The Girl Behind the Gates

by Brenda Davies

  ‘You OK?’ He smiles. ‘Audrey said you had smoke coming out of your ears.’

  ‘He’s impossible,’ she rants. ‘Absolutely impossible.’

  He leans against the door frame. ‘Yep, but letting him get you wound up just means he’s winning.’

  ‘Stop being so sensible,’ she grumps, but already she’s having to make an effort not to smile. His eyes twinkle and there’s that laugh, and she can’t resist joining in. ‘Don’t you ever lose it, Dale?’ she asks.

  ‘Who, me? Never, darling.’ He pauses. ‘Of course, I do – and believe me, you don’t want to see it when it happens. Not a pretty sight.’ Then he becomes serious. ‘But these poor buggers don’t need my moods.’ He touches her arm gently. ‘And they don’t need yours either. They’ve got enough on their plates as it is. I have the luxury of being able to let off my steam somewhere else.’

  ‘Is that a dig at me?’

  ‘Now, would I?’

  Janet sighs. ‘Point made.’

  ‘Good. Now – cup of tea?’ He turns to go, and is almost in the corridor when he pauses and looks back. ‘Beware. Big Cheese rolling in,’ he announces in a stage whisper.

  She looks up and smiles. ‘One of these days he’ll catch you and you’ll be out on your ear.’ She laughs.

  ‘Not with the power of the union behind me, my dear.’ He laughs. But then his face becomes serious. ‘He wasn’t always like this, you know. Why don’t you have a word with Audrey. She knows the full story.’

  Janet looks at him, intrigued. ‘OK, I will – thanks for the tip.’

  She taps on Audrey’s door and is greeted by a lovely smile. ‘Thanks for making time to see me. I know you’re very busy. Sorry I was in such a foul mood earlier.’

  ‘No problem. It’s lovely to see you.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to breach confidentiality, but I’m having a real issue with Dr Pauling and Dale suggested I have a word with you.’

  ‘Ah . . . come. Sit down.’

  Half an hour later, Janet walks along the corridor with her heart full of compassion. How it must feel to raise a child to the age of sixteen and have him die of cancer she can only imagine. No wonder he’s been angry with the world and everything in it. Poor man. She determines to do just as she would suggest to her patients and change her own attitude.

  Chapter Six

  Janet can’t get the thought of Dr Pauling’s overwhelming grief out of her head. Her mind drifts back to her own parents, and her own childhood.

  She’s four and the smell of newly baked bread and Victoria sponge cake make Janet’s mouth water as her mother bends down towards her and fluffs out the gathered skirt of her new dress. She looks at herself in her mother’s dressing-table mirror. Her hair is in ringlets and is crowned with a white bow that matches the collar of the dress. She likes the puffed sleeves. Her tan shoes are freshly polished and she has new white ankle socks. It’s a very special day because Daddy is coming home from the war.

  ‘You look very pretty.’ Her mother smiles. ‘Now, you won’t forget what Mummy said, will you?’

  ‘I haven’t to be frightened if he has stitches in his face,’ Janet recites.

  ‘That’s right. He will be tired and you have to be a very good girl and go to bed nicely in your new bed in the sitting room.’

  ‘I want to sleep with you and I don’t want to see him if he’s got cotton in his face,’ Janet says, halfway between anger and tears.

  Her mother laughs. ‘He won’t have cotton stitches. And they might be gone anyway. And we can still have a snuggle in the morning.’

  Janet looks down at her shoes. ‘Will he like me?’

  ‘I’m sure he’s going to love you just like I do,’ she says, ‘but he’s been very, very poorly and it might take him a while to get to know you – and to get to know me again too. I know you haven’t seen him before, but I have hardly seen him since before you were born, either.’

  ‘But I’m four now.’

  Her mother looks out of the window for the umpteenth time. ‘Well, he’s been in hospital for a long time. He’s a lot better now, but we still have to be very good and very quiet.’ She turns back from the window. ‘Not yet. He won’t be long though.’

  She bends down and gives Janet a hug then kisses her cheek. ‘I know it’s going to be very different but . . .’ She looks away as a figure crosses in front of the window, then she runs to open the door. Standing there is a man in a khaki uniform with a big bag over his shoulder. She makes a little sound of surprise. He smiles. He doesn’t have cotton in his face but there’s a big lump under his eye and a funny bump on his head. Her mother puts her arms around him and they have a long kiss while Janet hides her doll behind her back and snuggles up to the backs of her mother’s legs.

  ‘And who is this?’ the man says as he drops his bag and gets down on one knee. But Janet, suddenly shy, tries to hide in her mother’s skirt and looks the other way. ‘I brought you something, little Janet,’ he says, and slowly she looks at him as he pulls a soft doll with dark woolly hair and a pink dress out of his bag.

  Her mother reaches down and takes Janet’s old doll out of her hand and swaps it with the new one. ‘Well, look at that. She looks like you. What are you going to call her?’

  But Janet is still watching her own doll and wants to cry. She’s too shy to speak, and when her father stoops to pick her up, she feels afraid and stiffens and shies away from the scars on his face. And he smells funny. She looks back at her mother who is trying to smile, though her eyes look worried. Janet feels scared to see her mother so worried and she starts to wriggle and cry and wants to be in her mother’s arms, not this strange man’s, even if he is her father. He puts her down quickly.

  ‘She’ll be all right in a little while,’ her mother says, giving a nervous laugh, ‘it’ll take time.’

  Janet tosses around in the little bed in the sitting room and eventually falls asleep, but then is woken by her mother making funny noises like she’s hurt, or maybe crying, or maybe talking . . . And then her father makes a strange noise too. She gets up and goes to the door to her mother’s bedroom and opens the door just a crack. Her father seems to be hurting her mother. Then he looks up and sees her.

  ‘Get out of here,’ he shouts, and Janet runs back to her bed, afraid. She hates him.

  The next morning, she doesn’t know what to do. She can see that the sun is up but she hasn’t seen her mother yet, even though she always gets up before Janet is even awake. She hopes she isn’t dead.

  She waits . . . and waits . . . and waits . . .

  Then the door opens and out comes her father. He’s wearing trousers and a vest and braces. He doesn’t smile and goes straight to the toilet. Janet creeps to the door, terrified of what she might find. But there is her mother looking fine and Janet is staring at her, her forehead creased in a puzzled frown.

  ‘Come and have a cuddle,’ her mother says, and holds up the blanket so Janet can crawl in beside her. ‘Come on. It’s all right.’ So, Janet climbs up onto the bed and into her mother’s arms. ‘Daddy will be back in a minute, then we’ll all get up and have breakfast,’ she says. She smooths Janet’s hair and kisses her brow. ‘Daddy had a very bad accident. A bomb went off beside him. We have to be very quiet and good and make sure we don’t upset him.’

  Her father enters the room and looks at them in the bed. ‘Shall I make you two tea in bed?’ he says. ‘I could bring it on a tray.’ Then looking at Janet, ‘Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she whispers. This earns her another stroke from her mother.

  ‘Right. I’ll be back soon. Tea for my girls coming up.’

  She snuggles down and curls up in the welcoming warmth of the eiderdown and the comforting, familiar smell of her mother’s body, feeling safe and happy again. She won’t ask about the funny noises in the night.

  After breakfast Janet wants to help clearing the table as she always does. She stacks the plates – three now – and starts to pick
up the pile. ‘Just leave them, Janet,’ her mother says.

  ‘I can manage.’

  ‘No, just leave them. I’ll do that in a minute. Just put them back on the table.’

  Janet turns with them and, as she does, one slips off the pile and falls, breaking on the lino floor with a loud noise. Her father spins round, startled, his face contorted, his hands trembling. Janet trembles too as she stares at him for just a split second before his hand contacts the side of her head, with a force that hurls her across the room.

  ‘Do as your mother says,’ he bellows.

  ‘Jack,’ her mother screams as she scoops Janet up off the floor. ‘Just sit down. I’ll deal with her.’ Then all her attention is on Janet, who is too shocked even to cry. ‘Are you all right, flower?’

  ‘Of course, she’s all right,’ the voice thunders behind her. ‘She needs to learn to do as she’s told.’

  Janet feels a hand on her shoulder and opens her eyes. Dale’s beautiful eyes look directly into hers. ‘You look exhausted,’ he says as Janet flushes and sits up in her chair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, eyes darting round the room as she orientates herself. ‘I am tired. Not sleeping so well.’ And her mind shifts abruptly to Ian and the flush of her cheeks deepens with added shame.

  Chapter Seven

  Six months later

  Janet, hair dishevelled, barefoot, in jeans and T-shirt, leans against the doorway between the sitting room and hallway. Her face is drained of colour, her eyes red and swollen. She clutches a ball of crumpled paper in her hand.

  ‘Please don’t do this, Ian. Nothing happened. Honestly.’

  Ian pauses and looks up at her. His eyes seem dead; his skin dull. ‘Janet, those letters aren’t nothing.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I love you. Please don’t do this. Can we sit and talk?’

  ‘I’ve been begging you these last months to talk. You’ve got to sort yourself out. I can’t take it any more. You want him, then—’

  ‘I don’t want him. That ended months ago and I am sorting it out. Please don’t . . . I’m sorry about the letters. I should have destroyed them—’

  ‘You think that would have made it better?’ he shouts, finally losing his temper. ‘You should have told me. All those late call-outs with me sitting here waiting for you. All this flinching when I touch you. You can’t tell me that there was nothing going on.’

  ‘It’s not like you think. I was flattered. I thought you’d never need to know.’

  ‘Well, now I do, so just leave me be.’

  ‘Ian—’

  But he turns and carries on packing up his half of their life as though she wasn’t there. She surveys the room. The bookshelves are bereft of much of their usually colourful content. They stare at her accusingly like empty sockets, while the books that remain lean at odd angles, as if offering each other much-needed support. The music centre, denuded of stacks of records in their colourful jackets, mocks her. The Bee-Gees, Bread, Beethoven and Bach are being dragged away in cardboard boxes and plastic bags. And from all the commotion of the day, a loud silence born of shock and pain is all that remains. She’s pleaded and cajoled, shouted and cried, consciously manipulated, even, but nothing she has said has changed his mind. It’s all she can do now to stand and bear witness, stunned, her breath coming in short gasps of pain and bewilderment.

  ‘Do you want this?’ His usually soft, Irish-accented voice is rough and hoarse as he holds out their wedding photograph – their younger selves looking at each other with such love and hope in their eyes.

  ‘Of course I do, but take it if you want to.’

  He throws in onto the settee where it lands in the arms of other rejected joint possessions.

  ‘You can take it,’ she mumbles.

  ‘Make up your mind.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’ She rakes her hand through her hair.

  ‘Is anything about our marriage fair?’ he shouts suddenly, and she jumps.

  She turns away and walks into the kitchen, propping herself up on the counter with her elbows, crying into her hands. How can this be happening? The sound of yet another box being dragged into the hall makes her start. He’s actually going to leave . . . She dashes into the hallway but he’s already back in the sitting room with another black bin liner, stuffing a couple of cushions into it, dislodging some of the items thrown there, including the wedding photo which now falls to the floor. The glass shatters and they both stare at it, stunned.

  All at once, fury burns within Janet. ‘Don’t do that,’ she screams, pushing Ian aside so she can retrieve the pieces, piercing a fingertip on a shard of glass. She sucks the blood away as he makes a move towards her.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ She draws back as though from a snake about to strike.

  ‘Have it your way, then,’ he mutters under his breath, throwing the plastic bag down and grabbing one of the boxes. He heads for the open door.

  Just as he reaches it, Janet turns, panic-stricken. ‘Ian!’ she cries, hurrying to catch up with him, wiping her streaming eyes with her sleeve as she goes. ‘Don’t go! Please. We can fix this.’

  He shakes his head, eyes downcast. ‘Janet, you’re the psychiatrist. This isn’t about me and probably not even about him.’ He points at the letter she still clutches. ‘It’s about your father. That’s what you need to deal with.’

  ‘Stop it!’ she cries. ‘I’m trying to deal with it.’

  ‘Is that what your patients say when you hit a nerve?’

  Anger flares within her again. ‘Fine, go. Get out,’ she shouts. ‘You only married me because I was pregnant, anyway – not because you love me.’ There, it’s out. The canker that has eaten away at her for almost twenty years and that she had determined never to declare, knowing it would mean the end.

  He stops and stands perfectly still, then turns slowly towards her, his eyes glassy with hurt. They stare into each other’s eyes, each offering the other a silent challenge. When he finally speaks his voice is low, crushed by her accusation. ‘Is that what you think?’

  Janet wants to take it all back, to say she didn’t mean it, but she knows there’s no going back now. She lifts her chin defiantly. ‘The least you can do is admit it. You only married me because you had to. What do you think that feels like? At least I know he chose me for being me.’ And she pushes away the image of this tall, handsome man with his flirtatious smile and dark eyes, who for a while made her feel desirable and out of her mind with longing.

  Ian shakes his head. ‘I didn’t have to marry you. I’d have married you no matter what. You’ve been the love of my life ever since I laid eyes on you. But if that’s what you’ve always thought then, I’m sorry, but all this is of your own making. And as for him, whoever he is, do you think he could ever know you like I do?’

  Her heart shatters like the glass of their wedding photo at the finality of the lingering look, and only now does she understand that this really is the end. For perhaps the last time she drinks him in. He looks as if he’s aged ten years in the last week. He turns and walks to the waiting van with leaden steps, and places the box in the back. He wipes his face with his handkerchief and turns again. He walks straight past Janet in the doorway, not meeting her eyes, returning moments later with the last box.

  ‘I’ll let you know where I am when I’ve found a place,’ he says without stopping. ‘I’ll continue to pay the mortgage and if you need anything—’

  ‘I won’t,’ she snaps, driving the final nail into the coffin of their marriage.

  He climbs up and folds his beautiful, tall frame into the cab of the borrowed van that will take him out of her life. She can hardly bear the sound of the revving engine, or the sight of the vehicle as it reaches the end of the road and turns left. She stands in the doorway, arms folded over her chest, holding herself together, as the roses mock her with their perfect beaming beauty. Her eyes come to rest on a piece of paper that has lodged itself in the hedge. Absently, she steps out and crosses the lawn to pluck it
out, an offending splinter in a wound. She glances at it – a scribbled shopping list in Ian’s handwriting; must have blown out of one of the boxes.

  She crunches it into a ball and adds it to the balled-up, incriminating letter already in her hand. How could she have been so stupid as to leave it where he could find it? But maybe that’s exactly what was meant to happen. And he may never believe that she turned back and never consummated the relationship. Just a flirtation really. Good for her ego but deadly for her marriage.

  With a final glance around the garden, she goes back into the house and shuts the door on everything – the day, the past, her marriage, Ian.

  But the past will not leave her alone and, as she lies tossing and turning in bed, Ian’s words ring in her ears. And her mind drifts back to that evening in 1962.

  She and Ian have planned it as best they could in the circumstances, but Janet nevertheless nurses a sense of dread. As always, the fear of upsetting her father and causing either an outburst of aggression or, worse, a complex seizure because of his head injury, hangs in the air like a shroud. She has grown up with this tiptoeing around and trying to accommodate everyone, but Ian has a completely different take on how he should handle it. It’s stupid to even hope that they can get away without some upset, and the worry of that adds to the tense build-up that makes it all the more inevitable.

  Janet, her parents and Ian sit at the kitchen table having finished their meal, and Janet’s mother stands to gather the plates. Janet gathers hers and Ian’s and follows her mother to the kitchen sink to stack them for washing. She glances anxiously at Ian as she passes and he gently touches her back.

  ‘I’d like to have a word with you,’ Ian says to her father, and Janet’s mother looks at Janet, a question in her face.

  ‘Come and sit down, Mum,’ Janet says, as her father moves from the table to one of the two fireside chairs. Her mother takes her place in the other one, and Janet sits back at the table beside Ian, who takes her hand. Ignoring the fact that Ian has spoken, her father reaches for his pipe, knocks out the ash onto the fireside grate and starts to refill it, tamping down the tobacco with his thumb. Ian waits, squeezing Janet’s hand and giving her a quick, comforting glance.