Behind Closed Doors

Chapter Four

Back in 1976, when the beautiful Rosalie Johnson was twenty, she had met Chinua Johnson at a friend’s birthday party in Surulere, Lagos State. By then, she was already a popular Face in the national dailies and the TV screens, and her beauty had totally captivated him and entranced him, ensnaring him in a chain of irrepressible desire that bound him to her more strongly than iron binds ever could. His pursuit of her attention was relentless, and finally, she had to succumb to him, and their romance moved at such a fast pace that before she knew what was happening, she was already pregnant for him.

To him, the notion of becoming bound to her was unspeakable, and it had caused such a big problem between them, culminating in a bitter battle of words of threats between Rosalie’s wealthy father and Chinua’s equally affluent family. Rosalie’s father had a lot of clout and guts, and the man wasn’t ready to see his daughter give birth to a child out of wedlock. He made it abundantly clear that Chinua must marry her or be ready to have both him and his entire family destroyed.

And for the persons that knew the man well, they knew that he was not a man that was given to idle threats; once he said he was going to do something, then there was nothing in this world that would stop him from getting and doing what he wanted to do. If you were the unfortunate person that he’d turned his attention on, then you were dead meat.

The man prevailed, and Chinua and Rosalie contracted a customary marriage back home in the East, and it was the most colorful marriage ceremony ever to be celebrated back there. The gift that Rosalie received from her father was the merger of one division of the Brian Group of Companies which was threatening to swallow up everything in its path with the Johnson Empire which paled in significance. Because the man was not a fool, Rosalie kept the controlling stock of the company that had been merged with the Johnson’s. Chinua wanted her to give up the stocks to him, but she’d bluntly refused to do so.

There was a big church ceremony in Ikeja, with all the lavish trimmings that money can buy, and the marriage was the talk of the crème of Lagos fashionable society for several months afterwards.

‘And that was the beginning of my problems,’ Rosalie had told Henry. ‘Your father was furious that I had dared to refuse him the control of my stock. He had thought I was depressed, or it was because of my pregnancy, but he failed to understand that I was only safeguarding my own interests. I could never allow him to have such control over me.’

And so her life was a living hell. Her husband swore never to give her a marriage at the Marriage Registry which she craved, and he hated her guts for defying him. His attitude towards her was one of indifference. He stayed out late at night; he refrained from eating her meals, slept in a separate bedroom and treated her like a stranger.

When Rosalie went and complained to her father, the wily fox told her, ‘Do not wash your dirty linen in public, my dear.’

It was a warning and an admonition to her rolled up into one package in that simple sentence. She had learnt her lesson, and, determined not to wallow in self-pity; she got herself involved again in TV, doing commercials that were so popular. By 1978, she had gone back into the Beauty Pageant world after her two-year hiatus, and her winning streak continued. She was the toast of the NTA.

Chinua, a very jealous man by nature, had his indifference towards her petrify into a harshness that culminated in violent quarrels between them, and subsequently, fist fights. By 1986, he had started to slap her even for the slightest perceived slights, and she couldn’t turn to her family for help, neither did she confide in her friends. She played the role of the dutiful wife and a woman who remained undaunted even in the face of the worse danger she had ever encountered in her whole life. She was the gracious, graceful hostess whenever Chinua threw his lavish parties, and his guests were always pleased with her charm and intelligence, her beauty, and her perfectly preserved form. At those parties and in the Society pages of the papers, they were the perfect couple, but behind closed doors, she lived in bondage.