The Gift of Shame (31 page)

Helen smiled to herself as she imagined her own recent thoughts now flooding through Jeffrey’s mind. ‘Well?’ she demanded over her shoulder. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Her defiance received quick answer as she heard Jeffrey demand that he be given the riding crop. ‘Turn her!’ he snapped and it was Jimmy, having discarded his ludicrous fruit bowl headdress, that came forward with the key to the handcuffs and, leaning over the rail, unlocked them.

Turned, Helen found herself looking directly into Jeffrey’s livid face and had no doubt about his intention as he murmured an angry: ‘Bitch!’ into her boldly challenging face. ‘Hands on your head,’ he told her.

With as much dignity as she could muster Helen slowly raised her hands and, with infinite care, placed them on her head while at the same time impudently thrusting her breasts forward from the waist so that they reached to the tip of the stick. Her eyes alight, she made plain that she was daring him to do his worst.

Jeffrey seemed to hesitate. ‘Those boats are very close now,’ he murmured. ‘So you suppose “he” is out there and can see you?’

‘I hope so,’ Helen replied, her defiant spirit soaring.

‘Hold her upright!’ Jeffrey ordered, and Helen felt Martinez rising from his kneeling position to take her about the waist and pull her hard against his own body. She had barely time to register that Martinez was pressing his own full arousal against her before all such thoughts were driven away by the resulting four stripes of the crop. Summoning every last ounce of will that could be scavenged from her outraged body, she raised her head. As Martinez’s hold on her relaxed, she smiled directly into Jeffrey’s dumbfounded face. ‘Thank you,’ she said, keeping her voice firm and managed.

Jeffrey hesitated a moment, seemingly disconcerted by her response, before reaching forward to catch her, lifting her into his arms and carrying her like a bride swiftly from the scene.

Down through the boat and directly into the stateroom Helen found herself being unceremoniously dumped on the bed. Resentfully she tried getting up into a sitting position, her bottom still on fire. ‘Bastard!’ she screamed at him.

Jeffrey, his ‘pirate’ costume thrown to the four corners of the cabin, advanced on her, furiously aroused. ‘Slut!’ he seethed as he caught her up, spread her and penetrated her as she continued to scream protest while pummelling the solidity of his heaving body with her closed fists.

Silencing her with a hand across her mouth, Jeffrey spat his words into her face. ‘I’ve marked you! You’re mine! Understand? Nobody else’s!’

Despite her rising orgasm Helen managed to keep her anger going even when it was obvious to them both that it had been reduced to pretence. Rising to meet his every cruel thrust, she greeted his aggression just as she had welcomed the expiation of Carla’s whip. Nothing mattered but the combustion at their thighs. When Jeffrey explosively exhausted himself she moaned in protest. The fires dampened, they lay in each other’s arms, recovering their breath and knowing that they had in each other a relationship fired in the kiln of forgiveness.

They lay in astonished silence for some moments, listening to each other’s breathing, until, driven by an urgent need for full confession Helen thought of the inflight episode of which she had yet to tell Jeffrey.

‘There’s something more you have to know before you forgive me …’

Jeffrey raised himself slightly on the bed and looked
tenderly
down into her widened, apprehensive eyes. ‘There’s nothing more I need to know,’ he murmured. ‘Nothing! Except …’

‘What?’

‘Do you want to be with me?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Permanently?’ he insisted.

‘Yes.’

19

A BLAST FROM
a car horn half roused Helen from a deep velvety sleep and, annoyed at the intrusion of traffic, she had turned over to return to it when realisation dawned. A car horn? In the middle of the ocean?

Instantly alert she sat up, noted Jeffrey’s absence, and went to the long side window to open the slatted blinds. She found herself looking at the feet of people passing along a quayside. They were in harbour!

Excited to know just where they might have fetched up she would have hurried on deck to find out, but first there were urgent preliminaries to be taken care of in the bathroom.

It was there she caught a vision of herself in the mirror.

The sight of her battle ‘honours’ brought about an ineffable surge of energy. Filled with the need to share her excitement with Jeffrey she positively raced into the shower then dried herself, wincing as the towel passed over her bruised buttocks, brushed out her hair, grabbed up a sarong and was in the act of reaching for the stateroom door when it startled her by opening, seemingly, of its own will.

Looking up she saw a beaming Jeffrey standing. ‘Great news,’ he told her.

Feeling her entire body alive and open to experience she reacted sourly to his obvious excitement. ‘Don’t I get a good morning kiss?’ she asked.

Smiling broadly he caught her up and their kiss added further fuel to the smoulder in her belly. Overwhelmed with
an
urgent need she took his hand, intending to lead him to the bed, but he, infuriating her, pulled himself free. ‘Don’t you want to hear my news?’

‘Can’t I hear it later?’

‘No. Now. We have to pack.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Los Angeles,’ he said, his excitement bursting forth. ‘One of the investigators I hired has turned up a witness there.’

Helen became almost angry to have this reminder of her guilt thrust at her. Since meeting Jeffrey, especially since Paris, she had concentrated her anger and then guilt on him and their relationship. To be reminded of her previous, greater guilt in the context of her lustful mood was devastating. ‘Must you bring that up now?’ she wailed sitting heavily on the bed and mourning the loss of her earlier mood.

‘Absolutely!’ cried Jeffrey. ‘If half what my man reported is true it will change everything.’

Helen looked up at Jeffrey and felt a great gulf opening between them, just as she had over dinner that night in Paris. ‘Do you want everything to change?’ she asked.

‘Not between us – of course not. What I want is to lift this burden of guilt from you.’

‘And how will you do that?’

‘By going to Los Angeles and talking to this man. He’s a student at UCLA.’

‘And what does he know about anything?’

‘That’s what I want you to hear. First hand. From him.’ Taking her by the arm Jeffrey insisted she stand up. ‘We haven’t much time. I’ve chartered a private jet that’ll have us there in six hours. We’re three hours ahead of them in time zone terms so, if you hurry, we’ll be there in time to talk to him tonight.’

Looking at him Helen felt a sense of foreboding. Life had already cruelly demonstrated how one cruel trick of Nature
could
destroy an apparently seamless happiness and she feared any new intrusive element coming between her and Jeffrey. ‘Do you think this really is a good idea?’ she asked plaintively.

Normally excited by surprise, Helen, instead, felt sulkily depressed by this abrupt change of pace. Their goodbyes to those left behind on the yacht had been warm enough but Helen felt a deep sense of loss at leaving Qito and Carla and also the tearful Tsai. The luxuriously appointed interior of the aircraft had eight armchairs – they were far too grand to be described as ‘seats’ – grouped in two facing sets of four which the stewardess, not without a sly smile, indicated could be converted into two huge king-sized beds, then turned to demonstrate the video and music as if they were to be grouped, along with the beds, as further potentials for in-flight entertainment. After telling them they were cleared for immediate take-off she made a discreet withdrawal.

‘Pretty girl,’ commented Jeffrey as the twin engines rose to screaming pitch and the extravagant machine began to move.

Helen’s tone was more acid than she had intended as she answered, ‘No doubt she would happily demonstrate the beds for you.’

‘Something wrong?’ asked Jeffrey with much injured innocence in his voice.

‘Nothing,’ said Helen shortly and turned to stare out of the window as the jet raced along the tarmac and lifted into the skies.

Shutting Jeffrey out by feigning sleep she cursed her present mood. She was in flight with a man who had declared his love for her and wanted nothing more than to bring her peace of mind and she couldn’t understand why she resented him as
if
he were an intrusive stranger. Finally, just before genuine sleep overtook her, she understood. He was wrenching her from the refuge of forgetfulness that had made these past weeks possible and was now forcing her to face the root of her guilt.

Fearful of what might come from such a confrontation she knew for certain that, whatever the outcome, nothing would ever be the same again.

True to Jeffrey’s prediction the plane made it to Los Angeles by 4 pm local time, landing not in the sprawl of LA International but at Burbank in the San Fernando Valley. As they transferred, with very little formality, from the jet to the long black limousine waiting for them, Jeffrey explained that the traffic in Los Angeles was chaotic and made Burbank handier to the UCLA campus at Westwood, than the downtown LAX.

Wesley Pike was a rangy young man, standing six feet four and blinking at Helen through pebble glasses that made his eyes look as if they were in a permanent state of surprise. ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ he asked as they met in the discreetly quiet Boulevard Café in Westwood.

Shaking her head Helen sat in the offered chair and felt a bewildering unreality settle about her. That morning she had woken on a yacht alongside the quay in Guadeloupe; nine or so hours later she had been transported across a continent and felt her mind had been lost somewhere in transit.

‘I was one of the dive leaders that day,’ Wesley was saying. ‘Jesus – what a day! The worst of my life.’ Helen watched the raw-boned young man shifting his gaze randomly between herself and Jeffrey before addressing her directly. ‘They lied to you,’ he said.

‘Exactly what happened?’ asked Jeffrey.

Wesley shifted uneasily in his seat and looked almost grateful to be interrupted by the girl that came to take their order. Uninterested in the food Helen settled for coffee while Wesley, his appetite belying his thin build, ordered several complicated sandwiches which seemed, to Helen, to take ages to detail.

Finally turning back to the point Wesley went on. ‘I was working at the dive school only to make some money during the summer, you understand?’

‘Get to the point,’ Jeffrey urged.

‘Right! Well that day we had a rush of business. Too many people – too little equipment. The boss told me to check out some of the older stuff and see what could be used to meet the shortfall. I found a couple of usable items but we were still a couple of sets short and I told him there was no way we could stretch. He took over from me and pulled out this old air tank – a real museum piece – you know, steel and all, which they don’t make any more – today’s air tanks are aluminium. Anyway, they told me to issue it. I protested that there were signs of corrosion around the valve but he told me he’d used worse in the past and if I wanted to keep working there I’d better do as he asked.’ Wesley paused and glanced at Helen. ‘Sadly, your husband got the short straw.’

Helen, feeling slightly sick, stayed silent as Jeffrey pressed for more detail. ‘They knowingly gave him a faulty air tank?’

Wesley looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Well … yes, but …’

‘But what?’

‘Corrosion usually works from the inside out which makes it hard to see …’

‘So how did you know it was there?’

‘From the general state of the tank and the valve. It hadn’t
been
maintained in God knows how long. You could say I was making an educated guess.’

‘But if you could, they could, too. They should have known?’

Wesley nodded. ‘They should never have issued that tank.’

‘So what do you think happened down there?’

‘I
know
what happened. Anybody with half an eye could see what happened.’

‘Which was what?’

‘The tank must have been knocked against something on the wreck they were diving on. The knock caused the tank valve to blow off …’ Wesley glanced awkwardly at Helen ‘… it crushed the back of his skull.’

Helen felt as if a great weight was crushing her as she sat there and when Jeffrey reached out a hand to hers she held on to it as if to a lifeline.

‘So he died instantly?’

Wesley nodded. ‘The story about him getting trapped and his air running out – they made that up to try and get off the hook. They thought a law suit for negligence would bankrupt them so they told me and everyone else to keep their mouths shut.’ Welsey’s huge eyes peered at Helen. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s been bothering me ever since. I’m glad to, finally, tell the truth.’

Jeffrey was relentless. ‘And the truth is that nobody – not Helen – or anyone else on God’s earth could have made any difference by being there?’

Wesley shook his head. ‘The only difference it would have made would have been that this lady – excuse me ma’am – would have seen her husband die.’

‘And you’ll sign an
affidavit
to that effect?’

Wesley was still nodding agreement when Helen shot to her feet. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Please – just get me out of here!’

Wesley, looking confused, got to his feet as Jeffrey put an arm round the distressed Helen and, telling Wesley he would be in touch the next day, led Helen from the café and into the waiting limousine.

Sobbing uncontrollably Helen sat huddled in the capacious rear of the car and she heard Jeffrey directing the driver to the Bel Air Hotel.

Gathering every last ounce of strength left in her Helen, unwilling to look directly at him, spoke. ‘Jeffrey … I want a separate room tonight.’

Jeffrey renewed his comforting embrace. ‘Is that a good idea, darling? You really want to be alone?’

‘I
won’t
be alone,’ she told him in set, determined, tones. ‘There’s things I have to tell Kenneth.’