Chapter Twenty-three
Jamaica
I remained speechless as he spoke.
‘I was born as you know into the richest,
most aristocratic of families. But it was my brother who was to inherit the
lands, the title, the house… everything. When he was nineteen he died; he went
out hunting and returned in a body bag. We are unsure what happened but there
were bullet holes in his forehead.
There is madness in my family, Anne, and
no one has ever spoken of it openly, but eccentric behaviour, selfishness and
violence; these were the traits of my relatives. When I travelled to America,
fresh out of school and attended college there, it was a whole new world, an
open way of living, with no family feuds and no more secrets or violence… or lies, or so I thought.’
He stoked the flames of the fire that had
been lit in my room and continued speaking in his rich, low tones. ‘There were
no family fires to contend with there; I was free at last.’
I did not stir; I felt I at least owed him
the chance to unburden his conscience.
‘As you know, I had significant funds and
agreed to produce a film with Christopher when our screenplay won a
competition. It was just a low-budget movie but we were granted enough funds to
make the film the way we wanted and we were sent to New Orleans, one stiflingly
hot summer, to film it. Christopher Mason was my best friend at university and
my co-producer. Berenice Antoinetta Mason was his sister. We’d already
auditioned an actress for the leading role but when his sister walked in… she
had the part. She was…’
‘Beautiful?’ I answered for him.
‘Seductive.’ He countered.
‘And
you could not resist marrying her.’
‘I could not but not for the reasons you
think. I hardly knew her.’
‘Then why did you marry her? You were so
young, my age.’
‘Their family, the Masons, were one of the
oldest in New Orleans. Her father and my father did business together; it was
arranged. I was now the only son and due to inherit everything. I went from
being previously ignored by my family to somehow coming up in their world. My
wedding to Berenice was a business transaction for my father, the merging of
two family enterprises,’ he added bitterly.
‘And Berenice?’
‘She… loved me.’
‘That makes it worse. And you?’
‘I loved her the first moment I saw her.’
Breathless, I knew it. She must have been
so exquisite he had not bothered to ask any questions about the arrangement,
barely needing any incentive to marry her. The money had just been a bonus to
keep his father happy and the family business running strong.
Nevertheless, the words that had come out
of Nathanial’s mouth left me almost speechless. They were not exactly the words
a woman expects to hear on her wedding night.
I started to dress, not caring if he stayed
in the room. I began pulling on my woollen jumper over my pyjama top, buttoning
up my jeans, pulling on socks as he finished his unrehearsed speech. I’d cut my
hair in the bathroom, it was shorter around my ears, a shaggy long bob.
‘You look like a waif,’ he said, suddenly
noticing my hair in the firelight.
‘I feel like one,’ I replied. ‘I am not the
same person I was yesterday. I do not want to look like that girl.’ He reached
out to touch me but I pulled away from him. He continued to speak…
‘Christopher swears he didn’t know that she
was… more than different… more than mad… she thinks she’s a creature of the
night. Have you heard of bloodsuckers Anne?’
‘Only in horror movies.’
‘I have lived a horror movie and now I want
to return to the light.’
He continued speaking in low tones. I could
not stop myself from listening even though his words were abhorrent to me.
‘We honeymooned in Jamaica. That first
night was perfect; then I noticed, almost immediately after that night, some
strangeness. She would not go out in the light; She had a horror of blood in
the daylight but a craving to touch my wounds or “kiss them better” as she put
it, when I least expected it. Unknowingly, I’d scratched myself on the bedpost
and she began crazily licking my arm when I woke. It was not normal. The
medical examiner at the resort said she was… deluded, psychotic.’
‘Please, I said. I don’t need to hear any
more about your wife,’ I muttered under my breath. He kept speaking anyway…
‘I could not admit the truth of her
apparent insanity. At first, I just thought it was behavioural, containable. She
wanted to be with me all night, staying awake long after I fell asleep, waking
me up as she paced the floors.
When I woke the next morning she was
staring into my eyes and her eyes… she told me they turned red in the dark,
then black in daylight. Even after we’d…’ he hesitated, not wanting to say the
obvious words, ‘… slept together, she would stay in bed all day and only want
to go out at night. She spent vast amounts of money on a designer wardrobe but
did not wish to be seen in daylight. Then she became violent and angry over
nothing and one day, before we were due to arrive back in England, I found her
sharing a hammock with a bartender she’d picked up that afternoon. When I went to move her, she appeared to be
in a trance; the man was dead.
Investigations proved nothing and she was
not blamed but still…. I did not know the beautiful woman I’d married, Anne. She
was a stranger to me; she was not, human.
She acted human enough in her lucid moments but her habits were strange,
her thirsts, unquenchable. I could not control her. Finally, when we arrived
back in England, she tried to kill me.’
He lifted his shirt and showed me a stab
mark and scars on his hip mixed with what appeared to be bite marks.
‘That
night?’ I asked.
‘Christopher came here to visit her. He went
to the room, alone, and Berenice tried to kill him, her own brother. I did not
think he would talk because he knows I am trapped by her insanity, but blood is
thicker than water,’ he laughed bitterly.
Nathanial continued, ‘Before she’d tried to
kill me, she had wanted me to feed from her blood just as she had fed on mine
but I would not. She became agitated, pacing around the bedroom again once we
were here at Thornton. My wife started screaming and wound herself up into a
wild frenzy. Then she tried to stab me. She did not know her own mind. She was
not properly diagnosed or medicated. A stranger was found outside the grounds
of the estate, not long after I’d refused her, dead and drained of his blood.’
‘Stop… you are telling me an unimaginable
story. I don’t want to hear any more. I would think it all lies if I hadn’t
seen the evidence myself.’
‘I can’t stop, Anne. You deserve the
truth.’
‘Why didn’t you leave her? Divorce her?’
‘After she tried to kill me, then herself,
I refused to call in the police. We called in psychiatrists, instead. She denied
everything, hid her true nature from them but after careful observation, they
told me, if I were to press charges, take photographs of her violence, she would
be sectioned and held indefinitely in a psychiatric institution.’
He put his head in his hands then looked
up.
‘I couldn’t do it, Anne. Have you seen
those places? Have you ever seen a prison for the criminally insane? They
restrain people in padded cells, drug them all day; I couldn’t do it because I
loved her. But I could not live with her and she did not return my love. Over
time, she deteriorated, degenerated into whatever she is now.’
‘Then why didn’t you divorce her?’
‘Her family are catholic and do not recognize
divorce. They threatened to disown her; she would have ended up in an
institution without me to care for her. This way, legally, I am still responsible
for her. In any case, she has cursed me all the same. When you arrived, I had
not expected to ever feel love again.’
I was speechless with the weight of his
words.
‘Don’t leave me Anne. I beg you, don’t go.’
I looked at him, honestly feeling sorry for
him. But it was not my pity he needed. It was my love, my devotion.
‘I
think I must,’ was all I could utter.
‘Stay here with me; we will be husband and
wife in our eyes, if not the world’s. And honestly, who cares what people
think? I have never followed the rules of this world anyway and it is not
unusual to live together in this day and age. I will give you everything you
ever wanted.’
‘All I ever wanted,’ I said, ‘was you.’
‘And you have me,’ he said reaching out to
me, pressing me to him, covering my wrist with kisses and then moving up to my
chest, my neck. I could barely refuse him. But I pushed him off me again.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I must leave. Tonight.’
‘Don’t go, Anne. Who is there to disapprove?
There is no one in this world who will judge us once they see where the truth
lies.’
‘I do not want to live this lie.’
‘Who would know? Apart from the staff, the
village and they are all gossips anyway, who is there to care?’
‘I care.’
I could barely speak. ‘I would know, and I would judge myself harshly
for living with another woman’s husband.
I must leave, I cannot wait,’ I cried out as I pushed him away from me
and ran down the stairs.
He had taught me to drive and I used that
skill to flee to the village in one of his many fast and beautiful cars. I parked the vehicle in the parking lot near
the station and sheltered from the cold behind a wall where no one would see me
if they came searching. When the bus arrived that would take me to Devon, I
sent Rochester a text telling him where he could collect the car. Then I threw
my phone away.
