Chapter 11

After Sally left, after what felt like a last goodbye, I got out my faithful friend the whisky bottle, and settled in my armchair.

I felt as frustrated as I had after each of our meetings, but this time there was something else as well. It seemed Sally had at last given up the fight to get me back. I recalled what she said. She ached for me, she had always loved me. I was surprised that I now felt disappointed, somehow let down that the talks were finally over.

It was my discussions with Colette and Nicky about Sally’s seduction by Mulhern. I recalled suddenly and vividly Lizzy’s comment that Mulhern had tried to seduce her as well. I had to admit it mitigated my misgivings about Sally’s actions with the priest, even though she admitted she enjoyed the sex. Sex is sex and is designed to be enjoyed, after all. At base, it’s why we do it!

I realised and accepted that once you start having sex, the physical action and feelings are enjoyable and addictive in themselves, if you are not being forced. I remembered that her liaison with the priest faded into the background of my mind as we searched for her. I knew at the time that she had been unfaithful but I still searched for her doggedly. Why was that?

Was my search really love for her? Was love behind my drive to ensure she was not in danger from herself or others? Wasn’t that real love? When I rushed off to find her as soon as I knew where she was and before I knew about Bryn, I realised now that I had to have been seeking her return, seeking to reclaim her, not just to find answers. Wasn’t that the truth? Wasn’t that love? So why didn’t it feel like love now? And if I loved her, why couldn’t I accept her back?

So the real problem and obstacle, lay not in her times with the priest, which I could forgive, but in the way she cut herself off from me, and more importantly the children, for so long, and it would have been longer and perhaps permanent, if I had not sent the petition to her. That did not make sense at any level. That was the major block. People do not do things like that.

Then I thought again. People actually do do things like that. Every day somewhere, someone walks out of their home and disappears. Many are never found. Why do they do that? It is the agony of the families left behind that they do not know. I knew that agony at first hand now, when I had to help families to sort out the disappeared person’s affairs.

It seemed that though Sally had come back, she could not or would not explain why she was able to come back when she did, when she said she had not been able to before. Yes, that was the main puzzle and the main obstacle; that was where our discussions faltered and failed, why trust was impossible.

I shrugged disconsolately and went to bed. I hadn’t opened the whisky bottle and felt quite virtuous.

Nicky had noticed (I suspected she engineered it), that the week after the end of May school holiday finished was very light at work, and that I was highly stressed by the last few meetings with Sally, preceded by the heavy workload of the those weeks when Gordon was ill. So she suggested we take a week’s holiday.

I ruled out Wales: too many memories, but I wanted mountains and some seaside, so we ‘did’ the north east side of Scotland, then Orkney and Shetland, which, at the beginning of June had the longest days of any in the British Isles. Indeed it never went dark on Shetland. The air was clean and the weather was mainly fine on the mainland but often wet on the islands which we did not mind, and we returned refreshed.

I had informed Sally of the holiday before we went, and when we returned the following Saturday, there was a message asking me to contact her when we returned. It was very late, so it was Sunday morning when I phoned her.

“Caleb,” she sounded upbeat. “I think at last I might have some answers. Dr Masters has really put me through it, and I didn’t see where it was all leading, but now I do.”

“You want to meet and tell me all about it?” I asked. “When d’you want me to meet you?”

She hesitated and my spirits dropped. Was it bad news?

“Caleb,” she said, “Would you talk with Dr Masters yourself? I think she can explain what she’s discovered better than I can. Could you do that?”

“You don’t think I’ll believe it if you tell me. Is that it?” I asked sarcastically.

There was a pause. Then, quietly, “Yes.”

The response made me feel small. Why did I say these things?

I admired her. She was not a liar. A deceiver perhaps but never an outright liar. Then it hit me all the more forcibly that if I had simply asked her if she was having an affaire, she would have told the truth. Unfortunately I did not know or even suspect until she’d gone and then it was too late.

“Caleb?” she interrupted my thoughts.

“Sorry, Sally,” I hastened to say, “Yes. Of course I’ll see her. When?”

“Shall her secretary phone Tina tomorrow?”

“Good plan.”

“Thanks Caleb.”

“You’re welcome!”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

So it was that on Wednesday afternoon I awaited a visitor. Tina knocked and issued in Dr Masters.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr Latimer,” said Dr Masters. She was a woman of about my own age, very attractive, pretty, good bone structure, slim bordering on skinny but a body well proportioned given that fact. She had eyes that danced and twinkled. A happy woman.

“You’re welcome, Dr. Masters,” I replied, as solemnly as I could muster, while I gestured her towards the easy chairs in the office. “I’m just trying to work out whether you should charge me or I should charge you!”

She laughed, “I won’t if you won’t!” she quipped back.

I could see we would get on. As she sat down, she displayed a fair amount of shapely thigh. I tried to keep my eyes averted. I failed.

“Sorry,” she grinned, unabashed. “Wrong skirt for easy chairs!” I reddened.

“Can we dispense with surnames?” I asked. “I’m Caleb.”

“Catherine not Katy or Kate or Cathy.”

“That’s a long name, may I just call you Catherine?”

“Touché!” she said laughing.

Then, as if turning a switch, she became serious.

“Caleb, you know that Sarah has been seeing me for some weeks?”

I nodded, after mentally making the adjustment to thinking of Sally as Sarah.

“It’s been fairly intensive stuff – three times a week at times. We’ve made a lot of progress. She asked me to tell you everything rather than try to do it herself. She feels worried because she isn’t sure you would believe her.”

I appreciated her correct use of the verb ‘feel’, as in feel+emotion+reason instead of the sloppy, ‘feel that’ which really means ‘think that’. I nodded again and she continued.

“I know this will sound like standard Freudian psych. speech, but did you know her father?”

“Yes. A headmaster of the old school. Strict, good turn of phrase, wide vocabulary, enjoyed the English language, rather stiff!”

“Well observed, Caleb!” she interrupted. “That will make the rest much easier. You didn’t know her before university though, did you?”

“No, we met in her final year.”

“Right.”

She paused and took a breath.

“Well, you know her parents were both strict with her – loving, don’t get me wrong – but very strict.”

She didn’t wait for a reply but pressed on.

“Her mother would slap her legs hard if she was naughty, but her father was a different matter altogether. She never told you what he used to do?”

“No.”

“All right. I’ll tell you. First, you need to know that she idolised her father, loved him ardently, worshipped him, you get the picture?”

“I remember how cut up she was when he died. Daddy’s girl?”

“Exactly! Which made her father’s punishments all the more frightening and excruciatingly emotionally painful to her. Indeed she lived in terror of his punishments, not that they happened very often, you understand. She was usually a good girl.

“From a very early age, he would stand her in front of him while he used a wide and withering vocabulary in long lectures that invariably reduced her to tears within minutes, but he would continue to berate her even so.

“She feared this greatly in itself, but then he would tell her to bend over the desk and he would use his belt on her behind. She doesn’t think the pain was any worse than her mother’s smacks, but it was the fact it was her authoritarian father whom she loved so much who was administering the punishment, and in such a humiliating way.

“They were quite a straight-laced family, very Catholic. You can imagine that as she grew older, though he would use the belt rather less, he still used it, even when she was as old as fourteen, and he only had to say ‘You’re not too old... ‘ and leave the rest unsaid for all her distress and real fear to return.

“Indeed, to be summoned for a telling off was enough to wrack her with embarrassment and terror, and I’m not putting that too strongly Caleb. You still getting the picture?”

“I never realised,” I said, angry with the man, even though he was dead. “You wonder why she loved him so much, really.”

“Oh, she remembers him being affectionate, hugs and kisses, reading her stories as she sat on his knee, it made the contrast when she was naughty all the greater.

“Well,” she went on. “As a very young child she was often so frightened she would hide when she’d done wrong in the hope that it would all pass over and thus she would escape.

“As it happened, her father was often so pre-occupied with school matters that he would forget he had to see her, and she would indeed escape by keeping very quiet and out of his way for a some hours. So she learned this behaviour at an early age. Obviously it didn’t work every time, but often enough for her to use it successfully.

“Later, as she grew older, she would visit friends instead of hiding, often at some length, sometimes staying overnight, which also proved successful in escaping the situation. It was the same behaviour but adapted to her greater age and development.

“You need to understand those three things, her idolising love for him, her admiration of and respect for his authority, and her terror of his punishments.

“She doesn’t seem to have been a naughty child. In fact it sounds to me that she tried to be very good, but that made her feelings of guilt at her misdemeanours all the more acute when they did happen. It meant that emotionally as a teenager she could seldom bring herself to be stroppy with her parents, or shout at them as most teenagers do. Instead she would visit her friends more and be at home less, though she longed to go back once she was away from home. She missed her father, the very man who would lecture then punish her so embarrassingly if she went back. It’s a strange paradox.

“So can you tell me, Caleb, if you ever noticed her using this behaviour?”

“Well, Catherine,” I said after a pause for thought, “Now you mention it, if we got into a row she normally avoided confrontation with me by going off visiting friends, and then coming home later to talk more calmly about whatever the dispute was. But I don’t see–”

“Patience Caleb,” she said, holding up one hand, “I’m getting to it.”

She smiled and continued. “Are you familiar with regression?”

“You mean when people revert to previous strategies in stressful situations?”

“Exactly. You know, you’re really good! Now, the greater the stress, often the deeper the regression. This is where it applies to Sarah. She has a very deep sense of right and wrong, and an even deeper sense of shame when she knows she’s done wrong. She got that from her parents and her religion.

“Now for the whole of her adult life she’s been ‘a good girl’. She knew how to apologise and how to reconcile, and nothing she did was ever really evil in her eyes. Then she started this affaire with Anthony Mulhern.

“I don’t have to tell you how many levels of guilt there are working here. She’d betrayed you. She’d deceived you. She’d committed adultery, and with a priest. When those photo’s appeared in the church porch, to her shame they showed her partially undressed and engaged in a sexual act. You keeping up?”

I nodded, I was ahead of her.

“She had been discovered and revealed in what she knew to be very shameful and shaming behaviour. It was public exposure and you would find out as well. She could imagine the censure of the congregation and more to the point your censure. The shame she felt was akin to standing before her headmaster father.

“But worse. I don’t think you realise how like her father she sees you. You have authority – you are a lawyer. You show her a lot of love, and she loves you ardently. You have immense skill with words and she knows how well you can use them in an argument or a row. I’m afraid it was all too much for her.

“Now she regressed, not just a little but all the way back to early childhood. She ran away and hid. She actually had what lay people would call a mental breakdown, and she ran and hid. The only problem was that she was not a child. When she ran and hid this time, it wasn’t under a table, or overnight with friends, it was a long way away.

“The bigger problem she faced was that you were not like her father. He would forget he had to punish her, but she knew damn well that with you, and after her deeply immoral acts, this would not happen; you would never forget and it would not go away. It would be waiting for her whenever, if ever, she returned. I should also point out that she also felt deep shame as far as her children were concerned because they too would find out, and so she hid from them as well.”

“Oh, hell!” I exclaimed softly.

“Yes, indeed, Caleb,” she nodded sympathetically. “It was hell for her. She longed to come home, but her flight reflex would not let her. I think she told you that she wanted to come home but it was like a wall stopping her. She was in bitter conflict and mental stress all the time. She longed for you Caleb, but thought she could never put things right. Her depression grew and became very deep and she got little or no help.

“You know that one effect of depression is inertia, so she stayed where she was. In fact her so-called friend reinforced all the learned behaviour by insisting that you would never forgive her, and had in fact repudiated her totally by living with a younger, pretty woman.

“And then there was this man Bryn Price. She ran to him for comfort, as she used to run to her friends at school, but under the comfort she found in his care there was the renewed guilt which was working away, of betraying you yet again by living in his house. Even though this time the relationship was not sexual, she was living with another man, making any return impossible.

“Add to that the woman friend’s devious behaviour in destroying her letter to you so that no reply came, and you can see the mental destruction she suffered. To be honest with you, Caleb, I’m amazed she’s come through it as well as she has, though obviously she’s still deeply traumatised and depressed.”

“Catherine,” I said, “you’ve done a great service to me and I’m sure to Sally as well. I couldn’t work out why she seemed to abandon us so absolutely. It seemed so callous; so unfeeling, you understand.”

“Well, Caleb,” she smiled. “It was neither callous nor unfeeling, the very reverse in fact, her feeling of loss was very deep and did not diminish with time. But if I may continue – nearly finished!”

I nodded and smiled.

“The divorce petition and documentation shocked her into action and at the same time it was the punishment from you she’d been subconsciously waiting for. It was a legal punishment from you, a lawyer. It freed her. She could come home, though she knew by then that things had changed between you. Then, of course she found out the extent of the deceit of her so-called friends that she had relied on so heavily. She also learned that the future might have been so different if those two people hadn’t interfered. More fuel for her depression.

“Of course when she came back and talked with you, she found she’d missed her chance, now you really were with your new partner.”

“So how will she cope now?” I asked. I was appalled at the extent of the damage she had suffered, the mess she was in and I was worried for her future sanity.

Dr Masters paused and looked at me. “You’ve now some idea how traumatic these past weeks have been for her, as I led her through the whole painful business. It was heartrending to accompany her through it, but she is coping – as she said, she’s living one day at a time.”

Jenny brought in tea for me, and coffee for Catherine Masters (she’d asked the visitor’s preference as she arrived). We each sorted out milk and in her case sugar, and took a sip each.

Catherine Masters sat back in her chair. She had clearly finished what she had to say and had conveyed what was needed for my enlightenment. Now I wondered why Sally had sent her. She seemed to read my mind.

“Apart from making some things clearer for you, I don’t think this helps much, does it?” she suggested.

“Well,” I replied, “It certainly makes her absence understandable, but there are many more issues I have with her. I could have accepted that she would sleep with Price – her need for comfort would be a driving force in that direction, and I was surprised she didn’t. He seems to have been a support for her, apart from his deception when I saw them – I assume she told you of that?”

She nodded; I continued.

“He seems a good man, and I’m sure he fell in love with her – what’s not to love, as they say nowadays?”

I paused and took a drink. “What’s going on in her head at the moment, Catherine? She asked you to come here, why?”

“Not my job to be her apologist, Caleb. My brief was to give you information to set your mind at rest about her flight behaviour, not to argue her case. She’s delighted to know at last why it happened so drastically, it’s a tremendous relief to her, and at present she’s cursing her father for the damage he did her and has done more recently to her life.”

“Come on Catherine. Give. Is that what she said – just give him the facts?”

She looked vaguely uncomfortable. “No of course she’s said a lot more about you and about her hopes and wishes – not that she thinks they’ll ever come true. But I’m not sure how much of that part I ought to tell you: I was given clear parameters – patient confidentiality you know.”

Being a solicitor I could read between lines better than most.

“Catherine I’m going to say something. It’s what I think she might have said. I don’t expect you to tell me I’m right, but you can tell me if I’m wrong, since if I’m wrong she didn’t actually tell you what I think she said so there would be no confidentiality to break.”

She looked startled, than smiled, admiration showing on her face, “You really are a good lawyer! That’s brilliant. Fire away.”