My Policeman

by Bethan Roberts

Though it occurs to me now that he may have left his shirt on for you, Patrick. That you might have liked the bleach and blood stench of the station.

St. Luke

I’ll admit to you now, Patrick, that during my first year in the school I thought briefly of investing in a pair of glasses myself.

Patrick, did you feel like this on your first day at the museum? Like they had meant to employ someone else but due to some administrative error the letter of appointment had been sent to your address? I somehow doubt it.

and I daresay I took a step back at the sight of soft furnishings in a school context.

My voice sounded very small in the empty classroom. I suddenly realized that all I had to fill this entire space were my words, my voice; and it was a voice over which—I was convinced at that moment—I had very little control.

Learn their names early on and use them frequently

And, like me, they probably had very little comprehension of what the Virgin was about to go through.

Again I thought about my voice, and wondered where exactly it was situated in my body, where I might find it if I were to go looking. I might as well have been dreaming, and I think I did close my eyes for a minute, hoping that when I opened them again it would all become clear to me; my voice would come back and my body would be able to move in the right direction.

Can you imagine it, Patrick? In a museum, you never face your audience, do you? In a classroom, you face them every day.

And then, for some strange reason, it struck me that I could write Tom’s name instead of mine.

My own feeling is that your greatest hope of recovery lies in just being here, under this roof.

In those days it was rare, wasn’t it, Patrick, for Tom’s voice to become what you might call serious; there was always a lot of up-and-down in it, a delicacy, almost a musicality (no doubt that’s how you heard it), as though you couldn’t quite believe anything he said.

Over the years, his voice lost some of its musicality, partly, I think, in reaction to what happened to you;

I needn’t tell you, Patrick, that I obeyed, utterly mesmerized by the huge strength of that hand on my stomach, and by Tom’s eyes, blue and changing like the sea, on mine.

I’d always thought, up to then, that I should keep quiet about what I would now call my cultural interests. Too much talk about such things was tantamount to showing off, to getting ideas above your station. With Tom it was different. He wanted to hear about these things,

looked forward to the event. It would mean a whole afternoon with Tom.

You would have laughed, Patrick, at the sight of me in my bridesmaid’s dress.

Women didn’t live alone then. Not if they could help it.

“I’m not expecting a baby. I lied to him. To everyone.”

It was this touch, more than anything, that convinced me to act as I did over the following few months, Patrick.

People say that love is like a lightning bolt, but this wasn’t like that; this was like warm water, spreading through me.

I will not look away. Not anymore. But you never look at me as I tug down your pajama bottoms.

I am comforted by all this, Patrick. I am comforted by the fact that I am tending you, cheerfully, by the fact that you let me do this with the minimum of fuss, by the fact that I can wash every part of you, rub it all clean with my Marks and Spencer’s Pure Indulgence range flannel, and then throw the cloudy water down the drain.

performed all this without looking you in the face, Patrick. I had to look away, because you kept saying it: “Where’s Tom where’s Tom where’s Tom where’s Tom where’s Tom,”

stuffed things. It was a secret world, all right. A man’s world, I thought, just like butchers’ shops. Women can visit, but behind the curtain, in the back where they do the chopping and sorting, it’s all men.

“The Raising of Lazarus,”

But when I looked at his usually solid face—that broad nose, those steady eyes—it seemed to have gone a little soft. His neck was pink, and his lips hung drily open.

He doesn’t make assumptions just because of how you look.

Tom was full of concentration as you spoke. He was immensely focused, as if afraid to miss a key phrase or gesture.

“Isn’t it funny?” he said. “You started all this, Marion.” “All what?” He looked suddenly shy. “You’ll laugh.” “I won’t.” He pushed his hands in his pockets. “Well—this sort of self-improvement. You know. I’ve always enjoyed our chats—about art and books and all that—with you being a teacher, and now Patrick’s helping me too.” “Helping you?” “To improve my mind.”

that perhaps what worried me all along was what was inside me. My own unnatural practices.

Something that would allow me to become Tom’s lover.

We were alone. Without you.

He simply made his wishes clear,

Redheads. They’re all the same. But it was too late to care.

And it was such a relief, Patrick, to merely feel for a change.

“How come you’ve got his keys?” I asked.

There was something odd, something un-Tom-like in his voice, a theatricality which, at the time, I put down to nerves.

We didn’t go to your bedroom, Patrick (although I would love to tell you that we did).

Writing this now, picturing him confessing his weakness to me, I’m filled with love for him all over again.

Whatever else he didn’t tell me, daring to admit such a thing was a great achievement.

“I want you to be my wife,” he said.

Why write again? Because Patrick Hazlewood, thirty-four, has not given up.

Will burn this after writing. It’s one thing to commit oneself to paper; quite another to leave that paper lying about for any pair of eyes to devour.

I knew I could give him something he wanted.

I’ll glance his way, and if he doesn’t glance back, that will be the end of it.

So I glanced. And he was looking straight at me.

It’s a bad habit, this writing things down.

hadn’t yet become lovers, and in that photo there is something of the promise—and the threat—of what was to come.