Life Worth Living (18 page)

‘I never meant to hurt you,’ he cried. ‘I don’t know how it happened. You must believe me, Georgie. I love you.’ It was the first time he had used those three magical words. Now the manipulative Colin repeated them over and over again.

Paradoxically, the fact that I had done nothing to trigger this abuse made it easier for me to accept it. Had I shared some responsibility, I would have been angrier than I was, if only because I would have been angry with myself for contributing to something that had resulted in such damage to my face. As it was, I did not feel angry, although the enormity of what had happened descended upon me with immediate and crushing weight. Unless plastic surgeons could repair the damage, I would never be called beautiful again. Who knows, I thought, I might even have to live out the rest of my life looking grotesque. This prospect made me feel physically sick, but I realised that my psychological survival depended upon me preparing myself for that eventuality. Preparation would help to shore up whatever resources I needed to maintain a positive attitude, for the one thing I could not afford was to have my spirit destroyed too. No woman who has enjoyed a reputation for beauty confronts the loss of her looks with equanimity, and I was no exception. My future options with men had suddenly been restricted in a major way, and that consideration alone made me more amenable to Colin’s blandishments than I might otherwise have been.

Colin was overcome with remorse. All the way to the hospital, he begged and pleaded for forgiveness.

‘It will never happen again. I don’t know what came over me,’ he kept repeating.

‘Your problem is you drink too much and take too many drugs,’ I said.

‘I swear I’ll cut down,’ he vowed, desperation oozing from every pore. ‘Please, please say you’ll stay with me. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.’

‘As long as you give me your word of honour,’ I said, ‘that you’ll stop drinking so much. And you must stop drugs altogether.’ To me, someone’s word of honour was carved in stone.

‘On my father’s grave,’ said Colin, who hero worshipped his father. Then he launched into a long spiel about how he could
end up in prison for assault if the police ever found out, and how they’d be sure to if the press got wind of it, which they would if I told anyone. All the papers had spies everywhere, he said, and someone in the hospital would be sure to betray us.

This being a world I knew nothing about, and recognising the logic of his argument, I agreed to cover up for him. In truth, it was almost a relief to do so, for there can be few fates more demeaning for a woman than to have her own husband ruin her looks for no reason at all.

If I expected Colin to behave with consideration thereafter, I was in for a surprise. As soon as we reached the hospital and it became apparent that the process of examination, X-rays and treatment would be time consuming, he made some excuse about the stress and strain of the hospital being too much for him to cope with and fled, doubtless to hit the bottle. I didn’t care. I was relieved to be rid of my persecutor cum-husband. Dr Murdoch, the first doctor to examine me, asked how the injuries had happened.

‘I fell down the stairs,’ I lied.

‘That’s what they all say,’ he said kindly, his eyes full of compassion. ‘For what it’s worth, injuries like yours can’t be sustained in a fall.’

‘Then you know.’

‘Yes. I know.’

As luck would have it, Colin had done his worst on a bank holiday and most of the consultants were away. Mr Warner, the chief plastic surgeon, was on the golf course; the dental surgeon, who needed to be in attendance to realign my jaw, was not around either. By now the shock had worn off and I was in agony. Thank God Michael Yates showed up quickly, and buzzed back and forth between various members of the hospital staff, encouraging them to interrupt everyone’s holiday and perform the reconstructive surgery sooner rather than later.

Once I was checked in, I telephoned my little sister Margaret at school. She immediately came to the hospital and, though she was as much of a support and comfort as she had always been, I refrained from telling her the truth. I didn’t want the rest of the family to find out.

One person who did know all about the cause of my injuries was Mary Michele Rutherfurd. She lived in the building adjoining ours, and the two flats had an interconnecting door which we often used. You couldn’t drop a pin in our cottage without Mary Michele hearing it in her flat.

At nine o’clock that evening, Mr Warner and his team reconstructed my face into what would become, once it had healed, as close an approximation of the original as any artist could have achieved. The episode was undoubtedly a turning point in the marriage, but it was one which I hoped at the time would set us on a more positive path. I was tempted to leave Colin, but I did not want to discard a husband who had
promised to alter his behaviour to search for another when my looks might never be restored. Moreover, I genuinely believed that it had been an isolated aberration that would never be repeated. But such joy as there had been had gone out of our marriage, and Colin’s problems would have to be solved before we stood a chance. It was a time of reflection as much as of recovery, and I used the peace and quiet of enforced bed rest to face the issues squarely.

I could no longer say in all truth that I either loved or was in love with my husband. I had been halfway there when we’d married, but he had failed to fulfil his spoken and unspoken promise. Worse than that, he was so woefully inadequate in enjoying any of the pleasures, much less living up to the duties, of matrimony that I was frankly perplexed as to why he had married me at all. It certainly wasn’t for sex, affection, or companionship, or any of the normal things men wanted. I still could not believe it had been for money, since I personally didn’t have any. I no longer wanted to stay with Colin, but at the same time, I was aware that I had made a vow to God when I had made my marriage vows. The Catholicism of my youth and of my family had taken deeper root than I could have imagined, and the fact that our marriage had not been solemnised by a priest did not affect, in my opinion, the validity of that vow. The contract was between God and me, and I would have to stay until away out which did not involve me in breaking my word presented itself.

Meanwhile, my husband was doing nothing positive towards improving our relationship. His idea of cutting down on his drinking was not to start until 11.30 a.m. Then he would lurch home from the pub and pull out all the stops to gain my sympathy. Day in, day out, he went on and on and on about how unhappy his life had been; his lack of faith in marriage; how his suffering at the incestuous hands of his male relation had blighted his life and caused him to turn to drink and drugs in an attempt to blot out the pain. How there were times when he was so consumed with hatred for his mother that he hated all women, and that I mustn’t take any manifestation of that sentiment personally.

It was clear that Colin was a total mess, and that something must have been responsible, but it never occurred to me that the true reason might have been something as simple as the fact that he was a spoiled and arrogant brat who had been overindulged and underdisciplined by both his parents, and that his taste for intoxication had blown whatever brains he had once had. After all, no one could have had the hundreds of LSD trips he claimed, or taken the mescalin which induced flashbacks and had prompted one of his incarcerations in the Priory, the fashionable drink-and-drugs ‘bin’ in Roehampton, not to mention the cocaine he snorted and the heroin he smoked, and expected to remain either happy or sensible.

In the weeks after my release from hospital, our relationship was undergoing a fundamental shift. Because I now accepted that he was incapable of fulfilling the role of husband, and because his attempts to gain my sympathy cast me in the role of nurturer, I was being manoeuvred into playing mother and nanny rather than wife and sexual partner. Indeed, sex was now as dead as the dodo he had within his trousers. I saw the
danger of a partnership based on these new dynamics, but I did not see what choice I had. It takes two to tango, and there was hardly any point in dancing sexily around the room on my own when my husband had passed out after a hard morning’s or afternoon’s, or evening’s drinking.

By asking Colin to reduce his drinking and give up his drug-taking, I was threatening the very things he held dearest. Within days of my injury, he came up with a scheme that would allow him to continue as before, keep me docile and satisfy his desire for more money in the bank. Moreover, he introduced it, as he would thereafter introduce every other such strategy, with a breath taking brazenness that blinded me from cottoning on to what he was up to until it was too late.

‘I didn’t tell you before, because I didn’t want to hurt you, but I’ve had something on my mind. The
Sunday Express
mentioned to me the other day that your ex-boyfriend Ian Hamilton has been phoning them up and telling them that you’re a man.’

This, of course, was a complete lie, but I swallowed it whole. I simply could not envisage my own husband making up such a contemptible story. What possible motive Ian could have for doing such a thing perplexed me until Colin reasoned, ‘He’s obviously still keen on you. It’s nothing but sour grapes. Since he can’t have you, he wants to destroy you.’

Colin now set about convincing me that I should ignore his little foibles, like drinking and drug-taking, because I had cause to be grateful to him. He was my protector, and I had a duty to teach Ian a lesson.

‘You must sue him for slander,’ he advised.

When I baulked at such a noxious step, he demanded I do it for him if not for myself.

‘Put yourself in my shoes,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to have everyone saying my wife’s a man? It’s enough to drive even a teetotaller to drink.’

Of course Colin has a right to be upset, I thought, bitterly hurt that someone with whom I thought I was on good terms could have been so malicious, but I didn’t want to sue.

‘I’d much rather sort this out behind the scenes,’ I said.

‘Sue him and he’ll have to settle,’ Colin insisted.

‘I can’t sue him. We have friends in common, I know his family and his knows mine. It would make things very awkward for everyone. What would they say to each other when they ran into each other at the racetrack or at parties?’

‘You put your friends and family before me, then wonder why this marriage isn’t working,’ Colin grumbled.

He demanded that we consulted Peter St John-Howe, a friend who was a solicitor. When Peter and his wife came round for
dinner to discuss the matter, I took him to one side and told him that I really did not want an open breach. Peter gamely came back with advice that pleased Colin but at the same time took my reluctance into account. We were to threaten to sue without actually doing so. Perhaps we could get a friend to arrange a meeting between Ian and ourselves, make the threat, and get Ian to agree to a settlement whereby he undertook not to repeat his allegation.

Kari Lai, through whom I had met Ian, set up the meeting at her Eaton Square flat. ‘Georgie, I did not phone up the
Sunday Express
or any other newspaper and tell them anything about you. I have never phoned up a newspaper in my life to give them a story about anyone,’ Ian stated firmly. ‘Why would I tell them that you’re a man when you were my girlfriend?’

‘That’s exactly what I want to know,’ I retorted bitterly.

‘I didn’t do it, Georgie. You must believe me. I would never do anything like that. Why on earth should I?’

‘Sour grapes,’ Colin volunteered. ‘You couldn’t keep her and I have her.’

‘This is unbelievable,’ Ian said plaintively. ‘Georgie, you know me and I know you. Can you say that you truly believe I’m capable of something like that?’

‘No, Ian, I really didn’t believe that you were. That’s what made it so shocking. And hurtful.’

‘It’s not true,’ he repeated. ‘I didn’t do it, Georgie, I didn’t.’

He certainly seemed to be telling the truth. I wondered whether British newspapers would tell a bare-faced lie just to ferret out a story.

‘This is pointless,’ Colin said. ‘The
Sunday Express
told me you did it. They have no reason to lie. You’re either going to pay us £15,000 in damages or we’re going to sue you for slander.’

I could not believe what I was hearing. St John-Howe had specifically told us not to discuss money, explaining, ‘In Britain, you can’t quantify damages for defamation. It’s not like America.’ When Colin pressed him, he said he thought we might get about £3,000 if the case went to Court.

‘You see, Colin,’ I’d said, ‘it’s hardly worth the bother financially, so we may as well settle it privately.’

Now here he was demanding five times that amount.

‘That’s blackmail,’ Ian said. ‘Withdraw your threat or I’ll go to the police.’

Although I was furious with Colin, I was not about to let Ian walk away believing that he was the injured party, just in case he really had made that call.

‘It’s not blackmail, Ian. If it were anything, it would have to be extortion. But Colin is not trying to extort money out of you. He feels you’ve damaged his reputation and he simply wants compensation for the damage you’ve caused. If you go to the police and report him for blackmail, you’ll look a real idiot.’

Thereafter the discussion degenerated into accusations and counter-accusations, and I kept out of it as much as possible. Only after they had nearly come to blows did Ian depart.

On the way home I was so angry I could barely contain myself.

‘How could you have done that?’ I demanded. ‘You put yourself in the wrong. Peter told you not to ask for money, just an apology and an undertaking not to repeat the slander. Was this whole thing about silencing someone who has been spreading lies about your wife, or was it nothing but a covert attempt to extort money out of someone who you know has some?’

No sooner were the words out of my mouth that I knew I had hit upon the truth, or at least a part of it.

‘He should pay for the lies he’s told about you,’ said Colin. ‘Don’t you care that he’s humiliated us before the whole world?’