Voice of the Heart (103 page)

Nick sighed. ‘But you’re always impeccable.’ His voice trailed off and he eased away from her so that she was free of his weight. She slipped out of bed, as he had known she would, and disappeared without saying another word. Nick found a cigarette and lay back, smoking and thinking. He had spoken the truth when he had said this inevitable dash for the shower distressed him. Although it had been on his mind for weeks, he had procrastinated about discussing it, not wanting to upset her. But he had thought about this curious habit of hers all afternoon on the plane, had concluded it must be broached now. It had to be brought out in the open before it started to grow like a canker inside him. He suspected that her preoccupation with personal hygiene was rooted in something much more serious and significant than a mere desire for absolute cleanliness, and with any other woman he would have said so bluntly. But Katharine was shy, continually avoided any discussions about sex, and was self-conscious to a point of prudishness when it came to intimate matters. He loved her with a desperation that staggered him at times, and he wanted everything to be free and open between them.

A few minutes later the bathroom door opened and she came out, wearing a towel tied around her like a sarong, floating towards him on a cloud of mingled perfumes.

‘I could have sworn I brought that bottle of wine upstairs with us,’ he said, smiling at her genially, reminding himself to be both gentle and tactful. ‘But I’m damned if I can remember where I put it. After being away for a week, I guess I was over anxious about getting you into bed.’

Katherine laughed, glanced around, spotted
the bottle on the chest near the window. She brought it to him, filled the glasses on the bedside table, handed him one. Then she climbed onto the bed and sat in the middle of it, facing him, her legs crossed Indian style. ‘I’m so glad you’re back. I missed you, Nicky.’

‘I missed you too, darling.’ He reached for her hand, kissed her fingertips. He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, then said, ‘There mustn’t be any barriers between us, Katinka.’

Looking puzzled, she cried, ‘But there aren’t any!’ He said nothing, simply held her eyes with his, and she ventured, softly, ‘Are there? You must think—’

He held up his hand, shook his head. ‘I want to talk to you about something, and I don’t want you to get annoyed or distressed. You’re twenty-nine, a grown woman, so you should be able to discuss intimate things in an intelligent, sensible way, without becoming embarrassed.’

Panic swept over her. She knew from the serious tone, the expression on his face, that he was going to embroil her in a conversation about sex and she was flustered. She swallowed, dropped her eyes, became mute.

Perceiving her discomfort, Nick remarked with great gentleness, ‘I said, a few minutes ago, that you are always impeccable. So why do you continually think you’re not?’

‘I don’t know,’ she muttered, speaking the truth.

Deciding now to go right to the heart of the matter, Nick asked, ‘Don’t I make you happy, Kath?’

‘You know you do!’

‘I mean in bed.
Sexually.
’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. She lifted her head, searched his face. ‘Don’t… don’t
I
please
you
?’ As she spoke colour flamed in her cheeks and she felt herself tensing.

‘Yes, most of the time. However, there are occasions—’ He paused, thought: Far too many occasions, and proceeded carefully. ‘Sometimes, I don’t get the right responses from you, and I feel you’re not as relaxed as you should be with
me. Very often you’re removed and distant, and just a little inhibited, as a matter of fact.’ There, he had said it. Finally it was out in the open. He watched her closely, waiting for her reactions.

Katherine’s face was scarlet. ‘A-a-a-always? Am I always inhibited?’

‘No,’ he fibbed, wanting to spare her feelings as much as he could. ‘When you’ve had a few drinks you’re less uptight,’ he added, since there was actually a degree of truth in this.

‘Oh! Oh!’ Her hands flew to her face.

‘Look, darling, don’t get so upset. We must talk this out tonight. It’s very important for our future relationship.’

‘Do… do… you think…’ She dropped her hands, stared down at them. ‘Do you think I’m f-f-f-frigid?’ She stuttered over that hated word, and gulped, discovered she was afraid to look at him, more afraid of his answer.

‘Being frigid is not a crime, Kath darling,’ he murmured kindly, loving her more than ever. ‘Usually there’s a good reason for it.’

There was a long silence, and then she questioned in a tiny voice, ‘What reason?’

Nick stubbed out his cigarette, took hold of her hand. It trembled in his. He stroked it, said in a warm and reassuring voice, ‘
I love you
, Katherine. I want to help you. Relax, angel. I’m on your side, you know.’

‘Yes, I’ll try to relax, Nicky. But please tell me… what reason?’

‘A fear of intimacy and closeness can create frigidity in some women,’ he explained. ‘Then again, it might be caused by an unconscious desire to punish all men because of a subliminal hatred of the male species in general. Sometimes frigidness grows out of a bad sexual experience that happened in the past and which has caused trauma. Then, of course, there are women who are completely uninterested in sex because they are cold by nature.’

‘Which one applies to me?’ she whispered fearfully.

‘Darling, how can I possibly hazard a guess?’

‘Do you think I should see a psychiatrist, Nicky?’

He chuckled. ‘No, not when you have me.’ He reached for her, pulled her to him. ‘Come, lie next to me, darling, sip your wine, have a cigarette and calm down. And let’s talk about this some more.’

‘Yes,’ she murmured against his chest, and did as he suggested. She drank half the glass of wine in one long swallow, and then took a cigarette.

Nick lit it for her, said, ‘I think the best thing to do is examine the reasons I gave, Kath.’

After a moment’s thought, she exclaimed, ‘I don’t want to punish you. I love you. And I don’t hate men—’ She broke off, dunking this was not strictly correct:
Her father
. She did loathe him. But not Nick. ‘No, I definitely do not hate men, subliminally or consciously,’ she asserted in a strong and positive tone, sounding more like herself. She gave him a sidelong look. ‘Do you think I’m one of those women who’s cold by nature?’

Nick shook his head. ‘No, not at all. That leaves one last reason, Kath, a bad sexual experience. Have you had one, darling? Is that it perhaps?’

‘No! It’s not!’

Her sudden vehement denial aroused his suspicions, and he asked, ‘Not with Beau Stanton?’ No reply was forthcoming, and he told her quietly, ‘The other week when he was here, when I was questioning you about your marriage, I wasn’t doing it out of jealousy. I was simply trying to understand why it went wrong, hoping you would throw some light on your attitude. Your attitude to sex, I mean.’

‘Oh,’ she said, taken aback. And she thought instantly: My God, did Beau think I was frigid too? Is that why he changed towards me? She blurted this thought out before she could stop herself, and waited, looking up at Nick.

He nodded, reflected, said, ‘Yes, perhaps Beau
was
turned off because of your reserve, Kath. But I’m surprised he
didn’t deal with it, if that was the case. After all, he’d been married several times before you came along, and he’s much older than you, sophisticated. Well, so much for that. If you didn’t have a bad scene with Beau, what about Kim Cunningham?’

‘I never slept with Kim,’ she confessed.

‘I see,’ Nick responded evenly, sheathing his surprise. ‘Then perhaps some other man gave you a bad time. Yes?’

Katharine leaned back against his shoulder, closed her eyes, forcing herself to remember that day, every ghastly detail of it, filled with a sudden and terrible revulsion. She had blocked it out for years, as best she could. Blocked out the memory of George Gregson, of the way he had molested her. She knew she owed it to Nick to tell him, and also to gain his understanding and his help. And yet she was afraid to do so. Branded a liar by her father, who had not believed her, she was rendered speechless now, terrified Nick Latimer would not believe her story either.

Intuitively understanding that he had triggered an unpleasant recollection, Nick stroked her hair, said in the tenderest of voices, ‘Tell me all about it, Kathy.’

‘I’m scared to,’ she said with a shiver.

‘No, you’re not. I’ve always thought you one of the most fearless people I’ve ever met. Don’t forget, I want to help you.’

Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘There was this man, George Gregson. He was my father’s partner. He came to the house one day. It was Sunday. He… he’d always tried to make advances, and I’d repulsed him. That day… well, he forced me.’

He held her closer, said in a low voice, ‘You mean he raped you?’

‘N-n-not really,’ Katharine managed. Tears welled. ‘He molested me… you know… touched me. All over. My breasts. My… put his hand up my dress. He made me touch his… p-p-penis. I was horrified and revolted. I tried to fight
him off, but he was big, a big man, Nick, and he had me in a stranglehold. He p-p-pushed my face down onto it… into his lap… made me… put it in my mouth. Oh, Nick, it was vile. I thought it was going to choke me…’ She began to sob, her shoulders shaking convulsively.

Nick soothed her, dried her tears with gentle, sensitive hands. ‘How old were you?’ he asked at last, appalled by her story.

T-t-twelve,’ she gasped through her sobs.

‘Oh Jesus! Oh my God, Kath! You were only a child! The filthy depraved son of a bitch. I’d like to go out and find him. If I could get my hands on him I’d beat the goddamn life out of him.’ Nick’s harsh tone reflected his immense rage, his utter disgust. And he understood her then, understood so much about her. He cradled her for a long time, and as soon as she was calm, he asked. ‘What did your father do about it?’

‘Nothing. He didn’t believe me. He said I was a liar.’

Nick was astounded. ‘The stupid bastard!’ He squeezed his eyes shut, and his arms tightened on her fragile body. Her abhorrence of Patrick O’Rourke was well founded. The man should have been horsewhipped for doubting his daughter. He was as responsible for her traumatization as the fiend who had molested her. Sweet Jesus, no wonder she was inhibited. And we’re supposed to live in a civilized world. Animals. Animals, he thought, filled with contempt.

Katherine, misunderstanding his silence, whispered, ‘You do believe me, don’t you, Nicky?’

‘Yes, of course I believe you, my darling.’

She told him then how she had gone to the bathroom and scrubbed herself raw, and cleaned her teeth half a dozen times, and gargled repeatedly; how she had covered her entire body with talcum powder and doused herself in a whole bottle of perfume, and that she had done all this because she felt dirty. And ashamed. Because of her shame she had purposely ruined the new dress she had been
wearing that afternoon by spilling red ink on it, so that she would never have to wear it again and be reminded of her shattering experience. And later that night, she explained, when everyone was asleep, she had crept down to the basement and secretly burned her underwear and her white ankle socks in the furnace.

And she has been cleansing herself ever since, he said silently, and her pain was his own. Nick filled up with compassion and love for her, and his insight into Katharine Tempest was complete.

***

By unburdening herself to Nick, Katharine too had gained new insight into herself. In the ensuing days she began to realize how much that horrifying childhood experience had scarred her, what a devastating effect it had had on her adult life. Because her father had not given credence to her story, she had kept quiet thereafter, intimidated into silence and riddled with all manner of guilts. Yet by not ventilating her feelings, and so purging herself through catharsis, the incident had steadily been magnified out of all proportion in her mind. It had spiralled into a shameful secret that weighed her down and destroyed a great number of her natural feminine instincts, her very sexuality. One day it struck her that she had not been at fault, nor guilty of any wrongdoing, that she had simply been a victim of Gregson’s depravity. This knowledge brought a measure of welcome inner peace. Nick had carefully explained to her that she would not instantly shed her frigidity just because she had faced, revealed and discussed a painful experience. ‘Diagnosing complaints doesn’t automatically cure them,’ he had laughed. But she did find herself relaxing more often, and under Nick’s gentle and sensitive tutelage her approach to sex and intimacy became more normal and healthy. Also, having always thought of men as untrustworthy, seeing them as extensions of her father and Gregson, she was startled to discover that she trusted Nicholas Latimer implicitly.

For his part, Nick quickly acknowledged to himself that he had assumed too much, too soon on the night of her confessional. It was true that he did have a better understanding of her, a fresh psychological insight into her personality and character, but there were many sides to this complex woman which he did not fully comprehend. As they became more involved he began to realize that Katharine was a mass of contradictions. Vivacious, joyous, gay and loving though she was, there were dark aspects to her nature which did not fail to trouble him. She had sudden mood swings, could become withdrawn, cold, argumentative, imperious or depressed in the batting of an eyelid. She was generous and openhanded, devoted and loyal to those she held dear; conversely, and just as easily, she was manipulative, calculating, scheming and secretive, and she constantly meddled in people’s lives. This maddened Nick, especially since she tended to cloak her meddling in a mantle of do-goodery. He saw this as a self-serving device and told her as much one night, after she had involved herself in Terry’s business, his future plans. He had gone on to voice the opinion that she was misguided in believing she knew best, knew better than anybody how people should run their lives, because she did not. He had also angrily pointed out that she had a need to control, was bossy and power mad. Airily, she pooh-poohed his accusations and had explained, nonchalantly, that there were a lot of different Katharines and that he had better get used to each and every one of them.