I DID NOT go there with the intention of being anywhere near the creep; not physically, not even a hug, a kiss on the cheek, let alone sexually, for all the evident change in his manner.
I have not harboured a single thought, not sexually, of even a fling with him, not once. Not even in a dream.
I went to see him to confirm, but preferably disprove, that Jake had changed. (He couldn’t have. Not that much, not with so much distance between him and my subsequent world.) And in the unlikely event I assessed that he had indeed changed, then I wanted to discuss his will, his estate, as he himself had said; the idea of informing my — our — children that he had made provision for them excited me; kind of partly make up for his failings to them as a father.
What I found was a man who called me unrecognisable and said how he didn’t deserve even half an hour of my company and would understand if I remembered how he was of old and got back in my car and left.
What I found was the man he should have been and, more than that, a man who stood before me, trembling, not with rage but its complete opposite. His feelings were extreme, which he had no choice but to face, those feelings he almost embraced at Grace’s death, to become the truly grief-stricken father, till he took the coward’s option and drowned his so-called grief in drink.
Not this Jake.
Jake Heke stood before me, shaking like a leaf and weeping copious, if silent tears. Jake did this. In front of me — to me. Jake-Heke-crying-with-remorse? This could not be.
For you, Beth, he said. What he hadn’t given and I had so much deserved, the words from chest-heaving man who looked like a child. When all you wanted was a decent marriage, to raise good children, improve our lives. Sobbing. I’m sorry, Bethy.
Called me Bethy. I had always liked being called that, probably because he had never said it to me and not meant it; it had meant genuine love for me, his way of saying a word he would not let pass his lips. To say I was unprepared for this is the understatement of my life.
He wept for, he said, our two dead children. Which had me torn between falling for this self-indulgent creep saying sorry, all these years later, and forgiving him. I was torn between feeling for him and fury at it taking this long for the man to grow up.
(Stuff you, Jake the Muss Heke. Too damned late — twenty-five years too late, longer than that.) I was about to tell him those very thoughts, but instead found myself weeping as well. Except, unlike him, I couldn’t hold back the sound.
And then he was holding me and it was as far from sexual, or even mildly affectionate, as you can get. Just two estranged people crying in each other’s arms. But it kept changing as we stood there holding each other.
It was a father, a daddy, bawling eyes out for our two lost babies. God, I was crying so myself and for those same reasons: our two children gone. And at our share of the blame — my own, too. I should have known my Grace better. I should have put my motherhood love on the line with Nig, either the gang or me. For he loved me powerfully, did my big boy.
I was crying, finally, for him. At last the man — and still big and strong — holding me in his arms, saying Nig and Grace’s names, over and over.
He cried with sound then, great sobs unlocked from his inner prison, at long last a true man facing up to himself. It was so moving I felt my own inner being wanting release, the full woman I had always wanted to be; the completed woman, how I am now but with one missing factor: this man.
Grace! Nig! He cried. I did it to you! Jake killed you!
I know he did. Yet he didn’t. Or we are all to blame for everything bad that happens to our children, and there are times when that is just not so. Sometimes they make their own decisions. Though I think Jake was more responsible than not.
I did not go to his cottage with any sexual intention, and he most certainly did not even hint that it was what he hoped for. Hell, we were howling together for our children, and he with added apology for what he’d done to me. (You were a mongrel dog, Jake Heke. A violent loser of a husband. A no-account who spent years on the unemployment. A total failure of a father. Therefore not by any measure a man. And yet.)
Yet here we were in this unexpected state, both of us, and I gathered myself before he did as he’d quite gone, letting out not just this decade apart, not just the years he made miserable and tragic for his family, but for his life before that. The life he’d said so little about and yet it had scarred him so, maybe even made him the awful man he once was.
So I’m wiping the tears from his face and making soothing sounds — it was instinctive, humane, womanly, motherly. But he couldn’t stop and I started crying again and next our lips met — I made them meet. Put my mouth to his. The years came back in the instant. Our better times. Still he tried to push me away. He said, No, no, Beth. I don’t deserve you.
It was me, a happily married woman to a fine man, who was initiating this.
We ended up doing it and it’s the best loving I’ve had since, well, since him. Jake the Lover, when he left that Muss tag outside the marital bedroom door. The best thing, giving myself utterly to him and he to me. The height I had given up ever reaching again.
Yet I knew it was the biggest mistake of my life — again. With the same man. (Oh, woe is Beth. What have you done? What of your wonderful husband?) And yet why was my heart singing? Oh Lord, what was I to do? What was I to do?