Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

Carl poured generous measures into two paper cups and raised his in a familiar toast. ‘To us,’ he said. ‘And most of all to you, my Lady of the Harbour.’

He often called me that. It had a special significance for us. He leaned very close and whispered in my ear. The birds were singing. There was a child playing contentedly just a yard or two from our feet, intent on climbing through every possible shape in Barbara’s largest work, which is the centrepiece of the Hepworth garden, dominating the small central lawn. The towering green bronze Four-square , fifteen feet high, has a magnetic attraction for small children and I had already learned enough about the artist to know that she would have liked nothing better than to have watched this one at play amidst her work.

A couple of tourists, clutching guidebooks and talking in loud American accents, wandered by. Yet I was barely aware of anything except the closeness of the man I loved. It was always like that. Carl and I had no children, of course, and had agreed that we should have none, the way things were. Naturally I hoped that one day it would be possible to have Carl’s child, but I was still very young and we already had so much together. He made me happy and he made me laugh.

He took a bite of his pasty and several chunks of meat and potato fell into his lap. I really had never understood how so meticulous a man could have such a job getting food into his mouth without dropping it and in spite of the tension we both felt that day I found myself giggling.

He brushed the bits of food off his trousers, sat up very straight and pretended to drop the entire pasty. I giggled all the more.

‘God, I wish I was Little Miss Perfect like you,’ he said.

I kissed his cheek. Somehow or other he had managed to get flakes of pastry on it.

He grinned at me and spoke with his mouth full: ‘Nothing is going to hurt us, Suzanne. Nothing. We’re going to stay just as happy as we are now, always...’

I let his words wash over me.

Nonetheless, the damage had been done, somewhere deep inside. Hand in hand we walked home in the mid-afternoon. We paused by the Market House, now the town hall, outside which John Payne was hanged in 1549, the place of his execution marked by a bronze and marble tablet. The sight always made me shiver. The story went that the St Ives Mayor had been entertaining the provost marshal, whose job was to pacify the rebellious county of Cornwall, in the George and Dragon inn, when he was asked to have gallows erected by the time the meal was over. He did so without question and afterwards obediently escorted the provost marshal to the scaffold.

The provost then asked if the construction was strong enough and, upon being assured that it certainly was, turned to John Payne: ‘Well, then get up speedily for they are prepared for you.’

‘I hope,’ answered the mayor, ‘you mean not as you speak.’

‘In faith,’ said the provost, ‘there is no remedy for you have been a busy rebel.’

I heard my own voice recite those words verbatim from the book about the Prayer Book Rebellion that I had borrowed from the library. And I was aware of Carl staring at me.

‘A cheerful little tale,’ he said.

I smiled wanly. ‘Have we built our own gallows, Carl?’ I asked.

‘Suzanne, stop it,’ he said and for once he was very serious, without a trace of teasing banter in his voice. ‘Everything is going to be absolutely fine. I wish you wouldn’t be so morbid.’

The ghosts of St Ives felt very close that day. Just across Market Place was the little old-fashioned gentlemen’s outfitters where successive proprietors had reported seeing a ghost in the form of a pair of disembodied legs wearing wide blue trousers.

Funny things, ghost stories: one day they’ll make you laugh and another your flesh will crawl. This was one of the flesh-crawling days.

‘The ghosts of our own pasts are always with us, like the poor,’ I said.

Carl managed a dry laugh.

‘Where do you get these sayings, Suzanne?’

I shrugged. ‘I think I made that one up,’ I said.

Carl flung an arm round my shoulders and pulled me close to him. ‘C’mon, let’s go home,’ he said, the usual gentle teasing note back in his voice. ‘Ghosts aren’t allowed in Rose Cottage. I’ve banned them.’

We both knew that could never be quite true. Carl had been as disturbed as me by the curious damage to our van. I was well aware of that in spite of his gallant attempts to conceal his unease. As we carried on walking up the hill the sun continued to blaze, casting deep, dark shadows in the narrow streets. In one of those places where I knew there was a convenient gap between the buildings I turned to look back over the rooftops to the sea. A figure disappeared abruptly into a doorway. For a moment I wondered if someone was following us. I gave myself a silent dressing down for being paranoid. The water in St Ives bay still shimmered silver and gold, but my heart was no longer singing. All the old fears had invaded me again. I tried desperately to snap out of it, but I couldn’t quite.

‘Right, I’ll cook supper,’ said Carl when we arrived home. ‘Now tell me what would be madame’s fancy, then get out of my kitchen.’

As a rule I loved him cooking for me. He was a good cook and had the knack of turning our meals together into an event, but that night I somehow didn’t want him to.

‘I’ll cook,’ I said. ‘It will give me something to do...’

He didn’t press the point. He knew what I meant. I was hoping that being busy would stop me from dwelling on matters I preferred to forget. We had somehow not got around to buying any fresh food so I made spaghetti bolognaise with tins of minced meat and tomatoes. We always had plenty of garlic and onions. Too late I realised that there was no fresh parmesan in the fridge. Neither of us liked the dried-up powdered stuff you can buy in drums, so we had none of that to use as an emergency stand-in either. One way and another it was not the best spag-bog I had ever made, but if Carl noticed he gave no sign.

‘Right, I’ll wash up, then how about an early night?’ he suggested after we had finished eating.

I knew he wanted to make love to me, and I had no intention of rejecting him, even though I did not think it would work – not for me, at any rate. And it didn’t. I couldn’t concentrate. I derived some comfort from his closeness, I could never fail to do that, and from the familiar intimacy when he took me into the bathroom, as he always did afterwards, and we washed together beneath the shower. But later I was afraid to sleep. Carl was as gentle and understanding as ever. Yet, for hours after he had gone to sleep, I lay wide awake, trying not to toss and turn so much that I disturbed him.

I felt quite sure that when I did sleep I would have a nightmare. Such premonitions were not unusual, however much I fought against them, and almost always came true. This night was no exception. I was aware that maybe I half brought it on myself, but there seemed nothing I could do about it and the vivid detail was so overwhelming that I had no awareness that I was dreaming, that I was in fact asleep.

Instead I was caught in a terrible biting reality which took over my whole being. I felt the pain, smelled the blood, sensed the pleasure that came first and hated myself for it.

His arms were around me, his lips seeking mine, then kissing and nibbling my ears, my neck, my breasts. Methodically, efficiently.

The warm glow of arousal became a burning at the very core of me. He entered me, gently but forcefully pushing himself deep deep into me, as far as possible into the essence of my body.

My eyes were tightly closed, as if the lids were glued together and I could not open them. It did not matter. This was not really lovemaking, just clinically executed sex. But that did not matter either. The physical sensation was everything, all that existed.