Читать книгу Beyond All Evil: Two monsters, two mothers, a love that will last forever - June Thomson - Страница 11

Chapter 4

Rings on Our Fingers

‘If they were ever to break away, it would have to be now – it would soon be too late.’

Ian Stephen

June: I was so desperate to be loved.

I slipped the ring onto my finger and held it up to the light. The blue sapphires gleamed. They were surrounded by a circle of glittering, ice-white diamonds that appeared to have been planted in black velvet. I was mesmerised. I had never seen anything so beautiful.

‘Is that the one you want, then?’ Rab said. His voice was weary.

The well-dressed young jeweller, with his beautifully manicured hands, was making Rab feel uncomfortable. Rab probably assumed the man was gay because of his appearance and the manner in which he had been fussing around me since we entered H. Samuel in Glasgow’s Argyle Arcade.

The Victorian arcade of jewellery shops is a mecca for courting couples. Rab had planted his big workman’s hands on the gleaming glass counter but he withdrew them quickly when the young man rested his own delicate fingers next to his. I could read Rab like a book. He was fed up. We had traipsed the length of the arcade, lingering at every brightly lit casement window as I searched for the ring. I had now found it.

‘It is lovely, isn’t it?’ the jeweller said. ‘And it fits perfectly.’

‘Is that the one you want, then?’ Rab repeated.

I wanted to savour the moment. Rab was behind me but I could feel the heat of his simmering irritation. He’d had enough.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Give her it, then,’ Rab said brusquely, pulling a wad of notes from his trouser pocket.

‘Do you want to keep it on your finger?’ the jeweller asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want to take it off.’

I could hear the child in my voice.

‘I’ll get you the box,’ the jeweller said, delving into a cabinet behind him and locating a navy-blue leather box decorated with gilt scroll.

Rab laid down £98 on the glass counter. The price of happiness. I looked at my ring and pledged no one would ever take it from me. For some reason, I remembered the stereo record player from my teens, the most special gift my father had ever given me. I now felt the same about the ring. Like that stereo, this was something just for me. I would never take it off. It was Valentine’s Day, 1981, and £98 was a lot of money. Rab had worked many 12-hour shifts to pay for it.

He must really love me to give me something so special, I thought.

I leaned towards Rab and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He recoiled, embarrassed by my public show of affection. The tip of my nose brushed his jaw line and I felt a twinge. The swelling on the bridge of my nose had gone down in the last few days, but vestiges of pain remained.

I know this is the moment when everyone asks the same question. Why, in the name of God, would any woman in her right mind pledge herself to a man who had struck her just two weeks earlier?

How can I explain?

The truth is that I can’t. I cannot offer any rational explanation. From where I stand today it was, of course, monstrously crazy. But who among us can look back over the course of our lives and not find episodes that provoke the question ‘What in the hell was I thinking?’ ?

I should have walked away when I had the chance. In fact, I should have fled. But I did not. Why? It may seem trite and too easy to blame our childhoods, to look for excuses in our past. But …

What we become is governed by who we were. When I sat on Rab’s bed, nursing my bruised face, I had been incapable of rational thought. Don’t ask me why, but the pain of Rab’s assault dissipated the moment he said, ‘Let’s get engaged!’

It would be many years before I recognised that the reason I hadn’t fled was because I was so desperate to belong, so in need of being loved and so desirous of being wanted. I didn’t flee. I stayed. I made the mistake so many abused women have made before me, and no doubt there are – and will continue to be – many more caught in the same trap.

However, on that day, in that shop, the engagement ring was so much more than a piece of fancy jewellery. It was a symbol of all of the things I craved. I had convinced myself that Rab hitting me was a sign of his love. His violent outburst was born of jealousy. He couldn’t be jealous if he didn’t love me, could he? And, of course, was it not my fault? I had provoked him by waving at the men. But that was obviously all a load of nonsense. His jealousy was a manifestation of controlling behaviour, just as tearing up my cat-suit had been. How could waving innocently to your workmates deserve a punch in the face? So, to everyone who has ever said to me, ‘You should have left him,’ I say to them, ‘You’re absolutely right.’ But I didn’t and I would pay a dreadful price.

Wisdom in hindsight is, after all, our only exact science.

Giselle: And I was blinded by love.

The butterfly had spread her wings but she hadn’t flown far, at least not physically.

Within a few months I had moved into a new flat in a multi-storey block close to the one in which my parents lived. The blocks were crammed with families and had a population equivalent to a small town. Glasgow was dotted with such ‘multis’, a legacy of the 1950s and 1960s when the city fathers tore down the tenements and replaced them with what became known as ‘high living’. It was only a euphemism.

I looked around my shiny new flat, with its cream walls and the peach curtains that I had made by hand. I was so pleased with my new independence. I had at last grown up. I was a woman rather than a girl, the perennial baby of the family.

So much had changed in three months since that evening in Kelvingrove Park when Ash asked me to marry him. In the interim I had stood by my decision that we should wait a bit longer. I loved Ash, and I wanted to marry him, but there was just ‘something’ that held me back. He was still loving and attentive, and he continued to shower me with gifts, flowers and tokens of affection. I told him not to, and yet he persisted. He made me happy but – to use that famous expression – there was a third person in our relationship: his mother.

All of Ash’s grand schemes for our idyllic future behind an imaginary white picket fence seemed to involve ‘Mum’. Mum would live with us; Mum would look after the babies; Mum would keep the house and cook; Mum would choose my clothes. Ash’s mother was a lovely, welcoming woman, but I had a mother of my own and no one could take her place. I wanted Ash and me to be a couple, and not have his mother standing between us.

Since the evening in the park, Ash had asked me on an almost daily basis to marry him. His proposals were accompanied by elaborate word pictures of large homes, big cars, success, wealth and this mysterious term ‘respect’. More than anything, he valued respect. It was a word he often used and I never quite understood what he meant by it. Men who sweep the streets inspire respect. Respect is not defined by wealth or status, but Ash seemed to believe that it was.

Even in the rosy glow of early love, I recognised that Ash’s dreams were divorced from reality. How could we achieve all of the things he wanted? More importantly, why wasn’t what he already had enough for him? He had a good and secure job, and I had provided a place for us to live.

When I moved out of my parents’ home it had really pleased Ash. It was an obvious sign that I was trying to create what could become a world of our own. In reality, however, it seemed to have remained a world of my own. I got the flat, believing it was inevitable that Ash would move in.

He didn’t. I saw him every day, but every night there would be the phone call to his mobile. It was always his mother. They would speak for several moments and then he would find excuses to leave. Strange as it may seem, this was a pattern that would be maintained throughout our relationship, even after we married and had those beautiful babies he so wanted.

In the course of our entire time together, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of nights we spent in the same house. Looking back, I can’t fathom why I put up with it, but somehow we just fell into that way of doing things. Before we were married there always seemed to be a reasonable explanation for his nightly departure. His mother was unwell; he had forgotten to tell her he would not be home; she had made his dinner and he did not want to disappoint her.

I should have put my foot down and forced him to make a choice, but I was reluctant to do so. I still lacked confidence and perhaps feared that, if I demanded he choose between us, I would lose him. I did not worry that he was being unfaithful to me as I knew that the only ‘other woman’ in Ash’s life was his mother.

I also appreciated what it meant to feel a duty of care to your mother. I had looked after my own parents for so long and I was, in many ways, still doing so. Ash was clearly devoted to his mother and I was reluctant to make demands because a part of me believed it would be churlish to come between a parent and child. I looked around my little nest, trying to count my blessings, in the hope that everything would resolve itself in time.

The sound of a key in the lock brought me to my feet. Ash had arrived. He breezed in through the open door of the living room, one hand behind his back.

‘What are you looking so pleased about?’ I asked.

He was smiling broadly. By now I could recognise the expression that heralded yet another gift.

‘Ash, you don’t have to keep getting me stuff. I don’t need presents, I just need you.’

He beamed.

‘But this is special,’ he said, revealing his latest offering with a flourish. ‘Open it,’ he said, presenting me with a tiny velvet box.

‘Ash!’ I said.

‘Open it!’ he insisted, and I identified the same tone in his voice that I had heard on the evening when he gave me the Happy perfume.

I took the box and opened it. A love-heart ring, set with a deep-red ruby surrounded by diamonds, sat in a cushion of white satin.

I slipped the ring onto my finger and held my hand up to the light …