Behind Closed Doors: A Novel

After what Millie had told me about Jack pushing her down the stairs, the pressure to get away from him intensified. Even though I’d made her promise not to tell anyone, I couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t suddenly blurt it out to Janice, or even accuse Jack to his face. I don’t think it had occurred to him that she might have realised her fall was more than an accident. It was easy to underestimate Millie, and presume that the way she spoke was a reflection of the way her mind worked, but she was a lot cleverer than people gave her credit for. I had no idea what Jack would do if he discovered that she knew very well what had happened that day. I supposed he would dismiss her accusations as quickly as he had dismissed mine and suggest that she was jealous because he and I were now together, and was trying to break us up by making false accusations against him.

The only thing that kept me going through that bleak time was Millie. She seemed so at ease with Jack that I thought she’d forgotten he had pushed her down the stairs, or at least had come to terms with it. But whenever I told myself it was for the best, she would trot out what was fast becoming her mantra, ‘I like you Jack, but don’t like Jorj Koony,’ as if she knew what I was thinking and wanted to let me know that she was keeping her side of the bargain. As such, the pressure to keep my side of it grew and I began to plan my next move.

After what had happened when I’d tried to get the doctor to help me, I decided that next time, the more people who were around, the better it would be. So when I felt ready to try again, I pleaded with Jack to take me shopping with him, hoping that during the course of the trip I’d be able to get help from a shop assistant or member of the public. As I got out of the car, I thought my prayers had been answered when I saw a policeman standing only yards away from me. Even the way Jack held on to me tightly when I tried to break free lent weight to the fact that I was being kept prisoner and, when the policeman came hurrying over in response to my cries for help, I honestly thought my ordeal was over, until his concerned words—‘Is everything all right, Mr Angel?’—told me otherwise.

My behaviour from that point on confirmed what Jack had thought to tell the local constabulary some time before, namely that his wife had a history of mental problems and was prone to causing disturbances in public places, often by accusing him of keeping her prisoner. As Jack held my flailing limbs in a vice-like grip, he suggested to the policeman, in full hearing of the large crowd that had gathered, that he come and see the house that I called a prison. As the crowd looked on, whispering about mental illness and throwing Jack looks of solidarity, a police car arrived and, while I sat in the back with a policewoman who tried to still my tears of despair with soothing words, the policeman asked Jack about the work he did on behalf of battered women.

Afterwards, once it was all over and I was back in the room I had thought never to see again, the fact that he had so readily agreed for me to accompany him on the shopping trip confirmed what I had already worked out in Thailand, which was that he derived enormous pleasure from allowing me to think I had won, then snatching my victory away from me. He enjoyed preparing the ground for my downfall, rejoiced in his role as my loving but harassed husband, delighted in my crushing disappointment and, when it was all over, took pleasure in punishing me. Not only that, his ability to predict what I was going to do meant that I was doomed to failure from the start.

It was another three weeks before I saw Millie again and Jack’s explanation—that I had been too busy with friends to visit—hurt and confused her, especially as I couldn’t tell her otherwise with Jack constantly at our sides. Determined not to let her down again, I began to toe the line so that I could see her regularly. But, rather than please Jack, my subservience seemed to annoy him. I thought I had got him wrong, however, when he told me that because of my good behaviour he was going to allow me to paint again. Suspicious of his intentions, I hid my delight from him and gave him a list of what I needed half-heartedly, not daring to believe he would actually bring me what I was asking for. The next day, however, he duly arrived with pastels and oils in a variety of colours, as well as my easel and a new canvas.

‘There’s only one stipulation,’ he said, as I rejoiced over them like old friends. ‘I get to choose the subject matter.’

‘What do you mean?’ I frowned.

‘You paint what I want you to paint, nothing more, nothing less.’

I looked at him warily, trying to weigh him up, wondering if it was another of his games. ‘It depends what you want me to paint,’ I said.

‘A portrait.’

‘A portrait?’

‘Yes. You have painted some before, haven’t you?’

‘A few.’

‘Good. So, I’d like you to paint a portrait.’

‘Of you?’

‘Yes or no, Grace?’

All my instincts told me to refuse. But I was desperate to paint again, desperate to have something to fill my days besides reading. Although the thought of painting Jack revolted me, I told myself he was hardly going to stand and pose for me hour after hour. At least, I hoped not.

‘Only if I can work from a photograph,’ I said, relieved to have found a solution.

‘Done.’ He fished in his pocket. ‘Would you like to start now?’

‘Why not?’ I shrugged.

He drew out a photograph and held it in front of my face. ‘She was one of my clients. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?’

With a cry of alarm, I backed away from him, from it, but he followed me relentlessly, grinning inanely. ‘Come on, Grace, don’t be shy, take a good look. After all, you’re going to be seeing a lot of her over the next couple of weeks.’

‘Never,’ I spat. ‘I’ll never paint her!’

‘Of course you will. You agreed, remember? And you know what happens if you go back on your word?’ I stared at him. ‘That’s right—Millie. You do want to see her, don’t you?’

‘Not if this is the price I have to pay,’ I said, my voice tight.

‘I’m sorry—I should have said, “You do want to see her again, don’t you?” I’m sure you don’t want Millie to be left to rot in some asylum, do you?’

‘You’d better not lay a finger on her!’ I yelled.

‘Then you had better get painting. If you destroy this photograph, or deface it in any way, Millie will pay. If you don’t reproduce it on canvas, or pretend that you are unable to, Millie will pay. I will check daily to see how you’re progressing and, if I decide you are working too slowly, Millie will pay. And, when you’ve finished, you will paint another, and another, and another, until I decide I have enough.’

‘Enough for what?’ I sobbed, knowing I was beaten.

‘I’ll show you one day. I promise, Grace, I’ll show you one day.’

I cried and cried over that first painting. To have to look at a bruised and bloodied face hour after hour, day after day, to have to examine a broken nose, a cut lip, a black eye in minute detail and reproduce it on canvas was more than I could stomach and I was often violently sick. I knew that if I was to keep hold of my sanity I had to find a way of dealing with the trauma of painting something so grotesque, and I found that by giving the women in subsequent paintings names, and looking beyond the damage that had been done to them, imagining them as they were before, I was able to cope better. It also helped that Jack had never lost a case, as it meant that the women in the photographs—all ex-clients of his—had managed to get away from their abusive partners, and it made me all the more determined to get away from him. If they could do it, so could I.

We must have been about four months into our marriage when Jack decided that we’d spent enough time wrapped up in each other and that if people weren’t to become suspicious, we would have to begin socialising as we had before. One of the first dinners we went to was at Moira and Giles’s, but as they were primarily Jack’s friends, I behaved exactly as he told me I should and played the loving wife. It made me sick to the stomach to do so, but I realised that if he didn’t start trusting me, I’d be confined to my room indefinitely, and my chances of escaping would be drastically reduced.

I knew I’d done the right thing when, not long after, he told me that we’d be dining with colleagues of his. The rush of adrenalin I felt on hearing that they were colleagues and not friends was enough to convince me that it would be the perfect opportunity to get away from him, as they were more likely to believe my story than friends who had already had the wool pulled over their eyes by Jack. And, with a bit of luck, Jack’s success in the firm might mean there was somebody just waiting for the opportunity to stab him in the back. I knew I would have to be ingenious; Jack had already drummed into me how I was to act when other people were present—no going off on my own, not even to the toilet, no following anybody into another room, even if it was only to carry plates through, no having a private conversation with anybody, no looking anything but wonderfully happy and content.

It took me a while to work out what to do. Rather than try to get help in front of Jack, who was so very good at dismissing my accusations, I decided it would be better to try to get a letter to someone, because there was less chance of me being dismissed as a hysterical madwoman if I put everything in writing. Indeed, in view of Jack’s threats, it seemed the safest way forward. But getting my hands on even a small piece of paper proved impossible. I couldn’t ask Jack outright because he would have been immediately suspicious and not only would he have refused, he would have watched me like a hawk from then on.

The idea of cutting relevant words out of the books he had thoughtfully supplied me with came to me in the middle of the night. Using a pair of small nail scissors from my toilet bag, I cut out ‘please’, ‘help’, ‘me’, ‘I’, ‘am’, ‘being’, ‘held’, ‘captive’, ‘get’, ‘police’. I looked for a way of putting them in some kind of order. In the end, I put one on top of the other, starting with ‘please’ and finishing with ‘police’. They made such a tiny pile that the possibility of them being mistaken for just a screw of paper and being thrown away made me decide to secure them with one of my hairgrips, which I had in my make-up bag. Surely, I reasoned, anyone who found a hairgrip holding a bundle of little pieces of paper together would be curious enough to look at them.

After a lot of thought, because I couldn’t afford to have it opened in Jack’s presence, I decided to leave my cry for help somewhere on the table once dinner was over so it could be found after we’d left. I had no idea where we were having dinner, but I prayed it would be in someone’s house and not in a restaurant where the danger of the clip being scooped up in the tablecloth along with other debris was higher.

In the event, my careful planning came to nothing. I had been so concerned as to where I should leave my precious bundle of words that I forgot I had to get it past Jack first. I wasn’t overly worried until he came to fetch me and, after watching me for a moment as I slipped on my shoes and picked up my bag, asked why I was so nervous. Although I pretended it was because I would be meeting his colleagues, he didn’t believe me, especially as I had already met most of them at our wedding. He searched my clothes, getting me to turn out my pockets and then demanded that I give him my bag. His anger when he found the hairclip was predictable, his punishment exactly as he had promised. He moved me into the box room, which he had stripped of every comfort and began to starve me.