Ivory Nooses
This is the first chapter of the first JD Shaw novel. The novel is currently unfinished, standing at about 30000 words. I intend to return to it after finishing Corsican Intrigue.
Detective Inspector Jack Daniel Shaw, known to his friends as JD, and to wags, uncharitable souls and his enemies as "Bourbon", sat huddled, alone, beside the fire peering into his third pint of Fisherman's as if it could supply the answers to all the mysteries and miseries of his existence. There'd been a whole crowd of people in the pub, earlier. The rest of them laughing and joking to release the stresses of the day's work; JD trying his best to fake it, but in reality managing only the barest illusion of a two-dimensional cardboard cut-out of a so-called contented carefree existence.
Most of them hadn't noticed his preoccupation. DS Charlotte Carter, however, had, and had tried to draw him out. He'd looked at the concerned expression on her pretty face, and wished, wished - oh how he wished ! - that he could spill it all out to her. It wouldn't be hard, it could be so easy. But there were all the others around, and they'd gossip, and maybe they'd overhear, and maybe Charlotte's reaction to what was bothering him would be so bad that they'd find out .... no, no, it was unthinkable. He'd tried to smile reassuringly at her, and made some comment about how his mother's Alzheimer's seemed to be getting worse, and that he was worried about how much longer his father would be able to look after her. (Lies, lies, all lies, of course. His mother was as sharp as a steel trap at 74, if a little eccentric and overbearing. His father kept his head down and read his newspaper, and had never spent so much as a minute of his existence looking after her.) Charlotte had sympathised, mentioned her grandmother's senility, and seemed, for now at least, to have accepted the story.
After two pints, the others had departed. Some had gone on to another pub, where a jazz band was supposed to be playing that night. Some had homes to go to, as, indeed, did JD. (Not that he wanted to go home just yet; half his current problems lived there). Some of the younger PCs had probably gone on to "Illusions", the current happening nightclub in town. JD hadn't wanted to go there either; the other half of his problems would no doubt be there, in fine dancing and flirting form. After all, it was where they had met.
Mairi and Alex, Alex and Mairi. What a predicament he was in.
Mairi. He'd known Mairi pretty much all his life. The girl-next-door, she'd been. Together they'd played in sandpits, climbed trees, played at families - the usual childhood things. Other children had come and gone from their circle of friends, but the constant had always been Jack and Mairi. She'd gone through puberty first, and then there had always been a never-ending string of potential suitors hanging around. He, a late developer, had been left behind, his awakening heart trampled like a forgotten flower. Finally, at 15, he'd shot up six inches, his reedy treble voice had become a sonorous bass, he'd lost the childish nickname, and Mairi had once again been interested in him. They'd sort-of dated, in an on-and-off way, for the next three years until he'd left for Cambridge to study Computer Science whilst she'd gone to Liverpool to do Mechanical Engineering. There'd been other girlfriends for him, and other boyfriends for her, over the three years they'd spent studying, but she'd been the one he'd invited to the May Ball each summer.
After he'd left University, he had made the surprise move of turning down a lucrative job in the City for the rôle of a humble constable in the Cambridgeshire Constabulary. Granted, he'd been on the fast-track scheme, which is why he now found himself a Detective Inspector at the still quite tender age of 28, but even so. "It was not what we expected of you", his mother, Morag, had pronounced, with disapproval and disappointment written all over her face, her normally thin lips reduced to a single straight line. The family had always expected great things of him. A surprise, he'd been, his mother believing she was undergoing the menopause rather than pregnant again at 45, a full eighteen years after having her first-born, and 15 after what she had intended to be the last. He'd been the darling, the baby, the spoiled and pampered child. In return, he'd been the bright one, the inventor, the fixer, the entertainer, the light of their lives. Maybe a fair exchange, maybe not. The disapproval over his joining the police force had diminished when he became a detective, and JD knew that Morag now boasted to her bridge-playing friends about "my son, the detective inspector". Not that she would admit it to him, still occasionally muttering tearfully "We had such high hopes for you, you know".
The one thing that he had done right, in Morag's eyes, was marrying Mairi. On finishing her undergraduate degree at Liverpool, Mairi had stayed on to do a PhD. JD and Mairi had continued to see each other, now on a more committed basis. Much money had vanished into the pockets of the train companies, as they tried to ensure that they managed at least monthly visits. When his two-year probationary period was up, and he had passed his sergeant's exam, he had surprised Mairi with a diamond ring. They had married three months after she passed her viva, a big family affair back in Edinburgh. Three years of marriage, and Mairi was starting to hint that maybe it was time to start thinking about children. She was settled in her career at one of the city's most prestigious engineering consultancies, and thought that now was time to look to the future.
Ordinarily, JD would have agreed. He and Mairi had been in agreement that they'd like at least two, possibly three, children. But that had been then. Before. Before everything had been thrown into such turmoil that he couldn't really say whether there would ever be a place for children in his life. He didn't know whether he was going to be able to explain what had happened to Mairi, and and he wasn't at all sure that it would be a good idea even to try. She had started to notice that all was not well in Paradise; she was trying to get to the bottom of his black moods, his silences, his fugues. She had no idea, could have no idea. He was losing his soulmate, his best friend, because he simply could not tell her. If his best friend had been someone else, and not his wife, he would have confided all, from the moment he met Alex.
Alex. Alex was a recent development, and a damned confusing one at that. They had met at "Illusions" two months earlier. JD had gone with a big gang from work; it wasn't normally his sort of place, but he'd had his arm twisted by a couple of the young constables, who had taken to calling him Grandad. He'd decided to show them that he wasn't quite ready for the rocking chair and the retirement home yet.
It had been a mistake from start to finish, that nightclub visit. There was nothing worthwhile to drink, for a start, but that was merely a mild annoyance. The others had disappeared off onto the dance-floor as soon as they'd offloaded their coats, while he was still trying to get his bearings. He'd stood, huddled, against the bar for a while, watching the teeming masses of humanity gyrating on the dance floor, their faces and hands upraised as the strobing lights rained benefaction and absolution from the mundanity of their daily existence. JD had wondered sourly whether he ought to suggest that the Drugs Squad pay the club a visit - surely no-one could feel so uplifted by a simple light were they not high on some illegal substance or other. And then he'd caught himself, and thought that maybe the constables had had a point. Old age, or, at any rate, middle age seemed to be fast creeping up on him.
As the DJ had segued skilfully from one unknown trance track into another, Charlotte Carter had emerged, breathless, out of the scrum to drag him onto the dancefloor. He'd fought the temptation to resist, but in the end had decided to try to relax a little and at least pretend to enjoy himself. He'd looked around him for inspiration on how to actually dance to this kind of stuff, and had just been feeling about confident enough to try something a little more adventurous than swaying without moving his feet when he'd spotted Alex. Alex, of the shoulder-length perfectly-styled straight blond hair, the crystal blue eyes, the wide smile, the perfect teeth. Not his usual type at all, apart from the blue eyes. But normally it was dark hair, perhaps with a hint of copper or mahogany, blue eyes and a pale skin. And interesting, unusual, some would say ugly, features: a broken nose here, slightly crooked teeth there. Not Alex. Alex had smooth light-golden skin, quite clearly the result of jet-setting, not a bottle. And Alex's features were as even and model-perfect as they came.
JD felt a shudder pass through him, just remembering. He rolled the name across his tongue: "Al-ex", he whispered it, he wanted to shout it out loud so that all could hear. It was painfully painfully obvious that he had fallen in love with Alex, and he was behaving like an adolescent in the throes of his first crush. It had never been like that with Mairi, no sudden bolt of thunder, no lust like this, no necessity of drinking her in as if she were the last drop of water in the desert.
His fate had been sealed, that night at "Illusions", when Alex had looked over towards him and smiled. JD had blushed and smiled back. That had been enough. Alex had come over to him, taken him by the hand and led him off the dancefloor. Of course, Charlotte Carter had noticed, leading to some gentle teasing the next day, necessitating a hurried invention of an old schoolfriend who'd recognised him and dragged him away to catch up on old times. Another lie. His whole interaction with Charlotte these days seemed to be a tissue of lies. Better, perhaps, than the never-ending silences he presented Mairi with, but Mairi would have seen through the lies, whereas Charlotte didn't know him well enough to notice.
Alex had bought JD a drink and had proceeded to thoroughly pre-seduce him. Where JD had inhibitions, Alex had none, and the initial hand-grab had led to several meaningful hands resting on JD's knee for just that second too long. JD had been too watchful, too nervous, too scared of being spotted, to relax and enjoy himself properly. Alex had seemed to somehow sense this, and had leant over to whisper in his ear,
"It's OK if you don't want to do anything now. I'll still be attracted to you. It's up to you if you want to take this any further. I won't be offended if the answer's no, but I'll give you my phone number and email address so you can think it over at leisure, and get in touch with me if you want to."
And then Alex had nibbled the bottom of his earlobe for, ooh, maybe one second and JD had felt himself spontaneously combust. Just thinking back on it, now, two months later, a torturous agonised two months, JD felt himself instantly hard. Two months of knowing Alex's phone number, and not making the call. Two months of imagining himself stroking the flaxen hair and losing himself, burying himself, in all that made Alex Alex. And he hadn't done it. He was either moral, or he was stupid. And thoughts and feelings like this were sinful, so he must just be stupid.
In the end, he'd left the club early. He'd wanted to get away before the club started to empty and his friends found him. Alex had understood, and had simply hugged him goodbye, whilst slipping a card into the back pocket of his jeans.
He knew it off by heart now. Time to head home, he thought, trudging through the rotting autumn leaves.
Home now. Quietly, he turned the key in the lock. Past history told him that Mairi would most likely be asleep by this time of night. He, passing, put down more cat biscuits. Five minutes listening to her breathing said she was fast asleep.
Time for whispers, drunken confessions. The words of his mother's religion, which he had long since abandoned, came unbidden and slightly altered to his lips.
"Forgive me, Mairi, for I have sinned. I ... still love you, have always loved you, will always love you. But lately it's not been so easy, not been so natural. I've been bad-tempered, and silent, and avoidant. I know all that. I also know that you know that something's wrong. It's true: there is. Nothing to do with you. But it's something I need to say, because it's likely to have a major influence on the way our lives go from now on."
"God, this is so difficult for me to talk about. I guess that what I need to tell you is that I've fallen for someone else. A wonderful someone else. Name of Alex."
"The other thing I suppose I need to say at this point is that Alex isn't the brazen hussy you're no doubt imagining. Probably you'd rather that were the case. Alex is male, and queer, and I lust after him. I guess that makes me queer too. Bisexual, I guess."
"Is there anything left of the JD you've known all his life ?"
Receiving no answer, not even from his own brain, JD quietly undressed and slipped into the bed next to Mairi.