by Diane Wood
“Open the door, Nat. It’s George,” replied a muffled voice from the other side. “I need to see you.”
Stunned, she opened the door.
George was dressed in a dinner suit and looked upset. “Can I come in?” he asked, staring into the apartment. “It’s important.”
“George, it’s after one o’clock and I’ve got company. Besides, how did you know where I lived?”
“Just let me in, Nat, please.”
Standing aside, she closed the door behind him. He used to do this after she’d moved to the old flat, before she went to university. Usually he was drunk or drugged and quite distressed. He’d climb into her bed and beg her to hold him. Then he’d cry himself to sleep. Next morning they wouldn’t speak of his unhappiness.
“What do you want?” she demanded, trying to ascertain if he was sober.
“I want you to help me, Nat,” he replied a little dreamily. “I want you to help me protect the kids from Mother. She wants us to take the kids on forged documents and go with her to California. I can’t stop her, Nat.”
She guessed heroin, but it was hard to tell with George.
At that moment, Alex appeared in the doorway, dressed in Nathalie’s robe. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said quietly, checking that Nat was okay with her visitor. “I thought I might head home, now that I’m up.”
“Sorry to disturb you,” George mumbled, taking in the rumpled look of the attractive brunette. “I’m George, Nathalie’s brother.”
He was tall and stunningly handsome with blond hair and blue eyes, and he looked nothing like Nat. Alex was overwhelmed by the feeling she’d met him before.
George was taken by surprise that Nathalie’s company was a woman and confused by a strong sense of recognition.
“Pleased to meet you,” Alex greeted, looking at him curiously.
Walking toward Alex, Nat said, “Make a drink, George, and I’ll be right back.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said when they returned to the bedroom. “I have no idea what he wants, but he’s upset and he wouldn’t come here lightly, so I need to find out.”
Assuring her it wasn’t a problem, Alex slipped back into her clothes, hunted for her handbag and jacket and, kissing Nathalie warmly, told her she’d ring the next day. The presence of George Duncan unnerved her. There was a strange intensity about him that she’d seen in some of her patients. Yet he appeared intelligent and personable. And then there was the part of his conversation that she’d overheard—something about their mother trying to take the children to California. It was odd.
“So what happened to Josh, the fiancé?” George sneered, when Alex left.
“What do you want?” she asked, ignoring his question, “and how do you know where I live?”
“Mother’s been having you followed. She had your address written down.”
“She has no right…no fucking right,” she spat. But she knew if Mother wanted something she got it, and if she wanted her address, she’d have it.
“Mother thinks I’m staying the night with a client I escorted to a charity party, but I saw to it that she went straight to sleep when we finished at her place. I had to see you because I just don’t know what to do.”
“It’s very simple, George,” she replied with a sigh. “You have to stop her.”
“She’s arranging forged documents, so the kids can go on my passport.”
“Then don’t allow it. She can’t do it unless you agree.”
His head was down, his eyes fixated on the brown liquid in his glass. But he said nothing.
“Only you can stop her,” she pointed out angrily. “They’re your children.”
“I can’t stand up to her, you know that,” he mumbled. “Besides, she’ll have me put in prison if I try to stop her.”
“And how will that help her? She can’t take the children to America if you’re in prison and anything you and I did, we did for her, so she’d be implicated.”
“Not the sex stuff, Nat,” he mumbled. “There’s nothing wrong with that. How often do we have to tell you?”
“Then what?” she asked impatiently.
“I can’t say,” he mumbled. “You’re a cop, for fuck’s sake.”
The anger could no longer be suppressed as she hurled her half-full glass past his head. “Yes, George, I’m a police officer and a lawyer, one who’s spent half her life being Mother’s whore, who’s pimped teenage kids for her—kids who had no idea what they were getting into. By doing nothing about it my whole life, I’ve condoned what she does and that makes me even more corrupt and filthy than her. So don’t worry about me ever taking a stand and acting like a responsible human being, because I don’t have the fucking guts. I’m Mother’s puppet, just like you.”
By now the tears were pouring down her face and she’d slumped into the chair opposite George, who was staring at her white-faced.
Eventually Nathalie said, “It doesn’t matter what you did, George. I don’t want to know. Both of us should be in prison for the things we’ve done, but we’re not, and Mother has nothing to gain by putting you there. If she wants those children so desperately, then you have to know that there’s only one reason.”
“She says they’re her grandchildren, and she wants them near.”
“But you don’t believe her!”
“I don’t know, Nat. Sometimes I think she just wants us around her…you know…like most mothers would. Then sometimes I get scared for them—like tonight.”
“Then you hit up, and by the time you get here it all goes away again? Is that how it is?”
“I know things, Nat, and sometimes I get scared that Mother will find out. I’ve got a book, a journal…” He stopped, staring into the distance.
It was obvious he’d popped something with his drink. He was getting vaguer by the minute and his last hit wouldn’t have that effect.
“What are you talking about? What journal? And what’s this got to do with the children?”
“The children?” he repeated, shaking his head. “No, it was Mother’s. Christine stole it…Christine Martin.”
“I know who Christine was,” she answered irritably. “But what is it and how did you get it?”
“If she thought I had it, or even that I’d seen it…I don’t know what she’d do,” he mumbled to himself. “Chris told her she was going to the police with it unless Mother paid her off and let her go. Then she died.”
Nat jumped up. “Are you saying Mother had something to do with that?”
“What?”
“Are you saying there’s a connection between Christine threatening Mother and her death?”
“I don’t know. But she made me search Chris’s stuff and the flat for the journal. I didn’t find it then, but I found it later, after Mother went overseas and sold the house. I was cleaning up and found a tear in the wallpaper behind a painting. Chris had hidden it in Mother’s own house. I was going to tell Mother, but then I read it.”
“What’s in it?”
“I want to tell you, but I can’t. I need it right now. If she doesn’t back off wanting the kids, I’ll threaten to hand it over to you or to the police. But I just wanted you to know that I will protect them. They’re my kids and they’ll never have to do what we did.”
He was rambling and incoherent and no amount of questioning elicited sensible answers. He couldn’t go home. No cab driver would take him. He couldn’t drive, and she wasn’t going near the house.
Staggering with him to the spare room she sat him on the bed, stripped off his jacket, tie and pants and rolled him under the quilt where he fell into a drug-induced sleep.
Even now at thirty-three, he looked innocent, and in repose she could still see the young boy who’d been her only comfort when Mother had begun to teach them about “love.” She’d loved and hated him, needed and resented him, and he’d been good to her and vicious to her. But he was her brother, and gently she wiped away a tear that rolled slowly down his cheek, touched his hair and kissed him
on the lips. Then climbing onto the bed, she curled into his back, holding him as a mother would her child.
* * *
“Something smells good,” he said, joining her in the kitchen the next morning. “I could eat a horse.”
There was never a “morning after” for George. No matter how much alcohol or drugs he consumed, he always woke refreshed and untouched. This morning, dressed in his pants and shirt and with his tousled hair and single earring he looked handsome and devilish with no telltale signs of the despairing, needy boy of last night.
Pouring coffee while he tucked into egg and bacon, she said, “What’s in Mother’s journal?”
Putting down his knife and fork slowly, he looked up.
“Terrible things,” he said with a shudder. “It’s an old journal, one she started when I was about five or six. It covers a couple of years after that and she wrote down everything.”
“What sort of things?” she asked curiously.
Shaking his head firmly, he started back into his breakfast.
“Where is it?”
“Hidden,” he mumbled with food in his mouth.
“And you plan to use this journal against Mother if she insists on trying to force you to take Jeremy and Samantha to America?”
“I don’t know,” he answered hesitantly. “Maybe. I just don’t know what she’d do if she thought I’d even seen the journal, let alone if she thought I had it.”
“What could she do? You’re a grown man. She can hardly beat you, and if she cuts you off, then maybe that’s for the best. You have to pull away sooner or later.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” he replied angrily. “You didn’t pull away from Mother—she let you leave. You were no good to her at the time, so she put you on a rein and let you wander.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit? Then why did you come running when she rang after returning from overseas? You knew what she’d want from you, but you still came back after years of being out of her clutches. She tugged the leash and you came to heel.”
“She’s still my mother and I wanted to see you again,” she answered defensively. “But I refused to participate.”
“Did you? Or did I cover for you—protect you like I’ve always tried to? I think she would have killed you when you were little except I kept getting in the way. I told her I could control you, so sometimes she’d leave you alone. But you don’t remember any of that, do you, Nathalie?”
It was an accusation.
“You don’t believe that I don’t remember?”
“Do I believe anyone would forget being punched and beaten and terrorized, over and over, or being locked in a closet for hours, sometimes days at a time? No I don’t!”
“Why? Why would I pretend I didn’t remember?”
“Because you’re just as cowardly as me,” he spat, resentfully. “Even apart from the physical beatings, I know she tortured you mentally—taking you places in the middle of the night and doing terrible things that would make you sick for weeks after. Then when you got well, you’d pretend you didn’t remember anything. She’d always ask what you remembered, and you’d always say, ‘Nothing, Mother.’ Then she’d be nice to you for a while and you’d continue to do whatever she demanded of you.”
“You bastard,” she shouted, launching herself onto him and knocking him backward—plates and cups falling on top of them.
He was nearly twice her size, but the ferocity of the attack took him by surprise and it was a moment or two before he could seize her wrists and hold her away, closing down her assault.
“Stop it, Nat, stop it,” he said gently, as she continued to struggle. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“She didn’t hate me. She didn’t.” She was gasping now, tears pouring down her face. “I must have kept on upsetting her, that’s all. But I don’t remember any of it. I don’t.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I believe you. Just calm down so that we can get off the floor.”
They moved about the room, cleaning up the mess without speaking. Things were changing for both of them—suddenly the past was infiltrating the present, not just as nightmares and guilt and unspoken memories, but in a way that made them both feel threatened. For the first time in her life Nathalie believed she had something worth protecting from her past—her relationship with Alex and the promise of some happiness. And George had his children. And neither of them knew how to deal with any of it.
“You have to be careful,” he said to her as he put on his shoes and socks and prepared to leave. “I don’t know why Mother had you followed or even if she still is, but the cards are telling her things and it’s got her mighty upset. I think it’s the reason she came back here. And she’s far more dangerous than you can ever know, Nat. Don’t take her lightly.”
“I’m no threat to her,” she insisted. “And I have no control over her delusions. But you have to think seriously about how you can protect Samantha and Jeremy, because she’s manipulative, and I fear for them if she doesn’t leave soon. I’ll help you in any way I can, but you have to tell me what you want me to do.”
After he left, Nathalie showered, tidied the house and phoned Alex at work.
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “That’s the first time George has ever been to this flat. I didn’t even know he knew where I lived, but apparently Mother did.”
“It’s not a problem, Nat,” she responded gently. “It’s good that you’re having the contact. It might make it easier for you to see the children.”
“I hope so,” she replied without believing it. “But I missed you and I bet you were pretty tired when you got to work.”
“I didn’t come in until ten thirty,” she admitted with a laugh. “I’m owed weeks of time in lieu, so I took a couple of hours and if you’re going to be home, I might just take another couple this afternoon.”
Alex arrived about three o’clock, carrying a bottle of wine and the movie I Can’t Think Straight. It was just what Nathalie needed to take her mind off George, the children and Mother. Yet she kept drifting back to what George had said about Mother’s abuse. She knew he wasn’t lying, yet when she tried to remember, she’d feel physically ill and be forced to stop.
Alex knew as soon as she arrived that something had happened last night to upset Nathalie. Her eyes were troubled and her thoughts elsewhere, but Alex didn’t ask questions, hoping instead that Nathalie would volunteer what was on her mind.
“Do you think it’s possible to forget something terrible that happened to you as a child?” Nat asked casually, as they sipped coffee after the DVD.
“Yes,” Alex replied. “It’s quite common. Why?”
Ignoring the question, she said, “But not just one thing. What if a person doesn’t remember anything before a certain age?”
“Well, it would depend on what age you’re talking about. Some people can remember being two years old, others don’t have any definite memories until they’re much older.”
Nathalie kept her head down, stirring her coffee, deep in thought.
Alex knew she was talking about herself and the only way she would continue would be if she set her own pace. Quietly she got up and replaced their coffees.
“What if the person had no memories before the age of six or seven? Would that be unusual? I mean…it would hardly be normal, would it?”
“It would be unusual. And it might indicate that the individual had experienced some sort of physical or mental trauma. Instead of blocking the specific incident, they block the whole time period.”
“You mean pretend it didn’t happen?” Nat continued to stare into her coffee.
“Not really,” Alex answered gently. “Pretending something didn’t happen is a conscious decision. Blocking a memory rarely is. It’s the mind closing down to protect itself and allow the individual to keep functioning. Sooner or later though, those memories have to come out and be dealt with or they can trigger serious personality disorders, sometimes even psychiatric i
llness.”
“How do they retrieve the memories?”
“Through psychotherapy and sometimes hypnosis—it can be a long process and it doesn’t always work. When it does, there is still the original trauma and its repercussion to be dealt with, and that’s the hardest part.”
“Is that your job at the prison?”
“Yes, part of it.”
Again Nathalie went quiet.
“Is this to do with your nightmares?” Alex asked eventually.
“Perhaps,” she mumbled, without looking up. “I know what many of my nightmares are about, but with others it feels like I should, but I don’t. And then George told me things about when we were little, and I don’t remember any of it.”
“Do you believe they happened?”
“Sort of…actually, I don’t know,” Nat finished with a forlorn shrug. She could feel Alex’s warm green eyes bathing her and she needed to talk—wanted to know if she was insane.
Alex remained silent.
“I know why I have some of the nightmares,” she continued, trying to put them into perspective. “But the events seem more terrible and frightening in the nightmares than I remember them being in reality. Then there are the nightmares that don’t relate to anything that I know about. They’re the worst. But none of them seem to relate to what is supposed to have happened to me before I was six or seven. It’s just a mind fuck that makes no sense.”
“There would be a connection,” Alex said reassuringly. “But your mind is only releasing fragments at a time, so it appears confusing and senseless.”
“So if I go to this guy you were talking about—this psychologist—what difference will it make? I already know where half the shit in the nightmares comes from and it doesn’t stop me having them. How can he help?”
“He might be able to help you find ways of dealing with either the cause of the nightmares or the nightmares themselves.”
“Then I suppose I don’t have a choice,” she said reluctantly. “They’re getting worse and now George has told me stuff that makes me think I’m losing my mind. If I can’t stop these nightmares, I know I’ll end up losing you.”
“Don’t do it for me, Nat,” Alex said firmly, “or for George. If you’re going to do this, then do it for yourself…so that you can deal with the issues and find some peace.”
