Pas de Deux A novel by Bronwen Welsh A Sequel to 'Antonette's Story' Copyright 2021

Chapter 2 Kate

Kate and I had been firm friends for a number of years. She was the sister of Gary, my first boyfriend, and I only met her a short while before her family emigrated to Australia. Despite this, she made me a gift of her most treasured possession, the bride doll Jemima, the day before they flew out, and she did it while I was out for a final day with Gary so I didn't even know until I returned home. After that we started exchanging aerograms on a regular basis and in due course they were replaced with emails.

Kate trained as a nurse and came over to England for a year, working at St Thomas's Hospital in London and it was then that Ben, Jack's brother, met her. I could tell that he was rather smitten, but Kate had a boyfriend, Bruce, back in Australia to whom she was 'promised', and in due course she returned to Melbourne, and they got married. Jack and I actually flew over and attended the wedding.

What did I know about Bruce? Not very much. The only time I met him was at their wedding and that is hardly normal circumstances. He was a mechanic working in the garage where Kate's parent's car was serviced. A big fellow, six foot six inches tall, with bulging muscles, he played 'Aussie Rules footy' In winter, a game with a lot of physical contact, more akin to rugby than British football. In summer he played cricket for the same club. I think Kate had been mesmerised by his resemblance to the typical Aussie as seen on the screen, played by Chips Rafferty or Paul Hogan, and he in turn was captivated by Kate, the English rose, so different from the suntanned Aussie girls with their bleached blonde hair. There was also the attraction that Kate insisted on being a virgin until their wedding night, something that put me in mind of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn for some reason.

I can't say that Kate and I had no secrets from each other. To my eternal shame, I had never told her that I was 'trans', since I went out with her brother for a while and he didn't know either. However, in almost everything else we were extremely frank with one another, and soon after Kate returned to Australia she confided in me that the marriage had been arranged and that she had fallen pregnant, something that surprised me, knowing how much she wanted to remain a virgin until her wedding night. I couldn't help wondering just how much pressure Bruce had exerted to make her change her mind. If it had not been for the pregnancy, I wonder if she might have had second thoughts about getting married, but marry she did, and then shortly afterwards, she wrote to me the heartbreaking news that she had lost the baby. I don't think either her parents or Bruce's ever knew about it. I wondered afterwards if Bruce blamed her for the loss as men sometimes do. To make matters worse, they were told that it would have been a boy. It might have been better not to know, but Bruce insisted.

Things went on as before with an email every few weeks, but somehow I felt there was something very wrong but I didn't know what. Then an aerogram arrived addressed to me in Kate's handwriting and I noticed that there was no return address on it, something she had always included in the past. The writing was not her usual neat script but rather a scrawl, and I confess my hands were close to shaking as I opened it. It read as follows”

'Dear Antonette,
Excuse my scribble but I am writing this in my tea break at the hospital on a spare aerogram I found at home. One of the other nurses will post it for me as Bruce drops me off at work and picks me up, and he mustn't see this. I am sorry to say that I made a terrible mistake in marrying him. He is not the man I thought he was. He controls everything I do and is so jealous that I dare not speak to another man when I am with him. You saw in my last email my hint that we are trying for another child. It won't happen because I am on the Pill which I arranged to get from the staff doctor and the Pharmacy at the hospital. I keep the tablets well hidden as I don't know what Bruce would do if he found out. I've done it to buy myself some time.

Please keep writing emails to me as usual so that Bruce doesn't suspect anything but remember that he reads every one I write and receive, so please be careful what you write. I am going to talk to my parents but they may say that I made my bed and now must lie in it. I will ask them if I can at least receive letters or emails from you at their address and not to be shown to Bruce. That is all for now.
Much love, Kate.'

I was so shocked that I read it through twice. Poor Kate, what had she got herself into? I could not imagine what it would be like to be married to a man like that; Jack and I had such a wonderful relationship with total trust in one another. At the first opportunity I showed the letter to him and he was as shocked as I was.

“He sounds like the sort of man who might turn violent if she leaves him,” he said.

“That's what I was thinking,” I replied. “If I get a a chance I must tell her not to make him suspicious if she decides to leave.”

Then I had another thought. “Please don't let your brother know about this; he has a soft spot for her and if he knows. he might do something stupid which will make matters worse for her.”

“Agreed,” said Jack. “He went out with her a few times when she was over here and I rather think he was hoping that she would stay in England.”

I couldn't stop thinking about Kate. Her letter read like a cry for help, but what could I do from twelve thousand miles away? I felt that I needed to talk to her, and the only way to do that without Bruce knowing was to ring her at the hospital. I worked out the time difference and rang the hospital, hoping that she was working but she wasn't. I asked when her next shift started, her tea break time and the ward where I would find her. The following day I rang again and this time I was able to speak to her.

“Kate! It's Antonette. I got your letter and felt I must ring you.”

“Antonette! It's so wonderful to hear your voice. I'm sorry to worry you, but we are friends and I don't know who else I could tell about what is happening.”

“I'm glad you wrote to me Kate, but is there a way I can contact you in secret? Have you spoken to your parents?”

“Yes I have and they seem to think I am making a fuss over nothing. They said I should be happy that Bruce cares so much about me, but they don't know what it's really like. I'm taking the Pill because if I got pregnant again, I would be really trapped.”

“Could I write emails to you on something like Gmail or Outlook that you could access at work?”

“I'll have to ask the ward sister and only do it during my tea or lunch breaks. She might think I'm conducting an affair, so I'll have to explain that you are an old friend in England and my husband doesn't like me corresponding with you. That might work.”

“Don't use your own name for the emails just in case Bruce finds out, o.k.?”

“ Yes, I understand. Look, I'll have to get back to work now, but its so lovely to hear your voice.”

“You too, Kate. Just one final thing; if at any stage you decide to leave Bruce, don't give him any hint of it. I've heard of wives telling their husbands they were going to leave them and it didn't end well.”

“I understand, Antonette. I'll speak to the ward sister today and when I can, I'll send you an email. Bye for now, and thanks again for ringing, it's done me a power of good.”

When I put the phone down, I felt better for speaking to Kate, but that didn't really help her situation. I would discuss it again with Jack and see if he had any ideas.

A couple of days later I received a Gmail message from MaryBoleyn,.the name Kate had chosen. Thank goodness she didn't chose Anne, that might have been a bad omen.

So began a strange situation, where I wrote bland innocuous emails to Kate as herself, and received equally bland ones back, while using her 'nom de plume' she told me exactly what was going on. It seems Bruce was not beating her but he was controlling her every move and especially the money they jointly earned. He was also drinking a lot and when he was drunk she stayed away from him as much as she could for fear of what he might do.

Much of the time I wrote about what we were doing at the ballet company and Bruce made some unkind remarks that I must be a lesbian since I was married to a 'poofter'. Kate told me that remark was ironic since at the footy club Christmas party all the players had dressed up as ballet dancers with homemade tutus and did a dance. 'I don't know what a psychologist would make of that' she remarked in one email.

While I was working, I did my best to put her problems out of my mind and concentrate on my work, but when I was home or reading one of her emails, I felt very worried about her. How long could she stay on the Pill and not get pregnant before Bruce became suspicious? After all it seemed she became pregnant very quickly the first time.

About a month passed and then the message I had been dreading arrived – Bruce had found the pills. Kate had taken them out of their normal packaging and secreted them in her underwear drawer, but Bruce had obviously decided that something was wrong and was searching everywhere when she was at work. The day he found them, he picked her up from work as usual and said nothing, but she sensed from his silence in the car that something had happened. When they arrived back at the flat, he produced the pack of pills and said “Are these what I think they are?”

Kate tried to think of something to say but her embarrassment gave her away. “I just don't want a baby right away, Bruce. We're saving for a house and if I have to stop work it will half our income.”

“Bugger that, I want a son,” he replied and slapped her face, the first time he had hit her, but it wasn't the last. The next time she had a period and he knew she wasn't pregnant, he blacked her eye as if it was her fault. Kate was now terrified; if she became pregnant she was trapped.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Fortunately we had recently moved into a two-bedroom flat at very little increase in rent from our previous one. I had a discussion with Jack and wrote to Kate asking if she had a current passport. She replied that she did but she didn't have any money as Bruce had totally taken over control of their finances. I replied immediately, telling her that if she wanted to escape and come over to England, Jack and I would buy a one-way ticket for her and she could pay us back later. I didn't hear anything back for a day and then came the message that she wanted to come over. I told her not to risk Bruce knowing by packing a suitcase; if she could bring a few things in a handbag that would be fine, otherwise we would loan her the money to buy some clothes when she arrived. I knew she could easily get a job at a hospital once here and she could even stay with us for a while until she found somewhere to live. She was overcome with gratitude but I told her it was the least we could do for her.

Between us we worked out what she should do. After Bruce dropped her off at the hospital as usual, she would go to Human Resources and say she had a sick relative in England and needed leave of absence to go there urgently. Then with the little money she had, she would take the bus to Tullamarine airport and go to the airline desk where she would pick up the ticket for the flight. Once she was on board she would be safe. All being well, Bruce wouldn't know until he arrived to pick her up at the end of her shift. The hard part would be that we wouldn't know that everything had gone according to plan until she arrived at Singapore and contacted us, as by now Bruce had even taken her mobile phone off her.

The day that Kate was due to leave arrived. With the time difference, it was the middle of the night in England when she was due to arrive in Singapore, but I just couldn't go to sleep, so I told Jack to go to bed and sat up trying to read a book while waiting for the phone call from Kate.. The time that she should have landed arrived and I knew I had to wait while she left the plane and found a phone. I watched the second hand of our clock circle at a glacial speed. A hour passed and nothing. What could possibly have happened? I logged onto my computer to see if there was a message from Kate on either of the names she was using, but there was nothing. Surely Bruce hadn't come back to the hospital for some reason and caught her as she was leaving? Where was she?

To be continued

Next time: Kate's attempt to escape