Case Study on Devotional Delusion in the Nuclear Family Context, Deconstructed, in Third Person Narrative Form
Benoit had been married to Juliette for thirty-seven years. Theirs had
been a very conventional relationship. Meeting in their mid-twenties, both had
been single for some time, having had eerily similar experiences with former
partners, whom both would always consider to be the love of their lives. Coming
from quasi-religious, solid middle-class backgrounds, both Benoit and Juliette
were painfully aware of their social responsibilities; they knew that people
got married, set up home, and started a family in their mid-twenties. For that
reason alone, they were almost ridiculously keen to adhere to the norm, the
structure/stricture of their class. Crucially (although that’s probably an
inaccurate way of describing the dynamic of their relationship, for they could
quite easily have settled down with literally anyone, as the need to settle
down itself far outweighed potential suitability of any eventual partner), they
got on well with each other, had similar temperaments – easy-going, undemanding
– neither had any intellectual or artistic pretentions, both liked material
comforts, they only read books featured on the bestseller lists, they only saw
the most commercial and popular of films, they sought only non-challenging,
non-threatening cultural forms, they liked the idea of two weeks on the beach
in the summer, a fine, reliable automobile.
A qualified chartered
surveyor, Benoit had a promising career in local government – high on the
public sector pay scale, with good holidays and a secure pension. Also in local
government (that was, in fact, how the couple met, through mutual friends
employed in respective departments) Juliette had a low-ranking but nonetheless
fulfilling position at the local library, an administrative post, updating and
modernizing ways in which disabled, housebound citizens could have access to
everything a modern library could offer (one of her most worthy initiatives was
extending mobile library routes to more rural areas).
Nine months after meeting,
they married. Nine months later, Juliette gave birth to their first child,
Nicholas Junior. Due to Nicholas’ relatively high salary, Juliette was always
going to give up her job to bring up a family. This was unstated, expressly –
they never actually sat down, or lay in bed at night to come to that decision –
it was just the ‘done thing’ for people of their background and income.
The next five years saw two
new editions to the household – another boy, Jean-Paul and lastly, the little
girl they had both hoped for, the angelic Binki (well, Belinda, but the baby
name of Binki stuck with their daughter for the rest of her life).
With the family circle now
complete, husband and wife devoted themselves to the upbringing of their
children. They made sure that they had every opportunity possible – there were
music lessons (Nicholas Junior becoming very adept at piano, Jean-Paul, always
the more outgoing of the three children, the guitar, and Binki, the violin, of
which she would go on to enjoy a spectacular career, becoming a virtuoso with
the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra), sports, amateur dramatics, they travelled
extensively as a family, in the main, educational/historical trips: Egypt to
see the pyramids, Rome, the Coliseum, diving at the Great Barrier Reef, they
even spent four weeks riding the Trans-Siberian Express when the children were
in their teenage years.
With such a rich, wholesome
and fulfilling upbringing, each child went on to be an incredible success.
University-educated, Nicholas Junior became a veterinarian with his own
practice, Jean-Paul a music teacher (his rebellious streak had lasted up until
around his seventeenth birthday, when he fell madly in love with a beautiful
trainee teacher, a few years older, whom he married at twenty-one), and, as
aforementioned, Binki went on to be one of the most famous violinists in the
world, a rare and universally admired virtuoso.
It gave Nicholas and Juliette
great pride to see their progeny turn into such well-rounded individuals,
worthy, intelligent human beings who brought such joy to the lives of other
people. In particular, both parents remembered the time Binki performed an
incredible violin solo at the conservatoire (where she eventually graduated
with distinction) that reduced them both to tears. And while their marriage may
not have been particularly passionate or romantic, they shared the most
wonderfully tender and intimate moment that evening, when Nicholas was almost
choked with emotion, and Juliette reached out in the darkened auditorium,
surrounded by dozens of other beaming parents, and squeezed his hand tightly, a
moment which perhaps made up for all those cold, perfunctory nighttime kisses,
the premature dwindling of their lovemaking following Binki’s birth, lovemaking
that could only ever have been classed as functional, pedestrian, purely
procreational, at best.
But they had been good
parents – something of which they were both righty proud.
On entering his sixth decade,
with the children having left home many years ago, there was talk of Nicholas
applying for early retirement. Head of his department, he’d been such a valued,
proficient member of staff, his colleagues tried to talk him out of it, they
couldn’t see how the department could continue to flourish without his guidance
and leadership. But, in truth, his mind was already made up. Of late, he and
Juliette had spoken about selling up the family home and moving to warmer
climes, about a quiet life on the coast, of cultivating a beautiful garden, of
taking up painting, perhaps, buying a small boat and learning how to sail, of a
tranquil, relaxed way of life, about really enjoying the autumn of their years.
Money wasn’t an issue. Both sets of parents had died, quite close together,
leaving them very well-provided-for indeed.
On his last day at the
office, his colleagues threw Nicholas a party. Nothing special – a big cake and
a few bottles of good champagne – but their well-wishes were heartfelt and
genuine. Over the years, Nicholas had been a thoroughly modern and approachable
team leader, a friend more than a superior. For that, his team both liked and
respected him.
When he got home that
evening, a little lightheaded from the champagne, he found the house unusually
quiet. Confused (in fact, at the back of his mind, he wondered if Juliette
hadn’t arranged another surprise party), he called out her name and walked
through to the back of the house, to her almost exclusive province: the luxury
farmhouse-style kitchen where they spent the vast majority of their time in the
evenings and at weekends.
But when he entered the room,
all he found was Juliette’s laptop open on the kitchen table with a post-it-note
attached to the screen: Play Me.
Not really knowing what all
of this meant, Nicholas nonetheless sat down, tugged the post-it-note free of
the screen, manoeuvered the cursor over the video player already cued up and
pressed play.
Initially, he had difficulty
making out what he was now watching, even if the quality of the images was
high. Too many memories invaded his consciousness for him to concentrate solely
on what was taking place. For this footage had clearly been shot at their first
home, the modest apartment where they had embarked upon married life.
Specifically, the bedroom of that particular abode – Nicholas recognised the
pretty patterned sheets and a reproduction Matisse that hung above the bed
itself. Into shot came Juliette, completely naked, close behind her a man, also
naked, whom Nicholas had never seen before. Immediately, he was struck by his
wife’s youthful beauty, her full rounded breasts, flat stomach, shapely hips
and long legs, far more than the fact that she was now kneeling down and
performing the kind of wanton, wild fellatio on this stranger that she had
never bestowed on her husband during almost forty years of marriage.
“What?”
But it was just the
beginning.
No sooner had this stranger
withdrawn his penis from Juliette’s mouth and ejaculated over her breasts than
a new segment of footage started up. This time in the front room of the same
apartment, before a roaring fire, footage of Juliette engaged in frantic
intercourse with two big, broad-chested men with black leather masks covering
their faces. Again, the images soon faded out to be replaced by different
footage: Juliette engaged in an orgy at their holiday home out by the coast, a
property they bought shortly after Binki was born. And if that was the case,
then it must’ve been the time they spent a fortnight there about twenty-five
years ago. It must’ve been the time Juliette complained of a devastating
migraine and asked Nicholas to take the children out for the whole day to give
her some much-needed respite – there was literally no other possibility, no
other window of opportunity. Whilst Nicholas thought his wife was lying in a
darkened room with a cold flannel over her forehead, she was, in fact, being
penetrated in every orifice by any number of muscular, well-hung men, young
studs with rampant sexual desires and incredible stamina.
It went and on, the video,
like a compendium of depravity, a video diary charting Juliette’s wild sexual
antics (some of which featured long-standing colleagues from the office, men
Nicholas had regularly socialised with out of office hours, men he played golf
with, men he considered friends, men who’d attended his leaving party earlier
that day). Only as the years progressed, her proclivities, those she’d clearly
recorded for posterity, to present to Nicholas in the cruellest and most
calculated manner imaginable, darkened, became more violent and perverted.
There was S&M, bondage, rape fantasies, what looked like brutal beatings at
the hands of sadistic thugs in quite ridiculously clichéd leather outfits. In
one particular scene, Juliette demanded that her ‘master’ (well, that’s what
she called her tormentor in the video) strike her repeatedly across the face.
Once again, Nicholas ran the likely timelines through his head. Yes, he
thought to himself, I remember that bruising on her face; she told me she’d
walked into wardrobe door when she was dusting.
To his disgust (and he really
did feel close to vomiting now), the next substantial piece of footage showed
Juliette performing oral sex on a German shepherd dog.
It was too much; he hit the
stop button, banishing those truly awful images from the screen.
For the whole duration of
their marriage, Juliette had been indulging her crudest sexual fantasies to the
full. Whilst the children were at school or college or later, away at
university, whilst Nicholas himself was at work, out on site, attending
meetings or conferences, his wife had been committing the most sinful and
imaginative of infidelities. Whereas before he had always looked upon her as a
woman of impeachable moral character, a respectable, modest, unassuming mother
and wife, she was, in fact, nothing more than the most reprehensible of filthy
whores.
And Nicholas didn’t know,
truthfully, at the core of his very being, if he was angry at her for having
conducted this secret life, or the fact that he’d just accepted a staid, boring
sexual non-existence for himself, that he’d let his natural libido dim to a
dying ember so early, that he thought his wife wasn’t interested in sex, that
she was far more concerned with bringing up her children, that a family life
was more than enough to sustain her, that she was possessed of a natural
frigidity derived from a stuffy background.
And he wondered, if he’d
talked to her about this, frankly, in a mature and adult manner, if it would
have made any difference to their lives, if he’d have been able to enjoy a
fulfilling, even exciting sexual life with Juliette, if he could have been the
star of one of those video clips, giving and receiving such intense sexual
pleasure.
And he couldn’t help but
think back to a film he’d seen many years ago, a film which had made a deep
impression on him – Cinema Paradiso. Only Juliette’s tawdry compilation
didn’t feature the beauty of a lost or stolen kiss, but the schizoid
depravities of a lost, lonely woman to whom the finer feelings in life meant
absolutely nothing. And Nicholas realised, without having to go upstairs to the
bedroom to confirm as much, to confirm that all of Juliette’s possessions were
gone, that he would never, ever see her again.
Therapist Shaun Fox is the protagonist in Neil Randall's latest novel Bestial Burdens (Cephalopress). To order you copy of the book, click on the link below:
