Chapter 15: Endex

Now I was committed to buying an apartment in Bourne Mansion I had to come to a decision regarding meeting Miriam, not only to settle the differences between us but also in sharing the proceeds from the sale of 23 Kitchener Road, which I had bought from the local council in 1985.

Miriam had lived with her parents after our marriage in 1983 — which was a great mistake, and one I have rued ever since — and only moved in with my mother at 23 Kitchener Road in October 1991, after her parents were killed a road accident.

Miriam hadn't contributed to paying off the mortgage, and any money she paid towards household expenses, in the way of Council Tax or water rates, when living with my mother could be viewed as in lieu of rent.

From October 1991, to when my mother died in December 1996, I spent little or no time at 23 Kitchener Road, and the brief periods when I stayed with Miriam between my mother's death and March 1998 could not be described as 'in connubial bliss'.

However, from March 1998 until my deployment to Afghanistan in October 2001, Miriam and I shared the house as a married couple, other than when I was away on detachments, when it appeared she shared the house with her brother, especially the bedroom. The mortgage had been paid off before 1998, and according to my solicitors I had no legal requirement to give Miriam any share of the money when I sold the house.

Even so, I felt I had a moral obligation to share the procedees of the house sale with her; we had been married for almost 20 years, and had lived amicably and lovingly as man and wife for at least 5 of those years, even if not consecutively.

Mr Baker sighed when I explained my reasons in allowing Miriam part of the cash from the sale. "Well, what you do with the money is entirely up to you, Mister Desmond. But if you are determined to have a face to face meeting with your wife please allow us to make the arrangements."

I agreed, as long as it was somewhere without either set of solicitors present.

I saw a flicker of annoyance cross his face. "As you wish, Mister Desmond. I'll have Rosemary contact your wife's solicitor and arrange a time and place to suit you both."

We agreed to meet at 2 p.m., in Miriam's office at OCSET's regional HQ, a week later. On the appointed day I took time off from work and travelled to Plaistow, first by train to Paddington station, then by tube to Plaistow.

It was about noon when I got to Plaistow, and I decided to have a pie and a pint in The Crown before continuing on to my meeting with Miriam. The pub seemed to be doing its usual busy lunch time trade. I nodded to a few of the regulars, and then sat at the bar with my pie and pint.

"Are you a regular customer, sir?" A small, rotund, red faced man behind the bar asked the question.

"I've been in here a few times in the past," I admitted.

"The reason I ask," he continued, "is I've not long taken over the license, and I'm keen to get to know the regulars, and make sure they keep as regulars."

"Is there any reason why the regulars wouldn't still come for a drink here?"

"The previous landlord had a very experienced bar maid; she was an attraction in her own right, or so I've heard," The rotund man said as he polished a glass. "Matter of fact," he leaned over the bar and spoke quietly, "the landlord left his missus and scarpered with the barmaid. Don't know where they went, some say up North. The brewery only found out when the pub didn't open one morning. All hell let loose, and they had auditors and accountants sniffing around here like a bunch of pervs around a school girl's bicycle saddle. Do you know there wasn't a penny missing; they'd even left a float in the till."

"Well," I said, "just so long as you continue to serve a pint as good as this the regulars will keep on coming." I finished my pint and left.

The rotund bloke looked pleased with my remark; I hope it made his day.

Now I was off to make Miriam's day.

OCSET's regional HQ building was one of those glass and steel temples erected in praise of the Profit Motive. You could have held the World Cup final in the reception area, providing you moved the palms, cactus plants, and other exotic examples of flora.

The snooty woman on the reception desk – Flora? – changed from aloof to fawning when I revealed myself as a visitor to Mrs. Desmond, and not the gardener.

"Oh yes, sir. Missus Desmond has arranged for your visit. Please wear this Visitor Tag at all times in the building." She handed me a plastic badge as if it were some amulet which would ward off the evil eye.

"Mister Mandrake, one of our security colleagues, will escort you to her office." She beckoned to a gorilla in a suit by the entrance, who walked over to the reception desk with his knuckles dragging along the ground. OK, so I'm exaggerating, but he practically split his clothes with his bulked up muscles.

"Please accompany this gentleman to the Human Resources office suite on the sixth floor." the receptionist said, and Mandrake pointed me towards a bank of lifts.

We entered a lift; he pressed a button and we silently ascended.

"Marines, or the Paras?" I asked.

"Wha... ?" His amazement looked almost comical on his simian features. "Two Para; how did you know?"

"I can tell by the way you walk."

He stared at me, seeing if I was taking the piss, which I was, then he said, "were you in The Kate?"

I nodded. " Yeah, the Greenjackets."

He sniffed in disdain. "I thought you must have been in a crap hat mob."

"I was parachute trained, and was with Three Para on Mount Longdon."

He bared his gums in what for him would be a smile. "That's OK, then. Why didn't you join the Para's in the first place?"

"They wouldn't take me coz when I walked my knuckles didn't brush the ground."

He gave me an indignant glare, and for a moment I thought I had gone too far.

"You got turned down coz when you walked your todger didn't brush the ground," he said, and then bellowed with laughter.

I could do nothing other than join in. Mandrake wasn't the dead head he first appeared. Never judge a book by its cover.

The lift came to a stop, and as we entered the plush carpeted corridor I asked him if 'Mandrake' was his real name.

"Nah, its Drake. But I got fed up of being called Frankie or Ducky so I changed it."

The sixth floor was where the top brass of the regional office had their offices, or rather their suites of offices. We stopped at a set of oak double doors.

"This is the Human Resources executive's suite," Mandrake said, "I'll wait here until you finish, then escort you back to reception. Can't let you go wandering about by yourself in case you run off with the secret ingredient of their brown sauce. It's only the regional offices of a bloody grocer's shop, but the place is guarded like Fort Knox."

I pushed open the doors and walked into an office with several tasty looking females sitting at desks with telephones and computer monitors.

One of the girls looked up and smiled at me. "Are you Missus Desmond's visitor?" I nodded, and she lifted a telephone.

"Tell Miriam her two o'clock appointment has arrived." A moment passed then she said, "go through the door over there..." she pointed to her right, "and Missus Desmond's PA will meet you."

It was like trying to see some top politician or film star, and it struck me Miriam held a much higher position in the company than I had realised.

The PA was another extremely attractive female. She held out her hand.

"I'm Janet; Miriam suggests you meet in her private office, this room is used for team meetings."

There was a middle aged man sat in one of the armchairs; he didn't meet my eye when I scoped him but studiously kept his head bent, pretending to read a document he had on his knee. Janet didn't introduce me, but as I entered Miriam's private office I could feel his eyes boring into my back, and guessed he must be Arthur Fowler.

Miriam's office was a medium sized space which overlooked the green of Wanstead Park. There were several leather armchairs grouped around a large oval coffee table, and Miriam pointed to the chairs.

"We will be more comfortable sitting there, Des." She thanked Janet, who left, after giving me a slight smile. It occurred to me no one in Miriam's office had any idea who I was, or I what I was here for – although surely my surname would give them a clue?

As Miriam walked over to a chair by the table I took a closer look at her.

It was the first time in six months I had seen her, although of course I had seen her, naked, when I arrived home from Afghanistan, but she had been partly covered by Martin Hodge at the time.

She had lost some weight, and there were dark rings around her eyes, but for all that Miriam was looking extremely tasty and attractive, and I had a sudden surge of affection, and pride, for the woman who had cuckolded me with Hodge. She had risen from a fifteen year old shelf filler in the local OCSET store to an executive position with the national retail company, with all the perks that go with it.

I guessed she would be earning a pile more cash than I had as a sergeant.

Miriam started talking as soon as we had sat down, preventing me from telling her about the sale of the house.

"Des, I'm deeply ashamed, and dreadfully sorry, how I've behaved during our marriage. I treated you rotten, and I wouldn't blame you for hating me. I would fully deserve it for what I've done."

She sniffed a bit, then gazed down at the table and spoke in a low monotone, a handkerchief gripped in her hand.

"All my life Martin has exerted some sort of power over me. Every night he would come into my bedroom, and I never thought it was wrong. Marty would say, 'I'm your brother, Sis, I'm supposed to look after you, and stay with you at night, it's what brothers do'."

She was twisting the handkerchief between her hands as she spoke, staring down at the table. "When I started at Comprehensive school I came to understand it wasn't 'what brother did'. When I questioned him he said 'It's a special thing, a secret between you and me. I expect all your friends at school have the same sort of secret with their brothers'." She grimaced. "I was very gullible when it came to what Marty told me, and always thought it was the truth."

"Didn't your parents suspect what was happening?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "They may have, but wouldn't have dared say anything to Marty. They were scared of him. I saw him hit dad and mum on several occasions. He said they had been criticising me, and he was punishing them." The handkerchief was now a twisted and frayed piece of cotton from the treatment Miriam was giving it.

"When boys started to notice me, and called at the house, Marty would allow me to go out with them, but not to have a regular boyfriend. Boys kept asking me out, but I wouldn't go out with any of them more than once, except for Rikky Blaine. When Marty discovered I'd been to the pictures several times with Rikky he told me to drop him, but I wouldn't." She shivered if in memory of the time. "Marty warned me bad things would happen if I didn't do as he said. The day after I'd been at a birthday party with Rikky he got knocked off his bike by a car which didn't stop. He had a leg amputated, and was in hospital for six weeks. At the time I thought it was just terrible accident."

Miriam finally looked up from the table, eyes filled with tears yet to fall.

"A year later, just after my fourteenth birthday, I met Dennis Sharples. We fell in love, puppy love I suppose, but it was real for me. Denny was the first boy I allowed to go all the way – we were going to get married and everything."

She paused, a shadow of sadness passing swiftly over her face. "Marty found out and went ballistic. He told me to break it off with Denny or bad things would happen. I told him I loved Denny, and refused. Two days later a fire at Denny's house killed his mother and sister, and he suffered terrible burns."

She shook her head in despair. "If I had done what Marty told me it wouldn't have happened. I was convinced Marty had something to do with the fire, but there would have been no evidence leading back to him. From then on I did as he wanted because I didn't want anything like that to ever happen to my friends. Marty would allow me go out, and have sex, with a boy once or twice, but if he thought I was getting into a steady relationship I had to give him up, which I did."

She took my hand. "Then you showed up. Marty let me go out with you. He said, 'he'll get what he wants and then leave'." She smiled. "But you didn't, did you, Des. Martin couldn't believe you would stay with me, when all the girls in Plaistow wanted you." She frowned. "And I know a bloody great number of them had you."

I blushed; I had put myself about a fair bit when I came home on leave from the Falklands. The thing is I can't remember any of the girls I had shagged other than Miriam.

She continued. "When I got pregnant Marty said you'd bugger off so quick I wouldn't see your arse for dust. He was gobsmacked when you said you'd marry me, even after I had a miscarriage and lost the baby."

A flash of pain, and something which could have been fear, came into her eyes, and she sniffed back a tear. "He then did everything to wreck our marriage. He told me to stay at Plaistow with mum and dad when you went to Germany, 'in case something happened to them'. He made it obvious I wasn't to let you have sex when you came home on leave, and I was terrified he would do something to my parents, or you, if I disobeyed him. The times he was away, in prison, or Spain, or wherever, I was free to live the life I wanted with you, and we had some good times, didn't we, Des?" Her voice was so earnest and wistful I had a lump in my throat, and I squeezed her hand in agreement.

She smiled, but then her face darkened. "Not long after I agreed to come and join you in Celle Marty turned up out of the blue. He told me not to go to Germany, and I told him to get lost. He reminded me what happened when I didn't do what he wanted, but I still ignored him. I was determined to get away from his influence once and for all." Her face crumpled. "Then my parents died in a car crash. I'm positive Marty was behind it, but at first I blamed myself, and then I blamed you. I got myself into such a state I had a nervous breakdown, and if it hadn't been for your mum, and Arthur, I would probably have been sectioned and committed to a psychiatric hospital."

"You saying Martin Hodge killed your parents? Have you any proof?"

"He probably paid someone. He never does his own dirty work, and he has more than enough crack heads to do his bidding." She shook her head sadly. "All the years you told me he was a wrong 'un, and I didn't believe you. Thank God you put him in hospital, and then jail, because at last I'm free of him. I don't know how he maintained such control over me, but for the first time in my life I can look forward to a future without Martin spoiling it for me."

Martin Hodge had used the threat of hurting Miriam's friends and family if she didn't do what he wanted, which was to completely dominate her; sexually and mentally. Miriam must have a spirit made of tungsten steel to be able to keep her sanity, and maintain a high pressure job, knowing Hodge could appear at any time and try to take over her life – and some times of course he succeeded.

"So if it hadn't been for that bastard Hodge, and the hold he had over you, we could have lived a normal married life, as we did the last few years, when I was in Colchester and came home most weekends?" I said.

"Yes, they were good years, and if it hadn't been for him our married life could have been like that from the start."

She blushed, embarrassment showing on her face. "What Marty said when you came into..." her voice trailed away. She took a deep breath and started again.

"The things he said when you came back from Afghanistan, about your, err, penis, and me and your mum, was bollocks. You are a wonderful lover – no bloody wonder with the practise you've had over the years – and he said what he said to piss you off. As for him and your mum; well, I never saw any signs of them having a relationship. She did mellow towards him, after Vivian went back to his wife, and she started picking up all sorts of blokes in pubs again, but believe me, Des, I never saw him or her together, other than when I got home from work and Marty would be waiting for me in the house. They might have been in the same room, but that was all."