The Hidden Years (35 page)

David knew that he was out of step with his own
generation, and its determination to break through the social barriers
which had contained and ruled every previous generation.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that there
were so many of them; that they, those children born so closely after
the end of the war, were by far the largest single element of the
population, and so by their might, by sheer force of numbers, could
make their voices heard.

It interested him to see if this trend would continue; if
the teenagers of the sixties with their music, their ideals, their
refusal to bow to convention would continue all through their lives to
attract attention, to rule and dominate.

Faye was as unlike the women of his own time as it was
possible to be. She had none of their determination, their aggression,
their belief in their right to be as sexually active as they wished,
whenever they wished, where they wished and with whomever they desired.
She roused within him a deeply protective instinct, a need to nurture,
that he had never previously experienced.

He discovered that he was actively seeking her out,
talking with her, coaxing her out of the shell she had withdrawn into.

To Faye, David was a wholly new experience. She had never
known that men like him could exist. He was kind, gentle…
completely non-threatening. He talked to her, not at her, and when she
answered him he listened.

He told her a lot about himself… about his home
and his family, and she found herself envying him, wishing almost
fiercely that she could exchange her own past for one like
his… one where parents were protective and
caring… one where childhood was something to be looked back
on with affection and pleasure.

She was careful never to mention her own family until one
day by accident she was caught off guard and spoke of her foster
parents. Tense with apprehension, she waited for David to comment, to
question… but he seemed not to have noticed, not to be aware
of the panic gripping her.

The more she got to know David, the more she liked him,
and the more she knew that she could never reveal to him the truth
about herself… that she could not bear to see the disgust in
his eyes… to watch him withdraw from her as though she were
unclean.

Faye did not think of David as a potential lover; to do so
would almost have been a sacrilege, even if she had been able to
contemplate herself in such a physically intimate situation without
fear. He was a friend, someone she looked up to…revered
almost. Someone whose kindness she treasured, whose compassion drew her
almost compulsively to him.

She knew their friendship could only be short-lived. Soon
she would be leaving university. David's post was only temporary.
Ultimately he would be returning home, he had told her, to take over
the management of the factory begun by his mother.

Faye found it difficult to picture David's mother; David
plainly adored her, but to Faye she sounded formidable…
overpoweringly so. She knew their burgeoning friendship couldn't last,
that soon she and David would go their separate ways, and so she
treasured the time they spent together, the almost casual meetings
which always seemed to lead to long, intimate discussions.

She knew people were amused and curious about their
relationship but she didn't care. David never made her feel threatened
in the way that other men did. And even though she had never actually
been alone with him—he was scrupulous about never inviting
her back to his rooms or suggesting she invite him to
hers—she knew that, if he did, she would be as safe as though
they were in the middle of the university's crowded Student Union.

And then the blow fell. The examination results were
posted, and Faye discovered that instead of getting the coveted first
she had hoped for, she had barely got an indifferent third.

She walked away from the noticeboard almost physically
reeling with shock. One tiny corner of her mind, still working
logically, told her that in some way this was Jeremy Catesby's revenge,
that he was responsible for her poor degree, even while the rest of her
mind rejected the thought. The blame was hers… Somehow or
other she must have misjudged the quality of her own work…
Somehow or other she must have allowed her standards to slip. It was
impossible… unthinkable that a tutor, someone in such a
position of trust and responsibility, would actually use his power so
corruptly.

David saw her crossing the quadrangle, her face white with
shock. By the time he had fought his way through the mass of students
tumbling out of the buildings she was almost out of sight. Heading for
the library, he recognised.

He caught up with her halfway down the deserted corridor,
reaching out from behind her to grasp her arm. He felt the shock that
ran through her as though it was an electric current, her frantic
'Don't!' a shock of pain, fear and anger so intense that he felt them
as though her emotions were his own. And then she saw him and her face
flooded with colour.

'David,' she said weakly. 'I…'

'What's wrong?'

She shook her head, almost unable to speak.

'Come on, we can't talk here. We'll go to my rooms.'

Numbly Faye allowed him to guide her along the maze of
corridors. His rooms were bare and neat, almost monklike, their very
austerity somehow reassuring. She allowed him to guide her gently into
a chair.

'What is it?' he asked her again. 'Your
degree…?'

'A third,' she told him sickly. 'I needed a first. I
thought…'

David frowned. It was common knowledge that Faye should
get a first… and then he remembered overhearing a small
snippet of conversation between Jeremy Catesby and one of Faye's other
tutors. It hadn't meant anything to him at the time, but
now…Jeremy wouldn't be the first tutor to punish a pupil by
misusing his authority over them, but he must hate her a great deal if
he had actually dared to withhold her rightful degree.

His face very grim, he told Faye, 'Wait here.'

Faye never discovered what exactly it was David said to
Jeremy Catesby… how he threatened him… and she
was sure he must have done so, but when he eventually came back all he
said was, 'It's all right, I've seen the Dean. There's been a mistake.
It does happen some-times. You were right. You've got your
first… congratulations.'

At first Faye refused to believe it, but David was
insistent, and when he finally had convinced her the relief was so
great that she felt almost light-headed… almost euphoric.

'So what will you do now?' David asked her.

Faye shook her head. 'I don't really know. Look for a
summer job while I try to find something more permanent…'

'A summer job—perhaps I might be able to help
there… The library at Cottingdean is badly in need of
cataloguing. Dull work, I'm afraid, and not all that well paid, but it
would give you time to look round for something better. We aren't too
far from London…'

Faye stared at him. Work at Cottingdean… The
Cottingdean about which she had heard so much… Live in
David's home, meet his parents… At once she felt two equally
strong and conflicting emotions.

The first was an intense longing to accept, an intense
wave of pleasure that David should actually want her in his home, that
he should consider her worthy of it; the second was a sickening
awareness of how unworthy she actually was… of how David
would react to her if he knew the truth about her…of how his
kindness, his generosity, his friendship would turn to contempt and
rejection if he ever discovered…

'You'll need time to think things over,' David was saying
to her. 'Well, don't worry, there's no rush. Take as long as you like.
Term isn't over yet, and if something more appealing comes
along… well, don't feel embarrassed about saying so.'

Something more appealing? What
could
be more appealing? Faye was beginning to realise that there was a part
of her that asked nothing more from life than that she be allowed to
stand in the sheltering protection of David's friendship for the rest
of her life. His friendship… She swallowed as she made her
way back to her own room. Not even with David could she contemplate the
intimacy of sex. Sex turned men into violent destroyers, into cruel
and sadistic inflictors of pain and humiliation. But David wasn't like
that. David was different. And if he knew the truth about her he would
surely turn away from her in disgust. She shivered. Her past had become
a double burden, a guilty secret she had to hide from the rest of the
world. And she intended that it should remain her secret.

Someone else, though, had other ideas. Jeremy Catesby was
a vain man and, like all vain men, he could be extremely malicious when
his vanity was bruised.

He had enjoyed punishing Faye for her idiotic reactions to
his advances. The scratches alone had taken weeks to heal, and his
wife, who was no longer under any illusions about him, had told him
viciously that she hoped they would leave scars.

They hadn't, of course, but they had caused him to be the
butt of his colleagues' mirth.

It had been easy to get Faye transferred to another tutor,
and even easier to subtly ensure when it came to marking her
examination papers that she got only a third.

He felt no compunction about what he was doing. The stupid
bitch needed teaching a lesson, and as for her degree… Well,
she would marry and have a parcel of brats and never use the damn
thing. It was a waste of time educating women, although there were
certain aspects of it that he personally found extremely enjoyable. The
naiveté of his female students constantly amused him. They were so
eager to fall into his arms, into his bed… They deserved all
they got. Jeremy Catesby did not really like women.

To be confronted by David Danvers demanding to see Faye's
papers, threatening to expose him to the Dean if he did not retract
that third and announce that there had been an error, had been an
unpleasant shock.

Jeremy had never liked David, and it galled him now that
he was forced to give in. His wife would have something to say if he
was dismissed from a second lectureship. She was already bitter and
vituperative about his failure to secure one of the higher-status
chairs. She had had her sights set on Oxford when she had married him,
and so had he. If it hadn't been for the fact that her father was an
Oxford don he would never have married her. She was too domineering,
too demanding, too sure of herself to have any real appeal for him. Now
he couldn't afford to divorce her, either socially or financially, and
so he took his revenge against her and her whole sex in a series of
amusing little relationships with his female students, leaving his
stamp on them, so to speak, in the corruption of their ideals and the
destruction of their belief in themselves as women, both sexually and
intellectually.

Jeremy Catesby was a destroyer by nature, and he longed
more than anything else to destroy Faye.

He soon found the way. A chance remark by the Dean about
how well she had done considering her unfortunate start in life
prompted some discreet enquiries into her background. It was easy to
trace her adolescence back to her life with her foster parents.

What he uncovered after that took longer, but the results
far more than repaid the effort.

Gloatingly he dwelt on what he had learned. The clever
little bitch… all that pretence about being a
virgin… about being so cool and untouchable. Saint David
would have a shock when he learned the truth. He laughed to himself.
Saint David and his whore… because that was what the girl
was. No one could tell him that she hadn't encouraged the poor sod
whose life she had destroyed. They all did it… all women
were the same. Some of them just started earlier than others. You could
see it all the time… provocative little teases, the lot of
them, leading a man on, then protesting about it when they got what
they deserved. And she must have enjoyed it, too… must have
done to have done it for all those years. If she hadn't got herself
pregnant no doubt she'd have gone on enjoying it, as well. Trust a
woman to try and pin the blame on someone else…

He discovered that he was sweating, his body suddenly hard
with a mixture of arousal and violent energy. This was when he enjoyed sex the most: when his appetite
was aroused to such a pitch that it became a pleasure to physically
subdue the woman lying beneath him. It was even better if they
protested. Then they gave him the excuse to punish them a little, to
accuse them of leading him on, to enter them quickly, even violently so
that he could concentrate exclusively on his own pleasure.

He wiped his hand over his damp forehead, suppressing his
physical arousal. Just wait until he told Saint David all about his
precious Faye.

He set the scene for the denouement well, chivvying his
wife into organising a small cocktail party for his departing students.

Faye was invited along with David. She wanted to refuse to
go, but pride wouldn't let her. She had her degree, and nothing Jeremy
Catesby could do or say could take that away from her.

As a student on a grant with no parental support, Faye was
always short of money, and certainly had none to spare for fashionable
clothes. Her working uniform of pleated skirts and thick jumpers in
winter, jeans and thinner tops in summer comprised the entire contents
of her meagre wardrobe.

She had no idea what on earth she was going to wear for
the cocktail party. Instinct told her it would be a formal affair. It
had been a hot summer, so hot that she had recklessly allowed herself
to buy a soft gathered cotton shirt and a couple of short-sleeved
T-shirts to supplement her jeans.

Faye never wore clothes that revealed anything of her
body. Actually almost too slim, she always chose clothes that added
bulk to her slender frame, enveloping her figure so that she seemed
almost shapeless. Make-up was restricted to the merest touch of
lipstick, her hair invariably tied back off her face. The other girls
had grown used to her lack of vanity, her refusal to make the most of
herself, but when she joined the others on the immaculate lawns of the
Catesbys' large detached house on the day of the cocktail party Faye
was uncomfortably conscious of the amused and contemptuous glances of
her peers.