The Gift of Shame

by Sophie Hope-Walker

  ‘Exactly what happened?’ asked Jeffrey.

  Wesley shifted uneasily in his seat and looked almost grateful to be interrupted by the girl that came to take their order. Uninterested in the food Helen settled for coffee while Wesley, his appetite belying his thin build, ordered several complicated sandwiches which seemed, to Helen, to take ages to detail.

  Finally turning back to the point Wesley went on. ‘I was working at the dive school only to make some money during the summer, you understand?’

  ‘Get to the point,’ Jeffrey urged.

  ‘Right! Well that day we had a rush of business. Too many people – too little equipment. The boss told me to check out some of the older stuff and see what could be used to meet the shortfall. I found a couple of usable items but we were still a couple of sets short and I told him there was no way we could stretch. He took over from me and pulled out this old air tank – a real museum piece – you know, steel and all, which they don’t make any more – today’s air tanks are aluminium. Anyway, they told me to issue it. I protested that there were signs of corrosion around the valve but he told me he’d used worse in the past and if I wanted to keep working there I’d better do as he asked.’ Wesley paused and glanced at Helen. ‘Sadly, your husband got the short straw.’

  Helen, feeling slightly sick, stayed silent as Jeffrey pressed for more detail. ‘They knowingly gave him a faulty air tank?’

  Wesley looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Well … yes, but …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Corrosion usually works from the inside out which makes it hard to see …’

  ‘So how did you know it was there?’

  ‘From the general state of the tank and the valve. It hadn’t been maintained in God knows how long. You could say I was making an educated guess.’

  ‘But if you could, they could, too. They should have known?’

  Wesley nodded. ‘They should never have issued that tank.’

  ‘So what do you think happened down there?’

  ‘I know what happened. Anybody with half an eye could see what happened.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  ‘The tank must have been knocked against something on the wreck they were diving on. The knock caused the tank valve to blow off …’ Wesley glanced awkwardly at Helen ‘… it crushed the back of his skull.’

  Helen felt as if a great weight was crushing her as she sat there and when Jeffrey reached out a hand to hers she held on to it as if to a lifeline.

  ‘So he died instantly?’

  Wesley nodded. ‘The story about him getting trapped and his air running out – they made that up to try and get off the hook. They thought a law suit for negligence would bankrupt them so they told me and everyone else to keep their mouths shut.’ Welsey’s huge eyes peered at Helen. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s been bothering me ever since. I’m glad to, finally, tell the truth.’

  Jeffrey was relentless. ‘And the truth is that nobody – not Helen – or anyone else on God’s earth could have made any difference by being there?’

  Wesley shook his head. ‘The only difference it would have made would have been that this lady – excuse me ma’am – would have seen her husband die.’

  ‘And you’ll sign an affidavit to that effect?’

  Wesley was still nodding agreement when Helen shot to her feet. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Please – just get me out of here!’

  Wesley, looking confused, got to his feet as Jeffrey put an arm round the distressed Helen and, telling Wesley he would be in touch the next day, led Helen from the café and into the waiting limousine.

  Sobbing uncontrollably Helen sat huddled in the capacious rear of the car and she heard Jeffrey directing the driver to the Bel Air Hotel.

  Gathering every last ounce of strength left in her Helen, unwilling to look directly at him, spoke. ‘Jeffrey … I want a separate room tonight.’

  Jeffrey renewed his comforting embrace. ‘Is that a good idea, darling? You really want to be alone?’

  ‘I won’t be alone,’ she told him in set, determined, tones. ‘There’s things I have to tell Kenneth.’

  Jeffrey nodded his understanding and sat back in his seat as they rode to the hotel in silence.

  Helen usually preferred the fast facility of the shower to the bath but, this night, felt in need of a long contemplative soak.

  Eyes closed, she consciously prepared herself for the night ahead. She had never subscribed to any formal religions – finding worthy values in them all, she lived in an ethical supermarket – taking this item from there and that from another place and vaguely imagining herself one day arriving at a spiritual check-out, fully provided for what may lie ahead.

  Her belief in the spiritual survival after death was based more on optimism than conviction – an attitude she thought totally rational since atheism – a total rejection of all gods and the hereafter – required a bravery she didn’t possess. The atheists were brave since, if they were proved wrong, they had much more to lose than the mistaken believer.

  What, then, did she hope for in the coming night’s communion?

  Her belief in the survival of the spirit after death being tenuous, her one firm conviction was in the spirituality of the living and that spiritual survival, as much during life as after death, if any, depended on the discovery of the true self, and it was that which she sought tonight.

  When she was at a pre-pubertal age and still prepared to believe ‘grown-ups’ were the font of all wisdom, she had been much affected by a remark made to her by Aunt May. Visits from Aunt May, considered by her mother to be of the ‘shameful’ side of the family, were rare but one day, walking a wintry Eastbourne promenade, Aunt May had uttered words that, these many years later, were still locked into her consciousness. Aunt May had said: ‘To get by in life you have to lie. Everybody does it. Tell them what’s good for them to know, tell them any damn thing you want but never, never lie to yourself. Do that and you’re lost!’

  Aunt May lay with her tonight in this Bel Air bathroom. She may not, this night, summon the shade of Kenneth, but was convinced she could, with application, find herself.

  Determined to confront herself in the best possible light Helen rose from the bath and, after drying herself, oiled her body, applied some lip-gloss and a touch of mascara, brushed out her hair and went naked into the darkened bedroom and spread herself, offering up every orifice, on the top covers of the bed.

  Unable to immediately face the agony of Kenneth’s death she, with a conscious sense of cowardice, began with Millie’s telephone call.

  ‘You’ll have to start going out sometime. Either that or join a religious order.’

  It had been the appalling prospect of facing a positive philosophical choice, as much as anything, that had led her to Millie’s pre-Christmas party and the meeting with Jeffrey.

  Jeffrey, she now saw, was a man carrying almost as much guilt as herself. Could it have been the mutual need of expiation that had established their first bonding?

  Both had unconsciously recognised the other’s need; Jeffrey had given her the physical pain with which she had sought to obliterate – or, as she now recognised, disguise – the spiritual catharsis of loss.

  That Kenneth had gone and she remained were facts beyond denial. Kenneth, she reasoned, had the certainty of death while she was left with the bewilderment of life. Kenneth had gone where she could not follow and all the grieving in the world would not change that so, in one sense, the choice was simple. Life or death.

  Since there was no life without the living of it, it would seem she had simply to accept the facts and go forward bravely. Which brought her to what might be the crux – who, or what, was she?

  Aunt May’s homily haunted her as she reviewed the people and events of the past weeks. To which of them had she shown her true self?

  First, foremost and central to everything, there was Jeffrey. She had no doubt in her mind that she had stood spiritually naked before him and that h
is judgement mattered the most to her since it was, among all living people, the most informed.

  At that time of their meeting she had been spiritually numb and ready to greet any feeling or stimulation as better than the emotional void into which Kenneth’s death had plunged her.

  Jeffrey had served her need instead of exploiting it.

  More, he had assiduously sought out Wesley Pike and shown her that her guilt was baseless. In doing that he risked the core of their relationship. So what had motivated him? He had already spoken of love but where lay the border between love and lust?

  Was it marked by shame?

  Where lay the boundary between what was done in lust and given in love? Were both indistinguishable to a dispassionate observer from Outer Space, marked on the one hand by the shame of lust and on the other by exaltation of love? If so, had she felt shame?

  Most certainly not before Jeffrey. With Qito? With Madame Victoria, with Carla …? This last gave her pause. The image of Carla excited her beyond reason. With Carla she had discovered that lust recognises no gender frontier. Everything she had done since meeting Jeffrey had been directed by him until her precipitous flight from Paris.

  The two pilots on the plane, the nervous novice stewardess, her joyous submission to Carla and the excitement of Tsai. The fisherman on the island. These had been lust-led ideas of her own but they did not shame her, so where now lay that elusive no man’s land between lust and love?

  Lust simply demanded gratification while love took its time and brought with it the onus of trust. Could Jeffrey trust her? Did those excursions from his trust make her unworthy of his love? If so, why then had he forgiven her?

  She was confused by an inextricable link between the image of the flaring, exciting Carla, exulting in the joy of sexual domination, and Jeffrey. Where was the connection?

  It was then that she drew a crystalline clear image of Jeffrey’s eyes as he had looked on Carla. At the time she had jealously considered that, in that moment at least, he had desired Carla before herself. Now, quite suddenly, the pattern was resolved and she knew exactly what Jeffrey, but more importantly, she, wanted of herself.

  It was as if a great weight had been lifted from her as she understood that while Jeffrey had relieved her of an oppressive guilt, his own remained.

  She now knew that, relieved of her own guilt, she had within her hands the power to grant him the gift of shame!

  The coming day could not now dawn too soon.

  20

  AT HELEN’S INSISTENCE she and Jeffrey met the following morning on the neutral ground of the hotel’s coffee shop.

  Jeffrey, smiling anxiously, rose to greet her as she made her deliberately delayed entrance. He waited warily as she consciously took her time over ordering her breakfast, but couldn’t contain himself the moment the waitress had left them. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Did you come to any conclusions?’

  ‘Several,’ she said lightly. ‘I had a good long talk with myself and feel confident that I now know what I want.’

  ‘Do your plans include me?’

  Helen felt her spirits soar. She knew precisely what agonies Jeffrey must have suffered in the night and found herself content to continue teasing him. ‘Possibly,’ she finally allowed.

  Jeffrey visibly flinched. ‘Just “possibly”?’

  ‘Perhaps “conditionally” would have been a better word.’

  Anxiously nodding he insisted, ‘So what do I have to do?’

  At that moment the waitress returned with piled plates of toast, scrambled eggs and overflowing glasses of the juices she had ordered. Helen, sitting back, considered the interruption perfectly timed and let Jeffrey watch with frustration as she deliberately fussed over the cream and sugar pots.

  Finally, she relented enough to allow herself to smile brightly into his apprehensive face. ‘The first thing you have to know is that I’ve changed.’

  ‘Changed …?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Difficult to define,’ she said, consciously enigmatic.

  ‘Try,’ he urged.

  ‘No. It’s impossible to put into words.’

  ‘Then how am I to find out?’

  ‘In time.’

  ‘How long a time? For Christ’s sake, Helen, the past night has been a purgatory for me. I did some thinking too. I love you. Also I want to marry you.’

  ‘Which “me”?’ she asked. ‘The compliant little sex-slave? If so I’m afraid you might be disappointed.’

  ‘I never thought of you like that,’ he protested. ‘I never treated you like that. I thought what I was doing was providing the shock treatment you needed.’

  Nodding, she allowed him his point. ‘And you did it remarkably well, but there are questions arising.’

  ‘Anything you want to know about me … anything.’

  ‘There is one point – the answer to which could be crucial.’ She looked directly into his eyes and made an interval of silence as she bit greedily into her buttered toast. Carefully dabbing the crumbs from her lips, she went on: ‘How did you come to know Madame Victoria?’

  Jeffrey’s expression went from astonishment to caution as he absorbed this most unexpected question. ‘I don’t understand …’ he murmured defensively.

  ‘My understanding of that estimable establishment was that it catered to men seeking a certain form of physical domination. I was merely curious as to how you came to be such a welcome guest there.’

  Watching him closely Helen was, for a moment, afraid Jeffrey was about to retreat into blustering denial and was pleased when her faith in his honesty was justified by seeing him relax, for the first time that morning, and smile.

  ‘You’ve found me out,’ he finally said.

  ‘Have I?’ she asked, pretending uncertainty. ‘In what way – exactly?’

  ‘I’ll answer you the same way you answered me: It’s difficult to put into words.’

  Sitting back into the banquette Helen allowed him to bathe in the brilliance of her smile. ‘Then it seems we are left with the necessity of practical demonstration.’

  ‘What does that mean – exactly?’

  ‘Do you remember the first time you took me to your place?’ Seeing Jeffrey warily silent, she went on. ‘We were lying under the sun lamps in the conservatory. You said you wanted to worship me?’ She waited until she had Jeffrey’s answering nod before adding, ‘Well, I now intend you shall have your chance.’

  After a moment of considered silence Jeffrey nodded. ‘There’s nothing in the world I want more than that chance.’

  ‘Good!’ she said breezily. ‘In that case I shall need the morning alone. I have some shopping to do. What do you say to us meeting back here in time for lunch?’

  ‘Can’t I come with you?’ he pleaded.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly.

  Nodding, Jeffrey rose with her. ‘Whatever it is you want,’ he said anxiously, ‘they can deliver to the hotel and charge it to my account.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she smiled, allowed him a cheek-pecking kiss and was turning away when he caught her.

  ‘You didn’t answer when I asked you to marry me.’

  ‘We’ve time to discuss that, surely,’ she smiled.

  ‘No we haven’t. I wanted us to get married today.’

  ‘Today? Is that possible?’

  ‘Not in California, but in Nevada we could. I was hoping we’d take a plane to Las Vegas. They leave every half hour.’

  ‘Then there’s no need to decide before lunch is there?’ she asked. ‘Meanwhile I have my shopping to do.’

  Jeffrey nodded before her pussy-cat smile. ‘You certainly seem to have your priorities straightened out.’

  ‘Along with much else – as you will shortly discover. Until lunch, darling …’ she called as she moved away from Jeffrey’s imploring – and undeniably tempting – gaze.

  Lunch was a meal taken in fraught silence. The boxes containing Helen’s various purchases a
rrived one after the other and Jeffrey was constantly interrupted by requests for his signature.

  One of the names of the stores to which Helen had given her custom caught his eye. ‘Leather Bound?’ he asked, looking up from the debit slip to her challenging eyes.

  Helen dismissed his concern with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘A whim of mine,’ she smiled.

  Jeffrey had signed and then picked at the meal in which neither was particularly interested. ‘So when am I to know what’s expected of me?’ he finally asked.

  ‘I’m surprised you haven’t already guessed,’ she answered in deliberately syrupy tones.

  ‘My imagination is running riot but I haven’t dared to come to any conclusion.’

  Deciding that the time had come to relent a little she reached across the table to take his hand and asked, ‘Do the words: “Love, honour and obey” have any meaning for you?’

  ‘They do,’ he answered throatily. ‘The question is: who is to obey whom?’

  ‘If you haven’t understood that …’ she said ‘… then you haven’t been listening.’

  It seemed Jeffrey was having difficulty with his throat as he asked: ‘When am I to be allowed to “understand”?’

  Rising from the table Helen motioned him to stay where he was. ‘I shall be in my room. One hour from now you may call me there.’ Smiling, she leant down and kissed his cheek. ‘Bye, darling,’ she called as she breezily turned away.

  Jeffrey stood naked in the very centre of Helen’s room and knew that he was in the only place in the entire world he wished to be.

  Helen’s instructions on the telephone had been crystal clear.

  ‘In fifteen minutes you will come to my room. The door will be ajar. Just inside the door you will find a small lobby where you may strip. Naked you will go forward into the room and wait for me. Be warned that I shall consider anything less than a manifestly full arousal a personal insult.’

  The latter part of her instruction had worried Jeffrey but, in the event, he awaited her knowing that he had never before known such an overwhelming excitement. His anticipation of what might be to come was heightened by the transformation Helen had wrought in the hotel room. The furnishings and fixtures were almost identical to those of his own room but Helen had managed to completely alter the ambience.