Easy Freedom Chapter 2

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=3 height=90 BGCOLOR="#3399FF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#FFCC66" FACE="Times New Roman" ><I><B>Liz Berry Books</B></I></FONT><B>  </B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=160 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="08bd4c00dkelyh.png"> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Liz Berry Books"><U><I><B>Home</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" Meet Liz "><U><I><B>Meet Liz</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books"><U><I><B>Books</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id98.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Third Book/Creativity"><U><I><B>Third Book</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id29.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Messages"><U><I><B>Messages</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bookstore"><U><I><B>Bookstore</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Liz"><U><I><B>Contact Liz</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><U><I><B>Links</B></I></U></A></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="1ca61c01egerdp.jpg"> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <I><B>Easy Freedom - Chapter 2</B></I></div> <bR> <div> When Julie got back to the flat in the late afternoon, Chris had gone but Dev was still there. He had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and was sitting cross-legged and barefoot, on the bathroom floor, surrounded by slips of paper covered with private code marks in his large spiky writing, an empty six-pack of Carlsberg Special and a multi-track portable recorder which looked as though it had cost the earth.  A guitar was propped against the bath and he was listening, totally absorbed, to the tape that played the same explosion of sound over and over again, indistinguishable to Julie's ears, but not, apparently, to Dev who made a disgusted sound, swore, and turned the machine off.</div> <div>      'It sounded all right to me,' Julie said. 'What's it called?'</div> <div> Dev grunted.  'Message from Anarres. Our new album. Cathy's idea. She's been reading Ursula le Guin.'</div> <div> Julie, used to eccentricity, said curiously, 'Do you always use the bathroom floor?'</div> <div> Dev raised his eyebrow, his eyes gleaming. 'For music,' Julie said hastily.</div> <div> 'This bathroom's got a really nice live sound. You could hire it out. There's a spooky double echo in the higher registers. Hear?'  He played a few chords on his guitar.</div> <div> 'No,' said Julie.</div> <div> 'Christ, you must be tone deaf,' he said exasperated. 'You wanting to use the john?'</div> <div> 'No,' said Julie, annoyed at being thrown out of her own bathroom. 'Where's Cathy?'</div> <div> 'Lying down. Shut the door after you.'</div> <div> But instead, Julie found Cathy standing in the lounge looking out of the window into the darkening area. The room was bitterly cold, but Cathy seemed unaware of it.</div> <div> 'Dev's taken over the bathroom,' Julie said, throwing down her holdall and lighting the gas fire. 'Honestly, musicians are really crazy and screwed up. Not like art students.'</div> <div> Cathy turned and smiled. 'Or fashion students. You're back early. Did the man from Fun Girl Modes see your rainbow disco dresses?'</div> <div> 'He took away my folder of designs but I don't suppose I'll hear until after Christmas.' She unwound her woolly scarf and threw her raincoat over the back of a chair. 'It seems funny without the fans outside.'</div> <div> 'The press were here again. But Dev talked to them and they went away. No problem.'</div> <div> Julie watched her uneasily. 'You don't look well, Cathy. Is everything all right?'</div> <div> 'Dev's fixed the wedding. The day after tomorrow. St. Michael's, Nethercombe. Four o'clock. You're all invited.'</div> <div> 'Oh great! I'm so glad. I'm sure you're doing the right thing.'</div> <div> Cathy smiled mockingly. 'Marrying a millionaire? Gold taps in every bathroom?'</div> <div> 'Cathy!'</div> <div> 'Sorry. Well I'm glad it's settled. No more hassles, no more deciding, no more worries.'</div> <div> 'But, I mean, you are happy about it, aren't you?'</div> <div> 'Don't try to turn it into the romance of the century, Julie. You know I have to marry him.  I couldn't earn enough to keep myself and bring the baby up. I couldn't even go out to work with a tiny baby to look after. I've nowhere to live and nothing to live on. Julie, that's one thing I've learned from this business. I'm never, ever, going to get into that trap again. Somehow I'm going to find a way to get some money of my own. Be independent.'</div> <div> 'But Cathy, you do like Dev a lot, whatever you say.' Julie coloured. 'I mean, you are having his baby. And when you're together anyone can see the electricity sizzling.'</div> <div> Cathy said, strained, 'Maybe. But you don't understand, Julie.  There are a lot of things between me and Dev you don't know about. It started very badly. He...he...' But the words would not come. The muscles in her throat had tightened into their familiar neurotic paralysis. She coughed and swallowed convulsively.</div> <div> Julie stared at her pale face, mystified. 'But surely it can't be all that bad. Dev wouldn't do anything to hurt you. He's crazy about you. He's a nice guy.'</div> <div> Cathy turned back to the window. There was a dusty potted geranium on the window sill and she rubbed a leaf between her thumb and finger absently. 'You'd be surprised what a nice guy can do sometimes, Julie. It's not just men in raincoats in dark alleys, you know.'</div> <div> There was a long, shocked silence as Julie took in the implications of what she had said.</div> <div> 'You don't mean...You're not trying to tell me that Dev...'</div> <div> 'Did you know that more than half of the rapes in this country are committed by people known to the victims? Friends of the family, relatives, friends of the husband, business associates, husbands. I expect nearly all of them are usually nice guys too.'</div> <div> Julie said, angrily, 'Husbands? Are you crazy? It sounds like something you read in Spare Rib. I just don't believe this.  You ought to be careful what you're saying, Cathy. People might take it the wrong way.'</div> <div> 'Chris is a nice guy too. He knew what Dev was going to do. He didn't stop him.'</div> <div> Julie stared at her. 'Look, Cathy, I know you've been under a tremendous amount of strain these last few weeks, but you've got to stop making these wild accusations. There must have been some misunderstand. You just wouldn't be able to stay in the same room with him if he'd - well, done what you said. And yet you're going to marry him. Have his baby. And don't tell me you don't want Dev. I've seen the way you are when he kisses you.'</div> <div> 'I don't understand how I can go on seeing him either, Julie. But those other women - they go on too. Living with it. Living with their husbands. What else can you do? Maybe they love them enough to forgive them.'</div> <div> 'You've forgiven Dev?'</div> <div> Cathy stared at her, silent. Her fingers tightened and the geranium leaf broke off.</div> <div> 'You're making a mess on the carpet,' Julie pointed out.</div> <div> 'Sorry.' She picked up the pieces of leaf she had torn apart. 'Julie, let's forget we ever had this conversation, shall we?'</div> <div> 'I certainly don't want to remember it,' said Julie, indignantly.</div> <div> 'Let's change the subject then. Julie tell me if my black skirt and chiffon top will be okay for the wedding.'</div> <div> Julie said, horrified, 'But there will be hundreds of people there and the television and photographers...'</div> <div> 'I can't go shopping! I'll be recognised and they'll follow me about and push and spit at me again...' Cathy's voice rose.</div> <div> Julie could have kicked herself. She realised suddenly that Cathy must be very near breakdown. Although she had appeared to be calm and determined, it must have been a horrible experience to have to struggle through crowds of hostile fans, to have the most intimate details of her life spread out all over the world's newspapers. The worry, the pressure to marry Dev, the difficulty of deciding what to do about the baby, and now being stopped from doing the only thing she really wanted to do...Julie thought it was going to take her a very long time to recover.</div> <div> 'I was going to offer my Degree gown, Cathy.  It's your size.  In fact I was going to ask you to model it in the dress show at the end of the year.'</div> <div> 'But you've worked so hard on it.  It's the most important thing in your collection.  I might spill something on it, or the fans might tear it...'</div> <div> Julie laughed. She said, bluntly, 'Cathy if you can tell some of those newspaper people I designed the dress, I won't even need a degree. The publicity alone will start me in business.'</div> <div> Cathy flushed, embarrassed.</div> <div> 'Come and try it on.' Julie grabbed her hand, excited. 'I brought it back from the College specially.'</div> <div> The dress fitted perfectly. Julie had found the fabric in Paris in the summer. It was a delicate floating gauze, woven with gold threads. She had used wide bands of gold lace around the neck and around the full sleeves and hem. It was beautiful and unusual, and Cathy stared at herself in the mirror incredulously.</div> <div> 'You'll need something for your hair,' Julie said. 'Flowers, I think. I've some of this fabric left. I could make some flowers with seed pearl centres to wear by your ears, holding your hair back, like the maidens in those Victorian paintings.'</div> <div> 'Maiden?' Cathy arched her back and stuck her stomach out, laughing.</div> <div> 'Oh Cathy, you know you're so slim nobody will notice.'</div> <div> Cathy looked again into the mirror at the golden reflection. She had recognised it instantly. The faery figure from a recurring childhood dream. The same gold hair, the silk gold dress, but always in the dream the figure had been smiling and serene, carrying trailing sprays of honeysuckle.</div> <div> '...sandals and flowers,' Julie was saying. 'You'll have to get your brother to give you away. Has Dev got the ring?'</div> <div> 'Ring?' Cathy tensed suddenly. With this ring...Wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband...obey and serve him, love, honour and keep him...for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish...obey...till death.</div> <div> She slid out of the wedding dress quickly, pulled on her jeans and sweater and ran frantically along the hall.</div> <div> 'Dev,' she said desperately. 'I can't! Why did you arrange a church ceremony? I can't swear all those things. I don't believe in religion.'</div> <div> He got up.  'It shouldn't bother you then.' His voice was flippant, but his eyes were hard and glittering.</div> <div> 'We could get married in a Registry Office...'</div> <div> 'What you mean is you feel a Registry Office wedding is somehow not so serious. Easier to walk away from, without too much trouble.'</div> <div> 'No!'</div> <div> 'That's why we're getting married in a church. I'm tying you up as tight as I know how, Cathy. There's no get out now.'</div> <div> 'I won't promise to obey and serve!'</div> <div> He smiled suddenly. 'All right, we'll tell the Vicar to leave that out.  But the others hold, Cathy. Love, cherish. Till death.' He put his arms around Cathy and held her close against him.  He put his long fingers under her chin and turned her face up to him. 'I'll look after you now, Cathy.' He slid his mouth over hers, slowly, the pressure increasing, forcing her lips to open.</div> <div> Julie, who had followed her, worried, looked away, and did not see Cathy shaking, a gleam of perspiration at her hair line.</div> <bR> <div> There was so much to do the time passed swiftly.  Cathy did what she was told, ate when something was put in front of her, made suggestions and telephone calls, but everything seemed unreal.  She could not believe she would soon be married.</div> <div> Dev and Chris, and Julie too, now, remained on guard and two days later she was married to Dev in Nethercombe Parish Church amid scenes of riot and confusion not seen in the village since Cromwell's men had marched in, three hundred years before.</div> <div> Inside the church, the small handful of family and friends were outnumbered by famous pop faces, by newsmen from all over the world, by photographers and television teams. The noise of the excited fans and sightseers who had made their way to the village to catch a glimpse of the celebrities, the ice cream and hot-dog vans, angry villagers and irritable policemen, trying to hold back the surging crowds, halted the ceremony twice, which could scarcely be heard above the din outside. Afterwards Cathy found she could remember only a few things from that time, but they were brilliantly clear and focussed like a surrealist painting.</div> <div> There was her room, cleaned and empty, on the day of the wedding. All her gear and paintings had been taken down to Cox's Farm, Dev's house in the country, by one of the Easy Connection road vans, and there was nothing left. It was as though only a ghost girl had painted there and now she was gone for ever.</div> <div> 'Is anything the matter, Cathy?'</div> <div> She spun round and smiled brilliantly at Alun and Julie standing in the open doorway. 'Everything's fine.'</div> <div> 'You've been crying,' said Julie, angrily. 'What are you doing here? I left you bathing and brushing your hair.'</div> <div> 'Wedding nerves. I'm all right.' Cathy laughed. She came over and put her arm round Julie's waist. 'Thanks for everything, Julie, Alun. Tell the others?' Julie was to be Maid of Honour. She looked sophisticated in a deep blue lace suit, her hair put up so she could wear a wide brimmed hat with a rose. She nodded.</div> <div> 'Be careful,' said Alun. 'The raw edges are showing.'</div> <bR> <div> Outside the church, amid the shrieking and pushing crowd, a familiar face came into focus, like an omen. An Easy Connection fan. The boy who had been outside the College when she had been at her lowest ebb, realising she would have to marry Dev.</div> <div> 'You don't have to stay for ever,' he had said.</div> <div> 'Let him in,' she said to one of the policemen holding back the crowd.</div> <div> 'There's no room, Miss,' he said, smiling.</div> <div> 'He can stand at the back.'</div> <div> The she was in the church, crowded with faces she recognised but did not know.  Dev had been busy inviting his friends. She saw Keith Hurst, Easy Connection's drummer and his wife Lisa, smiling at her and waving. Gratefully she tried to smile back.</div> <div> Jim, her brother, was giving her away.  He took her arm, looking uncomfortable in his best suit. Their quarrel had been patched up after a fashion. But it was his fault she was here today, she thought bitterly.</div> <div> Someone thrust a small bouquet of tiny white roses and trailing honeysuckle into her hands. The scent made her feel sick, reminding her of that terrible first night in the apple orchard at Cox's Farm. She looked at the door desperately, but Julie moved quickly into place behind her and the organ began to play.</div> <div> Dev's eyes were darker and more intense than she had ever seen them. She heard her own voice, soft, husky, promising impossible things to God. She tried to look away from Dev's eyes, but they held hers fiercely and she was promising him too. Then Dev, his voice shaking, his fingers crushing hers, 'With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship...'</div> <bR> <div> At last it was over. They were in the vestry, signing their names and everybody was kissing everybody else. There were Dev's father and mother. Grey, middle aged, with glasses. Incredible they should have produced brilliant, rebellious Dev. Why had he never mentioned them or taken her to see them? She kissed his mother, who was crying and hugging her and saying over and over again, 'I'm so glad. I'm so glad!'</div> <div> And suddenly, there was Chris Carter. White. Not smiling. His back turned to the crowd. 'The Best Man gets to kiss the Bridge, too, Cathy.'</div> <div> It was not a Best Man's kiss.  It was a lover's kiss, and her body reacted with the same sexual fire as it did when Dev touched her. She struggled away from him, horrified. He smiled, slowly, his eyes shining, challenging.</div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Copyright Liz Berry 2002 All rights reserved.</B></I></div> <bR> <div> <I><B>_________________________________________________</B></I></div> <div> <A HREF="id68.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Easy Freedom Chapter 3"><U><I><B>Easy Freedom - Chapter 3</B></I></U></A><I><B> | </B></I><A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books"><U><I><B>Books</B></I></U></A><I><B> | </B></I><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Liz Berry Books"><U><I><B>Home</B></I></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>    </div> <bR> <div>     </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>                                                                                                                 </div> </td> <td valign="top" width=125 BGCOLOR="#3399FF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <A HREF="id25.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Easy Freedom"><U><I><B>Easy Freedom</B></I></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Easy Freedom Chapter 1"><U><I><B>Chapter 1</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <I><B>Chapter 2</B></I></div> <div> <A HREF="id68.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Easy Freedom Chapter 3"><U><I><B>Chapter 3</B></I></U></A></div> </td> </tr></table></body>