Out of Such Darkness (21 page)

She’s right. Imagine it. ‘Oh look, there’s the only survivor. Did you know he made $3million out of it? No wonder he’s smiling.’

‘But for Nancy – I should have
…
’

It’s over. Forget about it. Now get those toes back in there. I want to see whether she does a Meg Ryan in
When Harry Met Sally
.

Later, in the hotel room, their lovemaking is more leisurely but Jay’s need to dominate, to punish, is even more marked. His passion takes on a darker side.

It’s because of Nancy, isn’t it?

He starts to slap Teri’s butt – playfully at first – then harder. She wriggles away. He’s laughing as he grabs her waist. She giggles and shakes her head. ‘Stop it!’ Her voice is light. He pins her down and uses two fingers to enter her, roughly.

So you’re going to take it out on her.

‘Stop it!’ Her voice is sharper. ‘No! You’re scaring me.’

He grunts.

Go on! What’s the worst thing you can do?

He flips her over. ‘I know what you want.’ His left hand is on the small of her back to hold her down. His knees pinion the back of her legs and stop her kicking. He slavers on his right hand and wipes the slime over his cockhead. He drools on his fingers again and prods one of them against her anus.

‘NO!’ She struggles under him. ‘Not that. Not ever that.’ She hisses it with her head arched back.

He positions himself for a thrust forward but this gives Teri the opportunity to squirm up the bed. She kicks out backwards. It’s harmless but the impact on his thigh is enough to bring him fully back into the moment.

She sits up with her back to the headboard and pulls the duvet up. Her mascara is spread across her face. ‘You’d better go home,’ she says between sobs. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you. Go home!’

What’s this? She was up for it, trust me.

‘I wasn’t going to. Not if you didn’t want it.’

Don’t whine. You’ve nothing to apologise for.

‘How many times did I say “no”? How many times?’

But we get it, don’t we? No can sometimes mean yes.

He bangs his fist against his forehead. The MC’s interruptions make it impossible for him to collect his thoughts. ‘I won’t try it again. I made a mistake.’

You’re grovelling.
What did I tell you? She may say she didn’t want it but she would have lapped it up.

‘You bet you did. You been getting weird. Like this is some power trip for you. Like I was getting off on you hurting me. Well, that’s not me, Jay. You can crawl back under the rock you came from. I’ll put you down to experience. Now get the fuck outa my life!’

That went well then. Better get dressed.

‘You’re early. How did it go?’

Jay has walked through the front door without his usual greeting. ‘Huh?’

Rachel stands at the opening to the kitchen. Ben hovers at the top of the stairs down to the den. ‘You said you’d be late.’ She wipes her hands on a tea towel. ‘Doesn’t matter. Has the money come through?’

He nods as he puts down his briefcase and removes his overcoat. ‘Yeah. It’s sorted.’

‘Mmph! You don’t sound like a man who’s just been given $3million. I’ve got Champagne.’ She turns back into the kitchen.

‘Can I see it?’ Ben’s crossing towards him.

‘What?’

‘The cheque – $3million. It’s not often you see one of those.’

Jay smiles. ‘Huh. No. They paid it straight into our bank account.’

Ben turns away and sits at the table. ‘Spoilsports!’

The fridge door slams and Rachel comes in with a tray bearing the bottle and three glasses that clink together as she walks. ‘
We
are multi-millionaires!’

‘It’s not pounds, Mum – only dollars.’

She puts down the tray and ruffles his hair. ‘Even in pounds it’s two-plus – still multi–’

Sit. Forget Teri. Forget why you have three million bucks. Enjoy the Champagne.

He joins them at the table.

Rachel proffers the bottle. ‘You open it.’

He removes the foil and eases out the stopper. It ‘pops’ but he holds the cork to prevent it flying across the room. He pours the three measures, taking care lest the drink foams over the rims.

They each take one. ‘Cheers!’ he says.

‘To $3million!’ Rachel responds.

‘£2million plus!’ Ben says.

They all drink.

‘Tell me how it went,’ Rachel says.

Jay takes them through his fictitious day. He explains that more paperwork was necessary and, how, after he signed it, Teri, Nathan’s assistant took it to the offices of New York Life. In the meantime, Jay and Nathan went through the formal process of winding up Straub, DuCheyne. They visited some insurers after lunch and by the end of the day the company ceased to exist and here they are $3million richer.

‘What about the rest of the money?’ Rachel asks.

Oops! You let the lies run ahead of you.

Jay looks into his Champagne. ‘Yeah. The company’s wound up on paper. But it’s not finished. ’Cos it’s still a legal entity. When all that stuff is legally filed … that’s when we get the money. Like I said before – probably in the first couple of months next year.’ He feels Rachel’s laser beam stare on his face.

You always do it. Run off at the mouth.

‘Hmmm. Well those attorneys better not be jerking us around,’ Rachel says.

She’s using American slang, Jay. That has to be a danger signal.

‘I’m sure they’re not.’ He knocks back the last of his drink. ‘Now, I think I’ll take a shower before dinner. What are we having?’

Rachel is frowning. ‘Ben and I are having pasta.
You
said you were going to be late.’

‘I didn’t say I’d eat out.’

‘You inferred it. Anyway, why have a shower, why now?’

Ben stands up. ‘I’m going to my room.’

‘Homework?’ Rachel says, barely glancing in his direction.

‘Yeah.’ He’s already half-way up the stairs.

Rachel turns back to Jay and his heart lurches. She carries Ben’s homework schedule in her head and normally wouldn’t allow him to get away without a detailed account of what he intends to do. Jay scrapes back his chair.

‘Stay!’

He jerks a thumb in the direction of the bathroom. ‘My shower.’

‘Stay!’

Jay remains seated. ‘What’s the matter, Rache?’

‘You smell of her.’

‘Who?’ A trapdoor is opening beneath his feet.

‘What’s-her-name – Teri.’

‘What do you mean?’ It’s a hopeless rearguard action and he knows it.

No way out of this one. Take it like a man.

Her voice cuts like a scalpel. ‘You stink of her perfume and you stink of stale sex. How long has it been going on?’ Now the blade is ice-cold. ‘Don’t even try to deny it.’

He looks down at his hands and sees that he’s unconsciously clasped them together and is wringing them in an incriminating way. He pulls them apart and straightens his shoulders.

Best come clean
.

‘It’s over. It started when we went to Texas. But, believe me, it meant nothing–’

‘I bloody knew there was something fishy about San An-fucking-tonio.’

‘Like I said, it’s over.’

‘It’s bloody over all right.’ Tears are brimming. Her voice is a sob. ‘How could you?’

‘I’m sorry.’ He reaches out but she shrugs his hand away. ‘She was there
…
she–’

‘Don’t!’ Her eyes are wild. Her voice is still low but each consonant carries a fury. ‘Don’t blame her. It better be over. It better be fucking over. Because, if you ever do anything like this again, I’ll cut your balls off before taking you for every fucking cent of your fucking three fucking million fucking dollars.’

It’s as if her venom enters his blood. His head buzzes and his chest is constricting. Is this what a stroke feels like? A heart attack? He manages to mumble, hoping that if he talks long enough he’ll become coherent. ‘Never
…
I’ll never
…
it was a one-off
…
I didn’t mean to hurt
…
I’m sorry.’ His tears are falling now.

‘You’d better have that shower.
You
make sure you load the washing machine with your stuff.
You
get that suit dry-cleaned tomorrow. You get
her
stink out of
my
house. And you can fucking-well sleep in that sodding den tonight.

Jay slinks away from the table and makes for the bathroom, undoing his tie.

We’re not having the best of days.

It’s not funny. It’s your fault.

How do you make that out? You’re the one with the penis. Put it all behind you. Rachel will come round.

I love her. I wish I’d never …

Don’t we always. Teri’s toast. She’s served her purpose.

Jay stands motionless beneath the shower jet, his head bowed. You’re right I can deal with Fothergill for what’s left.

Not only that. She’s done what was needed. Stamford is over. We move on.

And Rachel?

What you told me about love – tell her. Any barriers she puts up … she’ll regret them. She will. Trust me.

The next morning it’s frosty both inside and outside the house. While Ben’s at school, Rachel makes clear that Jay’s behaviour means that she alone will decide when they return to the UK. She sits at the computer booking their flights on Christmas Day. She views rental property near their UK house and instructs the agents to give the tenants notice to quit. They have the money. She will get them back on track.

The following day is Thanksgiving and the Cochranes have invited them to their house to share their meal. Bob is keen that Jay joins him for the traditional American football game. By the time Thanksgiving night arrives, Rachel and Jay have reached a truce and share the marital bed. She allows him to cuddle against her back but her body is rigid.

Jay visits Willy Keel on the first two Sundays in December and at the beginning of the second meeting, Willy announces that he would be happy for Jay to publish his biography as long as it doesn’t happen until after his death. They agree to work on it together and to overcome the problem of Jay’s return to the UK as and when it presents itself.

They’re in Willy’s room. An old-person fug hangs around them. Jay is in the guest chair – the same plastic-covered, high-seated institution furniture as in the meeting room. He’s swung the bed-table across in front of it so there’s a surface to write on and a place for his recording machine. Willy is not in the bed which is crisply made. He slumps in his wheelchair wearing a zipped shell-suit – blue with white stripes down the sides. His feet are in slippers. There are two books and a spectacles case on top of the bedside cabinet. The books are piled with their edges squared. The spectacle case is set parallel. Jay wonders whether this precision is the effort of a nurse or the remnants of Willy’s military discipline.

‘I’d like to talk today about your escape from Germany,’ Jay says.

‘Well, first I had to make it back home – to Berlin. This was long before the Wall, you understand. The whole east of the country was under Russian control. There were ways to get into Berlin if you were resourceful enough. I went through the sewer system. My home from before the war was destroyed. My family was gone. All dead.’

They were Nazis from the beginning, Jay. The worst sort – the believers. No need to mourn their passing.

As Willy talks, Jay glances to check that the recorder light is on and tries to recall when Willy had told him about his family background. How can the MC know that they were early sympathisers unless he does?

Willy mentioned it before.

‘It looked as if the Russians had deliberately set out to flatten every single building in the city but a few survived and by some miracle the house where Cameron lived was one of them. The Green House we called it.’

‘Which sector was it in?’

‘The British. This was very lucky for me. It made it easier to get out later. It was there virtually unscathed, overlooking a burnt out Russian tank on the rubble that used to be Steinplatz. Even the wooden tobacco kiosk – it was still there.’ Willy’s eyes look out into the past.

‘What happened?’

‘Another miracle. Cameron’s landlady still lived there. Frail and so old. But not too old for the Russian soldiers to have ignored, she told me. She was so ashamed. And she had hidden my passport. She still had my passport.’

‘Why was it there – at the Green House? ’

‘It wasn’t my German passport. It was English.’

‘A British passport. How?’

‘Questions!’ He waves a hand as if swatting away a persistent wasp. ‘It’s a story for another time.’

‘But it meant you were able to leave?’

‘It wasn’t that easy. I still needed money to bribe my way out. You have to understand in those days there were very few honest people in Berlin. One of them – a good man – Bernie Gunther helped me. He’d been a Friedrichstrasse ‘bull’ – a police detective – before the war and had served on the Eastern front with the SS. He’d come back to Berlin to be a private investigator – lots of work for him with so many missing. He found me a widow with money. Her husband had been a big player in the black market – after the occupation the Western sectors were rife with corruption. He was killed and left her a stash of US dollars. Her money, my passport – we could escape.’ The ‘w’ in ‘we’ sounds like a sibilant ‘v’.

‘So what happened?’

‘Bernie Gunther took us to Osnabrück and Brits there smuggled us into Holland. We married in Enschede and ended up in Ostend where we waited for a boat.’

‘But now you were out of trouble.’

He shakes his head and tears appear. ‘It was still a lawless time in Europe – like the Wild West. Some GIs passing through attacked us. I was beaten up and they held me down while they …’ his voice broke, ‘my wife … I couldn’t help her.’

‘I’m so sorry’

‘It didn’t end there. Geraldine was pregnant. She had the boy. We brought him with us.’

‘To America?’

‘By the time we got to England her money was nearly spent. We couldn’t afford to stay hidden – on the run. We decided to own up to who we were. So we went to the British Red Cross. We changed our names to Keel before we came to New York.’