The Hidden Years (34 page)

Halfway through Faye's final year at university, one of
her tutors left. His replacement, Jeremy Catesby, was thirty-five years
old, married with two young children.

Right from the start Faye felt uneasy with him without
being able to specify why. There was nothing in his manner towards her
to make her feel threatened or uncomfortable. On the contrary. And
unlike some of the male tutors he made no attempt to conceal his
married state. There were family photographs on his desk, and he talked
about his wife and children with warm affection.

Her fellow female students considered him dreamy and
talked daringly about what it would be like to go to bed with him. As
always during this sort of discussion Faye kept silent. She had a
tutorial with Jeremy Catesby in the morning. She was beginning to dread
them, but she was determined to get a first-class degree. She would
need it in order to get a good job, since she was going to have to
support herself through her life. Marriage was not for her. Nor
children…

That latter knowledge hurt, but she dared not allow
herself to dwell on why. Logic told her that it would have been
impossible for her, a fourteen-year-old, to have brought up the baby
she had conceived… that the decision of her doctor and
social worker had been the right one…and yet she knew that
something inside her would always ache for a child. Not just because of
that child, but because it was an essential part of her nature. She had
a deep-rooted need to nurture, to protect… and being denied
the ability to satisfy that need brought yet another burden of bitter
resentment.

Her tutorial went smoothly enough; she was a conscientious
worker and once she obtained her degree she hoped to find work as an
archivist, preferably in a capacity that meant she could withdraw from
other people as much as possible.

When the tutorial was over she got up, collecting her
books and papers as she did so. She was just walking towards the door
when Jeremy Catesby said softly, 'No, don't go yet, Faye. There's
something I want to discuss with you.'

Immediately she started to tremble, some deep prescient
knowledge alerting her to danger. She wanted to run to the door and
fling it open but she couldn't move.

Jeremy had come round from behind the desk and was
standing in front of her. He was a tall, heavily muscled man with large
sharp teeth which gave him a predatory, dangerous look, and he moved
lithely and quietly. He smiled at her as he held out his hand.

'Come and sit down,' he invited her.

She wanted to refuse, ached to be able to do so, but he
was standing between her and the door. If she didn't move he could
easily reach out and touch her. The very thought made her shudder
sickly, her knees almost buckling as she obeyed his instructions,
picking the chair furthest away from any of the others.

'There's no need to look so apprehensive,' he told her,
smiling at her, and then added, 'You know, Faye, you puzzle me. You're
one of my best pupils. Conscientious… a hard worker.
Normally when one of my students looks at me the way you're doing, it's
because they know they're about to get a lecture on the standard of
their work; but there is another side to being a tutor… a
side concerned not so much with a student's academic life…
but more with personal issues…'

He knew. Somehow or other he knew… Faye had
started to sweat heavily, her heart pounding with sick horror. This was
the fear she had carried around with her almost all her life. That
somehow, someone would find out the truth about her and would use it,
in the same way her stepfather had used it.

'You're a pretty girl, Faye… a beautiful girl,
in fact, and yet… how shall I put this…? Well,
let's just say that you appear to live the life of a nun.'

Faye felt her face burn. She wanted to scream out in
protest at his invasion of her privacy… She hated the way he
was looking at her… the rueful and yet calculating male
smile that curved his mouth… A smile that suggested that her
supposed nunlike state was a situation he had the power to remedy, and
that she would be grateful to him for doing so.

'As your tutor—or one of them—I feel
that it is my responsibility to ensure that my students derive much
more from their time here at university than mere academic knowledge,
and if they have any problems, any difficulties that prevent them from
doing so then naturally I am concerned for them, and want to do all I
can to help them.'

Faye couldn't bear to look at him. She felt hot and cold
at the same time, burning up with hatred and anger, and yet frozen with
fear. She wanted to hiss and spit at him like a small cat, to tell him
just how wrong he was, to throw in his face the information that she
wasn't the ignorant virgin he seemed to think; to tell him just how she
had gained her sexual knowledge and how the gaining of it had made her
feel about his sex; and yet at the same time she wanted to run from him
and go on running, to hide herself away where she could be
safe… where no one could pry and poke into her
past… her pain.

'Sometimes in life we get ourselves into a situation
through no fault of our own which becomes irksome… Sometimes
we become the butt of unintentional, perhaps, but nevertheless cruel
comment, and when we're young and just beginning to find our feet in
the world, that's when we're most vulnerable. Especially in matters to
do with sex…'

He was looking at her, Faye knew, but she could not bring
herself to look back at him. She was terrified that if she did she
would see in his eyes the same look she had seen so often in her
stepfather's. She could hear already in his voice the purposefully
mesmeric domination of the sexually aroused male, thick and hot like
the male emissions of sex; and like those emissions the sound of his
own voice seemed to give him immense pleasure.

'Of course you find it embarrassing… shocking
perhaps to discuss such problems… even perhaps with your
friends… You feel that they might laugh at you…
make fun of you, and your virginity, which perhaps you've been brought
up to think of as something you must retain until marriage at all
costs, becomes a burden.

'What can you do? You're an intelligent girl. You know
that among the male students there are bets being laid as to who could
be the first to have you, and yet you've become aware that once you
leave here… once you move out into the wider world, your
virginity will become more irksome than ever.

'There is a solution.'

Faye could hear the amusement in his voice, the certainty,
the assurance, the confidence… and beneath it she could also
hear the hot feral note of male desire.

Somehow she managed to stand up, but as though he
anticipated her he moved faster, coming to stand in front of her, to
grasp her shoulders so that they were standing body to body.

Her books slipped from her hands, panic and nausea
overwhelming her as he lowered his head towards her.

She reacted instinctively, raking his face with her nails,
not once, but over and over again, so that he let her go almost
immediately, swearing at her.

Faye barely heard him. She ran to the door, wrenching it
open, almost colliding with the man coming down the corridor towards
her. Behind her she heard Jeremy Catesby saying thickly, 'You stupid
little bitch!'

But it didn't matter what he called her. Nothing mattered
other than that she had escaped… that he hadn't done to her
what her stepfather had done… that he hadn't touched
her… hurt her… punished her.

In her room, she collapsed on her bed, shivering with
reaction. She had made herself a dangerous enemy, she knew that. Jeremy
Catesby was a vain man and wouldn't forgive her for what she had done,
nor for rejecting him. But she didn't care. The thought of him touching
her body… of anyone touching her body was so nauseating that
anything was worth enduring to prevent that from happening.

Jeremy Catesby did punish her, tormenting her subtly and
not so subtly. She heard a rumour circulating that she had
propositioned him and that he had had to reject and reprimand her. She
became the butt of the kind of jokes that made her soul cringe, and she
was relieved rather than anything else to discover that she had been
transferred to another tutor.

She was spending more and more time on her own, wanting
only to get her degree and then to be free to conceal herself somewhere
where no one could ever hurt or damage her again.

She met David for the first time four days after sitting
her finals. She was in the university library looking up something when
he came in and, obviously mistaking her for a member of the staff,
asked her if she could help him.

Despite his height and breadth of shoulder, there was
something about him that instantly reassured her. Something at once so gentle and unthreatening that she was
drawn to it, like someone drawn to a soft cool breeze on an overheated
day when the air was thick with sulphur and the promise of a storm.

Without even being aware of how it happened, Faye took a
step towards him and then another.

He was looking, David told her, for books on medieval
England with particular reference to village life. He went on to
explain that it was a subject which particularly fascinated his mother
and that he had promised her when he took up his lectureship that he
would root around the university library to discover if there was
anything which might be of interest to her.

So he was a lecturer. He didn't look like one. In fact, he
didn't look like anyone she knew, Faye recognised. There was something
about David that set him apart from others… something
special… something she couldn't analyse, except to say that
for the first time in her life she found herself wanting to reach out
to another human being.

After she had directed David towards the appropriate
shelves, she watched him discreetly and curiously, wondering what on
earth it was about him that drew her so powerfully.

When he had his books he smiled at her again and thanked
her, leaving her to wonder what magic he possessed that made him seem
so different from other men.

She soon discovered that she wasn't alone in thinking him
'different'. 'Saint David' was his nickname among the students, who
seemed to regard him with a mixture of contempt and affection.

His subject was geography, something which surprised Faye.
She had automatically assumed that he must lecture in something like
philosophy, without really knowing why.

What she didn't realise was that he had been the man she
had almost run into when she escaped from Jeremy Catesby's room. David
had recognised her, though, quickly realising his mistake in believing
her to be one of the library staff. He too had heard the rumours
circulating about her, but he knew of Jeremy Catesby's bad reputation
at Oxford, and he also knew that his departure from his previous
teaching post had been brought about by the rumoured pregnancy of one
of his students.

Jeremy wasn't alone in having a penchant for teaching his
female students more than mere academics, but there was a brutality
about the man, a selfishness, a desire to dominate and inflict mental
pain that went way beyond sexual desire.

David had heard about Jeremy's womanising at Oxford, where
as a student his scope to indulge in his vice had been limited. Now, as
a tutor… He felt sorry for Faye and viewed the circulating
rumours with distaste and a growing dislike for Jeremy.

Unlike his colleague, David had no taste for seducing his
students. One day he would marry. Cottingdean would need an
heir… He smiled a little to himself at this thought.
Cottingdean, so important in the lives of his parents, so much loved
and cherished. One might almost have supposed he was the heir to a
feudal kingdom, from his parents' attitude towards the house and its
land.

Once, very gently, when he was in his teens, he had
pointed out to his mother when she had been talking about the future,
about the children he would have, that it was not essential that he
should marry… that there was after all Sage, and that
her
children could just as easily inherit Cottingdean as his own.

His mother's reaction had been instantaneous and
revealing. No, she had told him. Only
his
children… his son must inherit. Her vehemence had made him
feel uncomfortable. He knew, of course, that he was her favourite
child… knew it, and felt uncomfortable with that knowledge,
doing everything he could to make up to his younger sister for the
disparity in their parents' attitude towards them.

Yes, one day he would marry, and when he did he would like
his wife to have the same cool reserve exhibited by the girl in the
library. He sometimes found modern young women a little overpowering,
especially sexually.

There had been a time when David had wondered if his lack
of the sharply keen sexual hunger of his fellows sprang from some
unadmitted preference for his own sex, but no matter how much he
searched his heart and mind he could find no indication that this was
so. There had never been a time when he'd felt any kind of emotional or
physical desire for another man.

He liked women, and he admired them. It amused him
sometimes listening to his students. He often compared them with his
mother, who had done so many of the things they now dreamed of doing,
and at a time when women were not expected to make careers for
themselves, to be innovative and energetic in the world of commerce.

He had lost his virginity at university to a fellow
student, who had teased him about his ignorance and who had been only
too pleased to enlighten him. He remembered her with affection and
gratitude, while acknowledging that he was no partner for a woman with
a highly motivated sex drive.

Perhaps his parents' marriage was partly to blame for
that. It was obvious to him that, no matter what their relationship
might have been in the past, now his parents did not have a sex life;
but what impressed him far more than their apparent mutual celibacy was
the fact that his parents' marriage, based not on mutual sexual desire
but on friendship, respect, compassion, had thrived and survived where
the marriages of their peers had not, although the strain of having an
invalid husband had shown from time to time in his mother's controlled
face.