A Well Kept Secret (29 page)

One particular piece of familiarity that should have rung loud warning bells in my mind was that he would use any excuse to tap me with his hand on my backside. It was not vicious in any way, and usually accompanied by a joke or a smile. There never seemed to be any real meaning attached to the gesture, and although at first I found it a bit embarrassing, I came to accept it as just one of those things that were part of his character. Only a matter of a few weeks before the wedding, I had what ought to have been the clearest warning of all. After we had been to a party, we were laughing and joking as we often did, and the mask completely slipped for the first time. We had both had a bit too much to drink, and maybe that was what lay at the root of things. Quite without warning he suddenly threw me over his knee and started slapping my backside, only this time it was much done harder, and it really hurt. It was no longer funny, and even though I begged him to stop he was like a man in a frenzy. Only when I finally managed to get an arm round and claw at his face did he suddenly release me.

He couldn’t apologise enough, claiming that he didn’t know what had come over him because of the amount he had drunk, that he would never willingly hurt me, that he was deeply ashamed that he had upset me, and begging me to forgive him, which of course I stupidly did. If only I had read the signs correctly and backed out while I still had the chance matters might have turned out differently, but of course I didn’t. In due course we were married, and in the run-up to the wedding he was as always Mr Charm himself. I had quite forgotten the slapping incident by the time the big day arrived. I was living somewhere out on cloud nine, culminating in the wedding itself, which was everything a girl could dream of!
 
I thought fleetingly that it was odd that there were no members of his family present; he claimed that they were all dead and that he was as alone in the world as I was. Fool that I am, I swallowed every single lie he told me. As it turned out, I didn’t know the real man behind the charm at all.

The happiest day of my life continued its blissful passage until we finally reached the hotel in Jersey where we were to spend our honeymoon. I should perhaps stress once again that up to that point there had never been total intimacy between us. As I said, I always took it as a mark of his respect for me and my beliefs, because it had never once struck me as unusual that he hadn’t tried to get me into bed. I admit that I was secretly glad about this because the experiences I had suffered in the children’s home had made me only too well aware of the lusts that drive some men, and as much as I loved him I actively dreaded the physical side of marriage. I knew that it was something that I would have to face sometime, and I fooled myself into believing that with a loving, caring tender man, it would be blissful, and completely different from the agony of the rapes I had suffered.
 
I promised myself that even if it wasn’t all that I had hoped for, I would simulate ecstasy for his benefit!

We entered the hotel bedroom quite late, but once the door was closed everything changed. I imagined that I was going to undress and join him in the marital bed, I was even prepared for him to take part in this; by this time I was actually looking forward to the experience, being so completely besotted with the man.”

She paused and looked at him blankly.

“Are you
sure
you really want to hear all of this?” she asked. “I can stop now if you want?”

She didn’t wait for him to reply before looking quickly away, continuing in a taut voice; “Sorry; guess I’m still trying to ‘chicken out’; having got this far, I have to go on. Anyway, the fairytale world of love and tenderness vanished once we were alone in that room. No sooner was the door closed than he grabbed me without warning, threw me over his knee and proceeded to beat the hell out of me with the flat of his hand. It was nothing like the playful taps he had once used when we were courting; it was hard, vicious, and using all of his strength whilst he held me in such a position that I was virtually powerless to do anything about it. In vain did I cry out with shock and pain, he just struck me harder and harder, and I was helpless in his grip, unable to claw at him as I had done the last time such a thing had happened. Suddenly, when I thought the beating would go on forever he flung me on my back across the bed, and like an animal he tore at my clothes so that he could possess me. It was far, far worse than the rapes I had experienced as a child; He was like an animal, and I thought he had gone mad and that I was going to die.”

She stopped again, and Martin, who was shocked and sickened by her tale, could see the glistening of unshed tears in the corner of her eyes.

“It was the pattern of things to come,” she resumed at last, keeping her eyes averted now. “Having exhausted himself he fell asleep still lying on top of me. I lay there in agony, not daring to move in case I woke him and he started again. Completely shocked, my brain paralysed so that I couldn’t even think of what to do and scarcely believing what had happened, I was as one totally bereft of independent thought or action. All my dreams had been shattered, and only as the shock eased did the awful truth dawn finally on me; I had married a depraved monster! I must have stayed like that for an hour, but it seemed forever, and then he rolled away from me, leaving me in agony, yet too scared to do anything. I spent the whole night frozen with the fear that he would awaken, and the violence would start all over again.

When he finally stirred into wakefulness in the morning he was like a stranger, there was no more simulated love or tenderness visible now. I was his property to do with as he pleased. He held me by the throat and told me if I breathed a single word to a soul about what had happened he would kill me. I could see in his cold hard eyes that he meant it, and from that day I became almost a slave. When other people were around, he was his original charming self, but when we were alone he either ignored me completely, or without warning he once again became a sadistic, inhuman caricature of a man, and I lived in constant fear of him. I lived in dread of the beatings, always striving not to provoke him, and always failing.

When the ‘honeymoon’, if one could call it that, was over, we returned to a house he had bought on the outskirts of Portsmouth. I desperately wanted to leave him but he was well aware of that, and he took great delight in allowing me to think that I could get away, and each time that I tried he found me and dragged me back, and the beatings grew ever worse. In some ways he was clever, always being careful that the beatings never marking me on the face or limbs. Sometimes it was slapping with his hand across the buttocks until he was too exhausted to continue, and then as often as not I would be raped. Other times he would tie me to the bed frame and beat me across the buttocks and back with a bamboo cane, and this was always administered for what he called my sins! He beat the resistance out of me, so that I could scarcely think about anything other than how to endure the torture of it all. I became too frightened to complain to anyone in case they failed to believe me, and that he would then beat me to death. I felt that I was caught up in a nightmare that would never end. I kept telling myself that I had married for better or for worse, and that given time he might mellow. I gradually lost everything; self respect, independence, even humanity.”

She suddenly stopped talking as she once again lived in her mind the days of horror she had endured. Presently she shook her head, and in a controlled voice she started speaking again.

“As I soon learned,” she resumed, he voice taut with the effort of continuing with what she had determined to do, “people like Paul Collins don’t mellow. I soon discovered that he had a coterie of like-minded friends who shared a common interest in sadistically beating women, and whenever he was away he would arrange for one or more of his cronies to watch me, just as he in turn would watch for others. I came to dread the so-called ‘parties’ he would hold for these friends, for invariably they would end in violence culminating in rape for me once they had left. As I quickly realised, he couldn’t have sexual relations with a woman unless he had first been fully roused by beating her.

Then one night I knew that I had reached the absolute limit of my endurance. I had been serving drinks to his ‘guests’ when he suddenly caught hold of me. I thought I knew what was coming, and yet I didn’t know the all of it. I was thrown over his knee, and once again he proceeded to beat me, and this time in full view of his friends. They roared and cheered the spectacle, and then quite suddenly he threw up the skirt I was wearing and tore off my underwear. I thought I was about to be raped in front of everyone, but he just wanted to beat me on my naked buttocks in front of all his friends.”

She shuddered as she spoke, and still kept her eyes averted from her now thoroughly shocked audience.

“You might as well hear it all,” she said tautly after a few moments, “Worse was to follow. In spite of my struggles, which only served to excite them more, I was passed round like a doll to his friends. While some held me, others took up the beating. I don’t remember the end of it, because I eventually lost consciousness. I half came to my senses later as I was lying on the bed with Paul raping me. As he vented every indignity he could think of on me I knew that if I couldn’t get away I would sooner or later die at his hands.”

She paused, this time essaying a quick glance at Martin, who was listening, yet hardly able to credit the tale of sheer sadistic brutality she was relating.

“Over the next few days,” she resumed hurriedly before he could say anything. “I planned how I would make my escape, yet each time I thought there was a chance one of his friends would be there waiting. I seriously began to wonder if it would not be better to end it all rather than face any more.”

She stopped again, and stood up abruptly and walked jerkily round the room. She didn’t look at Martin as he sat there feeling helpless in the face of the hell she was reliving. He knew that such animals existed; yet to actually come across someone who had suffered as a consequence was something he never dreamed would happen to him. He knew that it was completely out of step with modern political thinking but in his view such perverts should be thrashed within an inch of their lives before being castrated and thrust into a pillory!

“Then one day I finally saw a risky way out of my awful predicament,” she said at last, collapsing once again into the chair while still keeping her eyes away from Martin. “By sheer chance I overheard part of a conversation between Paul and one of his cronies. As I listened, an idea was born. You may perhaps remember the case of the young teenage schoolgirl that was snatched from the streets of Portsmouth a few years back? Her name was Kelly Goodman. There had been no sign of her anywhere in spite of appeals on television and door-to-door enquiries by the police. It was the mention of the name ‘Kelly’ that alerted me.

I was just about to go into the room where Paul and his friends were gathered, but the door was ajar and I heard the name mentioned. I froze, and then to my horror I heard enough of the conversation to learn that they had the girl locked up in a house in the Drayton area of the city! They didn’t actually mention the address, yet what I heard was enough to know that most of them had already beaten and raped the poor girl, some of them more than once, and now they were tiring of the novelty. They knew they dare not release her and were actually discussing how to murder and dispose of the body. The sheer horror of what they were talking about was enough to shake my brain into some semblance of activity. I repressed the insane desire to burst in on them and plead with the pair of them not to do it, forcing myself to think. With my brain functioning for the first time in many months, I suddenly realised that this was the chance I had been seeking; a chance to get my husband put away where he could never touch me, a chance to get right away from him, and the horrors of living in constant fear. Pulling myself together with an effort, I walked into the room carrying drinks as I had been ordered, giving no sign that I had heard anything.

As I finished distributing the drinks I knew what was coming because it had happened so many times before. Paul grabbed me and my underclothes were torn off as once again I was thrust over his knee. Once he had slapped me hard a few times I was grabbed by one of his friends and then beaten first by one then by another. Almost fainting with the pain from my injuries I sought to console myself with the thought that at long last I could see a way out of the hell in which I was living. Once they had finally had the pleasure they drank some more and eventually left to continue drinking at the local pub. As soon as the coast was clear I telephoned the police, and having asked for the promised anonymity that was being offered to anyone giving information, I told them everything I knew. It proved to be the breakthrough they had been seeking, and once they had satisfied themselves that my information was genuine they mounted secret surveillance on Paul and his associates. Eventually they trailed him to the house in Drayton, and there he was arrested along with several of his friends. Their victim was saved, although I believe the poor girl spent many months in hospital recovering from her horrific injuries. Maybe by now she has recovered from the physical injuries though I doubt if the mental scars will ever heal. Anyway, at the subsequent trial Paul and a number of his closest associates received life sentences for their crimes.”