s injuries would eventually heal, even the emotional trauma of the rape would fade, but he didn’t know whether she’d ever get over the block he’d put on her seeing or contacting Angela. Knowing her history, Vic worried about her mental state over this loss, as it were, of a second child. For the first time, he looked forward with eagerness to the birth of their own child and hoped it would help to heal the hole that would be left in her life because access to Angela had been denied her.
Chapter Twenty-One
One glorious day in the middle of June 1959, Hannah opened the door to see the priest on the threshold. She wasn’t surprised. She’d been expecting him to visit before this. She still went to Mass on Sunday, but to the earliest one held at seven o’clock and she always scurried away after it, giving Father Fitzgerald no opportunity to ask if he could have a wee word with her, which she knew he was dying to do. She was glad it was Father Fitzgerald who came to see her, because although she knew what he’d come for, she couldn’t help but like him. She knew nothing of the conversation the priest had had with Arthur before they were married, but she always felt the priest took an interest in them all, especially in Josie, so she smiled as she said, ‘Come in, Father. I’ll take your coat and put the kettle on,’ and ushered him into the room that had been Gloria’s private sitting room that Hannah loved so much.
When she came back in with a tray of coffee and plate of biscuits, the priest was still standing in the middle of the room looking about him. It was a warm comfortable room, decorated in terracotta and cream. Hannah had retained Gloria’s terracotta-coloured sofa, with its array of bright cushions. There was no fire in the grate, for it was summer, but a beautifully decorated fire screen sat behind the gleaming brass fender. More brass decorated the mantel shelf either side of the carriage clock and a large gilt-edged mirror was above it all on the wall, while in the glass-fronted cupboards either side of the fireplace, Hannah had put her favourite ornaments.
Hannah set the tray down on one of the occasional tables and the priest sat down on the sofa beside it. ‘You have it very nice, Hannah.’
‘I can’t claim much credit, Father,’ Hannah told him. ‘This is mainly Gloria’s stuff. I always loved this room so I changed very little. Most of the other rooms have been cleared. It was a mammoth task. But this room was Gloria’s favourite. Not everyone was invited in here, but the pair of us used to have some famous chats in here, so we did. I still miss her quite dreadfully at times.’
‘You were good friends,’ the priest said gently. ‘Were you surprised to inherit the house, Hannah?’
‘Totally,’ Hannah said. ‘She never gave me any indication that that was what she intended to do.’
‘And yet,’ the priest went on, slowly accepting the cup of tea Hannah handed him, ‘maybe it wasn’t such a good thing. After all, it enabled you to leave your husband.’
‘Father, that was on the cards anyway.’
‘But why, Hannah? Could you not have talked any problems through?’
‘No, Father. It went deeper than that,’ Hannah said. ‘I never loved Arthur, so I suppose I did him a disservice marrying him, though I never lied and told him I did. He knew I didn’t love him. But that wasn’t it, Father, at least not the whole of it. If he’d been kind to me, I could have lived with him contentedly, I believe.’
‘Unkind? Did he hit you? Beat you?’
‘He hit me three times,’ Hannah said, and a shudder passed through her as she remembered the last time when he’d also raped her. ‘If you’d seen me a couple of weeks ago, his handiwork would have been evident,’ she went on. ‘But there’s worse things than a slap or punch, Father. Arthur began being verbally abusive not long after we were married. He became spiteful and vindictive when we were alone. In company he was totally different. In the end, I could stand no more.’
‘As I understand it, Hannah, in the end you negated your marriage vows.’
Hannah lowered her head. ‘It wasn’t like that, Father,’ she said earnestly. ‘I never went looking for another man. Anyway, now Arthur is divorcing me.’
But though she gave the priest this news without a tremor in her voice, she remembered how she thought she’d die of shame when she received the papers from the solicitor’s office and realised she’d been named in them as an adulteress, this adultery leading to a breakdown in their marriage. Vic had been terrifically supportive then as he’d held her in his arms and soothed her. He told her not to worry. It was, he said, the last time Arthur would have the power to hurt her in any way.
‘Divorcing you? You know there is no divorce in the Catholic Church.’
‘There is in the civil court, Father. I’m being named as an adulteress, which I suppose is only fair. But as soon as it happens, Vic and I will be married in the registry office.’
‘You’ll not be married in the sight of God,’ the priest said, appalled. ‘You will be living in sin.’
‘I know that, Father.’
‘Does that not worry you, child?’
‘A bit,’ Hannah admitted. ‘That’s why I held off so long.’
‘That isn’t the way I heard it,’ the priest said.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be, would it?’ Hannah
said bitterly. ‘Look, Father,’ she went on. ‘I never went out looking for another husband. I took the job with Vic Humphries for two reasons. The first was boredom, for with Angela out all day at school and Pauline there to see to things anyway, there wasn’t enough for me to do. The second reason was that I needed the money because Arthur gave me none. Vic and I became friends, as two people who work closely together often do, and that’s all it was then, a deep friendship.’
‘When did it change?’ the priest asked.
‘The day I found out Gloria was dying,’ Hannah said. ‘Vic found me crying and … and he comforted me.’ She was silent then, but her face flamed crimson and the priest surmised a lot by that flush.
‘But,’ Hannah went on, ‘things really came to a head at Christmas. Arthur took Angela away for four days. I felt so alone, so isolated and unloved. I couldn’t bear it and I phoned Vic and asked him to come.’
‘And did you spend the night together?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And is he living here with you now?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Child, your soul is in mortal danger,’ the priest said, shaking his head sorrowfully. And then he looked at Hannah’s swollen stomach and said, ‘Are you expecting Doctor Humphries’ baby?’
‘Yes,’ Hannah said and lifted her head defiantly. ‘And I’m proud to be, Father. Vic is a good man.’
‘You can’t really expect me to agree with you on that,’ Father Fitzgerald said sternly. ‘A man who entices a woman to flee from her husband and child is not one I would term “good”.’
‘He did no enticing, Father.’
‘Hannah, have you not thought of Angela’s reaction to all this? She’s at a very impressionable age.’
‘I know that, Father.’
‘Arthur tells me she is being confirmed next Sunday?’
Hannah knew that too. She’d circled the date on the calendar. Not that she’d needed to, it was etched in her memory. ‘You’ll be going to that I presume?’