Wimp, Stella had hissed at me in her pre-married-bliss baby days. Bloody wimp. ‘So you’re going to buy some are you, at eighty quid a bottle?’
I gave back a hoity-toity retort. ‘I can’t help it if I’ve got expensive tastes.’
And arm in arm, we’d chuckled and sauntered down the parade, out of The Potteries Shopping Centre.
Light Blue resurrected Margaret. By spraying her perfume on me she was invoked. When Steven breathed in the perfume he could believe I was her.
I arrived at The Green Banana, still disturbed by my musings, to find one of the drivers blocking the entrance with his lorry and impatient for me to open the gates. I keypadded him in, minutes later locking the office and walking to the corridor outside D5, just at the moment that Serena came tripping along in her six-inch heels. ‘Did you get a chance to ask Steven about moving out of here?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I clean forgot.’ I felt bad for lying but I hadn’t wanted to bring up the subject.
‘Oh.’ She gave an expression – part disappointment, part irritation. ‘I could do with saving some money.’ Then, seeing my face, she said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It isn’t important,’ before she too sniffed the air.
‘Light Blue,’ she said. ‘Your perfume.’
Moments later I heard her car manoeuvre in the courtyard before heading off. She’d only come in to check on the status of D5. Serena had done me a few favours and now I felt selfish for not considering her request. The truth was, I didn’t want these remnants of Margaret in our home.
I returned to the office and my role of gazing at life on flat grey screens. But I was restless that day, my mind constantly asking awkward questions – with no answers. The trouble with curiosity is that, like swallowed acid, it burns you from the inside out. You can feel it erode your stomach, working its way through to the skin. I wanted to bring Yr Arch alive, not treat it as a mausoleum. I wanted her properly dead. I didn’t want to ape the woman who watched me from the sketch in our sitting room.
That day I began to feel angry. I had always been a victim, at the mercy of someone else’s whims. Now I wanted to break free, take my future in my own hands. I wanted better. Something had shifted. I realized even more now that Steven’s world was strange, an alien planet and I was being drawn into it, away from my world and all that was familiar. I couldn’t stop. I stood on the crater of a volcano and peered into toxicity. I knew I should draw back but I was powerless, sensing the fumes rising, breathing them in and feeling the damage they did to me. I was trying to ascend on the downwards escalator, watching other people rise on the other side while I continued to head downwards. However hard I tried, I couldn’t reverse my direction. I think that was the first time I was really frightened. What had I let myself in for when I had married? Had I left one bear pit only to find myself in another?
I was worrying about this as I journeyed down Smallthorne Bank with its little shops, mostly owned by Asians, many with their plastic wares spread out on the pavement, brightening up the urban scene with eclectic variety, from pink tricycles to red washing-up bowls and gaudy arrangements of plastic flowers. The bus passed Ford Green Hall, an ancient black-and-white house on the left before climbing up towards Norton. I would soon be home.
Home. I still loved the thought of it, the sound of the word, a kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms, garden, all those things I never would have had but for Steven. I felt swamped with gratitude. He was a good man, I was convinced. I wanted it to work. It had to work.
As I was staring out of the bus window, I saw her. Minnie Ha-Ha, rucksack on her back, trudging up the hill as though she was exhausted. I knocked on the window but she didn’t see me. So I pinged the bell and jumped off as soon as the bus slowed, then ran towards her, shouting, ‘Minnie. Minnie.’
She didn’t recognize me at first. Then she did, giving a whoop of delight, greeting me with, ‘What the fuck have you done to your hair?’ Some things don’t change.
I stroked it self-consciously. A week after the wedding, Steven had persuaded me to have it cut to a short and, in my opinion, unflattering bob.
I tossed the remark aside. ‘Oh, I got fed up with always washing and straightening. Stuff,’ I said carelessly, my fingers tugging at the ends as though to lengthen it. ‘This is so much easier.’
‘Well, it don’t do nothing for you.’
I changed the subject. ‘So what are you up to?’
She looked pleased with herself. ‘I’m in a hostel,’ she said, ‘doing some work, helping out there.’
‘Paid work?’ This would be a first but she shook her head. ‘No. Voluntary. I just help with the breakfasts but it gives me an address, a bed to sleep in and food.’
I gave her a tight hug. Whatever she said, I could still smell the scent of the homeless. Maybe it impregnated not only her clothes but her skin, as Light Blue did mine.
‘So,’ she said, when she had escaped, ‘how’s married life?’
I answered honestly. ‘Strange,’ I said. Then, ‘Minnie, you knew Steven before, didn’t you?’
Her answer was evasive. ‘Not really.’
I touched her hand. It felt like a homeless person’s hand: cold, the skin dry and coarse, nails grubby. I could almost feel the years of grime underneath my fingers. She said, ‘Sorry.’
But I shook my head. ‘It was better that I knew.’
She didn’t respond straight away, but put her arms around me and I felt a wash of sympathy. Sympathy? For me, the girl who had everything?
I pulled myself away and held her at arm’s length so I could read her eyes. What I saw there unnerved me. Evasion, fright, apprehension. She didn’t want to upset me She grabbed my arm. ‘If he’d just paid for sex I wouldn’t have said anything. It’s the way he got them to play dead as though they were in a—’ She stopped. ‘That’s why they called him that …’
I put my hands over my ears and tried to cover up my revulsion.
She gave me a pitying look, as patronizing as an aunt patting a child on the head. ‘Play dead. Corpse bride. It’s what we call it when the man doesn’t want us to move or make a sound. We have to lie there, like a corpse. He was worse than most.’ She shuddered. ‘He would …’
I clapped my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to hear any more.
I tried to laugh it off. ‘A bit of S&M …’ I was about to continue that it wasn’t exactly unusual, but Minnie Ha-Ha was watching me, a look of pity now replacing the usual tough-girl glare. She put a hand out to touch my arm. ‘It’s more than that and you know it. You say he was married before.’
‘His wife died.’
‘Exactly.’
What did that mean?
‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘Be very careful. Watch your back.’
Why? I reasoned. All I had to do was to play dead. Not be dead.
Minnie Ha-Ha kissed me and her breath smelt nicely of toothpaste. ‘I’d look into it if I were you.’
‘It’s nothing serious,’ I insisted. But the lie shrivelled on my lips, desiccating my tongue.
I stood regarding her while I picked out the truth in her words, knowing that it was all the truth. Minnie was the poorest person I knew. She had nothing. Not a home or a relationship. Just the clothes she stood up in, which weren’t so much pre-loved as discarded because they were trash. And yet I trusted her more than anyone else I knew. She didn’t lie. She had no reason to.
I put my hand on her arm.
‘How do I get hold of you? I don’t have an address.’
She shook her head and, after giving me a pitying stare, she shook my hand away and was gone. She’d been slow before, trudging up the hill with her dirty old rucksack, but now she vanished into a side street at the speed of light.
Leaving me to return to the bus stop and home.
Steven was already there and looked happy. ‘Thought we might wander down to the pub,’ he said, ‘then come back and watch a film? You might want to wear this.’
He
handed me a dress, watching me speculatively as I examined it. It was what you might call frumpy. Pale blue, knee-length, made of slippery polyester, the sort of frock not even a middle-aged or elderly person would consider flattering. No price label this time. But I showered in the pink bath behind the plastic shower curtain, slipped it on and stood in front of the mirror, regarding myself. Jennifer Lomax, what are you turning into? Who are you turning into?
As we were regulars, the couple who ran the pub, Rosy and Sunny, were getting to know us and greeted us like old friends.
‘I’ll get the drinks and pick up a couple of menus.’
‘Thank you.’ Steven lounged back in his chair. ‘It’s nice to be waited on.’
I leaned across the bar, my back to him. Sunny was Indian; his family had arrived here three generations ago. He was a plump, happy guy and also an incorrigible gossip, which suited my purpose.
‘A beer for my husband and a glass of white wine for me.’
He didn’t need to ask which beer Steven would want. Steven was a man of regular habits. Simply pulling at the pump, turning around while the foam settled to pour my wine, he gave me an opportunity to start my investigation. ‘You must have known the previous Mrs Taverner?’
‘Not really.’
Rosy had bustled over and must have heard my question. She gave her husband a sharp glance before elaborating on Sunny’s comment. ‘He tended to come on his own.’
Even though my back was to him, I was aware that, curious what the conversation was about, Steven was watching from the corner table.
Rosy continued but I sensed she was reluctant to focus on this subject. ‘I think she was ill when they came here. He never brought her down.’
‘When did he move here?’
I didn’t need to turn around to know that he was right behind me, listening in.
‘We’ve only been here for eight years. He was here then, weren’t you, Steven?’ She was drawing him into the conversation.
He didn’t answer but looked at me speculatively. He knew I’d been asking questions and he didn’t like it.
We ate in silence. I didn’t enjoy it. I could feel his suspicion surround me like dust, clogging my eyes and nose and coating my tongue.
He paid at the bar and I caught a waft of his terse conversation with them. ‘I prefer you don’t discuss my private life with my wife.’
That shut down one avenue of enquiry.
And so we returned home, walking the couple of hundred yards in silence before settling down to watch a film, a story about a woman who escapes an abusive marriage, only to have her husband find her; the film didn’t disappoint with its dramatic denouement. We snuggled up together on the sofa, the dress material slippery and with a scent all of its own. The Light Blue hadn’t impregnated the material.
‘I like the beginning,’ he said when I’d switched the TV off. ‘Not too sure about the end though.’
I responded weakly but with honesty. ‘I think I like it better when she’s broken free.’
He leaned back to study me and pulled his arm away. He hadn’t expected that. He thought of me as compliant. Not a rebel.
I knew the drill now when I went to bed. I lay still as a corpse bride. No, I wasn’t thinking of England. I was wondering what would happen if I moved.
Try it and see.
That demon voice goading me to challenge.
I didn’t. As he thrust inside me he pinched my breasts. ‘Don’t move,’ he warned, ‘or I’ll stop.’ I didn’t. But deep inside me I could feel rebellion rising above the pleasure. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was playing his game, getting sucked into it as possibly Margaret had been. Before my experiences with various weirdos, I might have continued playing it on his terms. But now I had experience. I’d lived a bit. Suffered a bit. Life’s knocks make us stronger. I would play his game for now. But the worm would turn one day. While my body remained still, my mind was busy, busy, busy, making plans.
When I went to work the next day, Scarlet was full of it. She and Andy were going on a cruise to the Caribbean. She looked so happy and so excited. ‘You’ll be all right on your own?’
I smiled. ‘Course I will.’ I felt quite excited. I was responsible for the entire place, in charge. I felt important and empowered.
For the entire ten days that Scarlet and Andy were away I was too happy to challenge the status quo. Steven seemed different and I told myself that his strange ways were at an end. We were entering a new chapter in both our lives. I constantly lectured myself. He’d lost his wife. He’d grieved. He’d not disposed of her belongings. But now, I thought. Now that he had me, he would let all that go.
Boy, could I fool myself.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Around that time, just as spring was starting to pretend it was arriving, with lighter, longer days and the promise of flowers poking their way through the soil, I started to notice a change in him.
Initially he seemed even more distant, preoccupied. His eyes seemed to slide away from mine and he would sit for periods, wrapped up in himself. Sometimes apparently talking. His lips would move and he would seem to lean in, as though listening intently. It was as though he was arguing within himself, a constant, internal argument which made him abstracted and distant. Hard to reach. Sometimes I’d find it hard to connect with him at all. And Margaret’s eyes watched us from the wall of our sitting room.
That night in late February was typical. ‘Steven?’
He didn’t turn to look at me but sat, frowning, peering around him, searching for the speaker. ‘Steven,’ I said again, keeping my tone gentle because he seemed unnerved, alarmed and vulnerable, his eyes wide open with what looked like fear. Then he dropped his head into his hands. ‘I should have told you,’ he said.
I knelt by his side. ‘Told me what?’
He was licking dry lips, still looking around him. ‘I shouldn’t have …’
‘Shouldn’t have what?’ I was afraid of what he’d been about to say.
I shouldn’t have married you.
‘Steven?’
He didn’t respond but sat, rocking gently, backwards and forwards. His next word chilled me more than frightened me. ‘Margaret,’ he said, then put his hands either side of my face and drew me to him. ‘Margaret,’ he said again and kissed me very gently on the lips. ‘I so love you,’ he said.
And now I was confused. Who was he talking to? Whom did he love? His dead wife? Me? Did he know I even existed?
I felt angry then worried and tried, mistakenly, to force out an answer.
‘Steven, it’s Jennifer. Jenny.’ I was trying to break down a barrier, one I could neither see nor understand. As invisible as an electrical field. He was smiling at me now and looked almost back to normal. But I mistrusted this ‘normality’.
I sat in the dark that evening for a long time, trying to work out what was going on and what I should do. In the end I decided to try to contact his parents.
I knew his father’s name because it was on our marriage certificate. And he was alive. I knew they lived in Macclesfield, a mill town to the north of The Potteries.
I was aware that they might not welcome a visit from their new daughter-in-law. But what the hell?
I’d never met them. They’d never met me, and didn’t appear to acknowledge my existence. They hadn’t come to the wedding, which I had interpreted as disapproval for their son’s remarriage. Selfish, in my opinion. Why shouldn’t he when he’d experienced such tragedy? But they hadn’t even sent us a card. Maybe they didn’t know their son had married for the second time. Steven had lied. He hadn’t told them. I found their telephone number on the internet, even dialling it a few times. It usually went to answerphone. I left no message. Once or twice I heard a voice answering and I put the phone down, my heart pounding. Why? What was I frightened of? Rejection? I was prepared to encounter hostility. What else did I think I would unearth?
I tried to think of an alternative, of contacting Margaret’s family, but I didn�
��t even know her maiden name. I believed she was Welsh. That was it.
In the end, call me a coward, I plumped for an alternative.
Steven had once mentioned that he had a sister, Francine, who was a lecturer at Keele University, and on an off chance I searched her too on the internet and found out she lived in Stone, not far from here. I’d picked up a landline number.
I thought an approach to her might be easier than his parents. I knew nothing about her beyond her name. He hadn’t said whether they got on or not. I suspected not, or I would have met her before, and maybe she would have been the family member to attend the wedding.
To be honest I was nervous about meeting his parents. I had the feeling that their version of his first marriage would be nearest the truth and that whatever they said about their son remarrying I wasn’t going to like it. It would be hostile. There was a reason why he was as he was and I believed I would find that reason embedded in his first marriage and I would find the answer unpalatable.
I waited for a quiet moment at work when the grey screens were empty of their ghost people and there were no vehicles in the yard. Then I picked up the phone and dialled the number.
She answered and I managed to speak, the words pouring out like grain from a holed sack.
‘You don’t know me. My name is Jennifer. I’m married to your brother.’ Even over the phone line I sensed shock. The silence was as heavy as the atmosphere just before a thunderstorm breaks.
‘Sorry?’ Her voice was soft and not unkind. I repeated my statement and waited.
‘Steve is married?’ She couldn’t hide her shock.
But I was missing a word. Again. The query should have been: Steve is married again?
‘Yes. We married last month.’ My voice was prim, through tight lips. ‘You didn’t know?’
The Subsequent Wife Page 23