Somewhere Only We Know ....... Page 5
We settled into our life together. We went to Kinsley on a weekend, visited my Granny and my mam and dad. There was little improvement there. My mam kept saying you are going to regret this my lady, he isn’t right for you. It didn’t help that Keith kept going on about how he was going to be a millionaire before he was 25, even to me he seemed like a dreamer.
When I met Keith he worked at a local garden centre, but he was always buying and selling stuff; socks, washing up liquid, cars; pirate videos. You name it he was selling it and he was always up to something. At the time I was impressed, he was doing this all for us, but he never seemed to be making any money. We were using my wages to pay all the rent and bills.
He changed jobs and started working in sales, once again I was impressed, he was still very young, but had managed to get a job selling alongside men much older than he was, there was also the added bonus of a company car; we certainly were going up in the world.
Apart from the Keith’s penchant for ‘daydreaming’ a few other things started to emerge about him. He was always washing and cleaning, the washing machine was never off, he hovered daily and was forever spraying air freshener. The sheets on our bed were fresh every night. But the flat was still smelly! Despite all the cleaning and washing and spraying the flat still had a smell about it that penetrated everything in it. Then the penny dropped, Keith was a bed wetter. How had I missed it? Then I remembered every morning Keith would tell me to go put the kettle on and get the fags ready - we never had sex in a morning, well if we did it would be in the living room or bathroom. Poor Keith. I remembered when I had gone through a spell of bedwetting, it was horrific. My heart almost broke.
So I bought extra bedding. I didn’t say anything I just put the sheets in the cupboard along with a mattress protector. Keith didn’t say anything either, but I noticed that instead of switching the washing machine on with just one sheet in it, he would leave the door open so I could load the rest of the washing if we had any.
The other thing was that although I knew he was devoted to me, he was a born flirt. No one was safe from his charm, and charming he was. It didn’t matter what age they were or what they looked like, he had a roving eye. I was full of insecurities. If he was late I would panic thinking he was meeting someone else. I searched the flat for signs of is cheating, there was none. There were photographs of a girl who was the daughter of his boss at the garden centre, I was devastated; she was so pretty. When I asked him he said that he had gone out with her for a while, but she had finished him. Why would she do that I thought to myself, he is gorgeous. He must have been heartbroken when she finished him, maybe I was a rebound thing…. And so it went on. I would pick arguments with him, push him to the limits until one day he turned around and said “For fucks sake Caroline will you marry me?” And that was that.
The next weekend we went to my mam and dads. We had planned to tell them we were getting married, but my mam was so snotty with me and so off with Keith I decided I wasn’t going to bother, I did take my birth certificate with me when I left though and the next day we went to Newcastle Registry Office and booked our wedding. On the spur of the moment we decided to get married by special licence and we came away with our wedding arranged for the following Friday, 4 days away.
I borrowed a dress from a friend of Marion’s, bought a pair of cheap white shoes and Marion bought me a bouquet, well I think she bought it. Keith’s sister was coming up from Leeds for the day and he asked a lad he used to work with at the garden centre to come along and be a witness. Marion and The Commander decided that they wouldn’t be coming, which to be truthful I was relieved at, they were canny but a bit strange and I sometimes felt under pressure when I spent time with them.
So on the Friday lunchtime me and Keith along with witnesses; Jane his sister and Paul from the garden centre went into Newcastle and got married. I felt guilty for my family, my mam and dad had always wanted me to marry in church so this was going to be yet another disappointment for them. And my Granny, my best friend how could I have done this without her there to see me? But it was done and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, well there was, I didn’t tell
them, I didn’t tell them Keith and I had got married for another 6 months and I only told them then because my mam caught sight of a bank statement which was in the name of Mr and Mrs Keith Evans.
After the ceremony we went into a city centre pub for lunch. We had a few drinks, but I struggled to keep the drinks down I was so wound up. Afterwards Paul went home, Jane went to stay upstairs with her mam and The Commander and Keith and I went home. For the first time I saw Keith drunk and I didn’t like it.
My lovely mild mannered Keith was full of himself, he was foul mouthed and arrogant. When I tried to get him to come to bed he hit me, he hit me so hard I banged my head against the radiator. On my wedding night my new husband hit me and he was so drunk he didn’t even realise he had done it. I ran into the bathroom where I sat on the toilet shaking, I couldn’t take in what had just happened. On the day that should have been the happiest day of my life I had become a battered wife.
When I came out of the bathroom, Keith was asleep on the settee. Still in his wedding suit he looked the picture of innocence. I covered him with a blanket and went off to spend a sleepless night in our wedding bed. Keith had hit me and that was just the beginning.
Tub Thumping
The next morning I was sitting drinking a coffee on the kitchen bench when Keith came in, he had discarded his suit and was wearing a tee shirt and track suit bottoms. He looked terrible. “Are you okay? What happened?” He asked. I lifted my head, I knew from looking in the bathroom mirror earlier that my cheek was a lovely shade of lilac and was swollen. “Fuck me, I didn’t do that did I?” he whispered. “Yes you did - you got drunk lost your temper and hit me Keith, it was our wedding night and you hurt me,” I answered. “I can’t remember a thing Caz really I can’t, how could I have done that to you,” he said.
He burst into tears. I opened my arms and he snuggled into them sobbing, I soothed him until his breathing became normal again. “I am so, so sorry, it will never happen again, I promise you,” he pleaded. So I forgave him. I ran him a bath, I picked up his piss sodden suit from the bedroom floor, I couldn’t even bare taking it to the dry cleaners, so I binned it and I sponged down the settee. I mothered him, he had hurt me, but somehow he was the one that was needed comforting.
For a while thing went back to normal. He was so loving and caring and our relationship went back onto an even keel. Anything I wanted I got, clothes, nights out, anything. We put our wedding night well and truly to bed.
Keith was promoted at work, he became a team leader. He was still only 19 but showed such good skills that the company thought to reward him with promotion, his charm won through again. He got a pay rise, monthly bonuses and a new car. Along with the promotion came training courses and meetings and he spent at least one night a week away. At first I liked the time being on my own, but it soon wore thin.
Mrs Kleptomaniac and The Commander did my head in. They were a couple of Walter Mitties and couldn’t even lie straight in bed. It was a toss-up between who was the most frequent visitor at their house, the police or their insurance man. They were forever having something stolen, how I’ll never know, The Commander never set foot outside the flat, but they seemed to get away with it and the cheques kept coming. The Commanders assortment of kids and their families were also in and out all of the time, all the grandchildren looked the same, just in different sizes, they were all scruffy, swore like troopers and had continually runny noses. I kept my distance and I think they all thought that I was stuck up, this was always in evidence whenever any of the grandchildren where there, they would always made a game of putting something disgusting through my letterbox.
I got so fed up I started to go home when Keith was away. It was nice spending time with my mam and dad, after their disappointment in my secret wedding we enjoyed each other’s company. I don’t think
their relationship had changed much, it was still as volatile as ever but they made an effort when I stayed over. My Granny would come along for tea on those nights and sometimes I would go and stay with her. It was her idea that me and Keith should move back to Kinsley.
The seed had been planted. On my next visit I scoured the streets of Kinsley looking for my perfect house, well maybe not perfect but something we could afford and eventually came across a 3 bed roomed terrace, I loved it from the outside straight away; it had a back yard and a little front garden and then when Keith and I viewed it on the Saturday that was it. I loved it.
Our offer was accepted and we had our moving in date. I packed up the flat, binned more than I kept, but thought we would replace once we got into the new house.
A couple of weeks before we were due to move, my mam had to go into hospital for a hysterectomy. I decided that I would go and stay with her when she was discharged, she wasn’t supposed to do anything for months, but I thought if I stayed for the first week or so that would get her over the worst. Keith was working away for a few days that week so it was no hardship.
The week flew by, Keith rang me either when I was at work or at my mam and dad’s every day. He sounded stressed, I think his new job was proving harder than he thought. When I returned home at the end of the week I knew straight away something was wrong. I wandered through the flat, but there was nothing. Call it women’s intuition but I just knew that there had been someone else there.
When Keith came in I asked him if he had anyone there, he just called me stupid and said how could he have had, he had been in Sheffield all week. But I knew.
I couldn’t afford to have all my insecurities resurface, so I didn’t say anything else. I finished packing up the flat. I didn’t have any emotional attachment to the place, I had had some good times there, but it was also the place we spent our wedding night and that was one nightmare I was going to try and leave behind.
We also left Marion and The Commander behind too, not that we didn’t try to keep in touch with them, they just weren’t interested. We telephoned each other now and again, but Marion never did see anything of her grandchildren. When The Commander died a few years later, Marion moved down to the south coast. She wasn’t alone mind she ran away with one of The Commander’s grandsons, he was 19 years old, she was 59. Little did I know that one day I would be in a similar relationship myself, but I can remember I shuddered when Keith told me what she had done, people in glass houses and all that …….
We moved into our little house, it was lovely and I spent my spare time making it a home for us. It was nice because my family visited us now. My Granny often popped in and my mam and dad were frequent visitors. I didn’t mind staying on my own when Keith was away, I felt secure.
I was promoted at work, I had worked hard on my business studies course which I attended each week at college and it paid off, I became a PA to the Accounts Manager. The money wasn’t much better but I liked my job title. About this time I resumed my friendship with Jenny. She had come to work at our firm as a temp, she was all grown up and sophisticated, in fact she was the spit and dab of how I remembered her mam, it was eerie. She was married to David and had a baby boy. It was lovely having her back in my life and Keith liked her, well he flirted with her, but then again so did every other male she met and more to the point Keith flirted with any female with a pulse.
One thing that did happen shortly after we moved back to Kinsley, Keith started having a drink before he came home. Not a lot, he wasn’t mortal or anything, but there was a slight tilt in his personality and although on the odd occasion he still wet the bed, these had become more infrequent the more secure he had become in our relationship. But the nights that he had a drink, the bed wetting would be back.
The other thing that I didn’t like when he drank was his weird sex requests. We had a healthy sex life usually, we experimented but it was always fun, when he had a drink his demands would be verging on kinky: he wanted anal sex, he wanted me to have anal sex with him using one our toys, he wanted to piss on me ….. It went on and on. I would make excuses not to have sex, but often they would fall on deaf ears and I would end up having to endure his strange urges, I would be left feeling sore and humiliated.
So our life chugged on. I was close to my family, enjoyed my work, had nights out with my friends and for the most part was happy with Keith. When the Company that Keith worked for went into liquidation he was even lucky enough to secure a new job with a communication company and bank a few quid he received in redundancy.
He had a new set of workmates and I saw a difference in him straightaway. All his new colleagues were what I would call ‘fly boys’ always out to make a bit on money on the side. They worked hard and they partied hard and Keith at 21 went along for the ride. There was always something for him to invest a bit of money in, something to buy and sell and soon our savings were dwindling, for all the hype about how much he was going to make, I saw very little in return.
The ‘fly boys’ often went straight into town for a night out from work, and Keith the Sheep went with them. I would often think when he didn’t come in for his tea that I bet the ‘fly boy’s didn’t have an altar-egos that emerged the further down a pint they drank. I used to lie in bed and wait until I heard his key in the lock, then I would pretend I was asleep.
Sometimes he would wake me up and want sex, sometimes he would just collapse into bed and fall into a coma like sleep. I would lie there waiting for his breathing to change and then I would get up and go and sleep on the settee. I had learnt not to stay in the bed with him, he would only be asleep for 10 minutes or so when I would feel the warmth on my back as he pissed the bed.
The nights out became more and more frequent, it was exhausting but something was changing between us and I didn’t know how to stop it, because not long after he started his new job, his sober nights became an ordeal too.
We were still as affectionate as ever with each other. I coped with the bed wetting and even endured the strange sex request, I put it down to the drink and thought that he would never treat me like that if he was sober. But I was tired with it all, and for the first time ever, when we went to bed one night and Keith wanted sex, I said no. He huffed and turned his back to me. Please yourself I thought, if you weren’t such a dick when you were drunk I wouldn’t feel like this,
then turned my back to him and went to sleep. I woke up and couldn’t get my head into gear. Keith was having sex with me, he had actually pulled up my nightie and pushed his cock into me and was fucking me while he thought I was asleep. I lay there motionless, I couldn’t move, I didn’t want me to know I was awake because I didn’t know how I felt about this.
He finished, pulled down my nightie and rolled back away from me. Still I couldn’t move. I waited until I knew he was asleep and slipped out of our bed. I went downstairs, put the kettle on and lit a cigarette.
My hands were shaking. I had said no to sex but he had done it anyway when I was asleep. I felt used and dirty. I could have been anyone in that bed, he just wanted a shag, there was no love or affection, just him fucking a hole. I was devastated.
The following morning I didn’t know what to say. Keith said nothing, it was as if it didn’t happen.
I put the incident mentally into a box, along with the other things I didn’t want to think about and put it into cupboard that stored anything that hurt me.
Keith’s behaviour continued to deteriorate. The nights out, the drinking, the wasting of money. I could never quite shake off the feeling that he was up to something, there were always plenty of girls in his circle of workmates and I knew some of these girls went to meetings and training courses down the country with him.
He came in late one night from work, he had been drinking and as he brushed past me in the kitchen I got a strong whiff of White Linen perfume. All my doubts and insecurities came bubbling to the surface and before I could stop myself I turned around to him and said Keith “are you seeing someon
e else? “ I didn’t see it coming he cracked me across the head and as I reeled from it he grabbed me by the arms and pinned me against the kitchen cupboards. “You stupid fucking bitch” he said, his breath reeked and he was spitting at me as he spoke, “you are fucking mental”.
I slumped to the floor as he stormed out of the kitchen and went to bed. I sat on the floor for ages, tears pouring down my face. He hadn’t particularly hurt me it was more fright. What was happening to us?
Baby Love
I should have left then, it wasn’t as if it was the first time he had turned on me, but I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t go to my mam and dad’s, they now had an all right relationship with Keith and I didn’t want to put that into jeopardy. I could have went to my Granny’s but I didn’t want to drag her into my mess either. So I stayed. I slept on the settee again, well slept was stretching it. I lay on the settee. I should never have said anything, I knew he had had a drink and still I opened my mouth. I had pushed him to do this, if I had just said nothing none of this would have happened.
So the next morning it was same old same old, breakfast, strip bed, washer on, dress for work and all the time neither me or Keith mentioned what had happened, it was like it never had. But the bruises on my arms proved it had.
To the outside world we looked like any other young couple. I wore my smile like a mask, the actress was back. But when the mask slipped behind closed doors I was sad, insecure and scared, once again I was on my own. When Keith came in drunk I kept my mouth shut, I gave in to his sex demands and on sober nights when I said no to sex, I tolerated his night time behaviour.