Just Another Friday Night In Memphis - Part 8

??????it was the only safe thing to do!

Over the next few weeks the pain I was feeling festered and I became
angry about Deacon, he was a successful solicitor with a wife and young
daughter and I blamed him for wrecking my marriage, although now older
and wiser, I can see that it was nothing to do with him, it was Jean
who did the wrecking! At the time I didn't, and probably didn't want to
see that, and I set about tracing him. The firm, Waltons and Co. had
long since closed their Chelmsford office although the brass plaque was
still on the building but I knew they were a London firm from around
the Fenchurch Street area and it wasn't difficult to find the phone
number. I called them and asked for Deacon but I was told he'd left the
firm and now worked for another firm of solicitors called Linklaters
somewhere in the city. When I phoned their office I was informed that
he had left there also and asked whom I was and what I wanted, I said I
was an old friend who'd lost touch. This seemed to satisfy the person
on the other end and I was told he'd had a nervous breakdown and had
ended his legal career and was running a taxi company in his hometown
of Stansted Abbotts.

A week or so later I went to see Julia again, but this time I made a
detour to Stansted, intent on confronting Deacon in the presence of his
family. It was my intention to do as much damage to his marriage as I
possibly could on the basis that he had been uncaring and callous in
the treatment of mine. I pulled up outside the post office and feeling
like a criminal in the pursuit of my victim, entered and asked for the
local electoral register. The entry I was looking for read, Alexander
Kenneth Deacon, 18, Brewery Lane followed by Rosamunde Deacon, at the
same address, obviously his wife. Stansted isn't very big and locating
the address was easy. A quiet, traffic-free leafy lane running down a
slight incline with semi-detached sixties council house style homes on
one side and farmland on the other. Parking across the road from the
house I sat back and waited, it was early afternoon and I had no idea
how long the wait might be. The house was just like a thousand others,
the curtains were open and I could see the light coming in through the
back window, the garden was neat and tidy, the paintwork clean. It
struck me that to a stranger practically all homes give nothing away
about the relationships that exist in them.

I had been waiting about half an hour when I saw a girl turn the corner
at the bottom of the road and start up the hill. She was a couple of
hundred yards away and was walking slowly, almost aimlessly, as she got
nearer I could see she was probably eleven or twelve years old, was
wearing a school uniform and carried a satchel over her shoulder. I
watched her all the way up the lane and as she got level with me she
glanced across the road and smiled at me, then opening the gate walked
to the front door and let herself in! I could see her through the
window outlined against the light as she placed her satchel on the
table and started to take books from it. She left the room for a minute
or two then returned with a drink and sitting down at the table started
to do her homework. I suddenly felt awful about what I was determined
to do, I was very comfortable with causing Deacon problems but I now
realised the girl was the baby his wife had recently given birth to
when he so selfishly helped himself to my wife. How could I cause
unknown damage to this innocent schoolgirl? She undoubtedly idolised
her mum and dad and I was about to bring her world down about her ears.
I thought hard for a long while, my feelings of anger and animosity
toward her father were doing battle with my sense of decency and my
mind was a mess. I struggled for a while trying to decide whether my
desire for revenge outweighed the future happiness of this young girl,
and finally taking a deep breath turned the ignition key. The engine
leapt into life and as I engaged the gears I took one more look at the
girl engrossed in her schoolwork and with tears running down my cheeks
quietly drove away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was sitting at home one Sunday evening when the phone rang and as
usual I ignored it, the reason for this is it is seldom for me but most
often for my son. On this occasion it WAS for me, it was Mick Graves, a
friend that I knew through folk music, he lived a few miles from me but
I didn't see much of him.

'Hello George, I'm calling to see if you've heard about Nic', he
said.

'What are you talking about Mick?' I replied.

'Oh, you obviously haven't heard, he's had a bad car crash and he's
fighting for his life' Mick explained.

I was stunned at this news and couldn't speak for a few moments.

'Hello, George are you still there?' I heard Mick say.

'Yes, yes I'm here Mick, thanks for calling, look I have to go, I'll
get back to you later' I said, and hung up.

I sat there for a while trying to understand the implications of what
Mick had just told me. Picking the phone up I dialled Nic's number; it
rang twice and was answered by Julia's father. He confirmed what Mick
had said and told me Nic was in Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge and
Julia was with him. He said something else but I wasn't listening,
putting the receiver down I felt the tears well up in my eyes.

In the morning I phoned my firm and told them I wouldn't be coming to
work and after a hasty breakfast headed for Cambridge. It's about a
90min drive from home and I arrived about 9.30am, Nic was in intensive
care, some way from the reception desk and as I made my way there I was
fearful of what I might find. I entered an outer room, there was just
one person in there, it was Julia. She wasn't expecting me and she was
in a terrible state. She ran toward me, and bursting into tears threw
her arms around me and sobbed her poor heart out.

'Oh George I'm so glad you're here' she cried, 'I can't believe this
has happened!'

She calmed down a bit and holding onto my arm she said,

'I'll take you in to see him'

In the next room was an operating table and lying on it unconscious was
my friend, I stood by the table looking at him from end to end, he was
naked except for a towel draped across his groin for the sake of
decency. His face was a mess, it didn't really look human, it was
grotesquely misshapen with pipes inserted in his nostrils and another
in his throat, there were wires and pipes everywhere. I frantically
looked for a bit of him that wasn't wrecked and couldn't see one. I
didn't say this to Julia but at the time, looking at the mess he was
in, I remember thinking to myself it would have been better if he'd
died on the spot rather that drag out the misery to what looked like an
inevitable conclusion. We stayed in the room until Julia found it too
much to bear and then turning to me she said, 'Take me home George,
there's nothing more we can do here and I need some sleep.'

He had been coming home from a gig in Glossop when with just a few
miles to go to his house, hit a brick lorry head on near Peterborough.
It took the emergency services hours to cut him out of the wreckage;
his speedometer was jammed at 50mph and the lorry driver said he was
doing 30mph so it appeared it was an 80mph impact. Nic had slid out of
his seat belt on impact, his face hitting the top of the steering wheel
and smashed his lower jaw he had multiple fractures of the legs and his
right arm was smashed, he had damage to his left eye and several broken
ribs. He also suffered a brain haemorrhage, which caused a loss of
memory and eventually changed his personality. The doctors said it was
a miracle that he'd survived at all, they eventually recovered some of
his teeth from his lungs; he'd obviously inhaled them when his face hit
the steering wheel.

Over the next few days the doctors worked hard to save his life and
partly because he had always been so fit they succeeded. After about
three or four weeks they transferred him to Peterborough District
Hospital, which was closer to his home and easier for Julia to visit.
By the time I saw him next the doctors had tried to reconstruct his
face and he had what I can only describe as scaffolding attached to his
head. Three stainless steel rods running from his mouth toward his
forehead were attached to a curved horizontal rod across his brow which
in turn was fixed to two steel spikes embedded in his skull at his
hairline. At the mouth end of the vertical rods two more short rods
supporting a plate were inside his mouth holding his palate in place.
He was breathing and being fed through a pipe in his throat. Although
by now he was conscious he didn't know who anybody was, he didn't
remember Julia or the kids or his pet dog, nothing! Over a long period
of time things started to come back to him although even now 18 yrs
later there are things he can't recall.

The next 2 or 3 years saw a further decline in the situation at home
and I sank into a bottomless pit of depression yet again. Eventually my
accountant phoned and said that if I didn't submit some books for the
last 3yrs. the taxman would come down on me like a ton of bricks. I
rarely worked on Friday afternoons and started to sort out paperwork
etc. When I started to look through bank statements I came across
entries that I didn't understand. Jean dealt with all the money and I
didn't even have a chequebook although it was a joint account. Over a
period of the previous 3mths there were several withdrawals for sums of
several hundred pounds each. Further more I noticed that none of the
entries on the statements seemed to make much sense. There were a total
of 6 different chequebooks in use used at random, and the large sums
all came from the same book. I spent time looking for these books and
found them all except the relevant one. When Jean came in from work I
asked about the large sums and she became irritable and said it was
housekeeping money, but that was a lie, I always got her to write a
cheque for cash I needed and housekeeping and I would cash it and give
her the money she wanted. Most of the standard bills were paid by
standing order and there was no reasonable explanation for the large
sums. She lost her temper and flounced off to the shops.

Whilst she was out I searched the bedroom and at the back of a draw I
found the chequebook, but also a desk diary for 1979. It contained
several critical entries about me but more importantly half of the
entries were in shorthand, obviously meant to be secret from me in the
event that I were ever to discover the diary! I replaced the diary and
when Jean came back, presented her with the chequebook and enquired
what the letters AN on the stubs meant. She finally admitted that she
had opened a secret building society account at the Abbey National and
had been siphoning cash from our account into this one. She declared
that it was HER money; her wages and she could do what she liked with
it. I tried to explain to her that if her wages were hers it follows
that my wages are mine. I then pointed out to her that the kids didn't
have any income of their own and asked her what the hell they were
supposed to live on. The point I was trying to make was that as far as
I was concerned both her and my wages were collectively 'family income'
and as such we both had the right to know how and when it was spent. I
told her she had to put the money back whereupon she said it was in a
90-day acc. I told her she had 91 days to put it back, but she couldn't
bring herself to part with her 'loot' and eventually moved it to
another private account.

I became so depressed about the cash and the diary, thinking she was
having another affair and plotting to leave with the kids and all the
money that I got a friend to transcribe the diary. When I got the
transcription back some days later I couldn't bring myself to read it,
fearing the content, even though it was 5yrs old. Two weeks later we
had another awful row, she stormed out and in the heat of the moment I
opened the envelope. What I read shattered me, and I still can't think
about it without crying. It didn't say anything about an affair; it was
something far worse!

tbc