Jacintha Read online

  Copyright © Lorraine Davies, 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Publisher: Scott Fraser | Editor: Dominic Farrell

  Cover designer: Laura Boyle

  Cover image: istock.com/jozefmicic

  Printer: Webcom, a division of Marquis Book Printing Inc.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Jacintha / Lorraine Davies.

  Names: Davies, Lorraine (Lorraine E.) author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190075775 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190075783 | ISBN 9781459744554 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459744561 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459744578 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8607.A923 J33 2019 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

  Printed and bound in Canada.

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  For my beloved daughters, Carrie and Budge

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  AFTERWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION OF JACINTHA

  FORTY-FIVE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PREFACE

  THIS IS A TRUE STORY, written in the form of a novel, about my relationship with a woman I’ve called Jacintha. It was completed seven years after the events.

  I could have written a memoir, but I believe the truth, in this case, can be more richly and deeply expressed in fiction. I’ve used pseudonyms for everyone in the story. Were our real names known, Jacintha and my family would almost certainly suffer.

  I’ve changed the location, too, as a further barrier to discovery.

  I showed my ex-wife, Carol, a few chapters at a time while polishing a final draft, and included our email exchanges in the book.

  Richard Wilson

  September 2012

  SHE WOKE UP with a cry. Her childhood nightmare again. The man she called The Dirty Man loomed over her, huge as a bear. He pushed her to the floor, held her down with his knee as he unzipped his pants, put his paw over her mouth when she screamed.

  He smelled like fish and beer and pee. She could see his horrible thing, like a purply sausage, coming closer.

  She had seen him with her mother more than once and had opened the door when he knocked, even though her mother was out. Stupid. Stupid. Didn’t Mummy tell me never to open the door?

  Her tears were mixing with the sweat on his fingers, wetting her lips. She gagged and he said a bad word and pressed down harder. She tasted blood.

  She woke up as always, screaming, before he could push the ugly thing into her, hurting her terribly, the way he had in real life.

  The nightmare had recurred often in the past, well into her teen years, usually after she had seen a man on the street who looked like him. There were altogether too many bald men with fat paunches and noses red veined from drink. Too many ugly men.

  After she had turned twenty, five years ago, the nightmare happened rarely.

  She would tell Richard what had happened to her, of course. It was part of the whole plan.

  But not yet.

  ONE

  January 2005

  RICHARD DREAMED HE was lying half-drowned on a beach while a group of women and children pointed and laughed at him. He heard faint music, but it wasn’t sweet. It was menacing. Water gurgled sporadically from his mouth, as though he were a damaged fountain gargoyle. Carol was there, dressed in rags, but he didn’t recognize anyone else. He was guilty of something, but what? Racked with guilt. Wracked. Wrack was seaweed washed up on shore. Washed up. His legs were covered with small, sharp things that pricked his skin and felt like needles entering his bones to their aching marrow. He tried to brush the tormentors away and a few small crabs fled, but the other blue-black things clung. The colour of barnacles, but not barnacles. Creatures with teeth and claws.

  He woke with a cry of fear, and Carol reached out and stroked his forehead, saying, “It’s all right, Richard, you’re safe.”

  Both his legs were in casts. His concussion had turned out to be mild, thanks to plaster rather than timbers or toilets striking his head. Carol, her left arm in a cast and her ribs taped, had been released from hospital. She was visiting Richard before she went to meet the parents of their boarder, Jenny, at a funeral parlour. They had flown in from Montreal to take her body home.

  “Bad dream,” Richard said. “I’m all right.” What a hollow phrase, he thought. More often than not a lie, a glib social lie.

  When his head cleared enough to understand Carol’s mission, he asked her if she’d bought a card of condolence, and when she said she hadn’t yet, he told her his requirements for the card, so particular that he could tell it was all Carol could do not to lose patience with him.

  “Not one of those white lily things, you know — embossed. They’re so gloomy. Dire. Sorry, odd word. It is dire, after all. Not too much colour, of course, but maybe a little — a pale-yellow rose, maybe, although Jenny was such a red rose, if she were a flower, wasn’t she? And no verse; no soppy verse. I’ll write something. Oh God, what will I write?”

  “Write that she was a wonderful girl and you were very fond of her and so glad to have known her — something like that,” Carol said.

  “Very fond. It seems too lukewarm. It was more than that, but I can’t presume to say I loved her, can I? After knowing her such a short time? Not to her parents.”

  “Say something conventional. Write a letter to them later, when you’ve had some time. You’ll think of the right things to say
.”

  “No, you write in the card, from both of us. Say I’ll write later. Or I’ll phone them. We can talk on the phone. I wish I could have been the one to tell them. I feel it was my duty. It shouldn’t have happened. We shouldn’t have let it happen.”

  “Look at me, Richard. And listen. We didn’t let it happen. It was an accident. An accident.”

  Richard said nothing, looked away.

  Carol took his chin in her hand and turned his face toward her, as though he were a pouting child. “Say it.”

  “An accident,” he said flatly.

  It had happened less than forty-eight hours earlier. He had heard the roar first; an unearthly, apocalyptic sound. He’d thought absurdly of gods hurling boulders, thundering, throwing down lightning bolts. He should run, but which way? When the river of mud crashed through the living room ceiling, he was thrown to the floor. Something fell across his legs and he screamed in pain. Things were still falling, and he put his arms up to shield his head. When he dared to look, he saw all around him chairs, lamps, bureau drawers, clothes. Jesus! He lay perfectly still in the cold mud, most of which had rushed past him, smashing the French doors on the way out. He was held somewhere between panic and numbness, each vying for supremacy. After a while, a terrible stillness fell.

  Carol. Where is she? He tried to call her but his voice broke, rasping like an animal’s. He tried again.

  “Carol!” A croaking sound. Not loud enough. Try again. “Carol!”

  “Here, Richard. I’m here. In the dining room.”

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Christ, Carol, what the hell happened?” Panic was winning.

  “I think I’m all right. Are you?” Her voice was weak, but he thought she was trying to sound brave.

  Brave, Richard thought, and then the word floated away.

  “I’m okay,” he said. With an effort he tried to push himself up, but his hands slipped and he fell down again. His back was wet and cold. The oak bookcase was across his shins and books lay everywhere in the swamp of mud. My books are drowning. Why that phrase?

  Oh, yes. He’d been reading by the fireplace, which was gone now. Its tiles lay in shards. Bathroom sink from upstairs on the floor. Furniture upside down. Floorboards hanging. Chunks of plaster. The cliff above must have tried to bury them. Not tried. No. Pathetic fallacy. Act of God. No God. Act of nature. Fuck! Completely random fucking catastrophe.

  Yes. By the fireplace. He had been reading The Tempest, because of Jenny, thinking of Jenny, beginnings of an erection. A pleasurable guilt. No. Shouldn’t.

  “Richard. What are you doing?” Fear in Carol’s voice. “Can you come to me?”

  His heart thumped. A moan escaped him. “No, I’m trapped. Can you move?”

  “I’m squashed up against the wall. Our mattress fell on me.”

  “Mattress? In the dining room?” Why not? The toilet is now in the living room.

  “I thought it might smother me, but it’s leaning on something. A chair is pressing me into the corner.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Carol, I’m going to try to get free, come to you.” He managed this time to sit up.

  It was awful now. Timbers creaked. The whoosh of heavy rain lashed the house. Plaster and dust and water fell in sudden flurries. Something more was going to come down. Maybe the whole upper floor would fall on him. On Carol.

  And Jenny! Oh god. Was she here? “Jenny! Jenny! Answer me, please, Jenny!”

  Nothing.

  “I think Jenny’s gone to class,” Carol called.

  He could hear she was suffering, but fear overcame his sympathy. “You think? You think? Shit. Has she or hasn’t she?”

  “Richard, please calm down. Don’t panic. Please.”

  “Don’t panic? The house has fallen on us and I don’t know where Jenny is. I’m trying to lift the bookcase off my legs.” He tightened his arm muscles, willed them to be steel-like, lifted the case an inch or two, but it dropped back down and he yelled.

  “Richard?”

  He steadied his voice. “I’m all right.”

  On his next try, he lifted the bookcase high enough and long enough to free his right leg. With his arms straight out and straining, it was going to require a terrible twist of his body to push the bookcase to the left and shift his left leg to the right. He couldn’t get any traction and his shoulders were giving out. He lost his grip and the bookcase dropped the last inch and thudded onto his leg again and he fell back and began to cry and then everything went dark.

  He woke to see black rubber boots and yellow rubber pants. A man looking at him.

  “Can you hear me, sir?”

  Richard tried to sit up, but the man squatted, put his arms around Richard’s shoulders, and gently eased him down. “Don’t move now,” he said. “We’re bringing a stretcher in. You’re going to be all right.”

  “I feel dizzy.”

  “Probably a concussion. Some of the ceiling seems to have fallen on you.”

  There were things he should remember. What were they? Carol, yes. “My wife?”

  “She’s all right. She’s in the ambulance. You’ll see her soon.”

  “Is she badly hurt?”

  “No, a broken arm. Maybe a cracked rib.”

  And then he remembered. “Jenny,” he said. “Where’s Jenny?” He called her name, once, twice, his voice rising to a wail.

  “Sir, sir, please stay calm. Is there someone else in the house?”

  “Yes, Jenny. She boards here. I don’t know if she left for class. She has an afternoon class.”

  “Okay. Just a minute. I’ll check.” He went away. Came back after what seemed like a long time. “Yes, your wife told us about her. We’ve looked around already. But we’ll look again. Don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry! Who the fuck are you people? Can’t you do a proper search?” He began to whimper like a child and was crying uncontrollably as they loaded him into the ambulance.

  They found Jenny’s body in her bedroom. The roof had fallen on her and she’d been crushed and buried under the debris. Richard, concussed and in shock, wasn’t told about her until the following day.

  “I think it would lift your spirits a little if you heard from Imogen,” Carol said. “I left a message for her telling her you’ve been injured but you are going to be all right. Have you heard from her?”

  Imogen was Richard’s daughter from his first marriage. She’d lived in England with her mother ever since the divorce thirteen years ago, when Imogen was seven years old.

  “No, I called last week and Grace said Imogen was travelling in Europe with her boyfriend.”

  “Well, I hope she gets in touch soon.”

  “Yes, well.” Richard looked out the window and didn’t speak for a moment. The droop of his mouth reminded Carol of the way he had looked on visits with Imogen — a look of pain and regret and longing.

  “I guess no flowers for the Walkers,” Richard said. “If they’re flying home right away. It seems a shame, no flowers.” He started to cry. “Yes, get flowers. They can take them or not, but get flowers. Roses.”

  Carol bought a blank card with a yellow rose on it and wrote exactly what she’d suggested Richard write. She bought a bouquet of pale-yellow roses as well. She had been fond of Jenny, but the word, now that she thought about it, did seem lukewarm. How could anyone not love a young woman as bright and pretty as Jenny? So pretty she’d made Carol, who usually believed she looked young for her age, feel old and rumpled, especially in the mornings when Jenny was dewy and Carol’s face was lined with pillow creases and she’d yet to put on her eyeliner and mascara.

  She found Jenny’s parents, Gordon and Amanda Walker, in a stuffy little reception room lit by a lamp and a trickle of daylight from a small, high window. It smelled of stale perfume and some kind of chemical. Carpet cleaner? Embalming fluid?

  Codeine was making Carol woozy.

  Amanda Walker looked like she didn’t know whose clothes she was wearing. The fur coat seemed massive on her —
more like a fur blanket, or a bearskin with its limp arms around her. (The weather would have been icy when they left Montreal.) Her black fur hat was at a strange angle, maybe knocked askew without her noticing. Or caring. Only the salt-stained suede boots seemed to be hers. She bent down for a moment and traced the salt lines with a finger as though the lines were part of a map to a place she’d lost, a place Jenny might be. Carol drew in her breath sharply, as sadness hit her, and the woman looked up at her.

  Carol introduced herself and thrust the roses toward Amanda, who took them with a vague glance and put them in her lap.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She looked down at her boots again and mumbled something.

  “What’s that, Amanda dear?” Gordon Walker asked. He was about sixty-five, tall, with very short, grey hair. He wore an impeccable dark suit and a navy-blue overcoat of heavy wool. Expensive. Jenny had told them he was the president of a chain of supermarkets — twenty years older than her mother, whom he’d met while she was working in one of his stores. Her mother had since made a career as a charity fundraiser; a “lady who lunches,” Jenny had said with a mixture of amusement and disdain.

  Gordon Walker’s expression was stern, perhaps in an effort to keep his emotions from bursting forth. His taut and shiny skin seemed to be holding it all in. He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder, which drooped under the pressure. She looked up at him, puzzled.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “No, no. It’s all right. I said the salt on the sidewalks always ruins suede boots. That’s what I said. I don’t know why I buy them.” She was as beautiful as her daughter, even with her swollen eyes. Dark curls like Jenny’s spilled from her hat. She was crying silently, her tears running over her high cheekbones and down to the corners of her lips.

  Carol said, “Jenny was lovely to have around. We feel so terrible about what happened. A lovely, lovely young woman. It shouldn’t have happened. Our house, you know, it shouldn’t … it shouldn’t have …” She began to cry, too.

  “Please, it wasn’t your fault,” Gordon Walker said.

  Husband and wife sat and listened to Carol cry. Amanda’s eyes were dryer now. Nearer to the deserts of grief they would become.