by Fanny Blake
How stupid she had been to come here. If Rick hadn’t been so insistent about Barcelona, she would have refused the invitation however hard Kate had pushed.
The way he pointed with his little finger. Back then he had worn a signet ring on it that he tapped against the desk when impatient. Back then, he was a fresh-faced twenty-five-year-old. Back then, he was slim, athletic and so good-looking that nearly all the senior sixth had the hots for him, none more than her. Back then, he was called Jack Wilson. Back then, he had been their art teacher.
She couldn’t be more certain.
Unwanted memories came crowding in.
And all she wanted to do was run away and catch the next plane off the island.
13
I got us out of the party as soon as I decently could. I was aware that the others hadn’t really thrown themselves into it – why should they when I’d sprung it on them and they didn’t know a soul? Although Linda did her best, Jane and Kate stood on the periphery like teenagers at a house party thrown by someone they didn’t know. They reminded me of how I felt once at a party at Jane’s house. We must have been about twelve or thirteen. Whenever her mother left the room, they bunched together in a tight circle so I couldn’t join in. Funny what the mind does. I’d forgotten about that completely until then.
Being together was throwing up memories like that: things I hadn’t thought of for years. Of course I wasn’t always on the outside. I could equally well remember squishing onto the back seat of the bus home, Jane’s gang packed so tight together that Fran and Pam had to sit on the seat in front where we bombarded them with empty monkey-nut shells, and called them names. But if you stuck out the cold shoulder for long enough, Jane would come round and it would be your turn in the sunshine again while someone else got left out. In the meantime Kate or Linda would offer a hand of friendship when Jane wasn’t looking. Back then, her attention was something worth waiting for. Now, less so.
There was so much I wanted to ask her but now she was here I found myself holding back, not wanting to hear my suspicions were unfounded, not wanting to ruin things for the others. I was sure now that she was the one responsible for my being branded a thief and a liar, for my expulsion from school. Yes, it happened years ago but I still cared. It had taken me a long time to recover from the labelling and its ramifications. She was the reason my life went off the rails. But I was the one who got me back on them. Now, thanks to Rob, it was veering off them again and I had this irrational desire to sort things out for the record. If I could confront the past, then maybe I had a future. She had got from her life what I once wanted from mine, and I wanted to know whether that had made her happy.
By the time we left the party, Jane wasn’t looking well and asked if we’d mind if she skipped dinner and went back to the house. I didn’t like leaving her on her own but she insisted and the three of us were hungry. Besides, I wanted to share Fornalutx with them. I’d been going there so long but I never tired of the place. Some people criticise it for being a museum piece restored for the tourists but, to me, it was a beautiful village full of character.
We were shown to a table on the terrace of one of the restaurants on the hill down into the village. Mountains on one side, road on the other but once the tourists have left for the day, very little traffic goes through. Linda and I had to wait for Kate who had stopped by a litter of scrawny kittens that were playing around the entrance.
‘That was some house,’ said Kate eventually, as she browsed the menu. ‘Stunning.’
‘I liked the couple I was talking to.’ Linda handed me the wine list.
‘I don’t really know them. They’ve only been in the village for a couple of years and rent out their house most of the time.’ I hoped Linda realised how well Jane’s top suited her. She had lost all the self-confidence that I remembered her having. I was puzzled by the transformation from class star to the unconfident, self-effacing person who had come to stay. I had always imagined she would end up running the world, or at least have a hugely successful, high-profile career but something had changed her. I ordered a bottle of ses Nines, one of the red wines produced on the island, sensing her need. This man, Mike, had obviously messed her up badly. Or maybe there was more than that.
We ordered quickly. They took their lead from me as I recommended various local specialities. Pa amb oli; tumbet; paella; cod and veg. I know. I know. But the last tastes better than it sounds.
‘What did you think of the paintings?’ Kate asked, finally, once she’d chosen.
‘Not much. I was disappointed. William’s got such a good eye normally.’ I liked to think I had too.
‘What about the artist?’ said Linda. ‘I didn’t get to talk to him but he looked pretty wild.’ I wasn’t sure whether she was disapproving or admiring.
‘Jane thought she knew him.’ Kate took a mouthful of tumbet. ‘This is delicious. What’s in it? Onions, tomatoes, potatoes?’ She poked at it with her fork. ‘Anything else?’
‘Aubergine and peppers,’ I added. ‘How funny, he reminded me of someone too. I wasn’t going to say anything because I supposed he must be someone who I’d met through the business. If we hadn’t been surrounded by his admirers, I’d have asked him.’
You couldn’t see much of his face thanks to that beard but there was something about him. The intensity in his eyes was disconcerting and the way he held his head tilted to one side … no, it wasn’t that. The way he gestured. And then, I got it at last. ‘Oh my God. You know what it was?’
She shook her head and they both looked at me.
‘The way he pointed with his pinkie. There’s only one other person I’ve seen do that. Mr Wilson! You remember?’ Of course they did. We’d talked about him only the night before and we all knew we’d be talking about him again before our holiday together was over. ‘We used to copy him.’ I pointed with mine at the bottle of wine.
Linda was staring at me as if she’d seen a ghost. ‘But Mr Wilson wore a signet ring.’
‘I know.’ I could picture it against my thigh all too clearly, his fingers pressing hard enough to dent the flesh. That feeling of fear that haunted me for so long afterwards returned to me.
But the hand I saw tonight belonged to someone else. Its skin was loose, wrinkled over the knuckles, marked with age spots. Thick blue veins crossed the bones. The nails were bitten right down. But there was no ring.
‘He can’t possibly be,’ said Kate. ‘It’s just because we’re here together that you’re imagining it.’
‘Maybe.’ But those eyes. Sharp and calculating. I was sure they were his.
‘We haven’t really talked about all that properly,’ said Kate. ‘Do you want to?’
At last. But why not now? It was time I told my story again. It had been locked away unresolved for too long. A shame Jane wasn’t with us.
‘Sure,’ I said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and I was only doing it to oblige them. I waited for a moment while the waiter took our plates and brought the main courses. I sipped my one glass of wine, poured another for everyone else. ‘It happened just as I said at the time. You don’t remember?’
‘Not in detail. To be honest, I haven’t thought about it for years. Sorry.’ She added the apology when my face must have given away something I hadn’t intended. But why should have any of them have held what happened to me in their minds. They had their own lives to lead.
‘Mr Wilson was a predator.’ I might as well say it the way I saw it.
Linda’s fork clattered against her plate. ‘No!’
‘Maybe that’s harsh.’ I’d obviously touched a nerve. I was only too aware that most of our contemporaries had a crush on him. ‘But he had a position of responsibility and he abused that. He was one of what? Four male teachers in an all girls’ school?’
Kate nodded and ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Him, Mr Sutton, the Latin teach
er, Mr Greaves for physics and …’ She hesitated.
‘Mr Franks for French.’ I helped her out. ‘How could you forget him? Right name, right job.’
We all smiled at the old joke.
‘But none of them took advantage in the way Mr Wilson did. I know he was a young man, but it wasn’t right. And still he had plenty of fans.’
Linda reached across me for the bottle.
‘But not you,’ said Kate. ‘I always thought he was OK.’
‘Me too,’ Linda added.
‘He gave me the creeps. I used to watch him flirting as if we were some sort of game he was playing. But I was only interested in my results. I was set on getting into university – the first of my family. Art was an extra because I loved painting.’
My parents had been amazed and quietly pleased by my unexpected ambition that had been born when Mum had gone into hospital with a burst appendix. I had the romantic notion of being one of the people who could make others better, just like the white-coated doctors I saw. ‘Maybe he saw my indifference as a challenge. Whatever it was, during that last spring term, he got me alone in the art room at the end of the day. I’d left my cardigan in there and went back to get it. He was at his desk and asked me to come up and sit beside him. I did because I assumed he was going to critique my work. When I sat down, I saw he had a book of photos of naked men and women open on his desk.’
‘Really?’ Linda didn’t believe me.
‘Oh, they were very tasteful: arty,’ I reassured her. ‘But he asked me what I thought of them. I was shocked, and a bit confused. I must have mumbled something but I didn’t know what he meant me to say. The next thing, his hand was on my leg, pressing, moving towards my skirt. Remember how short we wore them?’ I could almost feel that pressure again as I retold the story.
The others had stopped eating to listen. I hadn’t talked about this for so long, but every moment of it was as clear to me as it had ever been. I couldn’t stop now.
‘Although I’d watched him flirt, I didn’t think he’d do any more than that. I couldn’t believe what was happening and yet for some reason I didn’t move away. I couldn’t. But as his hand reached under my skirt and his other touched my right breast …’ My own hand rose to it as I spoke. ‘I jumped up, knocking the chair over. The clatter it made seemed to register with him, then he was on his feet too. “Amy,” he said. “Amy. There’s nothing wrong with this. We’re both adults. You can make the decision I know you want to. Nobody need know.”’
‘Jesus,’ said Kate. ‘How could I have forgotten all this? What did you do?’
‘Honestly, it was as if I was paralysed. I knew how wrong it was but I couldn’t react. It’s as hard to explain now as it was then. Then he reached out for my hand and pulled me towards him. “That’s how much I want you,” he said, and put my hand on his cock through his trousers. “And you want to get good marks, don’t you?”’
‘Oh my God!’ Kate was shocked. Linda was biting her lip, her eyes fixed on me as she listened.
‘I was so stunned I didn’t react straight away, but then I pushed him as hard as I could and ran out of the room.’
‘Is that when you went to the Head?’ Linda sounded as if she was blaming me for not doing exactly that.
‘God, no. She hated me, remember? Or I thought she did. I’d been reported to her one too many times. I went to the cloakroom, grabbed my bag, and got the hell out of there.’
‘And what about the watch?’
On the other side of the valley, a car wound up the road, its lights appearing and disappearing as it travelled the road through the trees.
‘So … I raced home and decided that I wouldn’t say a thing to anyone, convinced that it was somehow my fault. That I’d said something or looked at him in some way that he’d misinterpreted. Maybe my skirt was too short.’ It was, but that was hardly the point. ‘If I didn’t say anything perhaps it wouldn’t have happened.’ I looked round them. ‘Sounds so daft now.’
‘You could at least have told us,’ said Kate.
But she wasn’t remembering how it had been between us then. We were seventeen and a close-knit group of friends who over the years had survived the bouts of bullying, exclusion, betrayals and secrets but who still scapegoated anyone who fell out of line. And that’s what I must have done in Jane’s eyes, our leader of the pack. Besides, nothing had happened. He hadn’t raped me. His word against mine. No one else had been there, so he could deny it. Just as he did. In 1976, we weren’t as clued up about our rights as girls are now. At least not at our school.
‘I couldn’t.’ I didn’t want to explain. Their memories would be different and I didn’t want to argue over the facts. ‘But it didn’t take long for Mum to work out there was something wrong. Eventually she wormed out of me what had happened. She was furious—’
‘I bet.’ Linda spoke at last. But she didn’t look up from her plate.
‘She phoned Milters to report him. But Milters didn’t believe her. I was down as a troublemaker and this was the last straw, and of course she supported her staff.’
‘She wouldn’t be able to deal with it like that these days.’
‘I don’t know that she could then, but she did. Anyway … He flat out denied everything, so it was his word against mine. And then his watch went missing and all hell broke loose.’
‘I remember that. What was it, his grandfather’s Rolex or something?’
‘A valuable watch that he’d inherited is all I know. He made such an almighty fuss and insisted the police were involved. We all had to have our bags and our desks searched – do you remember how we all stood beside them as Miss Wilford went through them, banging the lids down one by one – and lo and behold, there it was in mine.’ I could still feel that stomach-churning moment of discovery. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. ‘I still have no idea how it got there, but someone put it there.’
They were both looking at me with varying degrees of interest, Kate most of all. The passing years must have dimmed their memories more than I’d imagined. And why not? This was my drama, not theirs.
‘Then what?’
I couldn’t help noticing Linda was more challenging than sympathetic. But I didn’t have the tiniest scrap of evidence to back any accusation of Jane. I’d have to be more subtle in trying to find out what happened.
‘Whatever I said, no one would listen. It was just like when Jane popped that lipstick in my bag so I got the blame for shoplifting.’
‘You’re not blaming her?’ Both of them were shocked.
‘Of course not.’ I hurriedly smoothed that mistake over. ‘Mr Wilson claimed I must have stolen the watch to get back at him when my story about his coming on to me was discredited. I mean … it all sounds so ludicrous. Suddenly I had a criminal record, or at least was branded a thief, and was expelled for theft, lying and trying to ruin his career. Goodbye A levels. Goodbye university.’
‘But why believe him and not you?’ Kate asked. ‘There must be procedures that have to be followed when an accusation’s made like that.’
I shrugged. ‘No idea. But I’d like to know what happened, even now. I’ve done OK in life …’ I looked around me. ‘But not in the way I wanted to. That choice was taken away from me.’
‘Well!’ The word came out of Kate in a long whoosh.
‘Of course one of the reasons for wanting to see you again was to be able to talk about it, but there hasn’t been the right moment till now. Something’s happened at home that’s made me revisit things, and I’d like to resolve what happened for my own peace of mind.’
‘But you’re only talking about it now because of that guy’s little finger!’ Linda said, thoughtful. ‘That couldn’t have been Mr Wilson tonight. I’d have recognised him.
‘Jack Walsh?’ I shook my head. ‘You’re probably right. It’s just a coincidence that’s made me think it w
as him, that’s all. Why would he change his name?’ But I knew what I’d seen. Jane must have recognised him too and been shaken by it. She had a massive crush on him back when, always first into the art room and last to leave, desperate for his praise and approval. That I do remember.
‘It’s an incredible coincidence if you’re right.’ Katie polished off her cod, straightened her knife and fork on her plate and leaned back in her chair.
‘True.’ But I couldn’t help wondering about Jane’s absence. There hadn’t been anything wrong with her when we left for the party.
‘Why don’t you ask William?’ Linda suggested. ‘He might be able to find out.’
‘He’ll think I’ve gone mad.’ I could imagine his reaction only too well. ‘No, I’ll wait in case we feel like going to Valldemossa and the exhibition. I’ll ask Jack Walsh himself.’
But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t because I was suddenly scared that the answer would be yes, and then what would I do?
We finished our wine, paid the bill and went back to the car. I’d decided I wouldn’t put the others through the walk home because it was pretty arduous unless you were used to it. It wouldn’t be the first time that the stony steps caused an accident. Rob and Dan had both tripped up more than once when a bit the worse for wear and without the torch. Rob was once limping for weeks.
The house was quiet when we got back. Lights off. Dan had either hooked up with some others for supper or he was in his room. To my slight relief, Jane must have gone to bed. However, when we walked into the living room, before we put the lights on, I noticed candlelight flickering outside on the terrace table. I opened the door and went out to find Jane, wrapped in a pashmina, sitting quietly and staring at the night sky.
‘You OK?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really.’
I could see she was upset about something. However Kate was right behind me and bulldozed her way in.
‘You’ll never guess. Amy thought the same thing: that Mr Wilson had risen from the dead.’