Past Reason Hated

Banks said nothing.

Veronica sighed and went on. ‘I first met Caroline at the café where she worked. I used to go for long walks by the river… oh, just thinking about my life and how empty it felt… somehow, the moving water seemed to help soothe me. We got on speaking terms, then once I saw her in the market square and we went for a coffee. We discovered we were both in therapy. After that… well, it didn’t happen quickly.’

‘What attracted you to her?’

‘I didn’t even know I was attracted to her at first. Could you imagine someone like me admitting I’d fallen in love with a woman? But Caroline was so alive, so childlike in her enthusiasm for life. It was infectious. I’d felt half dead for years. I’d been shutting the world out. It’s possible to do that, you know. So many people accept what life dishes out to them. Apart from the occasional daydream, they never imagine it could be any different, any better. Even the half-life I have now is preferable to what my life was like before Caroline. There’s no going back. I was living like a zombie, denying everything that counts, until Caroline came along. She showed me how good it was to feel again. She made me feel alive for the first time. She got me interested in things because she was so passionate about them herself.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, theatre, books, film. So many things. And music. Claude was always trying to get me interested in music, and it really frustrated him that I didn’t seem to care as much as he did, or notice as much about it as he did. I suppose I loved opera most of all, but he never had much time for it. Most seasons I went to Leeds to see Opera North by myself. I liked to listen – I still do like classical music – but I never actually bought records for myself. There always seemed something stuffy about the music we listened to, perhaps because Claude hated anything popular, anything outside the classical field. But with Caroline it was jazz and blues and folk music. Somehow it just seemed more alive. We even went to clubs to see folk groups perform. I’d never done that before. Ever.’

‘But your husband’s a musician himself. He loves music. Didn’t he mean anything to you? Why couldn’t you respond to his enthusiasm?’

Veronica lowered her head and scratched the table surface with her thumb nail. The train hit a bumpy stretch of track and rocked.

‘I don’t know. Somehow I just felt completely stifled by his existence. That’s the only way I can put it. Like it didn’t matter what I thought or felt or did because he was the one our lives revolved around. I depended on him for everything, even for my tastes in music and books. I was suffocated by his presence. Anything I did would have been insignificant beside what he did. He was the great Claude Ivers, after all, always the teacher, the master. One dismissive comment from him on anything that mattered to me and I was reduced to silence, or tears, so I learned not to let things matter. I was the great man’s wife, not a person in my own right.’

She sat up straight, her brow furrowed. ‘How can I explain it to you? Claude wasn’t cruel, he didn’t do any of it on purpose. It’s just the way he is, and the way I am, or was. I still have my problems, more than ever now Caroline’s gone, I suppose, but when I look back I can’t believe I’m the same person I was then. She worked an act of magic – she breathed life into dust. And I know I can carry on somehow, no matter how hard, just because of her, just because I had her in my life, even for such a short time.’ She paused and glanced out the window. Banks could read the intense feeling in the set of her jaw, the way the small muscles below her cheekbones seemed drawn tight.

‘Do you see?’ she went on, turning her clear, grey-green eyes on Banks. ‘It wasn’t black and white. He wasn’t a bad husband. Neglectful, maybe. Certainly the last few years he was far too wrapped up in his work to notice me. And I was dying, drying up inside. If Caroline hadn’t come along I don’t know what would have become of me.’

‘But you started seeing the therapist before you met Caroline,’ Banks said. ‘What made you do that?’

‘Desperation, despair. I’d read an article about Jungian therapy in a women’s magazine. It sounded interesting, but not for me. Time passed and I became so miserable I had to do something or I was frightened I would try to kill myself. I suppose I told myself therapy was a sort of intellectual fun, not anything deep and personal. More like going to an evening class – you know, pottery, basket weaving or creative writing. It wasn’t like going to the real doctor or to a psychiatrist, and somehow I could handle that. It still took a lot of nerve, more than I believed I ever had. But I was so unhappy. And it helped. It can be a painful process, you know. You keep circling things without ever really zooming in on them, and sometimes you feel it’s a waste of time, it’s going nowhere. Then you do focus on things and you find you were circling them for good reason. Occasionally you get some kind of insight, and that sustains you for a while. Then I met Caroline.’

‘Had you experienced feelings like that before?’ Banks asked.

‘Towards another woman?’

‘Yes.’

Veronica shook her head. ‘I hadn’t experienced feelings like that for anyone before, male or female. Somehow or other, her being a woman just wasn’t an issue. Not after a while, anyway. Everything began to feel so natural I didn’t even have to think.’

‘What about your past, your upbringing?’

Veronica smiled. ‘Yes, isn’t it tempting to try and put everything down to that? I don’t mean to be dismissive, but I don’t think it’s so. I had no horrible experiences with men in my past. I’d never been abused, raped or beaten.’ She paused. ‘At least not physically.’

‘What was your family background like?’

‘Solid, suburban, upper middle class. Very repressed. Utterly cold. We never spoke about feelings and nobody told me about the facts of life. My mother was well bred, very Victorian, and my father was kind and gentle but rather distant, aloof. And he was away a lot. I never had much contact with boys while I was growing up. I went to convent school, and even at university I didn’t mix very much. I was in an all-girls residence and I tended to stay at home and study a lot. I was shy. Men frightened me with their deep voices and their aggressive ma

‘So you never had any other boyfriends?’

‘Never. I was reclusive, frightened as a mouse. Believe it or not, when Claude seemed to lose interest in sex, that suited me fine. Now, when I look back, I can’t remember what I did from day to day. How I got through. I was a housewife. I had no outside job. I suppose I cleaned and cooked and watched daytime television in a kind of trance. Then there was the Valium, of course.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘We were together for fifteen years. I never complained. I never took an interest in life outside his circle of friends and acquaintances. I had no passions of my own. I don’t blame Claude for that. He had his own life, and music was more important to him even than marriage. I think it has to be like that with a great artist, don’t you? And I believe Claude is a great artist. But great artists make lousy husbands.’

‘Did you ever think of having children?’

‘I did. But Claude thought they would interfere with his peace and quiet. He never really liked children. And I suppose I was, am, afraid of childbirth. Terrified, to be honest. Anyway, he just went ahead and had a vasectomy. He never even told me until it was done. What do you think of childless marriages, Mr Banks?’