Page 42 of Behind Closed Doors
‘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.
PRESENT
Waking in the basement, my mind instantly craves sunlight to anchor my internal clock. Or something to make me feel I haven’t, finally, lost my mind. I can’t hear Jack, but I sense he’s near, listening. Suddenly, the door swings open.
‘You’re going to have to move quicker than that if we’re to be in time to take Millie for lunch,’ he remarks, as I get slowly to my feet.
I know I should feel pleased that we’re going but the truth is, seeing Millie gets harder with each visit we make. Ever since she told me that Jack had pushed her down the stairs, she’s been waiting for me to do something about it. I’m beginning to dread the day she’ll actually manage to persuade Jack to take us to the hotel because I don’t want to have to tell her I still haven’t found a solution. Back then, it never occurred to me that I would still be a prisoner a year on. I had known that it would be difficult to get away from him but not that it would be impossible. And now, there is so little time left. Seventy-four days. The thought of Jack counting down the days until Millie comes to live with us like a child waiting impatiently for Christmas makes me feel sick.
