In the Still of the Night

by Charlotte Lamb

  She couldn’t confide in anyone. Least of all Johnny. She knew he would go crazy if she told him what had happened at that first interview, what Roger Keats had done to her, made her do with him. Her stomach heaved at the memory: his hand on the back of her neck, forcing her down on her knees.

  She had tried to blank out the memory. She couldn’t bear to remember.

  She certainly couldn’t tell Johnny. It would hurt him too much, because he loved her and Johnny was romantic, an innocent. If she told him what she had been made to do she knew he would never look at her without remembering and being sickened.

  Roger had got her backed into a corner. There was no escape that she could see.

  During lunch she saw Lee Kirk, the little dark girl Roger had been seen with a lot that term. She was picking at a tiny salad. Annie went over to sit next to her.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’

  Lee gave her a brief, unfriendly glance. ‘What about? This is my last day here. I’m leaving I’ve got a place in a touring company, we fly to Australia next week.’

  ‘Did Roger Keats get you the job?’

  After the last class, when the school was almost empty, Annie slowly made her way to Roger Keats’s office.

  She walked into the room she remembered so well from her first visit there, and Roger was sitting on the cushion-piled chaise-longue, drinking a glass of red wine.

  ‘Shut the door, lock it and come here,’ he said, looking her over with bright, greedy eyes.

  She stayed there, without moving, as if paralysed. ‘Mr Keats, I don’t want to do this.’

  Act, act, she thought. She gave him a pleading look.

  His red mouth smiled in enjoyment. ‘Roger, call me Roger, and don’t waste my time. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t ready to keep our bargain.’

  ‘Bargain?’

  ‘We made a deal, remember? You got a place at the school, and in return you were going to be nice to me, so start being nice. Lock the door, little Alice, and come over here. We’ll have a run-through of what you did for me before, to start with – you were good at that.’

  She didn’t have to act her sickened revulsion; she almost threw up at the memory he’d conjured up, that hot, stiff flesh in her mouth, his grunting enjoyment, the way he stared down, watched her.

  ‘No.’ She looked at him with hatred, not moving. ‘I won’t, I’ll never do … that … again. You can’t make me!’

  ‘But that’s what I like about you, Alice – I can make you do anything. Sweet little Alice with your long blonde hair and big, frightened eyes. You didn’t say no last time, you were very obedient.’

  ‘I hated it!’

  ‘I know you did. That was half the pleasure, to know you hated doing it to me, but to have you do it all the same.’ He ran his tongue-tip over his fleshy lips. ‘If you’d enjoyed it, it wouldn’t have been so much fun. This time we’ll try something new, something even more enjoyable.’

  ‘No!’

  His voice hardened. ‘Yes. I can do so much for you, remember. I’ve just been asked to recommend a girl for a small part in a children’s TV drama. Remember Derek Fenn, who judged the end-of-term competition? He’s looking for someone to play a fifteen-year-old in his school series. You won’t even have to act. It’s type-casting.’ He laughed, taking another sip of the red wine; she watched it stain his tongue, and shuddered. ‘Only a few weeks’ work,’ he drawled. ‘But the pay’s OK, it’s good experience, and nothing gets your face known quicker than TV.’

  Her voice rising she said, ‘You mean, if I sleep with you, I get this part? And if I refuse, I don’t?’

  ‘Do you have to have everything spelt out for you? Stupid girls don’t go far, little Alice. Of course that’s what I mean!’

  ‘Do you think Lee Kirk will go far?’ she shouted. ‘You got her a job in return for sleeping with you, didn’t you?’

  He laughed, unworried by the accusation. ‘Jealous? No need to be. Lee was hot stuff in bed but I couldn’t teach her a thing, she knew it all already. I’m going to have more fun with you, sweet, innocent little Alice. And remember, I always keep my word, darling. Give me what I want, and I’ll make sure you get what you want. So come over here and start by taking your clothes off.’

  Annie just stood there. Waiting.

  It seemed to her an eternity before the door behind her was pulled wide open and two of the school governors walked in. One of them was Rob’s father, a broad, bald-headed man who was a leading film director.

  Roger jerked upright, spilling red wine. He had turned grey; he suddenly looked old.

  ‘We’ve heard enough,’ Rob’s father said. ‘You can go now, Miss Lang, but we may need you to give evidence to the police if Keats isn’t sensible.’

  Roger’s eyes turned on her; she flinched at the look in them. His voice hoarse, he muttered, ‘You little bitch.’ He came off the chaise-longue in an angry lunge, dropped the glass, which shattered into fragments in a glittering shower, splashing wine like blood on the floor, on the chairs, on Roger’s trousers.

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ he grunted as his hands reached for her. ‘You set me up! I’ll kill you, you little bitch.’

  She was paralysed by fear. Roger’s hands closed round her neck, squeezing inwards, her breath choked in her throat. Her eyes rolled upwards; she was half-blind, dark blood flooding her face.

  ‘Let go of her, you bastard!’ she heard somebody say, then the two other men tore Roger away from her. He fell backwards, crashed into the wall and tumbled over, arms and legs sprawling.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Rob’s father asked, putting an arm round her.

  Her throat hurt, she was gasping for painful breath, and she was shaking violently.

  Annie nodded, then had to get away from there. She turned and ran out, her stomach churning.

  She never remembered afterwards how she got home – the whole journey was a blank. She was in shock.

  Her mother was still at work when she walked into the house. Johnny was there alone, sitting at the table, working on a piece of copy for that week’s paper, his brow creased as he checked a word in a dictionary.

  ‘You’re late, darling, I was beginning to get worried,’ he said, absently, glancing up and smiling.

  Annie was shivering. It was February the thirteenth, the day before St Valentine’s day, and there was snow whirling in the cold wind, snow piling up in gutters, against garden walls, on bushes and trees. She was wearing a thick woollen jacket, but she was bitterly cold. She stood in front of the fire, holding out her frozen hands to the blaze.

  ‘Annie? What’s wrong? What is it?’

  Johnny came towards her but she held her hands out, palms towards him, stopping him.

  ‘No! Don’t come any closer, Johnny.’ She felt dirty. She didn’t want him to touch her. Not until she had told him. She hadn’t meant to tell him, but now she saw she had to, or what had happened would poison her life. Telling Johnny would be like lancing a boil, letting the sickness and corruption ooze away.

  She started talking before she could change her mind, her voice disjointed, sobbing; the words poured out of her, tears running down her face without her noticing.

  Johnny went white as he listened. His eyes turned wild. Crazy. She didn’t know his face any more.

  She saw his mouth moving and barely heard his groaning. ‘Christ, Christ.’

  ‘He made me do it to him,’ she sobbed. ‘I hated what he made me do.’

  She wanted him to hold her and tell her he loved her and he would never let any man hurt her, never again, she was safe now and Johnny would protect her – but he didn’t. He turned and almost ran out of the room suddenly without a word.

  ‘Johnny, where are you going? Johnny!’ For a moment she was too shocked to move, then she ran out after him and was just in time to see him roaring away on his motorbike, in his black leather jacket but not wearing his helmet.

  He was driving too fast. If he crashed without a helmet he’d be killed.

 
; ‘Johnny!’ she screamed after him but he didn’t look back.

  She stood there on the path, waiting for him to turn round. He spun round the corner so fast, his bike leaned over, almost touching the ground. She heard the sound of the engine fading. Then silence. Still she stood there, minute after minute, like a statue, only her eyes alive. Johnny would come back to her. He was upset. He would come back when he got over the first shock.

  Then the phone began to ring. Annie ran to answer it, her face lighting up, but it wasn’t Johnny.

  ‘Don’t think you’re going to get away with what you’ve done to me,’ Roger Keats said thickly. ‘I’ll get you, if it takes the rest of my life. I’ll have you, one way or another. You’re going to pay, you little bitch. I’m going to make your life hell.’

  She dropped the phone blindly.

  Her mother came home a minute or two later and found the front door open, snow blowing in across the carpet, and Annie lying on the hall floor in a dead faint.

  Trudie Lang acted the way she always did, quickly and with commonsense. First, she shut the front door, then she called their doctor, and only after he had said he would come at once did she deal with Annie, help her to her feet, make her lie down on a sofa, got her a glass of water.

  The doctor only lived two streets away. He arrived before Trudie had had a chance to talk to Annie.

  He examined Annie, asked her questions; and that was when Trudie Lang discovered that her daughter was pregnant.

  Annie had suspected it for a couple of months, but had kept hoping it wasn’t true, that her periods would start again. It was the way she always dealt with problems, she knew that and she kept meaning to change, but she didn’t. She went on hoping that by ignoring a problem she could make it go away. That was why she had ignored Roger Keats until he forced her to do something about him. Now she was being forced to admit that she was going to have a baby.

  ‘Ring and make an appointment for your first check up at the antenatal clinic,’ the doctor told her, writing out a prescription. ‘And get these – they’ll calm you down a little.’

  Trudie Lang had just stood there without making a comment while the doctor was there. She had grown up in the school that didn’t wash the family’s dirty linen in public. She waited until the doctor had gone before she let her rage show. Coming back into the room where Annie still lay on the sofa, she came over and slapped Annie violently round the face.

  ‘You stupid little bitch. And don’t look at me with those big eyes. I’m not a man to be taken in by them. You’re not so dumb you don’t know what you’ve done. That’s the ‘end of acting for you. That’s your whole career down the drain. And for what?’ She shook Annie until it felt as if her head would come off.

  ‘Don’t, Mum!’

  Hoarsely, Trudie threw at her, ‘It’s Johnny Tyrone’s baby, isn’t it? Oh, don’t lie. I can see it in your face. I knew you were seeing a lot of him when I wasn’t here, but I thought you had more sense than to … Christ, Annie, if you had to sleep with him, why in hell didn’t you go on the Pill?’

  Helplessly, Annie shrugged. ‘The first time, it just happened, there was no time to think, and after that it didn’t seem to matter.’

  Her mother looked at her as if she hated her. ‘How could you be so bloody stupid? After all I’ve sacrificed for you, the years of scrimping and saving to pay for your lessons, all the hours I’ve spent taking you to ballet class and piano lessons.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to! It was all your idea in the beginning, you wanted me to be an actress, you pushed me …’

  ‘You little bitch!’ Trudie shouted. ‘I did it all for you – and you’ve started to get somewhere, I saw all the fuss they made of you when you were in Hamlet, you could be famous and rich – but you’ve chucked your chances away by letting some boy talk you into his bed. Well, he’ll have to marry you, he isn’t getting out of it. It takes two. He can take responsibility for what he’s done. I’m not keeping you and your bastard.’

  Tears ran down Annie’s white face. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. Don’t be angry, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Too late for that, isn’t it?’ Trudie bitterly said. ‘You had your big chance and you blew it. I’ll never forgive you.’ But the black rage had died out in her eyes as she watched her daughter’s tears. ‘He’s working tonight, is he? Did he say when he’d be back? I’ll wait up for him. I want to speak my mind before I get some sleep tonight. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I should have known, but I trusted him, I trusted the pair of you. More fool me. Wait till I see him! You’d better get to bed, you look half-dead.’

  Annie was afraid to let her talk to Johnny alone. ‘I’ll wait, too,’ she insisted, and wouldn’t let her mother bully her into going to bed.

  They waited until the early hours but Johnny didn’t come back. Disturbed and anxious, Annie went to bed at last, but didn’t sleep. Next day, her mother got in touch with his newspaper, but he wasn’t at work.

  The editor had no idea where he might have gone. He said he had just been about to ring them to ask if Johnny was ill.

  After hanging up, her mother turned on her, her mouth bitter, ‘He knew about the baby, didn’t he? You told him, and he’s bolted.’

  ‘No, I didn’t tell him!’ Annie was frantic with worry and unhappiness. Where could he have gone? Why had he run out like that? Had he been so appalled by her story that he never wanted to see her again?

  ‘Well, he owns that house, he can’t leave that behind. His lawyers will know where he is. I’ll get the truth out of them.’

  Trudie rang Johnny’s solicitors later that morning, but they claimed they had not heard from him either.

  ‘I didn’t believe a word of it,’ Trudie said furiously. ‘But I’m not giving up on Master Johnny. He isn’t getting out of this. He had his fun, now he’s going to pay for it.’

  Annie put her hands over her ears, screaming. ‘Don’t say that, don’t say that.’

  She ran upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. She got under the bedcovers, pulled them up over her head. She felt as if she was falling to pieces, her mind made scratchy, disconnected noises, like the sound of a fingernail down a window, every time she remembered yesterday, those moments with Roger Keats, the hatred in his eyes when he leapt to grab her by the throat.

  ‘I’ll kill you, you little bitch, you set me up …’

  And the bone-white tension of Johnny’s face as she told him, the way he had rushed out, her last glimpse of him on his motorbike driving away through the snow, much too fast when the roads were so icy. Motorbikes were dangerous enough at the best of times, but when black ice coated the roads it would be so easy to crash.

  She sat up in bed. That was it. An accident, he must have had an accident. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?

  A second later, she was running barefoot down the stairs in her nightdress. Her mother was in the kitchen; Annie could hear the kettle whistling. Her hand trembling, she looked up the local police station number and rang them, but they had no reports of any accident involving a motorbike in the past twenty-four hours.

  ‘He’s your lodger and he’s gone off without a word? Paid his rent, has he?’ said the police sergeant she spoke to, and when she hesitated, said drily, ‘Ah, run off without paying, then? Happens every day. Chalk it down to experience, miss.’

  She rang the local hospital next, but there had been no motorbike rider brought in after an accident. No Johnny Tyrone was a patient on any of the wards.

  She tried to think what other avenue she could explore, but her mind had gone blank. Her brief spurt of energy all gone, she went back to bed.

  Johnny might have gone to ground in his grandmother’s house, of course. Maybe he would be back once he had got over the shock of what she had told him? If he didn’t come tomorrow she would make her way there; it was a long, roundabout route on buses or Underground, and then a long walk along the little-used back road through the forest. She didn’t feel up to the journey today. She would g
o tomorrow.

  Next day, however, she was running a temperature so high that the doctor was afraid it might turn into pleurisy. Her mother shut the shop for the day to stay with her; Annie was almost hallucinating, flushed and breathing thickly, tossing and turning in the bed. It was a week before she recovered enough to get up and come downstairs in the afternoon.

  There had still been no sign of Johnny; she was beginning to think he was never coming back.

  That evening she and her mother had a visit from Derek Fenn, the TV actor-producer who had been at the first night of the school production of Hamlet, and who Roger Keats had claimed wanted her to appear in his children’s series.

  Derek Fenn was in his late thirties, a slight, distinguished-looking man with rather mournful dark eyes. She had asked around about him after meeting him at the first-night party for Hamlet. Everyone else seemed to know all about him. He had once been a Shakespearian star at Stratford, but his star had set when he started hitting the bottle, forgetting his lines and even falling over on stage.

  ‘Went to pieces, couldn’t cut it any more,’ Scott had told her. ‘He drifted into TV, an easier option for a drunk. He only has to remember a few words at a time and if he bangs into the furniture they sober him up with black coffee and start again. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.’

  ‘How sad,’ Annie had said, remembering his melancholy eyes.

  ‘Drunks aren’t sad, they’re pathetic,’ Scott had said scornfully. ‘He’s lucky – he’s still a big name. TV makes you more famous than Shakespeare.’

  Her mother was certainly impressed by him, but she wouldn’t leave Annie alone with the man; she was afraid of what Annie might tell him. Derek Fenn seemed to find that amusing; he was flattered, imagining that it was his reputation with women that was making Trudie Lang so edgy.

  ‘You know why I’m here?’ he smoothly asked Trudie, accepting the small glass of sherry she had offered him.

  Trudie smiled hopefully. ‘You tell me.’

  He gave her one of his practised smiles. ‘I saw Annie do Ophelia – a very moving experience, such a little, lost girl. I’ve never seen it played quite so young before, but it worked, I was very impressed. I think she would be perfect for a very interesting part in my new series.’