The Twisted Way (6 page)

‘That man is a piece of shit,’ she had overheard one say. She was beginning to believe it. ‘He is ruining her life,’ was another snippet of conversation that reached her ears.

After four long and tortuous years she had to admit that their relationship had deteriorated into a dismal sham. Janet continued with her efforts to make James happy but he exhibited little interest in her, his job or their home. Leisure time for them as a couple had become non-existent.

‘Holidays are too expensive,’ James grumbled, ‘we’re not made of money.’ Janet continued working in the garden and decorating the large rooms while James sulked or removed himself to a friend’s house to play cards during the school holidays. At least that is what he said he did. Jane, a fellow teacher at the school told her that she had seen him when she had been shopping in Everton. A woman had been clinging to his arm and gazing at him with adoration.

‘A redhead,’ Jane continued, ‘fat and coarse looking, certainly not as attractive as you! A right whore in fact.’

Janet dismissed this as tittle-tattle but felt uneasy and sick at heart.

‘It was probably a colleague,’ she had responded quickly, irritation creeping into her normally calm voice. There was no doubt in her mind that James was cheating on her, he had made it pretty clear that she was not his ideal woman, but it was not Jane’s business and a glance at her face indicated that she was sorry that she had mentioned it.

‘I expect you are right,’ Jane said with studied diffidence, her mind whirling and stumbling in an attempt to find another less prickly topic.

The autumn term was about to start in their fifth year of marriage and Janet expected that they would be returning to their teaching posts as usual. James announced suddenly and with complete lack of feeling or sensitivity that he was leaving her. He was going to travel the world. He had had as much as he could take of Enderly, Everton and those idiot teenagers.

‘You’ll be all right old girl,’ he stated flatly. ‘You can manage to pay the mortgage, it may be somewhat tight but you earn enough and if it becomes too much of a burden ... well, sell the house. It’s a rotten old barn anyway. I’ve always hated it.’

Arrangements for the deeds of Primrose House to be transferred to Janet had unbeknown to her been put in hand.

‘I’ve already signed the necessary papers,’ James told her in a dismissive tone. ‘Nothing you need to do about it, old fruit. I’ve withdrawn my savings from Everton Building Society and as we have separate bank accounts there’s not much to concern you.’

This was a surprise to Janet. Unbeknown to her he had already packed his bags ready for a journey.

‘My luggage has been stowed in my car boot for some days,’ he said. ‘I’m only taking the minimum, just three cases containing clothes and a few keepsakes. Anything else you are jolly well welcome to. If you haven’t enough money to buy another car you can always get the bus,’ he told her callously.

‘The meagre bus service permitting,’ Janet said softly under her breath, a sarcastic note creeping into her normally pleasant voice. Where did he think she was going to get the cash from to buy another car? The house mortgage was heavy and they had needed two salaries to cope with it. Most of the money they had paid off to date would be interest on the loan.

‘The village school is within walking distance even if you do have a load of books to carry,’ he said and turned cold belligerent blue eyes towards her, a look she would never forget as long as she lived. ‘A young woman like you with strong arms shouldn’t have any difficulty,’ he expanded in a condescending way. ‘I’ve no idea when I’ll return to Enderly, but I’ll be in contact as soon as it is convenient.’

Janet reeled with shock. She had realized for a long time that he might leave her but had pushed the idea to the back of her mind. In some ways she had to admit that she welcomed the news but reality was not at that moment palatable.

‘Soon as it is convenient’ … what on earth did that mean?

The colour drained from her face, her hands shook as her legs turned to jelly and she feared she would fall to the ground. She was a ridiculous weak fool. She had been duped, lost her little brother Tom, had no baby to love and had endured several years of misery with a womanising selfish man.

‘We shared that car,’ she said in a meek tone. ‘I paid for it! Half of it is mine.’ Her voice trailed into a quiet whisper.

‘My tax and insurance old girl,’ he responded with determined swiftness. ‘I am the registered owner. Too bad, old chum,’ he ended in a dismissive and firm voice. ‘You will have the benefit of the money I paid off the mortgage with my salary. Be grateful, woman!’

‘Why?’ she uttered, after a few moments of empty silence, her voice becoming strained and high pitched.

James shrugged and looked at her coolly, his bright blue eyes icy and expressionless. ‘I can’t really say old girl. You will be better off without me. I’m just a miserable old chap anyway and no good to you in my present frame of mind. You deserve better.’

This last comment at least rang true although Janet did not appreciate how apt it was at the time. She still had the house she loved, though how on earth she was going to pay the mortgage she did not know. A deep hole of misery appeared to open at her feet ready to swallow her up, though if she was honest with herself, she had been dissatisfied with her marriage and had longed to be free for a long time. She knew that there was only one person James loved and that was himself. The description ‘a self-centred egotistical bore’ fitted him perfectly. He was a selfish, shallow man. She had let her mother down and lost Tom in a vain effort to keep this rotten husband. What a blind creature she had been. It had been easier that way but she was determined that things would be different in future. If he thought he could crawl back when he was down on his luck he would have to think again. She glared at him, hate distorting her features for a moment as an unaccustomed hardness and resolve surfaced.

James turned abruptly away from her and heaved a noisy sigh of relief. The bloody woman did not show signs of hysteria, thank goodness. The parting was not going to be as difficult as he had anticipated. He opened the car door, lifted his lean body into the driving seat and slammed the door, which emitted a loud clang. He gripped the steering wheel, placed the key in the ignition and started the engine.

‘Dull as ditchwater this place,’ he shouted over his shoulder as he started to edge the car forward. ‘There are a few nice views, pretty in the usual crap Russetshire English way but that’s all. I long to savour the vibrant African heat, Australian outback and all the other interesting places I’ve read about during the past few years!’ An old map of Africa had been stowed in his bag and he was determined that North Africa would be his first destination. ‘I’ll come back if I’m broke and have nowhere else to go,’ he continued, ‘but I don’t know when. Don’t worry about me old girl.’

Janet shuddered and gritted her teeth. It was the first she had heard about his plans. What did he mean, don’t worry about him? That was something she realized with startling clarity that she would be glad not to do again. Had he really said those dreadful things to her? She had realized that he was restless but had not expected him to depart in such an abrupt manner.

‘Goodbye, good riddance dreary teacher wife,’ he shouted ‘I’m off!’

Janet stood deserted and amazed on the road outside Primrose House and watched as the small red car they had shared disappeared into the distance.

James made his way to Dover where he sold the car to a dealer. He heaved his luggage on to a ferry bound for France and without a backward glance at the white cliffs toasted his freedom with a strong cup of coffee he laced, exhibiting extravagance and greed, with three spoonfuls of fine white sugar.

John Lacey was the only son of a wealthy merchant and entrepreneur. His father spent thirty years building up a thriving 
business near Newbury before he died and John inherited, to 
his dismay, a considerable fortune when still only a young man. Unlike many of his contemporaries and the majority of the human race he was not interested in money; he would have exchanged it eagerly for affection and love, something he had little experience of during his childhood. When he was older he would appreciate being able to use his wealth to indulge his hobby of collecting antiques and other beautiful objects he loved, and buying gifts to please his second wife, but he was a simple man with simple needs and did not crave luxuries.

John was never able to get to know his mother well and was left with a vague memory of a quiet young woman with a thin peaky face and dark brown curly hair that lapped around her forehead and emphasised her pale grey eyes, who was always ill and suffered constant headaches. He often observed her reclining on her bed, pale and wan, whilst her long slender fingers untrammelled by household chores rested on luxurious silken bed covers. They were smooth, almost transparent and tipped with neat manicured nails, a chore untaken daily by her young maid Betsy who prattled on and on about the weather, her latest boyfriend or some other useless tittle-tattle which made no impact upon John or his mother.

‘Tiptoe boy, do not disturb your mother,’ or ‘no noisy toys, take care,’ were constant reminders that his mother was an invalid. Nobody ever explained to him what her illness was but he guessed that it must have been something serious. There were no motherly chats, walks in the park or birthday parties. He craved attention from this weak and listless woman but it was not forthcoming.

He would creep into her bedroom when he knew that nobody would be watching and became expert at tiptoeing around the room to look at the objects that his mother called her treasures. He was intrigued when he saw the faded old brown photographs depicting grandparents he had never seen and who were dressed in stuffy Victorian clothes. There was one of his mother as a small child nursing her favourite doll and one of himself when he was a baby of only few months. There were a number of elegant china ornaments, figurines and delicate hand-painted vases his mother had collected over the years which were carefully arranged in a small china cabinet. When he thought she was asleep he would open the cabinet doors and run his small, sometimes dirty, fingers over them. He would perhaps collect some himself one day. He liked them and tried to remember some of the names stamped underneath the ornaments although they were not all easy to read. Sometimes he would carefully remove one of the books about antiques and china she kept on a bookshelf by her bed and turn some of the pages so that he could admire the objects portrayed in them.

‘Mum,’ he sometimes whispered in his small childish voice in the hope of getting some response, even if it was only a pat on his head, a gesture of recognition, but he rarely did.

‘Don’t worry me, darling,’ or ‘Run along now, me dear, it is past your bedtime,’ or ‘Go and play now, Nanny will be looking for you,’ she would say in her soft Irish lilt, and that was all would remember about her voice.

Jack Lacey knew nothing about his Irish wife’s family and was not interested. His wife had been a disappointment to him. He had wanted someone who would entertain his business associates and provide him with several children to take over his business when he retired. In his view she had let him down. He was left with one quiet academic child who did not, in his opinion and to his regret, exhibit the promising entrepreneurial traits for which he had hoped.

Too often the oppressive smell of the sick room pervaded the young John’s nostrils and he had been glad to escape to where the air was fresh. Rough pine stairs led up to a nursery tucked away in the attic, a room devoid of comfortable carpets, where a small camp bed was tucked into one corner in readiness for his afternoon nap and a desk and stool in another in preparation for his studies. It was sparse but his father deemed it good enough. There was one compensation: a small wooden dappled grey rocking horse named Parker that he adored. The horse had soft painted black eyes that were friendly and welcoming and John spent many happy hours rocking himself on the horse. The rocking was soothing and the current nanny, more often than not, was grateful to discover that he was occupied. He could rock himself ‘silly’ as far as the nannies were concerned so long as he did not get under their feet.

Circumstances ensured that John developed into a quiet introverted child and although he was cared for by a variety of nannies over the years, some young, some old, not one of them was able to provide him with motherly love. He found it impossible to achieve a close and emotional relationship with any of them; his father’s choice of carers for his son was abysmal.

‘Behave yourself boy, look sharp,’ was the ultimate nanny’s favourite phrase. He did look sharp or had a quick slap with a large bony hand across his legs. Bedtime had been at the ridiculously early hour of six o’clock until the ‘martinet’, as he nicknamed her, left for a more lucrative post and his father considered he was too old at eleven years old for more nannies and could be sent to a boarding school about thirty miles away.

John had got into the habit of reading his favourite books under his blankets with the aid of a torch after the martinet had done her final round and disappeared to her sitting room to drink a large glass of sherry or other favourite tipple. Reading in poor light strained his eyesight and as a consequence he was forced to wear thick horn-rimmed glasses. However, he did discover that he did not like alcohol; he helped himself one day to a sip from all the bottles, whisky, vodka and sherry, that were stashed away by the often tipsy and bad-tempered nanny in a cupboard in her sitting room, resulting in violent sickness and stomach-ache, not easily forgotten. If the martinet guessed what had happened she did not mention the incident to his father and managed to show some sympathy with his plight. Shortly afterwards she moved to her new post.

John did not make any close friends at boarding school, he did not know how to, but at last he had some company of his own age and observed their behaviour from the sidelines. He was a loner. Most of the boys just ignored him; one or two tried to be friendly which he appreciated but he was not really concerned about his status. One or two played chess with him and discussed stamp collecting but there the interaction ended. The few that did make friendly overtures left him uneasy and unsure. He felt more comfortable without them.