Hidden Depths (7 page)

Felicity had married too early. She’d met Peter at a party. She was an undergraduate, only six weeks into her degree. Her parents had tried to persuade her to apply to a university a bit further from home, but she’d been daunted enough at the prospect of a hall of residence. She needed the security of the vicarage only an hour away, an escape route. Her father was a priest, mild, relaxed about theology, but strict on kindness. In fact, she’d taken to university life, the friendships and the late nights and especially the men. She saw that she might be attractive to them. They quite liked her shyness, perhaps they even saw her demure demeanour as a challenge. But she wasn’t sure how she should respond to them. She wandered around, bewildered and a little lost. Alice in an academic wonderland.

So, she was at this party in a student house in Heaton. There were bare floorboards and Indian cotton pinned on the walls, unfamiliar music and the heavy smell of dope which registered without her knowing what it was. It was very cold, she remembered, despite all the people crowded into the room. They’d had the first severe frost of the autumn and there was no form of heating. Outside, the soggy fallen leaves were frozen in heaps on the pavement.

Whatever had Peter been doing there? It really wasn’t his thing at all and beneath his dignity anyway to fraternize with undergraduates. But he was there, dressed in corduroy trousers and a hand-knitted woollen jumper, completely anachronistic, as if he’d wandered out of a Kingsley Amis novel. He was drinking beer from a can and looking miserable. Although he’d been out of place in the student party, he had been a familiar figure to Felicity, a familiar type at least. There had been lonely men in the parish, attracted to the church because, surely, there they would not be rejected. The last curate had been terribly shy. Her mother had made fun of him behind his back, and the middle-aged spinsters in the village had taken to competing for his affection with lamb casseroles and spicy gingerbread.

But when she started talking to Peter, Felicity had discovered that he was nothing like the weedy young Christians she’d met at summer camp, or the amiable curate. He was abrupt and arrogant and quite sure of himself despite the bizarre clothes.

‘I’d arranged to meet someone,’ he said angrily. ‘But they’ve not turned up. A complete waste of time.’

Felicity wasn’t sure whether the person who’d failed to materialize was male or female.

‘I’ve papers to mark.’

Then she realized that he wasn’t a mature student. He hadn’t looked thirteen years her senior. She was immensely dazzled by his status. She had always been attracted to men in authority, liking the idea of someone else taking control, of educating and informing her. She had so little experience of men and was convinced she would do everything wrong. Better let someone who knew what they were about lead the way.

She asked haltingly about his work and he began to talk about it with such energy and fire that she was enthralled, though she didn’t understand a word. They moved into the hall where the music wasn’t so loud, and sat on the stairs. They couldn’t sit side by side because they had to leave room for the people stumbling up to the bathroom, so he sat above her and she took a place at his feet.

The conversation wasn’t all one way. He asked about her and listened when she described her home and her parents. ‘I’m an only child. I suppose I’ve been very sheltered.’

‘This must all come as rather a shock,’ he said. ‘Student life, I mean.’ She didn’t like to say that actually she was enjoying the noise, the chaos and the freedom of university. He seemed taken with the idea that she was vulnerable and it seemed rude to contradict him. He was even tolerant of her religious faith, as if it was appropriate for someone at her stage of experience. As if she were a six-year-old who had confided a belief in the tooth fairy. ‘Even I agree that not everything can be explained by science,’ he said and that was when he first touched her, stroking her hair as if he wanted to reassure her that she wasn’t making a fool of herself. Not really. And she was grateful for his understanding.

They left when the party was in full swing. He offered to walk her back to the hall of residence. They took the bus into town and then walked over the Town Moor. It was bitterly cold, everything white and silver, mist caught in the hollows and coming from their mouths. There was a swollen white moon. ‘It looks too heavy,’ she said. ‘As if it should crash to earth.’

She expected then a brief sermon on gravity and the planets, but he stopped and turned towards her, taking her face in his gloved hands. ‘You are delightful,’ he said. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you.’

Later she realized that was probably true. He had been to a boys’ school, then straight to university and all his energies had been taken up with his academic work. Perhaps he had dreamed of women, perhaps they had haunted him, diving into his consciousness once every six minutes. Certainly he must have had sexual encounters. But he hadn’t allowed himself to be distracted. Until now. When they walked on he put his arm around her shoulders.

Outside her hall he pulled her to him and kissed her, and he stroked her hair, not gently this time, but with a violent, rubbing motion which made her feel how frustrated he must be. This pressure on her hair and scalp was the only expression of desire he allowed himself. She felt the contained passion stinging and fizzing inside him like electricity.

‘Can we meet for lunch?’ he asked. ‘Tomorrow?’

When she agreed she felt as if
she
was in control. She was the one with the power.

As he walked off, a friend wandered up. ‘Who was that?’

‘Peter Calvert.’

The friend was impressed. ‘I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he supposed to be brilliant? Almost a genius?’

He took her to Tynemouth for lunch, driving her there in his car. She had expected they’d go somewhere in town, somewhere close to the university. The car and the hotel restaurant full of businessmen again set him apart from her student friends. It took very little to impress her. Afterwards they climbed the bank to the priory and looked down over the river to South Shields. They walked along the bank of the Tyne and he pointed out a Mediterranean gull. He’d been wearing binoculars. She had thought that was odd because his subject was botany. She hadn’t understood then the nature of his ruling passion.

‘Do you have to be back?’ he asked. ‘A lecture?’ He took her hand in his, drew on her palm with his finger. The sun was shining and today he had no need of gloves. ‘I don’t want to lead you astray.’

‘Don’t you?’

He smiled at her. ‘Well, perhaps. Come and have tea with me.’

His flat wasn’t far away, in North Shields, an attic overlooking Northumberland Park. Two elderly sisters lived in the rest of the house. One of them was in the small garden when they arrived, raking up leaves from the lawn. She waved in a friendly way, then went back to her work without taking undue interest in Felicity. The flat was very tidy and Felicity imagined that Peter had cleaned it specially. It was full of books. A large-scale Ordnance Survey map showing the area of his field study had been pinned to the wall and the way in was blocked by a telescope on a tripod. There was a living room with a cramped kitchen and a bathroom off and a door which she presumed must lead to the bedroom. The door into the bedroom seemed to hold a fascination for her and while Peter was making tea she found her eyes drawn to it. It was panelled and the grain of the wood showed through the white gloss paint. It had a round brass knob. She wondered if the bedroom was also tidy, if he had changed the sheets in expectation. She would have sneaked a look but he came in, carrying a tea tray. There were cups and saucers which didn’t match and slices of fruit loaf, buttered.

Later that afternoon they went into the bedroom and made love. Her first time and nothing to write home about, of course. There was a lot of fumbling with a Durex, which he seemed as uncertain about how to use as she was, and they must have got the whole thing seriously wrong, or there had been an accident, because she found out soon after that she was pregnant. It must have been that first time. Later they became more proficient. The sex got better too. Even that first afternoon, though, she had a glimpse, an inkling of something wonderful, and that was more than she had expected.

She took Peter to meet her parents soon after, before she realized she was pregnant. It was a damp, raw day and, although it was only lunchtime, as they drove through the trees they could see the lights on in the living room, and a fire. ‘It was always like this when I came home from school,’ she said. ‘Welcoming.’ He never talked much about his parents. They were in business, rather driven. He made her feel as if her attitude to her family was sentimental and unreal.

Her mother had made a thick vegetable soup because it was Felicity’s favourite and home-made bread. After lunch they took coffee and chocolate cake and sat by the fire. Peter had been very quiet at first. It was as if he felt out of place, much as she did in the university. He was feeling his way. Now, sitting by the fire, he seemed to relax. Felicity seemed unnaturally tired. She listened to the conversation as if she was half asleep. He was talking about his work and her father was asking questions – not out of politeness, Felicity could always tell when he was simply being polite – but because he was interested. That’s good, Felicity thought. They get on. Then she must have fallen asleep because she woke with a start when a log fell and a spark cracked and spat onto the hearth rug. Her mother smiled indulgently and made a comment about wild parties. Felicity felt the same exhaustion in the first stage of all her pregnancies.

Marriage was Peter’s idea. Her parents put no pressure on them. Indeed, they seemed unsure about the wisdom of such haste. ‘You have been together for such a short time.’ They would probably have supported her through an abortion if that had been her choice. Peter asked to speak to her parents alone. There was another trip to the vicarage and the three of them talked in the kitchen while she dozed once more over a book in the living room. She felt altogether that the matter was out of her hands. She lacked the energy to make a decision.

On the way back to Newcastle, she asked Peter what had been said. ‘I told them I wanted to marry you the moment I set eyes on you.’ She thought it was the most romantic thing she had ever heard and the wedding went ahead.

Felicity was so caught up in her memories that the sound of a door closing downstairs made her start with surprise. The bath water was tepid. She climbed out and wrapped a towel around her, went out onto the landing and shouted downstairs.

‘Peter! I’m up here.’

There was no reply. She looked over the banister but there was no sign of him. She walked down the stairs, still wound in her towel, leaving a trail of damp footprints. The house was empty. She told herself she must have imagined the noise of the closing door, but a sense that the house had been invaded remained with her for the rest of the day.

Acklington Prison was up the coast and almost on Vera’s way home. It hadn’t been easy to arrange to visit Davy Sharp this late in the afternoon. Mornings were the time for official visits – solicitors, probation, police – and prison routine was rigid. It had taken called-in favours and tantrums on the phone before they’d agreed. She parked and walked to the gate. There was a heat haze over the flat fields towards the sea. Everywhere was quiet. Still the sun was shining and she felt the sweat greasy on her forehead and her nose just in the time it took to get to the building. The gate officer greeted her by name, though she didn’t recognize him. He was friendly and chatted about the weather as she handed over her mobile phone and signed herself in.

‘If it doesn’t break soon, there’ll be trouble,’ he said. ‘The heat gets to them. It’s a nightmare in the workshops. Someone will kick off soon and we’ll be lucky if there’s not a riot.’

She waited in an interview room while they fetched Davy Sharp. All the heat of the day seemed trapped in the small square space and the sun still streamed through a high window. In winter, she knew, the prison was freezing, the wind blowing straight from Scandinavia. She struggled to focus. She’d talked to Davy Sharp before. He could be sullen and uncommunicative, or charming. She thought of him as an actor or a chameleon. He could play whatever part he needed. It was always hard to know how to respond to him. Important to recognize that he was cleverer than he made out. And all the time her thoughts came back to beer, straight from the fridge, the condensation running down the outside of the glass. She’d had the picture in her head since leaving Geoff Armstrong’s.

There was the sound of boots in the corridor outside, keys on a chain, and the door was opened. Davy wore a blue-and-white-striped shirt, blue jeans, trainers. He slid across the threshold without a sound. It had been the officer who’d made the noise. He stood, weighing the keys in his hand, then nodded in her direction, not really looking at her, not speaking. Vera could tell he was resentful about the disrupted routine, at being forced to unlock the prisoner, walk him here from the block, while all the other officers, his mates, were in the office, drinking tea, having a laugh. He moved outside, sat on an upright chair, stared into space. She shut the door, was aware of the smell of hot bodies, hoped it came from Davy and not from her. She took a packet of cigarettes from her bag, offered him one. He took it, lit it quickly, inhaled.

‘You’ll know why I’m here,’ she said. They all had TVs in their pads now, he’d have seen the news, even if word of Luke’s death hadn’t got back to him in other ways.