Dare to Love (6 page)

‘So what made you give up?’

‘Can we stick to this please, Josi?’ His eyes were closed tightly, like he was watching a film and didn’t want to lose his place.

‘OK.’

‘Mick explained that the boys were Boy Scouts and were trying to earn some money for Bob a Job week.

‘Was it Bob-a-Job week?

‘I don’t know.’

‘They’d done lots of jobs around the house and garden but they were trying to bring in the biggest amount this year and had offered to do something very, very special. We would be helping a good cause by supporting them.’

I was still. He was tense; his long back straight, erect, like a pole had been inserted into his spine. He kept his eyes closed and looked straight ahead. I guessed he didn’t want to see the look of disgust on my face.

‘Mick explained that they were looking for big donations as this was a very special job.’ He squeezed the words out.

‘How much?’

‘A hundred pounds.’

‘What! Didn’t you smell a rat?’

‘Josi, I don’t have your background. I’m an accountant and one who’s lead a sheltered life to boot. There were things I didn’t know about. Things that didn’t come into my world.’

‘But they did though, didn’t they?’

‘Do you want me to go on?’

‘Yes.’

‘Two of the boys left the lounge and two of the guys followed them. They came back a while later. The other two boys left the room. Mick nodded at me. “Your turn mate, room top of the stairs and turn right.” I raised my eyebrows. He just said, “Don’t keep the boy waiting.” Then as I staggered out of the room he shouted, “Enjoy!”

I took a gulp of wine. Richard opened his eyes and closed them again, back to his movie.

‘The rest is a bit blurred.’ He squeezed his eyes tight as though trying to see more clearly.

‘It was a small bedroom with only a night light. The boy immediately started to take off my belt. I backed away and asked him what he was doing. “This is the job, sir,” he said.

“What job?” I stopped his hand. He looked surprised. “The bob-a-job sir. It’s a blow job.”

I started to leave the room. I think I told him he wasn’t doing that to me. He started to cry, said he would get into trouble and wouldn’t get the same amount of money as the other boys if I didn’t let him do it.’

He fell silent. He was struggling to breathe. This is the point at which I’d offer a sympathetic word to a client, tell them to breathe, to take their time, to let it go. But no words came out. I watched my husband in horror, trying not to picture him in that darkened room with that crying boy. The silence stretched out like a long road before us. Finally I asked the question I knew the answer to.

‘So you let him give you a blow job?’

The pain of the moment was carved into every line on his face. His mouth twisted into a strange contorted mask from which escaped the muted, almost indistinct ‘Yes’.

The pole was yanked from his spine as he crumpled into the settee, folding in on himself like a detonated building, collapsing from the inside.

I got up and went to wash my face. When I came back he hadn’t moved, looked like he could have stayed there forever, drained of the will or the means to move. I imagined if I lifted his hand it would flop like a rag doll. I sat in his silence for a while before eventually asking, with a little more compassion than I expected, ‘And the photos?’

It took him a while to focus, like he was dragging himself up from a very deep dive and had to wait till he could breathe normally again. That too quick a return would give him the bends, wrack his already ravaged body with more pain. I waited till he returned to the room and asked again.

‘And the photos?’

‘They arrived a week later. They must have got the camera set up somewhere in the room because no one came in.’

‘Richard. Look at me.’ It came out as an order, harsher than I’d intended. I needed to see his eyes when he answered the next question. I saw the slight film of tears which magnified the blue of his eyes threatening to spill over but I still asked, ‘Did you enjoy it?’

I didn’t feel good seeing the pain drift across his eyes, like so many storm clouds building and dissolving and building again. The pain that said, ‘I don’t know how you could ask me that?’ Although I could see the answer in his eyes, I still needed to hear him say, ‘No, Josi. I didn’t enjoy it.’

He found his will to move. Said he felt claustrophobic, needed some fresh air. He was gone for over three hours. When he returned, I was in one of the spare rooms, told him I needed some space to work out what I felt and what I needed to do.

In any relationship we accept there’ll be things we don’t understand but will accept. I tell my clients if they have eighty percent of what they want in the relationship, in the person, then it stands a good chance of being successful; if both parties are prepared to put in the requisite effort, at worst to keep it at eighty percent, but better still to keep increasing the percentage.

At the point we got married we were on a workable eighty-five percent, with the anticipation of building and increasing our fraction. Now there’s a big dent in that sum. This wasn’t just something we could ease into over time. Like new shoes, rubbing along with each other till we found a good fit. The shoes are too tight now, not fitting either of us. We could shoe horn ourselves into some form of fit, but from experience I knew that ill-fitting shoes eventually deform feet, necessitating major remedial surgery. A good number of my clients come to see me when, after years of shoe horning, their relationships have malformed them, squeezed then into smaller and smaller lives, crushed their dreams, shrivelled their hopes, withered their plans, twisted their soul and desiccated their spirit.

I felt cheated. I’d waited so long, eleven years to know him, to uncover his skeletons; to be sure I wouldn’t be in for any nasty shocks. How could he have kept this skeleton so well hidden? It was like hiding Mount Vesuvius in a pothole. Now the volcano had erupted. I’d poked about in the pothole and it had blown up in my face. Now I had to deal with the fall out.

That night I cried tears of anger and resentment. There was a rage in me that would dwarf Mount Vesuvius, would darken the skies, snuff out all life in its path. I felt betrayed. I’d been sold shoddy goods; sows ears packaged as a beautiful silk purse and I’d accepted it without looking below the wrapper.

Yet I
had
looked below the wrapper. I was aware of Richard’s eagerness to please, his willingness to take the line of least resistance, to acquiesce without a fight, to make a round trip rather than make a confrontation. After Curtis’ purple days, these were qualities I prized. Now I had to face the other side of these. I felt angry with myself. How could I have been so blind?

He needed help. Professional help. I knew a very good therapist who specialised in this kind of thing, but he was a friend, had been a guest at our wedding. I made enquiries, asked for recommendations to refer a client on. Felt a fraud and a liar and felt even more resentful for being pulled into his mesh of deceit. I finally found someone outside my sphere of contacts two weeks after moving into the spare room. I gave Richard the number and told him Dr Patterson was expecting his call.

I kept my own practice going as best I could. A couple of clients commented on my distraction during their session. I apologised and blamed a brewing cold. I managed the strain in the knowledge that Richard would be getting help and would at least gain some insight into why he’d allowed this to happen. I wanted him to understand the consequences for the boy, the implications for my practice if any of this came out and the potentially explosive ramification of legal action if he was ever tracked down.

I was living on a knife edge, living in the spare room, living in a house with a man I no longer knew, living with the hope that something good would come out of this. That Richard and I could find a way back to each other.

My social life reduced to zilch. Everyone thought we were in wedded bliss and left us alone. I was grateful that I didn’t have to make excuses, that I could just say, ‘I’m staying in with Richard tonight.’ And it was accepted.

He left early and worked late. I spent a lot of time at the gym at weekends. We ate before coming home so there was no need for a shared meal in the evenings. The Le Creuset set I’d been looking forward to using was gathering dust. I went to the office every day and helped other people move their lives forward, yet here I was treading in quicksand.

Three weeks after I’d given him Dr Patterson’s number, he was making me a drink when I asked him how he was getting on. He busied himself pouring the tea, said they’d been very busy at work and he hadn’t managed to make the call yet. I felt ready to burst, but managed to ask calmly, ‘Are you aware how busy he is, that he’d cleared time in his diary to fit you in because I stressed how urgent this is?’

The blood was pulsing at my temples. All these nights I’d been lying in the spare room believing we may be moving closer to a resolution and all the time he hadn’t even made the call, not one appointment, he was nowhere closer to taking responsibility for what he’d done. I couldn’t believe it!

‘I’ll phone next week when we’re less busy.’ He took his drink and went to his bedroom. Yes, it had become his bedroom. I’m often surprised what we’ll adapt and adjust to and accept as normal, while promising ourselves that things will change soon.

Richard’s company continued to experience an unprecedented increase in contracts, which was great for the company but which gave him the excuse not to ring Dr Patterson. We settled into a pattern. Every fortnight I’d ask him if he’d managed to make the appointment. He’d plead work and I’d let it go. After about five months, I told him I would leave if he didn’t make and appointment. He got one two weeks later, didn’t share any of the issues he was covering and we carried on as usual.

I was going quietly mad, unable to share this with anyone. Everyone thought we were so happy. I’d stopped shouting; he didn’t retaliate, just left the room.

‘We’ve become strangers, Celia, that’s when I called you. I needed to get away.’

The sun’s coming up. It promises to be a beautiful day. It’s already twenty degrees outside as we get ready for bed.

Grant

The end of another week. What do I have to show for it? It’s the same question I
asked myself last week and the week before that. I pull a few bits of work, price job for a contractor, look over plans for another one. A few dollars. Not enough to stop the bank phoning me every day, bugging me about when I’m going to clear the overdraft and start paying back the loan. They had no problem throwing it at me when I was bringing in big dollars.

I look at the name flashing on my cell. I know it will keep flashing till I answer. If I let it go to voicemail, it will just start flashing again.

‘Waz up?’ I ask. Can barely lift my voice.

It’s Melissa. Time to pick her up from work. I resent this daily ritual but since she the one bringing in the regular money, I’m obliged. At least I still have the car, still hanging on, but even that she helping to pay for. I look out the window at people with their shopping bags, people coming out the furniture shop, and wonder how the hell I find myself in this situation.

She the one did all the running, wouldn’t leave me alone. She young. When she tell me she twenty I put her out my mind. I’m not into young girls; in fact, if anything I like my women on the mature side. Not old, just with enough experience to hold a decent conversation. Older women know what they want in bed, they make it easier for me and they know how to please a man. I’m passed the stage when I had to lay down with everything in a skirt, have two and three of them on the go at a time. After a while one pussy is pretty much the same as another, if it’s just about the sex.

But Melissa know what she want, was forever calling my cell, calling by my house, inviting me to her house, to this party, to that dance. She wasn’t even my type, skinny with a chest like my son. I always tell her no; till one night I was bored as hell, hadn’t been with anyone since me and my wife split six months before. She had just got off the phone giving me a hard time about payments for my daughter. The daughter she wouldn’t even let me talk to. How could she always be sleeping when I call?

That’s when Melissa came by the house. I picture it in my head. Say she have two tickets for a movie called
Why Did I Get Married?
Do I want to come? It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself for the last three years. Maybe somebody else have the answer. I say, ‘Why not?’

The movie make me laugh, and God knows I need a laugh, but there’s something in it that make me uncomfortable. What a woman will do to keep her man and how a man can abuse that desperation. I bet most of the men in that room see a bit of himself in Mike.

I offer to buy her a drink on the way home, stop for a couple of beers before I take her back home.

‘You can come in for a drink if you want.’ She isn’t even trying to disguise what she have in mind. I don’t want to hurt her feelings by just saying ‘no’, so I just play around a little.

‘What you have to drink?’

‘I have beer and rum and soft drinks.’ She count them off on her fingers.

‘I don’t really want any of them. But thanks for asking.’