Unbind (16 page)

I didn’t need it. The man didn’t know whether he belonged in one country or another and he sure as hell wasn’t going to have me flying out to him anytime soon. Deep down, I was more than a little bit intrigued. Yet I couldn’t afford to be.

Past

CAI GREW UP knowing a few things for certain. The first was that his mother was not a well woman, the second was that his father was not a good man and the third and final certainty was that the butler and the housekeeper were more his parents. Sometimes he almost had to correct himself when speaking to Claire the housekeeper or Dirk the butler, the urge to call them mommy or papa quite strong some days.

The house he lived in was great for a child who enjoyed his own company. There were nooks and crannies to bury himself away in. There were lots of rooms he could spread out in—his toys, games and drawings found no confinement across the vast wood floors. He already had interest in photography and he was inquisitive about his mother’s talent for painting—but because she was ill, he rarely pushed her to tell him more. He knew no sharp object was left lying around, no medicine cabinet kept unlocked—nor did his father ever leave Claudia’s side.

Cai was born in that house—Claire the housekeeper delivered him. His mother was what Dirk referred to as a recluse, only when he thought Cai was out of earshot. Cai was home schooled by the help at his evil father’s insistence but sometimes he managed to make it outside the estate walls and onto neighbouring land. He discovered another mansion next door and there, he conversed with a girl called Jacqueline who was a year older than him but no more intelligent. They challenged each other on geography, math and science—neither of them managing to outdo the other. He warned her never to tell her parents that he was sneaking into their garden and when she asked why, he said, “My father wouldn’t let me keep coming here if he knew.”

The young Cai had some idea of Jackie’s little crush on him but he was a child and didn’t know he was sowing the seeds for future hurt. He only knew that her fondness allowed him some conversation with a kid of his own age. Even though he wasn’t attending school, he knew he wasn’t missing out on too much education. Between them Claire and Dirk were doing pretty well teaching him the basics. He just wished he could escape the strange atmosphere that sometimes clung to their house. He couldn’t explain it exactly, just that there were times when everyone—even his bad father—couldn’t speak, nor look at him. Words went unspoken while everyone held their breath, usually because his mother had locked herself away to paint.

Cai enjoyed summer most because Jackie was around—and often. He snuck out more and more, eventually getting Claire and Dirk to cover for him if his father asked questions. The old couple (not married, no) were kind to Cai and from their own money, they bought him a basic Kodak camera for his eighth birthday. His birthday being in June, he was able to use that summer to finally explore something he’d only previously attempted with plastic throwaway cameras or those toy ones that had a shutter and no film inside. With this new Kodak one, he took photos around the house and grounds, using up reel after reel. Dirk took them all into Litchfield and had them developed and soon the boy had a growing collection of images.

If Cai wasn’t taking pictures or climbing the walls to see Jackie, he was foraging for treasure in the gardens or spying on everyone else. He knew all the best places to hide so he could listen in on conversations or watch while the adults got up to no good.

One day he managed to get past his father and made it to the second floor where his mother’s studio was. He crept tentatively, not knowing what he may find. He wondered how anyone could stand to stay upstairs all day long when it was so sunny outside and so humid in the upper part of their house.

When he peered around the corner, she saw him and smiled. “Sneaking, are you?”

“Maybe.”

Cai knew his mother was a beautiful woman and it wasn’t through rose-coloured glasses, like Jackie often accused. No. From behind some bushes at the side of her family swimming pool, Jackie had pointed out her mother, her elder sisters and her aunts. He’d stared at them all for a lengthy amount of time, trying to decide if they were pretty. In the end he realised the fact he deliberated meant they probably weren’t. Whenever he looked at his mother, he knew she was an exceptional beauty. Without even make-up, she was stunning. Her apple-shaped face was rosy and bright, her lips soft and her eyes large and blue. Her brown hair was thick and wavy, her lashes long and her cheekbones rounded so unusually. If only he could understand her, though.

“You’re turning into a handsome boy, Cai.”

He didn’t accept the compliment because he knew he resembled his father, a Mexican with very dark features when compared to his mother’s. Cai was nothing like Claudia in looks, but in other ways, resembled her acutely.

Hers was a corner studio with windows on two sides of the room, all of them open thus allowing light and air into her space. He saw the easel stood in front of the fireplace and noticed no work in progress, only a pile of ripped sheets of paper nearby.

Light shone over her shoulder as she sat in a wingback by one window, her long skirt floating around her ankles as air breezed through. She might have seemed serene on the surface.

“Caius, come and sit by me,” she said.

Startled, he moved slowly. She rarely used his name.

He sat on the floorboards by her feet, the faithful son. He watched a multitude of birds swirling amongst the oak trees outside whilst one hand of hers lazily stroked through his thick mop of dark hair. Springtime, particularly June, was undoubtedly the most beautiful the house of
Sub Rosa
and its grounds
ever looked.

“You’re wondering what I am working on?” She asked calmly. “Why I am always up here?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I can see this image in my head but I just cannot paint it. I try, I try… and I try.”

“What is the trouble?” He appeared naïve, but he was with the rest of the house—even he could tell she was mad.

“I don’t know, I just can’t do it.”

“Mommy, I wish… I wish,” he struggled to say what he wanted to, turning his eyes on hers to implore her motherliness.

She turned to her handsome son, a smile turning up one corner of her lips and a twinkle in her eye. She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “I know, sweetheart… but
they
just wouldn’t let me.”

Her expression was so vacant and he thought back to when he overheard his father and Dirk in the kitchen, talking about the medication and how numb it made her feel. Cai hadn’t known her look so calm in such a long time.

“Perhaps when you are old enough, I will show you how to paint. I used to enjoy it so much, Cai. I wish I
could
enjoy it again, but I just can’t. Perhaps you might enjoy it for me… maybe when you turn eight, eh? That’s when all boys and girls become grown-up, isn’t it?”

I have already turned eight.
He saddened, knowing she’d not marked the occasion, not even in her own head. After all, it had been
the help
that had gotten him his only birthday present.

Any other young mind might have engaged his tongue but Cai was more intuitive than that. He was sad she had forgotten his birthday and was eager to let her know that he really had no wish to learn how to paint. He only wanted to know what kept his mother locked up there most of her days.

He stood and chanced a glance out of the window, looking to see whether Jacqueline and her family were back from a day at the beach yet. They weren’t, all their vehicles still missing from the driveway over the hill.

“Cai, what are you doing in here?” Philippe Cortez appeared at the door, filling the frame. An imposing sight, Claudia giggled behind her hand like Jackie sometimes did with Cai if they were sharing a joke or trying to wrestle one another. It frightened the youngster to see how his mother reacted to a man she was meant to have already done the nasty with.

Some days, Philippe appeared a stranger to Claudia but Cai had no idea why. They were very familiar with one another—they’d made him after all. Claire had already explained the birds and the bees to Cai; she thought it prevalent to, putting much emphasis on sex being about love between two people. Despite all Claire’s good intentions, Cai knew stuff went on in that house that he’d never comprehend—sights not easily forgotten.

“Go back downstairs, son. Be a good boy… you are good, aren’t you?” It wasn’t a question, he knew.

Cai nodded sombrely and snuck past his father—that dark, brooding mass of man.

Why did Cai think his father was evil? Well, it was often remarked on by the servants that Claudia had been fine up until Philippe impregnated her. After that, she’d changed—things got worse. Cai, in his childish mind, wondered what business a gardener had with a rich woman? Or more importantly, why his mother had given Philippe even the time of day? Why did his father leave his homeland? Did he leave family behind? All Cai knew was that his mother was only ill after she became pregnant.

And why else did he think his father was evil…?

Well, he’d seen what his parents did in the dead of night.

Every night.

It wasn’t normal.

LATER, the living nightmare was noisy. Their common place to entertain was the bedroom in the far corner of the house on the top floor, the room which mirrored his mother’s studio but was on the other side. Cai’s room was downstairs on the first floor, not many doors down from Dirk’s.

That night, his mother and father took their antics to the drawing room which was right beneath Cai’s room. He tried to muffle the sounds with a pillow over his head. He even thought about going to Dirk’s room to see if it was bothering him, but knowing Dirk, he’d be sleeping like the dead. He assumed if it were keeping Claire awake, she might kick ass because she had more guts than Dirk. Still, who would dare cross Philippe, the large man whose employment by day was gardening—and by night something else entirely.

Cai looked at his bedside clock and saw it was past one a.m. It made him sad in a way he couldn’t communicate—that his parents had no time to fashion a routine for their child. Jackie’s mom and dad had given her a set bedtime and read her stories. She also knew her parents went to bed at around 11 p.m., every night. They only did so if Jackie’s sisters had made curfew—otherwise they would stay up and wait until their daughters got home, to make sure they were safe. Cai’s parents had no set routine and often stayed up all night, sleeping in late afterwards.

He knew from experience not to peek through the doors or the windows to catch a glimpse at what his parents were doing. From the noises, he knew enough. It was the same, always, the same.

His mother would be tied up in a cupboard or a wardrobe or some similar box-shaped prison. Cai once saw this scenario set up through a door left ajar and noticed his mother wearing little more than her nightshirt. What he saw on her face was strange—a look of pure delight.

Meanwhile, Philippe might do things to one woman or two or three—perhaps more. Cai knew they were never the same women. He just knew his father brought them to the house in his truck and had Dirk drive them back to town in the morning. All the women were blindfolded and allowed Philippe to do the most unspeakable things to them—chains, whips, bonds. Some of the items Cai didn’t know the name for.

Screams, cries of passion and other sounds that came from those encounters scared Caius. He didn’t understand what was going on. Nor did he try to. He only knew it was evil and that his father used women like toys. Philippe kept going all night—and what was worse was that the ladies always left more than satisfied. Cai thought the female form beautiful but some of the women Philippe entertained left little to the imagination. It was all crude and barbaric, to him, especially after Claire explained sex should be about love.

The most disturbing thing about it all was that his mother Claudia remained in that closet, or whatever she was locked up in, but didn’t seem upset about what was going on. Cai decided his father was so evil that he’d turned his mother into this wicked creature she seemed to be whenever these games took place.

Claudia never spoke as Philippe used the women, who didn’t know they had an audience. Blindfolds were always insisted on, from the time these strangers entered the premises, to the moment they were dropped at the edge of town. Cai knew this because he’d heard it relayed enough times. Philippe used the same speech with each new batch of women he picked up from a bar, or wherever else he met these people.