As the Clock Struck Ten

by Gill Mather

  “Well I want to. Greg will have said something. He’s bound to have. He was always bringing it up when I was living with him. As though it’s not the sort of thing you’d want to just try to completely forget about.”

  Don had to be supportive, he felt. They were already holding hands and he took her other hand with his free hand. “Come on then,” he said.

  “He’ll have told you I had terminations.”

  “He did.”

  “Well I need to tell you what actually happened so that you know.”

  “I said before that I don't care. I mean I do care if the subject hurts you, but it doesn't change how I feel about you.”

  “No, but I want to tell you. The first one happened when I was not quite sixteen. When my parents found out I was probably pregnant because I’d missed a couple of periods and I wasn't feeling very well, they marched me straight to the doctors to get it sorted out as they put it. I didn't really know what was happening. It was just put to me that it was a procedure to bring my period on. There was no internet. I didn't have access to any books about pregnancy or the stages of development of a foetus. I was up and about the next day with no ill effects and it wasn't until quite a few years later that I questioned in my mind what had happened and that it was actually getting rid of a baby.

  “But no-one discussed with me anything about there being a baby and keeping the baby. It was just like, say, having your tonsils out though actually much quicker and in fact far less physically traumatic than that, or even than having a tooth out.”

  “Well I’m sorry,” said Don. “You can talk to me about that or anything else that troubles you at any time.”

  “Thanks. Well Greg always refers to two terminations but the second one wasn't actually a termination at all. I was about twenty three by then. I was with someone I’d probably have stayed with and I did become pregnant but I miscarried. It upset the relationship so after a time we separated and not long after I met Greg. However at the time it seemed as though I hadn't lost all the foetal material as they put it and I had to go into hospital to have a D&C, a dilation and curettage.

  “But Greg always insisted on throwing in my face that I’d had two terminations. I wished I’d never told him that or anything else about myself before I met him. He just used the things to taunt me.”

  “Poor darling.” He put his arm around her. “I’m not surprised you’d left him before. That’s another of the things he told me.”

  “Well I tried to. Not with anyone else. Just to my brother one time and another time to a friend. But people don't want to get involved. They don't want the bother. And with Greg, of course there was a lot of bother. And I had two children. I only spent one night away each time. I had to go back because of the children. Luke doesn't even know about it.”

  Don squeezed her and said: “Well you’re all safe now.”

  “Telling you makes me feel better,” said Grace. She sighed. “I need to try to forget about it now. It doesn't help to dwell on these things. Shall we go back then.”

  AT LUNCHTIME, ALL four of them had a meal together with some wine. Emma was already at the kitchen table and Luke had been invited up from the summerhouse. The young people had seemed reasonably casual and comfortable with each other. Don wasn’t a huge sports fan but he wanted to watch the afternoon's rugby match between the Springboks and Scotland being broadcast live on terrestrial TV. He wouldn't have satellite. It had been mentioned over lunch and Luke, a keen player, had wanted to come and watch too. Emma, having had too much wine and having got completely confused with the things she could say and the things she couldn't say had decided to retire to her room to read for a time.

  Later however she had wandered into the sitting room. Grace was asleep on the settee with Don's arm loosely around her. Don watched as Luke, on Emma entering the room, had risen from his chair and stayed standing until she sat down. Well, perhaps that was what they taught you to do at public school. Don knew that Luke had been at a public school until expelled aged fifteen.

  The gesture was polite for sure. But the smile on Luke’s face as he regarded Emma was familiar to intimate. Don began to have some sneaking doubts at that point. But Scotland were scoring and his attention went back to the screen as Emma pulled her legs up onto the chair, curled her feet underneath her and looked back at Luke.

  "THANK YOU FOR meeting me at such short notice. I'm surprised you remembered me. How's the new job going? You still seeing your boyfriend? That chef who works at Bingley's?"

  The questions were a little intrusive. Connie wondered how he knew about the boyfriend who was a chef at Bingley's Restaurant. She had only come here because the man had insinuated that the company might want her back at a considerably enhanced salary and she couldn't see what her boyfriend had to do with that. Though of course it was a rather unorthodox way from the outset to conduct a job interview; to accost her at the bus stop and ask to meet her at a rather grubby out of the way café on a light industrial estate on a Sunday afternoon to discuss it. However she knew quite well that he was a senior sales executive in the company. It must be all above board.

  Connie reasoned that he was probably busy most of the time and she worked during the week which is why he had offered to meet her on a Sunday. So he had said. He had also hinted at some secrecy which she had assumed was to do with a product or process the company had developed. She didn’t want to appear unfriendly but she didn’t see why she should disclose details of her private life to him.

  On the other hand, she was slightly apprehensive about refusing to answer his questions. He had about him something she would have struggled to describe in words if asked to do so. Not exactly menacing, but a kind of insistence, a persistence, an air of heavy concentration on the topic in hand, and she was worried how he'd react if she didn’t answer his questions outright.

  "Well," she said, "the new job's OK. Not so much responsibility as at Steins Pharmaceuticals but it's a job and I had to get another job."

  "You didn’t have to leave Steins."

  "No. I just wanted a break for a time. Now though I'm really looking for a bigger challenge."

  "You didn’t answer me about the boyfriend."

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "Well it's relevant to offering you a job. What your circumstances are. If you filled in a formal application form, you'd have to say whether you were single or married or living with a partner. It's just normal. It's just that this job is….isn't open to everyone. It has to be someone we can trust. Implicitly. You do understand don’t you?"

  "I….yes. OK. I do now you put it like that. Yes I'm still with my boyfriend. We'll probably get married soon. But for the time being actually we don’t live together. He lives with his parents and I live with mine. I go and stay at his home some weekends." Connie was thinking that the extra money would help with saving up a deposit for a house so that they could actually get married and live together properly.

  "Good. That's just what we're looking for. Stability, but not too much of an involvement for now. OK."

  He looked down at his notes and the photocopies of the documents he'd been able to make. He continued:

  "I see from your CV that you used to work as a waitress at Bingley's as well when you were still at school. Holidays and weekends and things. Is that where you met your boyfriend?"

  Connie frowned. Again the irrelevancy of the question was puzzling.

  "It indicates stability," he said by way of explanation. "That your current relationship is of long-standing. That your private life isn't in turmoil like some of these girls."

  Connie said shortly that yes she had met her boyfriend at Bingley's. She tried not to let her growing dislike of this man and his probing show too obviously.

  "In your company file, against religion you put down "RC". I assume that means Roman Catholic." He looked at Connie enquiringly.

  Connie couldn't see what this had to do with a job at a pharmaceutical company, and she said so.

  "
Actually it is relevant. You may have to be working with human foetuses. The products of abortions. Therefore if you had any strong religious convictions, it might make it difficult for you." He noticed that she'd gone very pale, and she swallowed several times. "Are you actually a practising Roman Catholic?"

  Connie's face was stricken. She looked as though she was going to cry. Greg was fascinated. After all the girl had presumably voluntarily subjected herself to a medical termination. To see what would emerge, he continued, regardless of the turmoil he could see his line of questioning was producing. He tried not to smile.

  "I know many Catholics strongly object to abortion. I'm sure the girls who had the abortions that produced the foetal material we have to use in the process didn’t really want to do away with their infants. But sometimes it's necessary. Wouldn't you agree?"

  He couldn't see Connie's face. It was almost buried in the bowl of icecream he'd bought her.

  "I expect the girls' families wouldn't have approved, but most girls wouldn't tell their families probably. Or indeed the fathers of their children. Children." He repeated the word for emphasis. "Little children.

  "What do you think then Connie? Interested in the position? Because if not, there's another little job I could put your way. In fact you'd probably be grateful to take it. So that your family and your boyfriend wouldn't find out what you'd done. I've got the report here. It clearly mentions termination of pregnancy as the reason you needed the time off work. Only fifteen weeks into the pregnancy it says. The poor little thing can't have felt anything. Probably. And then a bout of depression. Only natural…."

  The cry that escaped Connie's lips was loud and animalistic. Greg looked round in case anyone had noticed. He didn’t want this meeting to be especially remembered by anyone.

  "Shut up," he hissed. "Or I will tell your parents. And your bloody boyfriend. All I want is for you to do one small thing for me. It's not much. You must've got to know some of the other holiday girls who worked at Bingley's when you were there. That's of considerable use to me. There'll be no come back on you. You just do this thing I need you to do and then that'll be the end of it. OK?"

  Connie's hot tears melted the rest of her icecream as Greg outlined his requirements.

  012 The Proof

  HEARING THE CAR door slam, Don got out of bed and, tiptoeing to the window, he pulled the curtain back a fraction. The security light came on as Emma walked to the gate. He really would have to try and get the thing adjusted. He'd only meant it to sense motion inside the garden, not burst into life at every passing car, cyclist or pedestrian, not to mention cat, dog and rabbit. Luckily there wasn’t actually a great deal of passing traffic of any kind but still. He wasn’t sure what he was actually looking for but he knew he felt uneasy. Perhaps he never should have agreed to Luke staying here for any length of time. He was undoubtedly a good-looking young man with obvious charms. Especially when he wandered around in just his underpants half the time.

  Emma didn’t appear to be veering off in the direction of the summerhouse and Don couldn't see Luke emerging from it either and started to draw back. But some bushes just within view were moving and a figure stepped out onto the path in front of Emma. Don could just see them both if he stood on tiptoe. He thought about pulling up a chair to stand on so that he could get a better look but he didn’t want to disturb Grace.

  Some sort of altercation or at least difference of opinion was taking place but he couldn't hear what was being said. Not even faintly. Don wished he'd left the window open instead of closing it earlier. Luke was gesturing down the garden and Emma was shaking her head. This went on for a short time. They must be whispering. Once Luke had looked up at the house as he harangued Emma (for this must be what he was doing) and Don froze then Luke looked back at Emma.

  At length, Emma obviously relented since the pair walked off down the garden together. Don felt his blood pressure rising. That Luke, a guest in his house, would try to….try to….exactly what he wasn’t sure. Persuade Emma to go and view his etchings? The phrase was quaint and antiquated but it was how he saw the picture just at this point. His daughter was being invited to the young man's sleeping accommodation on some pretext and then the young man would wear her down and seduce her. That would be how it would happen.

  He didn’t think he was a hypocrite, not really. But he hugely now regretted his initial attitude that Emma should be more grown up about things when, on first arriving home, she had been so stroppy at finding him and Grace in a clinch in the kitchen. Now that seduction was imminent, he had reverted to a concerned and protective parent.

  The door of the summerhouse was open but they didn’t go in. Instead they sat in the moonlight on the chairs outside in conversation. Don continued to observe, frowning.

  "Don, what are you doing?"

  Don jumped guiltily. "Nothing."

  "Yes you are. What is it?" How long Grace had been awake watching him he didn’t know.

  "There's someone in the garden."

  "Surprise, surprise. Oh yes, I remember, Luke's living down there at the moment."

  "He and Emma are sitting at that little table talking."

  "Yes? And?"

  "Well what are they doing together at this time of night?"

  "You said they were talking."

  "Well what are they talking about?"

  "Does it matter? Come back to bed."

  "But they hardly know each other." Don realised he was whining a little.

  "Well perhaps they've got to know each other. They're similar ages. Now they might be going to the same university town. It's nice that they hit it off."

  "But Emma didn’t want to go down the garden with him."

  "How do you know that?"

  "He had to persuade her. That's what it looked like anyway."

  "He went to see his dad tonight didn’t he," said Grace. "Perhaps he's telling her about that."

  "Why would he want to tell her about that?"

  "I don’t know," said Grace in exasperation. "Please come back to bed."

  "But he might….they might…."

  "OK. And what would you do about it if they did?" Grace threw aside the bedclothes on his side and patted the bed. "Come back to bed. Hmm?"

  Don sighed, dropped the curtain and rather huffily did as she said.

  "Grace," he said in the dark after a time, "what made Greg think Luke had had a girl to stay for the night?"

  "He found an empty condom packet in the bathroom bin. He said Luke denied all knowledge."

  "Well he would wouldn't he."

  "I CAN'T REALLY believe it."

  "Well neither could I but she was there all right," said Luke. "And the house stank of cigarette smoke. I reckon she's living there."

  "But, I mean, in what capacity?"

  "Good question. I didn’t even know they knew each other."

  Emma kept quiet about that. "But," she said, "he must be at least twice her age! It's pretty gross isn't it?"

  "Bloody disgusting if that's what they're up to."

  Neither of them said any more, both no doubt thinking in varying degrees of detail about Alex's boyish underfed little body inside the nondescript androgynous clothing. Or worse; outside it.

  Without knowing it, they were both coming to roughly the same point from different directions. An uneasiness crept over Emma and she frowned. Alex in combination with Greg. Alex's insinuations in the hands of someone like Greg. Luke was thinking something similar. He wasn’t aware of the insinuations but he knew what Alex was like. And he certainly knew what his father was like. It was a potentially poisonous mixture.

  "I don’t think Alex knows about us," said Emma at length.

  "Probably not. If she did she'd tell my dad and then he'd've been bound to have immediately told your father. Anything to cause as much trouble as possible. I wonder how long they've known each other. Not long I assume."

  "Hmm." Emma yawned. "Well I'd better get off to bed. Goodnight Luke."

  "`Ni
ght." He didn’t ask her to stay. There was obviously some chance that her father might realise. He thought he had caught sight of a curtain twitching earlier. Best not to upset him.

  DON FAINTLY HEARD the second back door being shut and then after a short time the sound of the old toilet being flushed.

  "Satisfied?" said Grace.

  Don grunted. He was conscious that again it came out as a whine and also that he shouldn't be communicating by making noises. But it proved nothing to him. Who was to say that Luke hadn’t stealthily crept in with his daughter and was downstairs even now. Perhaps he should go and investigate. It would do no harm surely. In sympathy with the notion, Don’s body automatically stiffened, ready for action.

  "Don’t even think about it!” said Grace.

  IT WAS ANOTHER brilliant day. Luke had got up fairly early as usual and had carried out his exercise routine on the dewy grass in the open air. It was that much more exhilarating outside looking over the fields to the woods. He had made himself a cup of tea using the kettle donated by his mother and later had enjoyed a full cooked breakfast delivered to him by her. He had sketched for an hour and then gone out for a five mile run along the country lanes. He had passed Don’s car on the road obviously going somewhere and they had raised their hands to each other.

  Back at the summerhouse, he saw a text from Emma sent about five minutes previously saying that her dad was out for the rest of the morning. It was still only just after ten a.m. He texted back that he thought Don might be onto them and that they’d better skip it this time. He hadn't lived all his life with a conniving bastard like his dad without learning to suspect people and their motives. Sure enough within ten minutes Don’s car turned up. Thirty minutes later he got a text from Emma: “He said the meeting had been cancelled. Clever dick!”

  He texted back: “You should know all about that! You should delete your messages.”

  Emma did so and then got ready for work.

  THE LAST TWO DAYS, Emma had been asked to wait at tables again. It was quite a relief even if it would also mean taking breaks with Alex. She reasoned that she had to be prepared for the fact that Alex would know that Luke was living at her house now. And that Alex would also know that she, Emma, would know through Luke that Alex was….living with Greg? Maybe. But Alex was a slippery specimen and might well say she had just been visiting her preferred stepfather, which indeed perhaps she had been. Alex might also assume that Luke now knew about her mother’s relationship with Greg, that Emma would have told him.