Breaking and Entering

by Wendy Perriam

  He drove to Juliet’s street once more, parking in a shadowy spot a safe distance from the flat. Woodleigh Chase was mercifully well-lit, Victorian-style lamps throwing obliging swathes of light across every door and pathway. No one seemed to be about, but he settled himself in the driving-seat, with the uncomfortable sensation that he was behaving like a teenager, spying on a couple like this – and fruitlessly, he was beginning to suspect. They might have gone to his place, which could be the other side of London – gone anywhere, for God’s sake: Surrey, Scotland, Wales.

  Wales! He’d actually forgotten its existence; nor had he spared a thought for Penny since that fleeting memory of her earrings in the drawer. Yet it was for her sake that he’d finished things with Juliet, so how could he be so devious as to sneak back to his mistress’s lair?

  Exasperated, he switched on the ignition and was about to pull away when he saw two figures turning the corner and strolling along the pavement towards the elaborate wrought-iron gates of Woodleigh Chase. One of them was instantly familiar, but she was accompanied by another woman – a younger, plumper girl with fairish hair. He stared in disbelief. What a complete and utter fool he was! All that jealous anguish and she’d merely been out with a girlfriend. Well, thank God they hadn’t spotted him. The sensible thing now would be to drive straight home, as he had originally intended, and leave Juliet alone.

  Except she wasn’t alone – not yet, anyhow. He craned his neck to watch, saw both women slip through the front entrance. For one ridiculous moment he wondered if they were going upstairs not for coffee or a nightcap, but for kisses and caresses like Penny and Corinna.

  He thumped his fist on his knee. He was getting worse and worse, becoming almost paranoid. Did he intend to stay here all night, checking every creak and whimper of that inscrutable blue door? Admittedly the alternative was little more appealing: to return to an empty house (and bed), and then wake to the prospect of an empty, endless Sunday.

  He switched on the radio and caught the last few minutes of a quiz show: how many square yards in an acre; why was Aethelred the Unready so called? He got both answers wrong: he was out by eight hundred as regarded the square yards, and thought Unready meant ‘indecisive’, instead of ‘lacking counsel’. Daniel the Indecisive – well, that was right, at any rate. He dithered for a further fifteen minutes, flicking along the wavelength from one station to another, without finding any programme to rival his compulsive interest in Juliet’s front door.

  Halfway through the Jasper Jones Request Show (which in normal circumstances he would have avoided like the plague) the young plumpish female re-emerged, this time on her own. She slammed the door behind her and stood buttoning up her jacket, then strode purposefully away, down the path and along the shadowy street. Was it just his imagination, or did she look a shade dishevelled, her hair more tousled than it had been earlier?

  He snapped off the radio and jumped out of the car, darting through the gates of Woodleigh Chase. If he rang Juliet’s bell now, she would assume it was her girlfriend, doubling back to fetch something she’d forgotten. He wouldn’t even have to give his name, just sidle in as she released the door.

  ‘If you’re lucky,’ he told himself, pressing the buzzer with a nervous but determined finger, and praying to the gods he didn’t believe in.

  One of them must exist. The door opened with no question and no fuss, and he sprinted gratefully upstairs; his panicked heartbeat resounding through the stairwell.

  He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray, staring at it with fury and disgust. The crumpled fag-end seemed to be snuggling up to Juliet’s red-stained one – the only kind of closeness they had achieved. He’d been so disconcerted to find her already undressed (and absolutely beside herself with fury – accusing him of spying on her, behaving like a lunatic), that he had snatched a cigarette almost in self-defence. He could hardly deny the charges when he’d condemned himself in almost identical terms. None the less, he’d shouted back, and things had spiralled out of control into a vitriolic row, which had left them both shaking – and both smoking.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. The strained, resentful silence was almost more disturbing than the slanging match. He felt so ashamed, so tired, he hid his head in his hands, as if to creep into oblivion. He could smell nicotine on his fingers, taste it in his mouth – a harsh repellent taste, which didn’t stop him craving a second cigarette. He reached for the packet, but all at once a different smell engulfed him: the reek of Sayers’s pipe, as the chaplain’s foul and pungent breath whiffled in his face. The effect was instantaneous: tears pricked at his eyelids, started sliding down his cheeks – the traumatic tears of a twelve-year-old. Horrified, he tried to blink them away, but they continued unabated, in full view of Juliet. She had never seen him cry – the very thought was mortifying. She would despise him even more now.

  He turned his back on her, but he couldn’t stop his shoulders shaking, nor control his violent sobs. He was cracking up, revealing himself as a spineless sissy to a woman he respected. He was aware of her arm creeping round his shoulders, her perfume in his nostrils, displacing the tobacco. She had come to sit beside him, and instead of angry words she was whispering soothing phrases, like a mother calming her hysterical child. He tried to speak and couldn’t. It was so extraordinary, so startling, to be close to her again, to feel her arms encircling him. She was wearing nothing but a housecoat, tied loosely at the waist, and her bare feet looked strangely vulnerable without their usual stylish footwear. It was as if by taking off her high-heeled shoes and formal navy skirt she had also removed a barrier between them. Admittedly, she’d been incensed when he’d first caught her dishabille, but she was now speaking to him more tenderly than he had ever imagined possible.

  ‘Daniel, darling, please don’t cry. Don’t you realize, you’ve just made everything all right? I mean, that was the whole problem – I thought I meant nothing to you. But now …’ She broke off, as if embarrassed herself; the pale satin of her housecoat spotted with his tears.

  He pummelled his eyes with his fists. God! She assumed he was crying over her, had even called him darling. Whatever could he say? It would be impossible to tell her about Sayers, and if he alluded vaguely to some recent shock he’d had, she’d only insist on knowing all the details. ‘Look, Juliet, I …’

  ‘It’s all right – you don’t have to explain. I was horrid – I admit it. I said some really vicious things. But you must understand, it upset me too, your appearing like a bolt from the blue, when I assumed I’d never see you again.’ She retied her sash, smoothed its tasselled ends, then took his hand in hers. ‘Forgive me, darling, for putting it so bluntly, but it’s the best thing which could have happened – your breaking down like this, I mean. I can see now that you value the relationship, and that our time apart has been a frightful strain for you. In fact, I noticed when you first came in how ill and tired you looked, but I put it down to that damn-fool camp.’ She forced a smile, squeezed his hand affectionately. ‘If you really want to know, you couldn’t have said sorry in a more effective way. When you apologized before, it sounded sort of brusque and insincere, and I suspected you’d come round here just to …’

  ‘Juliet, it’s not that.’ He couldn’t get the words out. Even now, the tears refused to stop. He felt utterly humiliated, totally confused; no longer even knew why he was crying.

  ‘I’d better get you a hankie.’ Juliet stood up, ran barefoot to the bedroom.

  He blundered after her, grabbed the proffered box of paper tissues and tossed it on the dressing-table without bothering to take one. He pressed himself against her, burying his wet face in her shoulder. He felt her tense and feared she’d pull away. Desperately, he clung to her, holding her so tightly he could feel every curve and contour of her body. He had never had an erection while he was crying – hadn’t even realized it was possible. But then never before had he experienced such a turmoil of emotions: explosive reckless anger, bewildered rutting shame. Nor had he ev
er kissed her quite so fiercely; biting her lips, searching out her tongue with his, as if determined to devour her. He clawed her sash undone and wrested off the housecoat, drawing in his breath as his eyes moved from her breasts to the dark blur of her thatch. Then, somehow, he was on his knees, kissing the coarse hair, mumbling his lips against it, flicking his tongue between her legs. He realized she was still tense – dry and unresponsive. Had his crying turned her off? Was she feeling only pity for him, and no desire at all? He tugged at his belt and clumsily unzipped his jeans while continuing to tongue her. He dared not break the contact, or try to undress fully, fearing he’d lose the urgency of the moment and his passionate resolve. Nothing mattered any longer except manoeuvring her to the bed.

  He all but dragged her, arranging her body as he wanted: on her knees, face down – then pinioning her beneath him and entering her more roughly than he’d meant. She was still dry and still reluctant, but he had to have her; had to thrust away this terrifying anger. He was building up a rhythm, heaving himself against the crouched and passive form, lunging wildly back and forth; the defenceless bed shuddering on its springs. She was trying to speak – protest perhaps, or stop him – but he put his hand across her mouth. He mustn’t hear her voice or see her face; must block out his surroundings: the pretty-pretty bedroom with its flower-sprigged walls and virginal white coverlet. He was somewhere else entirely – in a dingy study with a stained and faded carpet, heavy velour curtains shrouding all the windows; a deep male voice crooning in his ear.

  ‘You mustn’t be ashamed, my boy. These things are only natural.’

  He was ashamed – horrified by his own brute violence – but he suppressed his feelings by thrusting harder still, in time to Sayers’s bland disarming words. ‘These things are only natural.’ The phrase throbbed through his head, drowning any scruples, inciting him to even greater ferocity. It was only natural to avenge himself, to prove he wasn’t a poofter, or some cowering brat to be used as a receptacle, then tossed back in the shit. His hands were gripping the pale flesh; his rucked-up clothes uncomfortable; the soft purr of the gas fire goading and enraging him.

  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong at all, Daniel. We all need relief from time to time. God made us that way, didn’t He, so it’s perfectly all right.’

  Of course it was all right, and of course he needed relief – relief from days and days of fury and frustration; long nights deprived of sleep, or entangled in dark nightmare. The rage surged up inside him – exhilarating, horrible – until he was on the point of coming. He shut his eyes to concentrate; his breath hurting in his chest. The darkness turned to red beneath his eyelids: the red of Sayers’s blood. He wasn’t simply buggering him – he was murdering the bastard, and his crimson blood was flowing over the cold black leather sofa, seeping into the shabby balding carpet, oozing under the still-locked double doors, until the whole of Greystone Court had seen it, and he’d been expelled as a criminal.

  Yes, he thought, as he slumped appalled across the unresisting body. They’re right this time. No punishment could be severe enough for a rapist and a murderer.

  Chapter Thirty

  Daniel was in danger of rolling off the bed. He edged in a few inches, afraid of waking Juliet, who had only just subsided into sleep. He couldn’t endure another session of soul-searching. The last hour had been gruelling enough – her tears and his apologies, the storm of lies he’d been forced to produce to excuse his unspeakable behaviour, when there was no conceivable excuse. Yet Juliet had arrived at the conclusion that his violence was a sort of ardour, and though at first repelled by it, she was also somehow impressed; seeing him as a wild Byronic figure driven to excesses by the sheer strength of his passion for her.

  He stared into the darkness; the only glimmer of light stealing through a crack in the curtains from one of the mock-Victorian lamps outside. While she lauded him as Byron, he’d been damning himself as a bully and a thug – in fact, little better than Sayers. He had kept offering to go home (longing to escape, if only to sort out the confusion raging in his head), but she had insisted that he stay, claiming he was still too upset to be on his own, let alone to drive. Despite his wretched state, he hadn’t missed the irony of the situation: throughout their affair he would have given anything to stay the night with her, but now, when it was possible, he felt only dread and despair. The problem was that their whole relationship had become mired in misunderstanding, and although lying physically close, their bodies all but touching, he had never felt more distanced from her emotionally.

  It was also oppressively hot. He was wearing nothing but his skin, but that skin was damp and sweaty, and he couldn’t seem to get comfortable in the narrow too-soft bed. He tried to lie as still as possible, but Juliet herself was a surprisingly restless sleeper, turning over in her sleep and giving sudden violent shudders, which made him jump as well. He felt an overwhelming urge to have Penny there instead, but thoughts of Penny induced even fiercer guilt. Not only had he betrayed her yet again, he had proved himself a monster in the process. In fact, in whichever direction his mind strayed, some prosecutor would loom before him with accusations of baseness and neglect.

  His stomach rumbled vulgarly, reminding him that all he had eaten since yesterday’s breakfast was a packet of Maltesers and one bite of a hot dog. He tried ignoring his hunger, which seemed another dangerous appetite, best left unappeased. But a second, louder gurgle persuaded him to change his mind. A hot milky drink might help him to unwind, and if he made himself a sandwich, too, it would at least kill half an hour, bring dawn a little closer.

  He crept out of bed and tiptoed to the door, opening it as softly as he could. It was a relief to reach the kitchen and be able to stretch his limbs, which felt stiff and cramped from the strain of lying still. He switched on the light, its neon glare hurting his eyes after the murky gloom of the bedroom. He never felt at ease in Juliet’s flat. Its smugly decorous ambience seemed to hold him in disdain, especially now, when he was naked and unwashed. His clothes were in the bedroom, so he wrapped himself in a king-sized towel, borrowed from the bathroom. Some king, he reflected wryly as he caught sight of himself in the mirror, his shell-pink swaddlings topped by stubbly chin and unkempt hair. Clutching the slipping towel, he stole back to the kitchen to see what he could find to eat. Making a humble sandwich was clearly going to tax his ingenuity. There appeared to be no bread, not even Juliet’s usual diet brand, and certainly no butter. Fat was evidently enemy number one, since everything he lighted on was labelled low in fat: milk, yogurt, salad-dressing, even Ovaltine. Well, at least he could make a hot drink: no-fat milk with low-fat Ovaltine, and sweetened with sugarless sugar. There were no biscuits to accompany it, but perhaps Juliet wouldn’t begrudge him a bowl of Special K – the only permitted cereal (for slimmers, naturally). He ate some from the packet, dry, unwilling to make further inroads on the morning’s milk supply.

  The morning! He had totally forgotten that in a matter of a few short hours they would be sitting down to breakfast here – together, yet apart; the spectre of last night still overshadowing everything. How could they make conversation, or behave in any normal fashion, as if nothing untoward had happened? He put away the cereal, turned off the gas under the pan of barely warm milk. Only now was he beginning to realize that the memory of what he’d done could never be erased. He would be compelled to live with the knowledge that he – a rational, liberal, decent sort of man (or so he’d thought, naïvely) – could actually use force against a woman; treat her like a punchbag or a scapegoat, to work off his own anger.

  He slunk into the sitting-room and stood leaning against the bureau, staring at the neat array of stationery and file-cards. Almost without thinking, he reached for a cigarette. He lit it gratefully, trying to fix his attention only on the minutiae of smoking: his hand, his mouth, the ashtray, the all-absorbing business of inhaling and exhaling. Yet his mind refused to stop its anxious circling, especially when it dawned on him, with a sense of hopeless failure,
that he was back to where he’d been two months ago: a smoker, with a mistress. All his efforts to renounce the two transgressions had proved completely fruitless. In fact, he and Juliet were now bonded more inextricably than ever. His very violence had convinced her that this new intense relationship couldn’t possibly founder, as their previous one had done. How could he admit to her that what she regarded as his overwhelming passion was really vengeful fury, and directed against a long-dead pederast? That would be another sort of violence, and one she wouldn’t forgive.

  He drifted to the window and stood looking out at the well-tended lawns and flowerbeds. If only he had his own private gardener to hack away the undergrowth which choked him, cut down his rotten branches. Not only had the last two months proved sterile, but the new crises which had arisen had revealed a harrowing past.

  ‘But that’s your problem, Daniel, isn’t it? You can’t leave anything behind – not the past, not your pain and suffering as a child.’

  The healer’s voice was so distinct, he spun round from the window to confront him. No one there. Yet he had no more imagined the voice than the one in Leicester Square; each word unmistakable.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ he implored, not knowing where to direct his own voice – inside, outside, up or down. ‘All you’ve done is make things worse, so for God’s sake go away.’

  Chapter Thirty One

  Daniel squeezed himself into the one free patch of grass between the close-packed bodies lying on the bank. He glanced surreptitiously at his immediate neighbours: a lank-haired student strumming a guitar, and two lovers rubbing sun-tan oil into each other’s naked backs. The fragrant scent of the oil mingled agreeably with the smell of fruit from their picnic-basket – some exotic foreign fruit he didn’t recognize. He had the feeling once again of being on holiday abroad, this time at a beach resort. The beach itself would have to be imagined, since there was no sand, only grass, but the water and the swimmers, the sunbathers and lifeguard were all here before his eyes.