A Deep Deceit

Fifteen

I returned to the cottage. After all, where else did I have to go? I arrived there just before 9 p.m., having caught the 5.22 from Exeter, and treated myself to a taxi home from Penzance.

I was exhausted and very hungry. There had been a buffet car on the train but I had not had any appetite for a while after seeing Carl and by the time I arrived in St Ives my stomach had begun to send serious messages to remind me that it had not received any food all day. I made tea and toast, and scrambled a couple of eggs. After I’d eaten I lay down on the sofa. I didn’t even have the energy to make it into a bed again.

I think sleep could have been my body’s way of providing me with a kind of therapy. Had I been bothering to think about it logically I might have worried about being unable to sleep, but instead the oblivion descended almost as soon as I put my head on the pillows.

Once more I was woken by a hammering on the door.

I peered out of the window. At first I couldn’t see anybody, but then, illuminated by the street light on the corner, I watched the tall, bulky figure of Will step back from the porch and tip his face towards me, peering at the upstairs window. The last thing I felt able to cope with was a visitor, so I ducked away. I didn’t want him to see me. I waited almost a minute before I looked out of the window again. Mercifully Will seemed to have gone.

I looked at my watch. It was almost 10.30, a bit late to come calling, I thought vaguely. Then I slumped on to the sofa again and tried to recapture the oblivion I had achieved before he turned up on the doorstep, but without success at first. At some time during the night I found the energy to turn the sofa into a proper bed and maybe that helped me eventually to fall into a deep sleep.

I was awoken by another loud knocking on the door. But this time it was broad daylight outside. Morning had presumably arrived. I reckoned the caller could reasonably be one of three people – Will again, Mrs Jackson, or Mariette – and it made little difference to me which. I didn’t want to see anybody, not even Mariette – in spite of the undoubted success of our last evening together. I did not even look out of the window but waited quietly for the caller to go away.

After a moment or two I heard Mariette’s voice calling through the letter box. ‘Are you there, Suzanne? It’s me. Are you all right?’

I continued to ignore her. After a bit she went away.

I had no intention of even trying to face the world. I just wanted to stay hidden away in my bed. I buried my head in the pillow and ultimately cried myself to sleep.

It was different, you see. Until confronting Carl face-to-face in jail I had been kidding myself, I suppose. But Carl had not been able to tell me that the American allegation was all a dreadful mistake. Indeed, he had admitted to me that he had killed his daughter. I was devastated.

I had to accept that I had been quite wrong about him all those years. And to face the strong likelihood that he had known that I was not a murderer, that he had let me suffer those awful nightmares for six long years without telling me the only thing that could have made it all stop – and all so that he could have control over me. So that I would be dependent on him.

The letters were part of the way in which he kept me dependent. That made such a dreadful kind of sense.

Even so, in spite of what I had told him in his cell – that he had stolen my life from me – it wasn’t really true. Carl had turned me into a fugitive, Carl had taken my freedom from me, but I had to take some responsibility for that too. I had wanted to run away with him and he had not made me unhappy. He had given me a life, a curiously good kind of life, I had to admit. He had promised so long ago when we met in Richmond Park that he would make me happy and at times he had made me quite blissfully happy. I accepted totally that he had loved me – obsessively perhaps, but truly too, there was no doubt about that.

I could even half forgive him the kidnap. Back at home in the comfort of the little house I had shared so contentedly with him it was hard to recall that I had not long ago been frightened of him. It still didn’t seem real, somehow. I was so confused.

Maybe I could eventually forgive him for sending the threatening letters, but what I could not live with, could never forgive or forget, was what he had done before he met me. He had killed his own child – and all through his total inability to let go of anyone he loved. I had suffered enough with guilt because I thought I had killed a violent, drunken monster of a man. Carl had been responsible for the death of an innocent child. He had assumed a different personality and invaded my life, and all the time kept his past, even his real name, a secret from me.

I wondered how he had managed to do that for all those years. We had been so close. At least I thought we had been so close.

I slumped into a kind of trance, reliving my years with Carl, going over and over all that I had learned, all that had happened. I lost track of how long I stayed like that, but I suppose I knew that several days must have passed. Physically I felt lethargic and washed out, but there were no signs that the pneumonia threatened to return.

I ate everything that Mariette had brought, all the eggs and milk and cheese, the potatoes and the other vegetables, and all the fruit plus the stale digestive biscuits and a tin of sardines I found lurking in a corner of the cupboard. I wasn’t hungry and had no interest whatsoever in food. I ate automatically and for comfort in the same way that I slept, welcoming oblivion again and again.

But when the food ran out I did not consider shopping for more provisions.

I had little concept of night and day. I kept the curtains drawn all the time. I cocooned myself in my own misery.

At some stage a letter arrived from Carl:

There was more of the same but I was no longer impressed by it. He did not mention his daughter once. In fact, the letter only increased my anger and sense of betrayal. I tore it into small pieces and flushed it down the lavatory.

Intermittently, somebody or other knocked on the front door. The days passed. In a way they were endless, it was as if time had stopped. I continued to ignore callers. Mariette always shouted through the letter box. She began to sound increasingly anxious. I don’t know why I couldn’t bring myself at least to speak to her. But I just didn’t want to be bothered.

Eventually, early one evening, I heard a particularly loud, authoritative knock on the door, followed by Mariette’s voice through the letter box: ‘Suzanne, please, please open the door. I’ve been so worried about you.’

Again I did not respond.

Then I heard a man’s voice. ‘Mrs Peters, are you there? This is the police. Constable Brownly. Please open the door.’ He repeated the request several times. Then he said: ‘Mrs Peters, I’m concerned about your safety and your health. I should warn you that if you don’t answer the door I’m going to break in. If you’re there, please answer.’

I had been sitting at the top of the stairs, hugging my knees to my chin. Almost grateful that a kind of deadlock had been broken, I got to my feet and stumbled downstairs. My movements seemed clumsy. I knew that once more I was barely functioning.

I opened the front door. Constable Brownly, a very young uniformed officer, looked relieved and as if he didn’t know what to do or say next.

Mariette’s face, breaking into a smile as I pulled the door towards me, changed to an expression of shock when she saw me.

I hadn’t washed or changed my clothes in the time I had shut myself away in the cottage. And I had not even really thought about it until this moment. There were dirty dishes all over the place. My usually immaculate little home was a mess and so was I. That would never have been allowed were Carl still in residence, I reflected obliquely, and just thinking about Carl cut into me again.

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t find words. All I could feel was a dreadful blankness.

Mariette didn’t say anything either. She just stepped towards me and hugged me.

I started to cry again then. And I just couldn’t stop.

Mariette took me home and, with remarkable fortitude, her mother agreed that I could stay, even though the cottage was so small and had only two bedrooms. Mariette insisted on giving up her own pretty room at the back of the house for me and said she would be quite comfortable on the sofa bed in the brass-ornamented front room downstairs.

I had neither the grace nor the energy to protest. She undressed me, washed me, lent me a nightie and tucked me up in the little single bed. Still I could not stop crying.

‘Mum’s called the doctor,’ she said.

I began to protest.

‘No, you need help. Something to calm you down, maybe.’

I protested more loudly. ‘No,’ I more or less shouted. ‘No, no more drugs.’

‘All right, shush,’ said Mariette, who was proving to be extremely stoical. ‘Whatever you say. Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to ever again. I won’t let the doctor bully you, don’t worry about that.’

I gave in. She was probably right. I did need help.

The doctor turned out to be a young blond woman with old eyes. She introduced herself as Mavis Tompkins and in spite of her age was one of those people who instantly inspired confidence. Quite a bonus for a doctor, I thought. You almost felt better just for seeing her. We talked about therapy and victim support more than drugs, and, although her manner could not have been further from any kind of bullying, I did allow myself to be coaxed into agreeing to virtually all her suggestions.

‘Not yet, though, not yet,’ I said anxiously, after saying, yes, I would see a therapist.

‘All right, not yet,’ she acceeded perhaps reluctantly, as I buried myself yet again in the dark warmth of Mariette’s bed.

I stayed with Mariette for almost three weeks, regaining mental and physical strength, and I shall always be grateful for the patience and support she and her mother unstintingly gave me.

During that time I made no attempt to enquire about Carl and what was happening to him, and I heard nothing further from the police. DS Perry was still in Plymouth, more than likely, and DC Carter was not the kind of man who would make contact if he could avoid doing so. He wouldn’t want to risk stirring up trouble for himself unnecessarily.

I told myself I didn’t care what happened to Carl, as long as I never had to see him again.

I suppose I had a kind of breakdown. Not surprising when you considered all I had been through. I blocked everything out. Most important of all was to block Carl out.

And that might have been the way it would remain, had it not been for the intervention of Will Jones.

My time with Mariette and her mother was actually surprisingly peaceful, in spite of my distressed state of mind, but after three weeks I knew I must be overstaying my welcome. The sofa bed in the front room couldn’t be that comfortable, and Mariette continued to insist that I remained in her bedroom until I was both mentally and physically stronger. However, when I eventually expressed a desire to return to Rose Cottage both Mariette and her mother were worried that the house itself might upset me and suggested I looked for somewhere else to rent.

Perhaps stubbornly, I insisted on going back to the cottage. More than anything else I wanted at least to try to bury the demons that lurked there. I felt it was something I had to do alone, so I made my own way up the hill, carrying the small bag containing the few clothes and books Mariette had collected for me.

I had not been back since the night she and the policeman had knocked so forcefully on the front door. I remembered clearly enough that we had left the place in a fearful mess, complete with all those dirty dishes piled in the kitchen sink. I just hoped no mice or even rats had been attracted.

But when I unlocked the front door a pleasant surprise awaited me. The place looked and smelled fresh and clean, there were newly cut flowers in a vase on the table and not a dirty dish anywhere to be seen.

‘Bless you, Mariette,’ I said to myself with feeling.

She had been back to collect one or two things for me and to pick up the mail occasionally, and must have worked her magic on the cottage then. There had been no further letters from Carl. Maybe he had accepted that I wanted nothing more to do with him.

Rose Cottage was a wonderful surprise. I spent the day pottering around and realised that I must be beginning to cope. At any rate I was functioning after a fashion. I walked down to the town to do some shopping. I was still conscious of curious stares and had yet to venture back into any of the hostelries Carl and I had frequented. Nonetheless I didn’t find the exercise too difficult.

Steve, the matinée idol fishmonger, fussed over me charmingly and insisted on giving me a small, beautifully dressed fresh crab as a present. ‘Good to see you back, Suzanne,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some first-class fresh halibut coming in in a couple of days. I’ll save you a piece.’

I had smiled wanly. Halibut, Carl’s favourite. The king of fish, he called it. How the memories flooded back.

At home that evening I blessed Steve for his crab, not least because it meant I barely had to cook. I boiled some rice to eat with the crab and made a little green salad. The crabmeat was rich and sweet and, as ever, the plain boiled rice brought out its flavour beautifully – that was something, one of so many things, Carl had taught me. As I ate I realised I had not enjoyed a meal in a long time, probably not since before it all happened.

Afterwards I settled mindlessly in front of the TV for a couple of hours. I went to bed before midnight and slept surprisingly well – no more nightmares, not of any kind.

In the morning I made a concentrated effort to think about my future: what I was going to do next. I needed to work, I understood that. I had no money and no apparent way of acquiring any. It was hard to imagine what kind of work I could do, Carl had certainly been right about that. The library job had long been filled and, in any case, I still doubted that I would ever have been regarded as suitably qualified.

Mariette and her mother had kindly allowed me to stay with them free of charge but there had been rent to pay on the cottage and other bills to settle, and there was not a lot left of the £500 Will had given me – certainly not enough to pay for the next month’s rent, which would soon be due.

I counted the remaining notes and coins, still in the original envelope over and over again. Each time it came to the same amount: £110 25p. An electricity bill for almost £100 had come in the post that morning. That effectively took care of that. Suddenly I began to feel quite desperate. How was I going to live?

Strange for me to be worrying about money after a lifetime of having someone else to take care of such matters. It was actually quite frightening and was one bit of independence I could still do without, I thought wryly.

Then I had an idea. I wondered if Carl might have left any cash in our usual hiding place. I thought it unlikely, I assumed he would have taken whatever money he had with him when he rushed me off to that awful damp shed in the middle of nowhere, but you never knew.

On the off chance I decided to have a look in the cellar. I rolled back the linoleum floor covering and found the crowbar under the sink. I had never prised up the flagstone that served as a trapdoor on my own before and it did not prove to be an easy task. I had to lean on the iron bar with all my weight in order to budge the stone at one side. Then I wedged a piece of wood under the open end, did the same trick with the crowbar on the other side and somehow managed to slide the stone to one side. I fetched the small ladder that lived under the stairs and lowered it down through the hole.

First putting a torch in my pocket, I climbed carefully down. Although I had been as tickled as Carl when he discovered the cellar, I did not much like being in it and certainly not alone.

Resolutely I switched on the torch and felt behind the pile of Carl’s paintings, which were neatly stacked in one corner. There was no sign of the leather document case.

‘Damn!’ I said out loud. I wondered if the police had found it in the shed or in Carl’s van, and if it was at the police station now. I had not thought to ask. But even if it were there, I doubted they would hand it over to me. After all, it was Carl’s property, I supposed.

I shone my torch over the paintings. There were five of them, all abstracts. Will would take any number of the chocolate box landscapes, but never more than two or three of the abstracts at a time. There was a very limited market and he just didn’t have the wall space. In spite of various attempts, Carl had not found any other gallery in St Ives prepared to take his abstracts at all. Still, they were worth as much as £200 or £300 each on a good day. I decided to get them out of the cellar and see if I could at least get them displayed somewhere. Maybe I could play the sympathy ticket.

I carried the five paintings to the foot of the ladder, then climbed up a couple of rungs reaching down to pick them up one by one, lift them as high as I could and push them out on to the kitchen floor. As I did so I reflected that any revenue from their sale would surely technically belong to Carl, but I thought I might be able to persuade Will at any rate to bend the rules. He had already done so once, after all.

When I had successfully manhandled the paintings out of the cellar I carried them into the dining room and propped them up around the walls. They were good, no question about that. Whatever else he had done in his life, Carl could certainly paint. For just a fleeting moment I experienced a flash of nostalgia for what might have been. But I knew all I could do now was concentrate on the present. Carl was in jail. Our life together was over.

I decided to have a final look in the cellar to check that there was nothing else down there of value. There wasn’t. I shone the torch carefully into every nook and cranny revealing only some cans of paint, sidelined from Carl’s studio, a box of scrubby brushes, several packets of short stubby crayon ends and a number of used sketch pads, all arranged in tidy piles. Carl didn’t like throwing things away, just in case he might ever need them again one day. There were also a couple of cardboard boxes, one containing Christmas decorations and the other some candles and some old magazines. I thought I might at least make use of the candles and dragged the box over to the ladder.

Then I heard a knock on the front door.

I had promised Mariette faithfully that whatever happened I would never repeat my performance of locking myself in the house and ignoring callers. So dutifully I clambered up the ladder, switched off my torch and put it on the kitchen worktop, shouting ‘just a minute’. I shut the kitchen door firmly behind me and hurried to open the front door.

Will Jones stood on the doorstep smiling broadly. He was carrying a large bunch of roses. ‘Welcome home,’ he said and thrust the flowers into my hand.

I smiled my appreciation. I knew that Will had enquired regularly after my welfare during the time that I had stayed with Mariette, and that she had relayed to him my thanks and explained that I really did not want to see anyone for a bit. I simply hadn’t been able to face visitors. I still didn’t exactly relish the prospect, but Will just might have another of those welcome brown envelopes on his person. ‘I was just thinking about you, Will, come on in,’ I invited. Well, it was true in a way, albeit not quite the way he seemed to take it.

His face positively lit up. ‘I thought you could do with a man about the place.’ He beamed at me. It seemed a very strange thing to say in the circumstances.

I couldn’t think of any reply, really. He followed me into the dining room and I gestured to the paintings all around us. ‘I was hoping you might be able to find a place for a couple of these, and bend the rules a bit about payment,’ I said. ‘I could certainly do with the money...’

Will didn’t even glance at the paintings. He just stood there in the middle of the room staring at me. ‘You look prettier than ever,’ he said.

I glanced at him curiously. ‘Go on upstairs and I’ll bring up some coffee,’ I instructed, slightly thrown by his rather bizarre compliment.

In the kitchen I didn’t bother to put the stone back over the cellar. Will would have heard me and wanted to help, and Carl and I had always been strict about keeping our hiding place a secret. In any case I was fairly used to dodging around it, and I quickly made coffee and carried a tray upstairs to join Will.

He was as avuncular as ever, but I had even more difficulty than usual making small talk.

I sat on the sofa next to him and found myself noticing how often he touched me as we chatted. He’d always done so, of course, but it hadn’t seemed to matter when Carl was around.

Suddenly he leaned very close to me and put his arm round me. He had often done that before too, but I instinctively knew that this time was different. ‘You miss Carl, Suzanne, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I responded truthfully.

‘The two of you were so perfect together.’ There was something in Will’s voice that I couldn’t quite identify, something not very pleasant.

I studied him more closely, perhaps seeing him for the first time, this man I had both liked and trusted. I suppose I had never really looked beyond the flamboyant exterior before, never seen beyond the showman. His silver bouffant hairdo no longer looked attractively eccentric – just rather pathetic. He had always been a kind of parody of himself. His eyes were red-rimmed. He was definitely under some sort of strain.

‘You never did understand,’ he went on. ‘That was the problem. And I could never tell you... never find the words, you see...’

He pulled me even nearer to him and I realised suddenly that his hand had dropped down so that he was lightly stroking my breast. Curiously, perhaps, it was still the last thing I had anticipated.

‘You miss Carl in every way, I expect...’

His voice was very low. Suggestive.

I wrenched myself away from him and stood up. ‘Don’t be silly, Will,’ I said, trying hard not to make too much of it.

But I had said the wrong thing. There was anger in his voice when he spoke again. ‘Don’t be silly, Will,’ he repeated, his voice mocking mine. ‘That’s how you think of me, that’s how you’ve both always thought of me, isn’t it? Silly Willy, we can treat him how we like, he’ll still come running, still knock himself out trying to flog Carl’s bloody awful paintings.’

I was stunned by his sudden outburst. He was speaking in a kind of bitter whine. ‘What on earth’s the matter with you, Will?’ I asked. ‘You’ve always admired Carl’s painting, haven’t you? And I thought we were friends.’

‘Pah,’ snarled Will. ‘He’s no better than any of the others, just very very average. But he had you, didn’t he? And together you were...’ his voice softened ‘... so special.’

Was that it then? Will was jealous of Carl and me? I couldn’t believe my ears. It had never occurred to me. Not to either of us.

‘I was your friend all right, oh yes, I was such a good friend,’ he went on. ‘But you two, you barely noticed me, did you? If it didn’t suit you, you turned me away. Remember the night I brought you the pink champagne? It made no difference, did it? I could have brought diamonds. You two wanted to be alone together. Nothing else mattered. You just turned me away...’

He paused. I didn’t speak. Merely calling him silly had brought on this outburst? All sorts of jumbled thoughts were beginning to occur to me.

Meanwhile the tirade continued. It was as if, once he had started, he couldn’t stop. ‘You never took me seriously, did you? You had no idea about my feelings. Not either of you. And you, Suzanne, you’re so soft and lovely, I always liked so much just to touch you...’

I shivered, thinking of how often he had done that. But in such a way that I had never really minded and neither had Carl. He was quite an actor, was Will, but then, we had always thought that.

‘I knew there was no hope, of course, there was only ever Carl for you. So I was prepared to accept that. Just to be near you. I tried to tell you how it was, I really did. I was prepared to settle for friendship. But you kept shutting me out, didn’t you? Both of you. Making a joke of my feelings. It was so unfair...’

His voice was wheedling and yet very hard. He really was beginning to scare me.

Sometimes things are suddenly very clear and you wonder how you missed them before. How could Carl and I have been so blind? But then, we had always been so totally wrapped up in each other. Will was right about that.

I thought of the time he had come to dinner and told us how he envied us, how we had so much, how he would have swapped his gallery, his car, everything he had for what we had. And yes, Carl had made a joke of it, as he usually did. How Will must have hated that. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ I asked.

‘I thought you might have known already.’

I had known nothing. But I was beginning to realise a lot. I had a feeling I had made an awful error of judgement, that I had got something horribly wrong.

I took a deep breath. ‘Did you threaten us, did you send the letters, Will?’ I asked. I spoke very softly, trying to keep my voice expressionless.

He looked for a moment as if he were going to deny it. Then he turned on me. ‘Of course I did,’ he shouted. ‘And you never suspected for a bloody moment, did you. Not Silly Willy, whom you could treat like dirt and I’d still ask for more.’ He laughed. It was not a pretty sound.

‘Why, for Christ’s sake?’ I asked, really scared now. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘I’ve just told you,’ he said. ‘It was the way you treated me, both of you. And if I couldn’t have you I was going to hurt you, Suzanne, you and him. I wanted to give that perfect...’ he spat out the word then continued ‘... that perfect life of yours a shaking.’

‘You tortured us,’ I yelled at him. ‘We did nothing to deserve that.’

‘I was the one who was tortured.’

Will’s red-rimmed eyes burned into me. My legs felt like jelly.

‘I thought Carl had sent the letters, done it all, I really believed that.’ I was thinking aloud really.

Will leered at me. ‘Carl?’ he repeated wonderingly. ‘That was a bonus for me, wasn’t it? I never expected that.’

I wanted to hit him, but I didn’t have the courage. I couldn’t believe that this evil, poisonous side of Will had been lurking all this time and neither Carl nor I had seen it. But, of course, we had rarely seen anything much except each other.

Then Will stood up and I became disconcertingly aware of how big he was. We were quite alone and the walls of Rose Cottage were three and a half feet thick. Carl and I had never heard the neighbours, nor they us as far as I knew. I began to wonder what Will had really come to the cottage for. It was hard to believe that he would have confessed all this on the spur of the moment. Could he be that uncontrolled? What was he intending to do now?

He began to speak again. ‘I could have given you so much more than he ever did, you know, in every way...’

I didn’t want to hear any more. I just wanted the man out of my house. ‘You’d better go, Will,’ I said, struggling to stay calm.

‘Really? Yes, and every time before I’ve always gone, haven’t I? Meekly left you and that pretentious American bastard alone whenever you wanted me to. Or that’s what you thought, wasn’t it?’

He took a menacing step towards me. I began to think that I might be in real danger.

‘I’ve stood outside, you know, late at night, listening to you having sex. Listening to your cries, Suzanne.’

I cringed, feeling slightly sick. Was it true, I wondered? It could have been. Carl and I had almost always slept with the window open a little. We’d never given it a thought. I shuddered involuntarily.

‘C’mon, why don’t you give me just one chance,’ he said. ‘Let me have you. Let me give it to you, show you what it can really be like. Were you crying out because you were satisfied, Suzanne, or because you needed more? I doubt that pathetic bastard ever fucked you properly, did he? I doubt he had it in him...’

My instinct was to cower away from him. That had always been my instinct when faced with a threat. But not this time. Instead of taking a step backwards I made myself take a step forward towards Will. He towered over me. I refused to allow myself to be daunted. ‘Will, I despise you,’ I told him. ‘The only way you are ever going to have me is to rape me. Is that what you want? Is that what you are, as well as everything else, a rapist?’

Something flickered across his eyes.

He reached out with one hand, thrust it between my legs and pushed hard upwards, so hard that it hurt, which was no doubt his intention.

I tried not to flinch.

For what seemed like for ever he stood in front of me staring at me, his hand thrust against my crutch, his long bony fingers digging into me. I returned his stare as levelly as I could.

Eventually and abruptly he removed his hand and spoke. ‘You’re not worth it, are you? I’ve come almost to hate you, you know. That’s what happens if you keep rejecting someone.’

He stepped back. ‘Carl murdered his daughter, he kidnapped and drugged you, Suzanne,’ he said calmly enough. ‘You can’t still feel anything for him, surely?’

He didn’t wait for a reply. He turned on his heel, ran down the stairs and left the cottage through the front door.

I felt sick. I half fell on to the sofa bed, put my head in my hands and wept.