Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

He led me to one of the chairs and I obediently sat on it. My legs and my head still felt rather as if they belonged to someone else.

‘I’ll make us some tea.’ He lit an oil lamp and some candles before switching off the torch. There appeared to be no natural light.

I sat in silence watching as he busied himself with the Primus stove and a kettle. I could not fight the fuzziness inside my head and for a moment or two I could think of nothing more to say.

He brought two steaming mugs to the table and put one into my hand.

‘So what are we doing here?’ I asked then.

‘Taking stock, buying time,’ he replied stoutly.

‘Carl, we’re hiding and this time we’re really hiding, like rats in a hole.’

Carl reached over and touched my face. ‘Don’t be melodramatic,’ he said.

‘Carl!’ I waved a hand vaguely at the dimly lit hut. ‘I’m hardly being melodramatic. Look at the place.’

I shivered. The shed felt cold and damp. It was, after all, still only quite early in April. The sun outside might have been bright and warm that day but there was a thoroughly unpleasant chill inside this old disused building. I dreaded to think what it would be like to sleep here, to spend a night here, maybe several nights, and found it hard to grasp that it really was Carl’s plan to do so.

‘It’s not so bad,’ I heard him say stubbornly. ‘And it’s only for a little while. I’ll think of something, you’ll see.’

‘This isn’t what I want, Carl.’ I pushed the point, determined not to be overruled by him. ‘I want to face up to things, sort things out. Why don’t we do that? It would be for the best, I’m absolutely sure of it.’

He sighed.

‘You don’t know the full story...’ he began haltingly.

‘Then tell me, for goodness’ sake,’ I said.

‘No, I can’t. I just want to protect you, that’s all.’

‘Oh, Carl, I’m not a child.’

He looked startled. ‘Drink your tea,’ he said. ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

I opened my mouth to tell him not to be absurd, but I picked up the mug and swallowed instead. The tea was hot and sweet. Maybe it would at least revive me a little and help clear my head.

It seemed to do just the opposite. I struggled even to keep my eyes open. After a bit I was vaguely aware of Carl helping me to one of the camp beds, then there was only blackness. He was singing to me softly when I woke.

I hoisted myself on to an elbow. I realised I was lying in a sleeping bag with blankets piled on top. Nonetheless my teeth were chattering with the cold. And the bedding felt damp.

Carl was sitting on the floor by the bed tinkering with the gas heater. But his eyes were on me. His voice seemed to come from a distance as he sang, repeating one verse over and over again. Eventually, even in my thoroughly befuddled condition, the words became clear to me.

I struggled to focus on him. He leaned towards me and began to stroke and kiss me, gentle and caring as always.

‘That’s me, my darling, I am your prisoner,’ he told me.

His eyes seemed very bright even though the room was so dimly lit. I had no idea whether it was night or day, although I thought that the wood which covered what had once been windows had been only roughly fitted and that, were it day I would be able to see at least some chinks of light.

Carl was still talking. ‘I couldn’t let them take you away from me, Suzanne. I couldn’t let you go. I have to keep you with me so that I can look after you.’

His face looked strangely contorted in the candlelight, or perhaps that was the fuzziness in my head. For a moment I could hardly remember where we were. And I didn’t like it much when I did remember.

I tried to pull myself upright, to get up off the bed, and Carl did not attempt to prevent me doing so, but I could not stand properly. When I fell backwards, however, he caught me and laid me safely down into the musty pillows.

‘There my darling, there,’ he soothed. ‘You’re just not strong. You never have been. You have to let me look after you, you must...’

‘Carl, you’re not looking after me. You know I have a weak chest. I’m so cold.’

‘I know honey, I can’t get this damned heater to work, that’s the problem. But I will, I promise you, then we’ll be really cosy...’

I fell asleep again. I don’t know for how long. When I woke for the second time my head was much clearer, but it ached. The hut seemed colder and danker than ever. My chest was really starting to hurt.

I was still lying on the camp bed. Carl was sitting next to me looking anxious, the gas heater still in pieces between his legs. There was a slightly glazed expression in his eyes that I couldn’t quite recognise. Then it dawned on me. It was desperation. I stared at him. The kindness was still there, the usual concern, the caring. I could see that in his eyes too. But I had so many questions. I really didn’t understand what he was doing.

‘What are we doing Carl, why do we have to stay here?’ I asked, for what seemed like the umpteenth time.

‘I’m looking after you,’ he replied doggedly. ‘Just like I always have.’

I saw that he had made more tea. He fetched me a mug, dodging all my questions.

‘Later,’ my darling. ‘Have some tea, then I’ll make you some breakfast.’

‘B-but,’ I began to protest.

‘Drink your tea,’ said Carl again, as if he were my nanny, not my lover, the man I had shared my life with for almost seven years. But then, he was always like that with me. I had encouraged him to be so, I supposed. I had needed that. Needed to be looked after as much as he had needed to look after me.

I drank my tea. First, I would do what he wanted, as I always did. Then, afterwards, I would insist that he told me what was going on.

But there was no afterwards. Soon, there was only the blackness again.

I don’t know how long I was out for that time, but when I came round, or woke, or whatever, I did not open my eyes properly. Instead I squinted out of one half-open slit. Carl was sitting on a chair by the bed watching me. I had never thought it strange that he liked to watch me sleep, that he would sit for hours just looking at me while I slept. I was used to that kind of attention, that kind of obsessive care. I had been brought up to it.

He seemed to have given up trying to fix the gas heater. He was wearing a thick sweater, a fleece, a sheepskin coat and a woolly hat – just about all the winter clothes he possessed on top of each other in layers. I noticed that he had unzipped the second sleeping bag and covered me with that too. I was still terribly cold.

I studied him through my half-open eye again. Was it a kind of madness I could see in him? I didn’t know.

I decided to show some courage. I forced myself into a sitting position and, before he could speak or make a move towards me, I demanded: ‘Have you been drugging me, Carl?’

He looked pained and shook his head. ‘Of course not, honey. I just gave you something to make you sleep, to soothe away your troubles, that’s all. I’ve not drugged you, no, that’s not it at all.’

He knelt down on the floor beside me and rested his head in my lap. ‘I’d never hurt you, never, you know that,’ he said in that gentle, soothing drawl that had always captivated me.

‘Carl, you are hurting me. I don’t want to be here. And I’m freezing. It’s damp in here. I really don’t feel well.’

I began to cough. It was not a deliberate ploy to prove my point. With my tendency towards bronchitis I didn’t have to pretend anything, not in those conditions. I felt terrible. In the six and a half years that I had lived by the seaside in St Ives I had suffered, by my standards, from only the mildest of chest infections, certainly nothing serious enough even to necessitate consulting a doctor, which had been all for the best as neither Carl nor I was registered with one. This was different. My childhood memories of chronic bronchitis remained vivid; and I feared that I was in for a serious bout.