Our Kind of Cruelty

by Araminta Hall

  ‘I enjoyed it,’ I said. ‘We both did.’

  Xander looked up, as if he hadn’t heard me correctly and his voice shook slightly when he next spoke. But I recognised the shake, it was one of desire; it was the sound of someone getting what they want. ‘But I thought Mrs Metcalf said you only went once? And you didn’t take part?’

  I kept my voice steady. ‘We went a few times. And we did take part.’

  Xander almost smiled. ‘You took part in orgies? You and Mrs Metcalf?’

  ‘Yes.’

  You cried out at this point, V; the tears gushed from your eyes, the eagle bouncing up and down with your heartbeat.

  ‘Can you tell the court what you did?’ Xander asked, almost licking his lips.

  Momentarily I lost my nerve. I wanted to ignore the greater good and stop the pain at that second. I stood up, my eyes locked on yours. ‘Forgive me, V,’ I shouted. ‘It’s for the best, I promise. I love you.’

  You opened your mouth but the only sounds were those of your sobs.

  Petra stood up. ‘This has to stop, my lord.’

  ‘Your defendant cannot address Mrs Metcalf,’ Judge Smithson said. ‘Unless he wants to be found in contempt of court.’

  Xander walked towards me and I sat back down, my whole body shaking. The whole room seemed to be shaking. But I drew strength from your continued distress, V, because I knew we were together in our pain; I knew I had more lies to tell about you, and that telling them was the only certain way to protect you, to keep you safe while I was locked away. ‘Mike, you need to tell the court what sort of a hold Mrs Metcalf had over you.’

  We hadn’t prepared that question and I felt it run into me like a punch. ‘We are very much in love,’ I said and my voice sounded hard and loud.

  Xander nodded, conciliatory. ‘Yes, I don’t doubt that. But would you have done anything for her?’

  ‘Absolutely. I still would.’

  ‘There’s nothing you wouldn’t do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The silence throbbed around us. ‘Even after all this? Even after all she’s said about you?’

  I nodded. ‘Verity will have her reasons. It will be OK.’

  I remembered something else last night, V, something which came to me late as I lay on my bunk turning everything over in my mind. I remembered when we went into that gift shop in Edinburgh, the year we went to the festival. How we were looking through a pile of quotes on wooden plaques and laughing and then you stopped. How you held one up and said it was the first quote you’d ever come across which actually meant something worth remembering. I read it over your shoulder that day: I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

  ‘We should remember that, Mikey,’ you said to me, ‘Shakespeare is always right.’ And I didn’t understand then why you thought that, but I do now, I absolutely do now.

  We must work and bend the truth. Others might see it differently, but, my darling, our kind of cruelty is love by any other name.

  Xander snapped shut the papers. ‘Did Mrs Metcalf ever ask you to hurt Mr Metcalf in any way?’

  I paused, but only briefly. And, V, I looked straight at you. Remember that. I took a breath deep into my stomach because we had reached the moment I have spent the last weeks debating: what constitutes the truth? Does it exist only in what we say to each other in flimsy puffs of air, often without real thought? Or is it, as I suspect, more than that? No, surely it is the foundation of all we are. It is in our bones, in our being. It begs to be interpreted in order to reach its true potential.

  ‘She asked me to help her,’ I said, my heart hammering in my chest and my blood singing in my ears.

  Xander stood still for a moment and it was good to see him wrong-footed. I felt him look straight at me but I didn’t return his stare because I was never going to take my eyes off you. ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘When I went to her house on the Monday. After we kissed we spent a lot of time talking about how we were going to handle the situation, like I’ve said.’ I stopped for a moment, remembering how the floor had felt underneath me, how we’d sat up, how we’d shivered with desire. ‘As you know she said that she wished things had worked out between us.’

  My God, V, you are the most beautiful being ever to have existed, that’s what I thought when I looked at you then. I could swim into you and lie still forever. But I knew Xander and all the rest of them would need more. I knew the story needed a more definite climax.

  ‘She told me she wanted to get out of the marriage but that she couldn’t do it alone. She asked for my help.’ The words pricked me as they left my body.

  ‘Mr Hayes, what did these words mean to you?’ Xander asked through my thoughts.

  ‘That she was scared because she hates confrontation. I’ve always saved her from bad situations and she knew I could help her with this one. Verity didn’t want Angus dead, just like I didn’t want him dead. But we had to be together. Do you understand that? It is simply impossible that we don’t end up together.’

  I was speaking only to you, V, and you never moved your gaze from mine for one second. You stopped crying. And I knew then that you finally understood what I had done.

  Xander and Petra spent ages summing up, all going over and over the same wrong thoughts in the same wrong ways. And then the judge could have had his lines written for him by Xander. He spent a lot of time summarising the legal issues: how to find me guilty of murder was the most serious verdict the jury could bring against me. How to do so they had to be absolutely certain of my intention to kill Angus at the moment I hit him. How they had to be sure I wasn’t acting in self-defence. He also reminded them about my upbringing and the mental strain I had been under at the time. He told them that the option to convict of manslaughter was a realistic expectation.

  He did little to hide his revulsion for you, V. He reminded the jury how you had lied, even under oath, about Angela and the Kitten Club, and how you find it hard to remove yourself from unwanted situations, especially ending relationships. He talked for a long time about, as he put it, your extreme and unusual sexual appetites, and how you clearly used your sexuality to exert control over me. I shut my eyes as he spoke to stop myself from screaming out in your defence, but these are the trolls we have to deal with. These are the maggots who would not be fit to feed on our corpses.

  In the end we only had to wait twenty-four hours before we were called back in. I was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter. And you, my love, were found guilty of accessory to manslaughter. I looked over to you when the verdicts were read out and I saw your knees buckle and how your warden had to steady you with her arm. Suzi cried out, but I’m not sure you heard. We had to stay standing to hear Judge Smithson talk about how tragic this case has been and how he believed that neither of us had meant for it to end in Angus’s death. He spoke about responsibility and the dangers involved in game-playing and using others.

  I remember completely clearly only one line that he said: ‘You, Mr Hayes, have fallen victim to two emotionally deficient women in your life and I only hope that when you leave prison you choose your future partners with more caution.’ It took me a while to realise he was talking about you, V, and my mother.

  He gave us both eight years, but Xander says we will appeal and it’s likely to be cut to about five. With good behaviour he reckons we should be out in three to four. It’s not that long.

  Terry let me watch the news on his TV when I got back from court. We sat together on his fetid bunk and watched Petra stalk down the steps of the courthouse. There were lots of reporters jostling around her and she allowed them to settle before she began to speak.

  ‘In my opinion, the wrong person has been on trial in this case,’ she said, her anger bristling off her like a force field. ‘Verity Metcalf appears to have been on trial for her sexuality throughout this sham of a trial, which at times has felt like we were back in seventeenth-century Salem. I did not expect to be standing
in a twenty-first-century courtroom and hearing words like “enchanted” and “beguiled” used about a clever, thoughtful woman. The lies and gossip which have enveloped this case have resulted not only in a dangerous man receiving a reduced sentence which will see him back on our streets in only a few short years, but with an innocent woman being convicted of a crime she did not commit.’

  She chose a camera and looked down the lens, out to us. ‘Anyone who tells you that we have achieved equality should think hard about what has happened here; should wonder at why none of this even appears unusual or shocking. We in the legal system should all feel ashamed of ourselves today, for justice has not been served.’

  I felt a coldness rest in my stomach, but Terry shoved me in the ribs. ‘Fucking women’s libbers,’ he said. ‘They’re all dykes, the lot of them. What they need is a good seeing-to by a real man.’ He laughed hollowly, the sound rattling round his chest. I didn’t reply, instead climbing up on to my bunk to find the fog had lifted for the night and I could see the stars through my tiny window.

  And so we are here, V. Both shut up in our boxes, waiting for the moment we can be together again. Xander forwards me lots of requests from writers and journalists and production companies, all of whom are eager to tell my side of the story, as they put it. He tries to persuade me to talk to them, saying it would be good for me, but really it’s just because he’s vain and would like to see himself mirrored by a handsome actor. So far I have refused all requests, but I am starting to wonder. News changes quickly and gossip is overtaken. We are bound together by this story, our shared truth, and maybe we need to prolong it. Maybe we need to cement it forever on screens and in books so that we are always bound together by words.

  Thank you for dropping the assault charges. I know of course that you never really meant it to go to court; it was simply another part of the Crave, another way to take us close to the edge before pulling back. And you were right to plead no contest to Angus’s family’s ridiculous civil action about the will. I recognised what they were when I saw them in court. But it doesn’t matter; we wouldn’t have ever touched a penny of his money anyway, would we, my love?

  V, I know you like instant gratification and I know you will be finding the thought of spending even three years without me very hard, which is why I write to you every day. Long letters all about our glorious future.

  I especially like to talk to you about our home. The garden will be spectacular this spring, but it will be perfect when we return. Anna told me that all gardens need three years to properly settle and become the spaces they are meant to be. I lie on my bunk and think of this and it is like we planned it. You will be amazed at the cleverness of the planting and I can see you there, sitting amongst the swaying flowers as I cook us supper on the barbeque. We can lie on the hot stones and look up at the clouds and you can teach me again to see pictures. We will make love in every room of the house and I will show you the numbers of the women in the cupboard in the kitchen, which I have decided we can’t paint over. We will tell each other their stories; we will give them their proper endings.

  We will get on aeroplanes, V, and lie on deserted beaches where the breeze kisses our skin. We will drink cocktails in strange hotel rooms where no one knows our names and swim in seas deeper than our imagination. We will hold each other tight every night, our bodies wrapping around one another, our heads resting against each other. We will sleep peacefully, our breaths in union, warm and deep. And I won’t wake in the night and want to uncoil your brain because I will know what is there. You will put your hand on my chest and feel my heartbeat and I will kiss every inch of your body. We, my darling, are creatures of perfection held in a state of waiting, our anticipation making our reunion all the better in the end.

  V, we have managed what all other lovers yearn but fail to do. We have eclipsed the world and exist only within our hearts. We have almost reached a state of perfection, a state in which our communication is all that matters. I shut my eyes and think about all the wonderful days and weeks and months and years of togetherness stretching on before us, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, till death do us part, forever and ever, amen.

  Oh God, V, you made me wait, but I have finally received a reply to all the letters I have written. It was a postcard on which you had written three words in capital letters: ‘YOU ARE NOT.’

  I turned the card over and on the front was a photograph of an eagle, soaring high in the sky over snow-capped mountains. I laid the card on my bunk, its four corners in perfect line with each other, and then sat cross-legged in front of it. I stayed very still like that for a long time, just savouring the moment.

  I shut my eyes because I had to process everything. I had to allow the eagle to soar into my brain and show me the way, just as you always intended. My darling, I know what others will think you mean with these words, but I also know you would never be crass and obvious. I love how you used our three-word code and the way you make me work, that nothing is straightforward with you. I know what you really mean. But I don’t need you to tell me that I am not guilty.

  The Crave I know is over. We don’t need it any more. We are beyond that now. Beyond anything outside of ourselves. But for old times’ sake, I crossed out your three words and replaced them with the ones which will always mean something just to us: ‘I CRAVE YOU.’ I readdressed it and put it into the prison mail system, so you should receive it tomorrow.

  You, V, are the only person who has ever known what I need to survive in this world. I know Elaine and Barry, even my mother, tried their best, but you are the only person who has ever seen deep inside me, who has touched my soul.

  We are humans, flailing and mistaken, but that doesn’t matter. Because we love, we can forgive. We know the truth. We know what love is: the kindest and the cruellest emotion.

  I am coming for you, V. I am coming.

  Afterword

  For me a true ‘psychological thriller’ is propelled not by plot but by psychology. And within this, the possibilities for suspense and twists and intrigue are of course endless – after all, there is nothing more complex than the human mind and human emotion. This is precisely why I love the novels of Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, Patricia Highsmith and Iris Murdoch, in which the thrills derive from the fascinating momentum of the characters’ internal lives. This realisation, more than anything, unlocked what I wanted to achieve with this book.

  I already knew I wanted to write about obsessive love.

  And it quickly became apparent that I wanted to occupy a male voice; I wanted to change the perspective away from all the brilliant damaged women I’d read in the last few years, and reveal a damaged man. I like flawed characters – in fact I only believe in flawed characters. I don’t believe in goodness or badness per se, I believe in rounded, whole humans, battered and bruised by circumstance and inheritance. So, my protagonist couldn’t be bad or good, he couldn’t possibly know everything or understand much, but at the same time I wanted him to believe in all that he did. I wanted someone who both repelled and attracted us, who made us uncomfortable and yet with whom we sympathised. It became obvious that I had to write the book in the first person and that I could not deviate from Mike’s viewpoint in any way.

  Then, by chance, I watched the Netflix documentary on Amanda Knox. Naturally I knew about the case and had been appalled by the screaming tabloid headlines and the incompetence of the police. But, until I watched that documentary, I hadn’t appreciated how truly terrifying that case had been for women. How no one actually cared about the fact that a young girl had been murdered or who had done it: how the only story which held any traction was that of Amanda and the fact that she liked sex. The trial, I realised, had not been about who killed Meredith, but about how sexualised Amanda Knox was and how she needed to be punished for this.

  I decided to write a book about a man obsessed with his idea of what he perceives to be the perfect woman. But more than obsessed, I wanted him to be properly in love
, with all the accompanying madness. As such, I knew this woman had to be someone with whom he shared a long history, not simply a fantasy figure. I gave them a sexual game they played, in which they were both complicit and which they both enjoyed. I wanted two dubious, but harmless characters. Two flawed humans enjoying their space in the world, oblivious almost as to what anyone else thought of them.

  I knew however that Mike needed to have reason behind his obsession. I remembered a documentary I heard on the radio a few years ago in which a psychologist said that if we have a very damaged relationship with our parents we can get stuck in our emotional development. Our parents are the only people who ever truly love us unconditionally and we need this in order to be able to go into adulthood unencumbered by this need, which gives us the ability to have healthy relationships. It’s an idea which has always stuck with me and makes complete sense and I knew Mike needed a past which made his ability to become obsessed realistic.

  I wondered as I finished the novel if I’d gone a bit far in this idea that women are always judged more harshly than men. If maybe I’d over-egged the idea that women still have to be perfect, that if we don’t conform we’re seen as mad or aggressive or different? This was in October 2016 and the American election was ratcheting up to its final crescendo. I watched, open-mouthed, for a month as a competent, intelligent, powerful woman was eroded by a bumbling, inarticulate, pantomime villain of a bully. He can’t possibly win, I kept telling myself, still believing we had come this far, we couldn’t spin the wheel all the way back. Now, terrifyingly, I’m not sure there is a ‘too far’.

  It is undeniable right now that we live in a world in which women and men are judged in completely different ways. Women must be perfect, men are allowed to get away with murder. Equality is still a far-off dream and all of our pasts have spun round to again slap us in the face. It seems like we can’t escape who we are both personally or as a collective. We keep taking small, faltering steps, but often we are pushed backwards. It is once again a frightening time to be a woman, to be different, to be other.