A Deep Deceit (3 page)

The sun was shining for once, in spite of the time of year. Christmas was just a couple of days away, but the cares of a world, which seemed to me then to be such a grim, desolate place rested heavily on my shoulders. I was deeply unhappy and I didn't know what to do about it.

Then suddenly he was by my side. Silently, as before. I looked up at him. The gentle eyes. The broad, ruddy face. The short blond hair that looked a bit like a scrubby crop of discoloured grass. I had so frequently seen that face inside my head since our one and only meeting. I thought I was behaving like a fool. For a few seconds neither of us spoke.

He crouched down in front of me. ‘I-I'm s-so gglad you've c-come,' he said, his stammer the worst I had so far known it.

‘Yes.' I studied him. ‘I wondered if you might be here . . .' It wasn't like me to give so much away.

‘I've b-been here every afternoon since we met,' he replied. His eyes were earnest. He was still hesitant and yet obviously so determined. I found that mix in him quite captivating, and would continue to do so throughout all our years together.

‘I've been w-worried about you.'

It was such a strange thing to say to someone you barely know, yet I was quite certain that he was telling the truth. He wasn't playing a game. Carl never played games with other people's emotions and somehow I realised that even then.

Tentatively he stretched forward and took my hand in his. His touch was as gentle as his voice and his eyes. Something happened inside me. I half reached out for him, not believing what I was doing. He shuffled around, so that he could sit on the tree trunk next to me, then wrapped his free arm round me. I leaned into him and let the tears come as never before.

I cried my heart out in the middle of the Isabella Garden that sunny December afternoon as Carl held me. When I could cry no more he took his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me, just as he had the first time.

I half expected him to run. I think I would have done if I had been confronted by such a hysterical woman. ‘God, I'm sorry,' I said eventually.

He grinned that crooked boyish grin. ‘If we're going to be friends I think we should make a pact to stop apologising to each other.'

Friends? Even that still seemed barely possible.

‘You don't know . . . you still don't know anything . . .' I stuttered.

‘I know that I want to h-help you, to stop you being so sad. I don't know why, but I do.'

I felt his arm tighten around me.

‘I c-can, you know,' he murmured. ‘I c-can stop you being so sad.'

The extraordinary thing was that even then, at the height of my misery, I did not really doubt him. I could not see how any other life would ever be possible, yet at last there was hope.

It does happen. People do meet and instantly fall in love. And sometimes they stay in love. That meeting was almost seven years before the threats started. And Carl and I had lived together, an inseparable pair, for more than six of those years – a modern miracle, perhaps. But for me Carl had a way of making miracles happen. He did indeed stop my sadness. And I never felt safer than when I lay in his arms.

All I needed to make my life perfect was for the nightmares to go away. And I had to believe that one day they would.

Three

I had gone almost six months without a nightmare when it happened. That was the longest gap ever since Carl and I had arrived in St Ives. Maybe the moment had come, I had told myself, maybe there would be no more. I dared not think about it, but I did allow myself to hope.

I had even begun to make some kind of life for myself outside the tightly contained nest of my home with Carl. One of the most famous schools of modern artists had evolved in St Ives, painters and sculptors drawn by a light so pure that you could wake up thinking the sun was shining outside even on a rainy day. It was the home of Barbara Hepworth and Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron, and Terry Frost, and a host of others whom I had only known of through reading about them and looking at their work in books. It was all of this which had attracted Carl to the town and for me it was as if all these wonderful artists leaped from the pages I had pored over so avidly and came alive. As I walked the streets I could feel these artistic giants walking with me. Their work was suddenly within my grasp. The Tate Gallery, a huge, white, angular building towering somewhat monstrously above the town, displays some of their paintings and sculptures with an almost clinical efficiency, but the pioneer spirit that inspired these men and women and brought them international fame is in the very air that you breathe in St Ives. At Barbara Hepworth's house, you can see the piece of stone she was working on when she died so tragically, her tools alongside it just as she had left them. St Ives is full of magic.

I went regularly to the library just as I had done in London, to learn more about the town and the county that Carl and I had adopted. If St Ives is steeped in history, Cornwall is a mysterious county of legend and ghosts, martyrs and heroes. I was fascinated by it and, as usual, I immersed myself in the past as much as the present. It was in the library, a splendid old Victorian building on Fore Street, that, sitting engrossed at one end of a long table, I first began to read the story of John Payne, mayor of St Ives, who had been a leader of the last great Cornish uprising in 1548, when the Cornish had refused to accept the new Common Prayer Book in English. As many as 6000 Comishmen were believed to have died in battle and John Payne was one of those later executed.

I decided this was a man both Carl and I should know more about, and added the book to the selection I planned to take home with me that day.

‘He built his own gallows, you know,' said the young assistant librarian in a soft Cornish voice, as I presented the John Payne book at the counter to be stamped out.

‘So I gather.'

‘Anyway. Good choice.' She handed the book back to me along with the other three I had picked. ‘Everyone English should know about John Payne and the Prayer Book Rebellion. If they'd printed a Cornish Prayer Book, like they did a Welsh one, or if John Payne and his lads had won we might all still be speaking Cornish around here.'

I smiled at the allusion to Cornwall and England being separate countries. There was a twinkle in the girl's eye, but I never quite knew whether the Cornish were joking or not when they made comments like that. Usually not, I suspected.

‘What makes you so sure I'm not Cornish anyway?' I asked.

‘You wouldn't need to read about John Payne at your age if you were,' she replied with a big smile. She was, I realised, a strikingly pretty girl and had the kind of self-confidence that I could never even imagine aspiring to.

‘My name's Mariette,' she went on and held out her hand in a rather old-fashioned gesture. I took it and shook.

‘Suzanne,' I said and not a lot more. I wasn't used to making friends. I didn't have any, really, and never had. Only Carl.

I had seen Mariette before, of course. She had been working at the library for about six months I thought, and she had checked out books for me before, but we had never embarked on any kind of conversation, however brief. I had noticed, though, that she always seemed bright and cheery, and did not appear to have a care in the world. I envied Mariette and all who were like her more than they could ever realise, and when she began to seek me out regularly I am sure that she had no idea how much it meant to me.

I remember vividly the first time we went for morning coffee together.

‘Do you like cappuccino?' she had asked me.

‘Oh yes,' I said. Carl had introduced me to cappuccino and espresso as he had to so many things. Conversation over fine coffee had not figured much in my life before I met him.

‘Come on, then, I'm due a break,' she said. ‘They do great cappuccino at that new place round the corner.'

Mariette grabbed her coat and we hurried out of the library. ‘I haven't got long,' she said. ‘Let's make the most of it.'

Mariette had lots of very dark curly hair, which bounced when she walked – the kind of hair I had always envied. Mine was straight and lank, and a sort of mousy nothing colour.

‘What are you staring at?' she asked as she pushed open the double doors of a little coffee bar, which seemed really quite trendy for St Ives.

‘Y-your hair,' I confessed haltingly. ‘I've always wanted hair like that.'

I thought I sounded fairly pathetic, but if I did, Mariette gave no sign. ‘Oh, we all want the hair we haven't got,' she responded with a giggle. ‘I'd love to have smooth, straight hair like yours, get sick to death of all these curls all over the place.' She glanced thoughtfully at me. ‘Maybe you could do with some nice blond highlights, though,' she ventured.

I think my jaw dropped. The idea of dyeing my hair, and peroxide blond at that, had never occurred to me. And I was a long way off being ready for it. I would just have to put up with the bland nothingness of my mousy hair, which, I have to admit, I did think rather suited the bland nothingness of the rest of me.

I was such an average sort of person; average height, average build, average-looking in every way. When I stood in front of a mirror I saw nothing remotely memorable. Brownish-grey eyes, regular features, a neat mouth, a small, snubby nose. I knew that my eyes were bright and my complexion clear and healthy-looking, but when Carl told me I was pretty I didn't really believe him. Probably because nobody but Carl had ever said such a thing to me, and he loved me, so I assumed that he judged everything about me differently from the rest of mankind.

Mariette guided me to a glass-topped table in a corner by the window and as soon as we sat down she took a packet of cigarettes out of her bag. ‘Been dying for a fag all morning,' she muttered as she lit up, drew in a deep, joyful breath and offered me the packet.

I shook my head. Carl didn't approve of smoking. He was strongly anti drugs of any kind and although he enjoyed an occasional drink, particularly a pint or two of beer in one of St Ives's many pubs, he loathed blatant drunkenness. Carl never liked to be out of control nor to see others so, apparently a legacy of his childhood. Carl had had an unconventional upbringing, mostly in Key West in Florida, the only son of parents whom he described, without a deal of affection, as the last great hippies.

A handsome young waiter came and took our order. He and Mariette obviously knew each other. He spoke with a strong French accent and seemed to enjoy saying her name, fussing around our table rather more than might really have been necessary. He had quite long wavy brown hair, which he was constantly brushing out of his eyes, and tufts of brown hair sprouted at the open neck of his spotless white shirt.

Mariette flirted with him outrageously. I was fascinated. I didn't even know how to flirt. Her eyes followed the waiter as he moved around the room. ‘I think he's got the cutest bum in Cornwall!' she said, making a little sucking noise with her teeth.

I glanced at her in some alarm.

She giggled, something she did a lot. ‘Sorry, forgot you were an old married woman,' she said.

It wasn't that really, though. It was just that I wasn't used to girl talk and certainly not Mariette's brand of it. It would not have occurred to me to comment on the condition of a man's bum. I had never sat chatting with a girlfriend talking about men, and had no idea how to join in.

Mariette was unfazed by my reaction. She was a few years younger than me, shorter and with a slight plumpness which might one day spoil her looks. But not for a long time. At twenty-two or twenty-three she was merely voluptuous. She was quite stunning in every way, with big brown eyes and that curly hair so black you could hardly believe the colour was natural, although somehow you knew it was. Her skin was pale and creamy, and her lips full and pink. Like me, she wore very little make-up, but I suspected that our reasons were rather different. She didn't need make-up and jolly well knew it. I just didn't have a clue how to go about putting on anything beyond a dash of mascara, a smear of foundation and a smudge of lipstick.

‘Do you know,' she said, ‘I've not had it since New Year's Eve.'

I nearly choked on my cappuccino. ‘Oh,' I remarked lamely.

‘Yeah,' Mariette continued conversationally. ‘Went to a party with my Micky and all he did was get fruity with this tart from Truro. So I pulled her bloke – not that he was up to much. But then my Micky has the cheek to get all sanctimonious and chuck me up.'

The French waiter reappeared, to ask smilingly if there was anything else we would like.

‘Tell you later, darling,' said Mariette shamelessly. The waiter's smile widened. When he eventually carried our empty coffee cups back to the kitchen Mariette's eyes followed his retreating bum. ‘What I couldn't do with that,' she murmured.

I was staggered. But I found myself giggling along with her. For me even such inconsequential events were an adventure, and I could not wait to get home and tell Carl about my new friend – although I did leave out our conversations concerning the merits of the waiter's bum and the state of Mariette's sex life.

As coffee breaks with Mariette became a weekly occurrence I began to relax and even join in the cheeky chat. Our gossipy sessions were a great novelty to me because Carl and I were always so totally immersed in each other that we had never felt the need to mix much with anyone from outside. In any case, we only felt really safe with each other. I even wondered if my new friendship with Mariette might cause him any anxiety, but he gave no indication that it did.

I was however finding myself drawn towards a lifestyle very different from anything I had ever experienced. Mariette's independence seemed so appealing to me. Exciting even!