Gordon arranged to meet Jennifer at a service station. He had taken a half-day holiday and covered his tracks at the factory so there was a plausible excuse for him not to speak to Tania immediately if she rang to check up on him. Fortunately, she never thought to monitor the mileage on the car as a means of keeping control of his movements.
The restaurant was busy, but he managed to find a table in a corner and reckoned that the noise of people moving about and talking would give them greater privacy than they had had in the tea shop. Apart from a brief telephone call to agree the meeting he hadn’t spoken to Jennifer other than during breaks at the choir practices, but there had normally been other members around so these conversations were generally about the pieces they were singing, families, or what people had been doing apart from music. The rehearsals had stopped after the last concert, the one Gordon had missed, so even this contact had ceased.
He thought over once more what he was going to say and decided not to mention the evening of the concert, when Sally had ridiculed him so mercilessly ... when, in despair, he had thrashed his leg with the coat hanger. He had limped for days, but this had been nothing compared to the shock of his own violent actions. It was so out of character.
Even sitting amongst the bustle of the restaurant he could see plainly in his mind’s eye the blur of silver metal whipping through the air, feel again the sharp pain in his thigh, hear the swish swish, his cries of anguish and the laughter from the sitting room. The evening had troubled him so greatly that the next day he had tackled his wife about her and Sally’s behaviour, but she dismissed his complaint with, ‘Can’t you take a joke? Your problem is you’re far too sensitive’.
In a rare moment of defiance he had continued to sleep in the spare room. She had retaliated, firstly by smoking in their bedroom so that most of the upstairs stank as it did downstairs. Then on a couple of occasions, when he had arrived home late in the evening from work, she had told him to make his own dinner.
Gordon didn’t know if she had eaten or had snacked so much that she wasn’t bothered. However, when he had said he was too tired to cook and would nip around the corner to buy a takeaway, Tania had forbidden him, saying there was plenty of good food in the fridge and it was a sin to waste it.
She had stood at the front door so that he would have to manhandle her out of the way in order to leave the house. She knew he would back down at the prospect of such a physical confrontation. All she had to do was to stand there long enough and ignore his pleas. When he had retreated to the kitchen she would wait to hear him putting a pan on the cooker before going to the sitting room to watch television.
The humiliation of these memories made him feel as though he was being suffocated. In a gesture of frustration Gordon thrust his hands into his jacket pockets. The fingers of his right hand touched something tiny and he became calmer as he remembered another recent event. When he and Celina had gone to the church after their walk along the river she had asked if he would like to light a candle.
When he had been about to put down the spent match the vicar had suggested that it might be a good idea to keep it as a reminder of the light that had been lit that day. He took the slither of wood from his pocket to study, oblivious to the nearby noisy families on holiday, the couples who were on their way to visit relatives, or the various business people stopping for a rest during their hectic schedules.
There were good people around.
He kept the token in his hand and only returned it to his pocket when he saw Jennifer, who was almost at the table before he noticed her. He fetched a pot of tea and was soon recounting what had happened after they had last met, how they had been spotted in the tea shop by Sally, and Tania’s response when he had returned home.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘That must have been awful.’
‘It was nothing compared to what you’ve gone through over the years.’
‘Whatever the level of aggression, the hurt inside can be immense. Thank you for letting me know what happened. You must at all times take the greatest care.’
‘I can’t tell you how much I appreciated your honesty and trust in explaining about your life with Derek. I understand you did it to make me analyse my own marriage, to question my relationship with Tania.’
‘It was the best way I could think of to help you.’
‘I would like to tell you some of my story.’
‘And I would like to hear it and if I can help in any way then I will.’
Gordon didn’t start by talking about his married life, but by recalling the memory he had of when he was seven and how his father had stopped his mother from showing any affection because he thought it would make him grow up to be a homosexual. Jennifer had to wipe away tears when he got to the end of the tale.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I spent several months in safe houses after I escaped and I heard many women’s stories. Apparently, it’s not unusual for very controlling men to prevent partners showing physical love towards their children. The idea is so totally abhorrent to any mother that it’s one of the greatest punishments they can dish out. If a man can make a woman obey him with such extremely unnatural behaviour then he has gained absolute power over her. It’s almost as though it’s a test.’
He was astonished to hear that such things occurred. Gordon had always believed he was rather odd in the way his life had changed overnight into one of ‘non-touching’ and he had never doubted that his father’s reasons were tied up with his obsessive phobia of homosexuals. But to learn that this situation was not uncommon in certain relationships gave a new slant to his childhood experience.
‘I don’t think I could have taken more punishment from Derek,’ continued Jennifer after they had both been silent for a while, ‘but when I heard about the lives of some of the others in the shelters I cried and cried for what they had been through. Some of the depravity they were forced to endure made me feel sick.’
They both sat quietly, drinking tea and reflecting. He picked up his story again, explaining about the insults and ridicule he had grown up with because of his appearance.
‘That’s so sad,’ she said when he had finished.
‘The saddest part of it all is that I have let the course of my life be determined by strangers in the street, screaming abuse into my face as though they were doing nothing more than making a comment about the weather,’ he said. ‘Then when I was twenty, along came Tania.’
‘You were vulnerable,’ she said. ‘People who have grown up in homes where there is excessive control of one person over another, or even of the whole family, often accept those characteristics in their partners as being normal. They don’t grow up to become an abusive adult, but the husband or wife of someone who is and unless people are exposed to something different then they have nothing to compare this type of environment to.
‘You were even more vulnerable because you were so desperate simply to be held by another human being. We all need that. You can’t blame yourself for grabbing what must have seemed at the time to be great good fortune.’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘But even though I had never had a partner before and knew very little of relationships, I saw warning signs of Tania’s instability quite early on. I shouldn’t have ignored them. I simply didn’t want to acknowledge what they might represent.’
‘Many battered women could probably make a similar admission.’
‘I’ve tried to be analytical in my feelings and the answers I come up with aren’t positive,’ he said, pausing to collect his thoughts before continuing. ‘Her extreme laziness and the way she tells lies as part of everyday conversation have killed any respect, and I can’t tell her anything in confidence because she’ll repeat it when she’s drunk.’
‘That’s a huge obstacle to exist between two people,’ she said. ‘If there’s not enough trust to say something privately then communication is reduced to a superficial level.’
‘I used to think Tania’s jealousy—checking my post and the numbers on the telephone bill, reading my emails—that they were just distorted ways of showing love. But when you look at these actions from an alternative perspective, as someone who is trying to dominate another person, they take on a much more sinister meaning.
‘It’s this constant need to control me. She’s chipped away at my confidence, which was already low enough as it was, continually telling me I’m stupid, screaming at me to either do or not do something, using the affection I craved as a bargaining tool to mould me into her person, not the one I really am. In the end I became frightened of her without realising.’
He was quiet, looking down at his empty cup.
‘All abusers rely on fear,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s a key weapon in their corrupt arsenal. They depend on the fear of ridicule and rejection, of loneliness and shame, of pain. They steal our money and friends, trample our spirit joyfully into dust, destroy our dreams, until we believe ourselves to be so worthless, creatures so unlovable, that we are totally dependent on them for everything, and even accept we deserve the punishments they hand out.’
She took hold of his hand.
‘But you are lovable. You’re a good, kind person. Over the years, you’ve accepted all the insults and criticism as fact, but they’re not. You’re not to blame for the abuse you receive. Nobody is. It took me more than a year to accept that I wasn’t responsible for the situation I was in, and this was with the enormous support of the people at the shelters. You know, those strangers who screamed insults in the street are like Derek and Tania, trying to control another person.’
He had never considered such a link.
‘But why would strangers want to control me? What benefit is it to them what I do, as it’s so unlikely we would ever meet again?’
‘That doesn’t matter to people who are overwhelmed with the need to dominate. They’ll cast their web in all directions in order to catch as many victims as possible, to infect them with their influence. They’re consumed by the need. When we went out in the car, one of Derek’s favourite tricks was to flash at a female driver then wave his fist angrily as if she had done something terribly wrong. He always picked the moment carefully, normally when someone had just made a manoeuvre.
‘He would drive on smiling, knowing that at least some of the people he did this to would agonise for ages, trying to understand what they had done so incorrectly that another motorist had been irritated to such a degree. With hardly any effort Derek had got inside their head and manipulated their thoughts and feelings. I wanted to hug those women, to reassure them that they hadn’t made a mistake and it was just a sick game of my husband’s.’
‘I remember ...’ he said.
‘What?’
‘It’s a silly example, but it’s just come to mind.’
‘I won’t know if you don’t tell me.’
‘Once, when I was seventeen, a group of five or six lads gathered around me at the bus stop and started to make insulting comments. It was a common scenario. I tried to ignore them and after a few minutes they became bored. But just before they moved on, one of them said, “He enjoyed that”. I thought it was an extraordinary statement. Why should this complete stranger believe that I enjoyed such treatment?’
‘He sounds like an abuser in the making,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s a classic tactic to make out that the victim likes being tormented. I pity any woman who ever became involved with that lad when he was older.’
‘I never really understood why people were so compelled to ridicule me the way they did.’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps, like all bullies, it’s only by putting others down that they can hope to feel good about themselves. There are lots of characters around like it and you’ll come across this type of behaviour in all walks of life, just like domestic violence.’
She removed her hand from his and poured more tea. It was going cold, however, they were so wrapped up in each other’s stories that neither of them wanted to leave the table to get more.
‘There’s one thing about Tania that you’ve not commented on,’ she said.
He looked at her without speaking.
‘You don’t say whether or not you still love her. Despite everything that is done to us, we so often believe we love someone, that they are truly remorseful and will change if we allow them another chance ... if we only give even more of our love.’
He knew the answer without having to consider it.
‘No. I don’t love her. Perhaps in the beginning, but there’s nothing left now except concern that she might hurt herself if I leave, and my own fear of being alone.’
‘Do you believe she would harm herself?’
‘She’s said that she would, but it’s impossible to know.’
‘Maybe it’s just another way of controlling you, playing to your caring nature.’
Gordon shrugged his shoulders.
‘One woman in the shelter told me she left her husband when she realised she didn’t want to grow old with him, that the hurt could be endured day-by-day, but when she considered the idea of being with him in twenty or thirty years’ time, of being old together, the image was so awful she left the house that very afternoon and never went back. And I don’t think you need to fear being alone. Many women would snap you up.’
He managed to smile at this observation.
‘How do you feel now?’ she asked.
‘Terrified,’ he said, but the smile had not completely gone away. ‘I know what I have to do. I just have to find the courage to do it.’