The Face

by Ivan B

  He picked up his knife and fork and Bau muttered “So you see her?”

  He shook his head sadly and miserably. “For the first three years, but it was impossible, you talked about the mother-baby bond, there’s also the father-daughter bond you know and I just could not be Uncle Brian.”

  “So?”

  “So we came to an arrangement. Joan and Sam emigrated to Canada, he’s a dentist and can work anywhere. I promised never to go over and they promised to send me a picture of Janis every year on her birthday until she is eighteen.”

  “Will they tell her she’s sort of adopted?”

  She saw his eyes moisten, “No, that was part of the agreement, why should we mess up her life? She’s got the right birth certificate, the right colouring and two devoted, absolutely devoted, parents. Why should I destroy that by insisting that she knows?”

  “Suppose she visits England?”

  “Then I don’t exist,” he said hoarsely. “She was very young when they left and once they were in Canada I agreed never to send birthday or Christmas cards or anything. As far as Janis knows her mother didn’t have a brother, it was the only way we could manage it.”

  His face told the world that it had been a terrible price to pay and they ate in silence as she savoured the delicious taste of salmon for the first time in years. Eventually Brian restarted his story. “After that I started work at the school. Initially I just taught physics and later, when I’d got a part-time diploma in theology, I started teaching RE.”

  “When did you become Chaplain?”

  “Five years ago. I went forward for selection as a Non-Stipendiary Anglican Priest and to my amazement they accepted me, after that the school jumped on the bandwagon and made me their chaplain.”

  Bau put her knife down and started toying with the salad. “How do you square that with giving your daughter away?”

  “If God can’t forgive a sinner what hope is there for us?”

  She ate a button tomato, “So from then it’s been all plain sailing?”

  His face told her exactly the opposite. “It’s a mixed school and despite what you probably think it’s not a school for the wealthy. It’s an army school, we take the children of army families that are posted abroad. We also take children of one-parent families, especially where the other parent was killed on active duty. You get to meet the parents and I got friendly with one of them, very friendly. She was struggling with learning computing to keep pace with her daughter and I gave her one-to-one lessons. I guess I’m naïve I really thought we had the start of a good relationship.”

  “And?”

  “And she was leading me up the garden path for slaughter. A friendly red-cap warned me and I almost ignored him, I certainly told him to mind his own business. I apologised for that later. Anyway I did decide to check her out, remember I’d been bitten once so this was the second time around. Turns out shed fleeced two men before. She’d get friendly with them and then cry rape. Fortunately I’d never slept with her, on past record if I had she’d have cried rape and gone straight to the police demanding a medical examination. My sperm and her daughter’s witness statement would have been the damning evidence. She’d already got away with it in Germany and Cyprus. She never pressed the charges, just got the men to pay her off, for a small fortune.”

  He wiped up the last of the steak fat with a piece of bread, “So there you are, all the sordid details, not a simple school teacher but a man who gives away his child and then seeks a woman out, a second woman, who wants to fleece him for everything he has.”

  She studied his face and said softly, “Is that how you see me, a penniless wench out for your cash?”

  Horror shot across his face and Bau relaxed. “No. Certainly not. Never.” He stammered.

  She reached out and touched his hand, “I believe you and thanks for telling me the truth.”

  He looked utterly despondent, “It’s not the truth, least it’s only the edited truth. Last year I could stand it no longer and I took a holiday - to Canada.”

  “And?”

  “And I went to Janis’ home town and chickened out, I left after twelve hours, but I was a hairsbreadth away from blowing her life apart.”

  “It might have been the making of her life.”

  He shook his head, “No, I read the local paper. She’d won the school cup for the best ecological initiative in the school. I was so proud I could have…”

  He tailed off and took a breath, “I could have ruined my sister’s day and my daughter’s life. Instead I went to the other side of the country and worked in a monastery pulling weeds.”

  He surveyed her plate, “Was that good?”

  She nodded, “Wonderful.”

  “Pudding?”

  “No thanks, you have one if you want, I’ll just have coffee if it’s on offer.”

  “Of course it’s on offer”

  They moved to the lounge and settled down on a low settee. She poured the coffee before turning to him and whispering, “I don’t think any less of you, especially as I can’t go around throwing stones, but I promise that I’m not out to fleece you or try and use you or anything like that. We met by accident not design.”

  He grinned, “By design, I had designs to meet you the first time I saw you.”

  “Then beware of false expectations.”

  She sat back, “I still think it’s a dream. I keep thinking I’ll wake up and Nanette will be bending over me with one of her leers and offering me a knuckle sandwich if I don’t clean the loo up after her disgusting diarrhoea.”

  “You had en-suite facilities?”

  “If you call a WC bowl with no seat and a million internal scratches en-suite facilities then yes; it was sheer luxury.”

  He without warning he put his arm around her, it was both unexpected and expected, she too knew that they didn’t have the time for extended politeness, but he seemed to be throwing caution to the winds.

  He dropped her off at her cottage an hour and a half later, not wanting to leave her in the middle of nowhere, but also not wanting to seem presumptuous. Once again, as he expected, she wouldn’t let him escort her to the door. This time he was prepared and just after he’d stopped he leant over and kissed her on the cheek. She thought about turning her head so their lips could meet, but she had other things on her mind. Instead she ran to the front door and turned to give him a wonderful wave and smile before running inside, managing to yell at the rat on the worktop before throwing up in the sink. She’d dearly have loved to kiss Brian, but vomiting over him was not the way to a man’s heart. As she started to clean up the sink and thoroughly rinse her mouth she burst into tears. For once in her life she’d met a decent man, one she knew she could love, but the timing was all wrong. She had Amy to consider and if Brian couldn’t accept her relationship with Amy then she could never be with him. For the moment Amy had to have preference. Besides, she’d probably get sent back inside till her juices all dried up and she ended up as a battered useless hag of a woman with a hard face and embittered attitudes. Would he want her then? She screamed at nothing in particular to relieve her frustration and sobbed her heart out while leaning on the sink and waiting for the second round of nausea to run its course. Freedom was turning out o be a bitch.

  Chapter 6

  Out Of Control

  Once back at the house Brian made straight for the upstairs lounge where he knocked back a stiff whisky, following his research he had a job to do and didn’t particularly relish the fact. He thought about a second whisky before deciding that he needed some wits about him and proceeded downstairs to the kitchen. Once there he donned his coverall and, before he lost his nerve, went straight down the shaft. Once at the bottom he pulled out his small digital camera and took some photographs. He repeated the process in the old office taking care to photograph the bodies from a number of angles. He then put his camera away and took a deep breath. He re-checked the two bodies studying the clothing and the footwear. After a slight hesitation he
donned a pair of latex gloves that he had bought earlier and reached for the envelope. The message inside was simple:

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  John was right in telling us that you would not believe us about him. We both feel that if we can’t be believed by you he will never stop. We have told Belinda everything, perhaps you will believe our story now. We will love you forever, please do not think badly of us. Please give our clothes to Cecilia, Love…

  It was signed in a barely discernible scrawl ‘by Lillian and Barbara,’ but Brian already knew the names from the newspapers of the time. He carefully put the paper back in the envelope and sat back on his heels. Lodged between the two bodies were two identical tiny plastic handbags. He reached over and gently prised the first one from out between the bodies, he felt like a grave-robber. In some ways the contents were pathetic, a small pile of coins, a tiny handkerchief, two almost perished small elastic bands and a front-door key on a key-fob that proclaimed ‘Lillian’ under it’s yellowed push-on plastic cover. He laid the purse and its contents on the floor and took a photograph before carefully packing everything back into the purse. He repeated the operation with the second purse; the contents were much the same, but this time the key-fob read ‘Barbara.’ He ever so carefully placed the purses back between them. He paused before taking a little phial of oil out of his pocket. Gritting his teeth he traced a small oily cross on each forehead and said a blessing over them. Finally, as he made a large sign of the cross with his hand over both of them he said softly, “I know it’s a bit late Lord, but please look after Lillian and Barbara.”

  The other room was about the same size as the one with the corpses, but the contents were entirely different. There were three upturned metal milk crates, dozens of piles of wax; a couple of old style front cycle lamps and half a dozen men’s magazines of the soft porn variety. It had obviously been a boy’s den. There was one other difference, there was another shaft in corner of the room with iron hoops starting on the wall and disappearing upwards into the gloom. Brian took some more photographs, checked the memory availability and took a couple more before gingerly going over to the shaft and climbing up. At the top was a pair of very rotten wooden trap-doors each covering half of the shaft width. Brian pushed them and was rewarded by earth falling from the crack between the doors. He nodded to himself and went back down. At the bottom he crouched down and examined a small piece of white cloth that he gingerly turned over and photographed. He checked the orientation of the rooms and began to pace around for a few minutes and measure the distance between the two shafts; he then exited back to the kitchen. After a slight pause he commenced what he had personally dubbed operation clear-up. He closed the grill, this time dropping the key down the shaft and laid some old vinyl floor tiles on the grill till he had covered all the gaps. He filled in the exposed shaft with freshly mixed concrete, which levelled off at floor level. After that he re-laid the large quarry tiles using a slightly damp sand and cement mixture. Next he washed the entire floor, deliberately mopping all the dirty water over the re-laid tiles to add dirt into the sand-filled cracks. Finally he put all the furniture back in place and made himself a hot-chocolate drink. Just before he went to bed he once again watched the video clips of the Rocqettes that he had saved on George’s computer, carefully studying Bau. Then, and only then, he went to bed. It was 4am.

  Needless to say he did not rise early, it being mid-morning before he finished his breakfast. As he washed up he contemplated when to go over and see Bau. A frantic ringing of the doorbell disturbed his contemplation. Amy was a woman transformed. For a start there was animation in the hazel eyes, enough for Brian to know that she was running on adrenaline. Secondly she was now sporting an identical twisted nose-ring with a blob on the end to Bau, plus a pair of large two-inch diameter silver ear-rings. Her brown top had been replaced by a short-sleeve pink tee-shirt with ‘Candy’ scrawled across her breasts, which jutted out like an overhanging precipice. Finally her brown jeans had been replaced by a pair of skin tight red ones; he only hoped that she never asked anyone ‘does my bum look big in this?’ He gazed into her smooth skin faced that was now surrounded by a falling mop of blonde hair and thought about the perversity of ageing. Bau had aged badly; Amy still had the face of a teenager without a single wrinkle at the edge of her eyes. He studied her face close up, it was totally dominated by her nose. Her forehead sloped back slightly and the nose seemed to be an extension of this slope jutting out like a ski-jump. Her eyebrows picked up the edge of her nose and swung over her eyes in a wide black semicircular arc. He wondered how, should anyone tried to kiss her, they could get close enough to her over-pink lips without being speared to death. “Is B-Bau in?” She asked excitedly.

  Brian’s eyes flicked towards the end of the drive; there was no car. “I escaped,” she said. “Is B-Bau there?” She repeated.

  “No, she’s at her…”

  Brian stopped himself in time; he instinctively knew that Bau would not want Amy to know that she was living in that squalid cottage. “She’s over at a cottage in Burston Tye, why don’t we go and get her?”

  As they walked to the car he wondered if Amy had periods of hyper-activity followed by periods of depression. Yesterday she’d been dull-eyed and sluggish, today she was lively to say the least. As he opened the car door for her it occurred to him that she was acting like a woman who’s husband was about to come back from the war; she was a woman totally aflame with the ardour of love.

  Brian spent the first five minutes of the journey wondering how he was going to cope with Amy and Bau, would their mutual devotion freeze him out? Amy suddenly spoke and disturbed Brian’s increasingly anxious thoughts. “Pardon?”

  “Are you B-Bau’s b-boyfriend?” There seemed a total innocence in her enquiry.

  “To be honest we’ve only just met.”

  After half a mile she tried again, “Are you chasing B-Bau?”

  “Chasing?”

  “You know, ‘heap b-big he-man hunter seeks luscious female to d-drag b-back to cave t-to stoke camp-fire.’”

  Brian laughed, “I guess you could say that, except my flat has central heating.”

  “She likes you,” Amy announced, “I can t-tell.”

  He caught something in her voice, possibly fear, and decided to pull into to a farm entrance. He turned the engine off and faced her across the empty central seat. “Look, I want what’s best for Bau, she’s had an awful deal of the cards and I don’t intend to make her life worse. If you’re trying to tell me to back off because she’d be happy with you then so be it. At this point I only want her happiness.”

  Amy’s Hazel eyes widened, “You’d g-give her up t-to make her happy?”

  She pronounced ‘you’d’ very carefully and with a long vowel, Brian guessed that she’d had elocution lessons for the stammer. “Yes.”

  “T-Then you must l-love her.”

  Amy started to nibble at her bottom lip and Brian thought that she wasn’t going to say anything more. She stopped nibbling, “Needn’t b-be like that, I t-think she could c-cope with b-both of us, call that a d-double happiness.”

  Brian noted that the stammer was only universal on bs and ds and only occasionally on other letters as she made a big effort to pronounce other words without it. He reluctantly shook his head. “No go, we’d end up tearing her apart. I think at the moment she needs you more, so it’s goodbye Brian.” He stared Amy in the eyes, “She really needs you, be gentle with her.”

  He heard himself say the words, but he couldn’t believe just what he was saying. He was convinced that Amy provided something essential to Bau, but wasn’t quite sure what it was. Amy put her head onto one side and thought. “Only t-tear her apart if we force her to make a choice b-between us. If we can coexist then she d-doesn’t have to choose and we can all b-be happy.”

  This sounded too simplistic for words. “Still a no go,” said Brian, “She’d end up as mediator between us - piggy in the middle - and that could be worse.” />
  Amy sat still and Brian realised what Bau had meant when she had said that Amy didn’t think fast on her feet, however she clearly did think. Eventually she said, “Then we must d-do more than just coexist, we must b-be friends and accept each other’s call on B-Bau.”

  Brian opened her mouth, Amy continued on with her forehead creased into a thinking frown. “I d-don’t mind that she’d probably want to sleep in your b-bed at nights. On the other hand if she and I get together at other times you mustn’t b-be jealous.”

  This was ridiculous; they were plotting together for the affections of the same woman. He paused before he said anything. What was the alternative? Possibly that would be to lose Bau forever. “What about if I take her out for a romantic evening meal at a restaurant, are you telling me you wouldn’t be jealous?”

  “Not if we could d-do the same, or have a girl’s d-day out.” She paused and wore her thinking frown for a while. “Though it would b-be nice if all three of us went out from time to time, it would sort of cement the fact that she d-didn’t have to choose b-between us and we weren’t in competition, vying for her affections.”

  She pronounced ‘affections’ at twice the normal vowel length. Brian decided to push the reasoning. “Suppose I wanted to marry her.”

  “Fine, as long as I was matron of honour.”

  “But you’d expect to live with us?”

  “Of course, as far as everyone else is concerned I’d b-be your live-in housekeeper.”

  Brian momentarily had that feeling of being sucked-in again. Last week this would all have been absurd, this week it sounded plausible. After all, he reasoned to himself, he had Bau’s needs to consider not only his needs. He decided to join in the plotting. “No secrets or plotting behind each other’s back, it wouldn’t be good for Bau.”