A Deep Deceit

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘These are wonderful,’ I said.

  I glanced at him, open admiration in my eyes.

  He blushed. He had the kind of complexion which colours easily. I found that endearing. I blushed easily too, and hated it, so I felt for him. He shuffled his feet nervously and put his hands back in his pockets. ‘You enjoy looking at drawings and paintings?’ he queried.

  I nodded.

  ‘Anything in particular?’

  It was my turn to hesitate. I wasn’t used to talking about art. My husband and I did not have those kinds of conversations. In fact, we didn’t have any kind of conversation at all. He told me what to do and I did it. Anything in order not to provoke those outbursts of rage I was so afraid of.

  ‘Oh, everything really . . .’ I began.

  He was smiling at me encouragingly but I was sure I must sound pathetic. I strove to explain. ‘I go to galleries when I can, but mostly I’ve only been able to look at books. I get them from the library and I’ve tried to gain a sense of how painting and sculpture has developed. Somebody in almost every period has made some kind of gigantic leap forward, haven’t they? Leonardo da Vinci broke every rule in the book during the Renaissance. But who could have dreamed that one day we would have the Impressionists and the Cubists? There’s so much that’s wonderful. And it’s all led to what modern painters are trying to do today, and it’s just so exciting . . .’

  I paused. I seemed to have progressed from stupefied silence to verbal diarrhoea. But he was looking at me as if he was fascinated by what I was saying.

  ‘You like abstracts then?’

  I nodded.

  ‘That’s what I try to do, well mostly. These are inclined to be my bread and butter.’ He patted the pocket containing his sketches. ‘It’s the use of colour and shape that intrigues me. You see, you’re right about every generation making a leap forward. You wouldn’t think any artist could still produce something new, something original. But we can. Well, some can. The best ones.’

  I noticed that he had stopped stammering.

  He spoke with quiet enthusiasm, his voice a slow drawl, gentle as his eyes. ‘Have you seen the Kandinsky exhibition at the Royal Academy?’ he asked suddenly.

  I shook my head. It was hard for me to get away for long enough to visit any central London galleries, and in any case I rarely had money of my own for fares and admission fees.

  ‘But you know him, you know Kandinsky?’ he persisted.

  ‘Oh yes. Wassily Kandinsky. He was so ahead of his time it’s difficult to believe that he’s been dead for over half a century. I think he was an absolute genius.’

  He nodded his agreement. ‘Of course he was and you must see the exhibition. You really must. No book can do justice to the scale and the drama of Kandinsky. Look, I’ll take you. I’d love to take you, I really would . . .’

  I was startled. ‘You don’t know anything about me,’ I blurted out suddenly. ‘I can’t go anywhere with you.’

  ‘N-no, of course not. I’m s-sorry.’ He backed off at once. And I noticed that the stammer was back.

  I could feel the tears pricking again. I looked away.

  ‘I kn-know that you need a friend,’ he said hesitantly.

  I suppose I wore my pain like a cloak in those days. His voice was even more quiet and gentle. I couldn’t stop myself shedding just a few more tears.

  He reached out and touched my cheek, very lightly. ‘Are you s-sure you couldn’t come, it wouldn’t take long, we c-could go on the Tube.’

  Hesitant he might have been, but he wasn’t giving up easily. I was later to learn that was very much part of the man. He didn’t give up – not on anything or anyone that he cared about. None the less, what he was suggesting, such a small thing, was quite impossible.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, look, perhaps we could m-meet here again and just talk. C-could you come tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He obviously realised that I was not free to do as I pleased. He did not, however, ask if I was married. Instead he just said, with that boyish grin: ‘O-or the next day?’

  ‘Well, perhaps,’ I heard myself reply, thinking that I must be quite mad. Didn’t I have enough troubles?

  ‘I’ll be here,’ he told me firmly, without even a hint of a stammer.

  He walked with me through the garden and up the path to the car park where I had left my bicycle chained to a post. My bike was about the only thing I owned that I valued. It made it possible for me to escape at least sometimes from the horrible reality of my life. About the nearest I ever got to any feeling of freedom was when I cycled through Richmond Park to the Isabella, or down by the river, or to any other of my special haunts.

  I sought out peace and tranquillity. And the few snatched hours I managed to steal in these places were precious to me.

  It was extraordinary to have met someone who I felt understood that, and so much else about me, even though we were still strangers. Carl said very little that first time, but walked close by my side. Silent. Calm. It felt good, somehow, from the beginning.

  He watched me as I unchained my bicycle – a bright red mountain bike, my last present from Gran. It had been state of the art when she had given it to me and I was still very proud of it. I kept it spotlessly clean and shiny.

  ‘I could give you a lift in my van,’ he said eventually. ‘The bike will fit in the back, I think.’

  I replied far too quickly. ‘No,’ I said at once, and my voice was much louder and sharper than I had intended.

  He held up both hands, palms towards me. ‘No, o-of course not. I’m s-sorry . . .’

  I battled to recover myself. The thought of arriving home loaded into a strange van sent me into a panic. It also made me remember how dangerous it would be for me even to consider seeing this man again.

  Swiftly I clambered aboard my bike and set off. ‘The day after tomorrow,’ I called over my shoulder. ‘I don’t think I can make it after all.’

  I could barely see his face. He was already in the distance and in any case I had to watch the road. He did not shout after me. But I was aware of him standing there, staring silently at my retreating back.

  I did not return to the Isabella two days later. I wanted to, but I did not dare. I didn’t visit the garden for almost three weeks – although almost every day I thought about my gentle American stranger.

  Eventually I did go back there, telling myself there was nothing unusual in this. After all, the garden was one of my special places and I was certainly not going there in the hope of meeting the stranger again.

  But as I wandered through the garden I was somehow led to the same tree trunk and I did vaguely wonder if he would be there. It was a silly thought and I knew it. I gave myself a telling off as I sat down on the old broken tree and threw a few pieces of stale bread at the ducks.

  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 s
aw 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.