How It Was

by Janet Ellis

  ‘Marion.’ Bridget smiled. ‘I’ll just plunge in. And I’ll understand if you disapprove.’ She smiled again. ‘I’m having an affair.’ Her large face was bright with achievement. She shone with pride. She regarded me with a kind expression. ‘Are you shocked?’

  ‘It wasn’t what I expected,’ I said truthfully. ‘How long, I mean, when? And . . . who?’

  ‘I didn’t expect it either.’ Bridget leaned back against the cushions. ‘Oh, ouch,’ she said, sitting forward at once and holding a small plastic pig. ‘I mean, I thought I was happily married . . .’ She leaned back again.

  I tried hard to imagine Bridget’s husband. Trevor, wasn’t it? Had we even met? I seemed to think he had glasses and not much hair.

  ‘And Richard was the last person I’d thought I’d notice.’ Bridget seemed to relish saying his name. ‘Or who would notice me. Oh my God,’ she said happily, ‘it’s such a cliché.’ She paused and sighed.

  I wonder, I thought, who is looking after the dogs?

  ‘Are you being careful, Bridget?’ I meant about everything.

  Bridget sat up straight, sober after her dizzy reverie. ‘Oh Marion. You do disapprove.’ Her eyes filled with tears. She ran from one emotion to the other, like a child playing tag. Even through her tears, Bridget seemed airborne with pleasure, her toes only lightly on the ground.

  ‘I don’t disapprove,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, I just don’t think you’ve ever told me anything like this before.’

  ‘I’ve never said it aloud.’ Bridget sniffed and shook her head, like a wet dog. We both looked in different directions, in silence, till we caught each other’s eye and began to laugh. ‘Oh God,’ Bridget wailed, pulling a cushion from behind her and burying her face in it. When she looked up, there were two mascara trails down her face. ‘I’m so happy,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s ridiculous and difficult and he’s married and so am I and I don’t know what will happen and I don’t care!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, after a pause. ‘You are a one.’

  ‘I am. I am a one. I’m such a one!’ Bridget gasped and blew air into her cheeks, exhaling with a loud rush of air. ‘I never thought I was the sort of woman who . . .’ She laughed, still short of breath. ‘I don’t know who I thought that was, really. But I suppose I didn’t imagine she’d be someone like me. Everyone thinks I’m practical and a bit plain, don’t they? And they’d have looked at me with my awful hair and my fat calves and thought no one would think I was in the least bit fanciable.’ She looked straight at me. ‘I bet you thought that, too, didn’t you?’

  ‘No.’ I tried not to fidget under her gaze, feeling found out. ‘You’ve never said anything about you and Trevor being unhappy.’

  ‘Trevor!’ Bridget clapped her hands to her cheeks. ‘Oh, Marion. Trevor is so dull. He’s so boring. He hardly says anything. He doesn’t see anything. He hasn’t even noticed my hair.’

  ‘Really? It’s very different.’ Perhaps Trevor thought that Bridget’s new look was a big mistake and was ignoring it out of kindness.

  ‘Do you like it?’ Bridget fiddled with her fringe. ‘Richard just sort of pushed my hair to one side like this’ – she exaggerated the sweep of her hair – ‘and he said it really suited me.’

  The jury, I thought, was still out about that. And I was pretty sure that Michael would notice if I suddenly cut off half my hair and then used a can of Elnett on it every day.

  ‘Richard thinks I’m beautiful,’ said Bridget. ‘He says I’m the most interesting woman he’s ever met.’

  Something in her tone, half wistful and half proud, silenced me and smudged every mocking thought. Bridget seemed redefined by her lover’s appraisal. Had Michael noticed me gleaming like this, when I was seeing Philip? I shut the thought down. This was different. This was flippant and casual. This time next year, it would all be over. And Richard would still be alive.

  ‘Marion,’ Bridget said solemnly, ‘I want to ask you a favour.’

  ‘Wait a minute, I’m going to tidy you up. Just in case . . .’

  ‘Is someone coming?’ Bridget started back in her seat.

  ‘No, no, but I don’t want you to say something important to me while you look like the wreck of the Hesperus.’ I pulled a tissue from my sleeve and scrubbed at the black streaks on her cheeks.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, stroking her face gingerly. ‘All gone?’ She laced her fingers together. ‘Would you mind saying I’m staying with you for one night, Maz?’ Her fingers tightened in her lap. ‘Just for one night? Richard and I have only been able to meet in the daytime, but he’s got to go away on business soon. I could stay at his hotel with him. I could tell Trevor that I’m with you. Could I? Would you do that for me, Marion?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘When?’ I thought of a sullen hotel and an anonymous bedroom. I imagined Bridget waiting there for hours, in new underwear. Richard would race through a meeting to get to her. The room could be stale with another occupant’s cigarette smoke, there might be ominous stains on the wall or the bedding and the noise of the bar might carry on past midnight, but the lovers wouldn’t notice. If they did, they wouldn’t mind. Jealousy, unexpected and violent, flooded through me like water through an open sluice gate.

  ‘I think it’ll be soon,’ Bridget said. ‘Probably next week. I’ll telephone you. You are a dear. Are you sure?’ But she didn’t need my answer, she had already jumped over any obstacles to the open field beyond. ‘Shall we have lunch now? I’m suddenly starving.’

  Bridget chattered while I washed lettuce and chopped tomatoes. She talked about the little Westies and her new front door, but the main topic of conversation was Richard. How he noticed everything about her, how he made her laugh. How he’d managed to smuggle a birthday present to her: ‘Ingenious! It was a book, Maz, so that anyone could have given it to me, but he’d written a little code on a slip of paper and it corresponded to the initials of certain words on specific pages and it spelled “I love you”.’ He didn’t live nearby, she said, so meeting up was difficult. Neither of them had children which, Bridget said, looking at me with pity, would have made it all much worse. But his wife wasn’t well, so he couldn’t just leave. ‘And I don’t know what it would do to Trevor, either,’ she said. ‘His mother died last year.’

  The whole thing sounded like quite hard work. What obviously redeemed it, although Bridget didn’t say as much, was that being in bed with him made all the secrecy and lying worthwhile. ‘A whole night!’ Bridget said from time to time, then: ‘Thank you!’ as if she needed to keep being grateful to ensure that I kept my word. ‘It’s just if Trevor calls, that’s all,’ she said, to reassure me that there’d be no more role-play required other than a quick, simple untruth.

  ‘I’m off to a gallery,’ Bridget said, putting on her coat. ‘Well, we’re off to a gallery. That’s why I’m all dressed up. Richard’s in town and he likes that sort of thing. I’m just happy to do whatever he wants. Trevor thinks I’m going to be with you all the time today.’ She caught my eye and looked guilty for the first time. ‘It’s not really a lie, is it? I’m here now,’ she said, as if one of her lies was worse than the other. I’d stopped short of asking for a physical description of Richard, but Bridget supplied the occasional detail (‘he’s got such lovely blue eyes,’ or: ‘he’s much taller than me,’ and: ‘I adore his smile’) so that he’d shifted about in my mind’s eye, like someone in a hall of mirrors.

  Bridget took the top off her lipstick and painted her mouth with a thick layer of peach frosting, spreading the colour well outside her lip line. She gazed at her reflection in her powder compact. She saw me watching her and made an exaggerated, kissing pout for my benefit. ‘I owe you,’ she said, placing a hand on my arm with a grave expression. ‘And I’ll find a way to pay you back. Why don’t you come up and stay or something? I’d really look after you.’

  I imagined me and Trevor sitting together without speaking, counting the hours until Bridget returned. We’d both notice that she was still f
lushed.

  Bridget’s antics were all rather stupid, really. It was hardly the stuff of romance. It was more the content of newspaper articles about husbands who discover their wives’ affairs and then murder them as a consequence. Bridget would be jolly hard to do away with, though, she had the sort of bouncy resilience that would repel any attempt on her life. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she’d say, while undoing the rope at her throat or taking the gun from Trevor’s hand, ‘I’ll go and feed the dogs, then we’ll chat.’

  After she’d gone, I could smell her scent everywhere she’d been. I hoped she never had cause to visit Richard’s house, because the invalid wife would be tormented by the perfume of infidelity, drifting to wherever she lay, too weak to move. If he had such a bedridden wife, of course. He was lying to whatever wife he actually had to see Bridget, wasn’t he, so he could well be deceiving her, too. People want to think you’re telling them the truth, after all. It’s not so much that anyone is a good liar, I thought, but that most of us are good believers.

  Chapter 38

  1 October

  I walked the long way round, through the field. I wanted to rehearse what I was going to say to Bobbie, so that I could seem really not very bothered when I told her about her father coming to our house. I wasn’t going to tell her about seeing him after school. I felt swollen with information, my stomach actually ached. The pony trotted over as usual. I picked some long grass and held it out to him. He rubbed his velvet lips on my skin as he ate. He licked me and his huge emery board tongue filed my palm flat. I leaned my face on his neck and breathed him in. It was the smell of the only thing that used to matter to me. I laced my fingers through his tough mane and leaned into his flank. He swung his head and looked at me with one kind, brown eye. Whenever I walked anywhere – along the lanes, going to the bus stop, even through the school corridors – I’d be thinking about riding. If we drove anywhere, I’d sit in the back of the car and look at fields to see how good a gallop you’d get there or size up gates for a jump. Whatever I was doing, wherever I was going, I’d pretend I was still riding. I was half horse and half myself. I’d shake my neck as if I had a mane. I’d paw the ground and snort. I’d canter along the paths and snap sticks to make short crops, slapping my thighs as I ran. It made me feel as if I could run anywhere and leap over any obstacle. I was wild and strong. Tom Spencer saw me once and he started giggling. ‘Why are you running along hitting your own leg?’ he said. I was a bit frightened of him then. I didn’t know that he is just a bit soggy, like overcooked veg. I’d dropped the stick and walked away from him, as fast as I could.

  Being near the pony wasn’t the same any more. It was as if a magic spell had worn off.

  Eddie used to keep Truck on a little doll’s house chair next to his bed. It’s not there now. I asked him why and he said he’d buried him. I said dig him up, he’s metal he won’t dissolve. But Eddie said Truck was happy where he was. He said he doesn’t have to think about him any more. He said you can look after me now, instead. I said I would. I think I mean it. Last summer, we caught freshwater shrimps in the stream by the castle. We took them home in jam jars, even though they hardly ever survived even one night. Eddie half filled his jar with stones and twigs and the little dead shrimps would catch on them and wriggle about if you shook them. He thought they were still alive. There’s a complicated sadness inside my chest, all the time. If I poke at it, it wriggles like they did. When Eddie was born, Mrs Owen from the next-door cottage told me babies come to the right parents. She said your little brother is exactly who they need. He’s like glue, she said. They’ll stick together now.

  Chapter 39

  Michael is being ministered to when I arrive. Three nurses, as attentive as geishas, bob and bend, moving over and beside him, adjusting and checking. There’s nothing for me to do. ‘I’ll go and get a coffee, shall I?’ I say.

  One of them pauses and looks up. ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Deacon,’ she says. ‘Mr Kazmi will be here soon.’

  I raise my eyebrows in question.

  ‘The senior registrar,’ she says.

  The other two exchange glances, as if I’ve stumbled upon a secret. I remember how nervous those sorts of visits made me, once.

  ‘Should I wait?’ I say.

  Another ripple of embarrassment. ‘Probably best to wait, yes,’ she says. ‘We don’t want to miss him.’

  I stand next to Michael. ‘Better not skive off, then,’ I say, ‘you stay right here.’

  He smiles, his mouth flattened against acrylic.

  Two hours pass, in spite of the alleged imminence of the registrar’s arrival. I have no appetite for the letters today. They keep up a constant clamour for attention but it’s as ignorable as a party in a distant neighbour’s garden. I retrieve a newspaper from underneath a pile of unopened books and skim old news without concentrating. Time slows. I have a circular conversation in my head about a broken fingernail. I explore it with the tip of my thumb and I remind myself, over and over again, to buy a file, to smooth the edge.

  When he finally comes in, Mr Kazmi is preceded by a phalanx of nurses and the young doctor. They form a guard of honour as he approaches me. ‘Mrs . . . ?’ He glances at the whiteboard above Michael’s head. ‘Deacon, yes,’ he reassures himself, as if I couldn’t be relied on to give the right answer. He is small, plump, unhurried. Around him, the others are in perpetual motion. They look at him for only the briefest time before twitching away, as though he is too bright to be gazed at for long. ‘How are you?’ he says to Michael.

  Still dying, I think.

  ‘Let’s get this mask off, shall we?’ he says.

  This galvanises everyone, and a job that would have taken one of them only a few minutes is shared out between them. The room stills afterwards. I miss the machine’s hiss.

  ‘Now, then, Mr Michael.’ Kazmi speaks too loudly. His voice is clipped, and he lifts the end of his sentences, as though everything is in doubt. The nurses shift from foot to foot and stare at a blank space above the bed. The young doctor avoids looking at me. ‘Do you know, Mr Michael,’ Kazmi continues, ‘that this machine cannot let you live for ever? It breathes for you now. Without it, you cannot breathe.’

  Michael nods. His mouth is dry, and his lips are cracked. I want to let him sip some water, but the space between us is guarded by this small, loud man.

  ‘You must decide yourself, Mr Michael, sir, to stop using it. When you do, you will not live.’ He pauses. ‘You are in control,’ he says. His words swoop upwards, regardless of the fact that this is not a question.

  Michael hasn’t taken his eyes off his interrogator. You do realise, I want to say to him, that this man is telling you to decide when to die.

  ‘Just one thing,’ Kazmi says. ‘It’s Friday today.’ He looks at the nurses. They nod in agreement. ‘I am not here tomorrow. Or the next day.’ He raises his eyebrows at Michael, as if he wants him to confirm the fact, too.

  ‘I don’t think the days of the week matter now,’ I say.

  Kazmi looks at me in surprise. ‘But, Mr Michael,’ he says, though he aims what he says at me, ‘there will be no one here to supervise over the weekend. I am not here until Monday. The machine will be very uncomfortable for you by then.’

  I know only too well that if a doctor tells you something will be very uncomfortable, they are warning you of intense pain. Or of procedures that feel worse than what they’re trying to treat. This time, they mean they are predicting nothing else mattering except getting through to the end.

  ‘Shall I leave you to decide?’ he says, still as loudly as if he needed to reach the back of a lecture theatre. ‘It is best that you decide soon.’

  ‘I don’t want the mask any more,’ Michael says. He hasn’t looked away from his strange confessor. I realise I haven’t heard him speak above a whisper for some time.

  ‘You are sure?’ Kazmi has begun to assemble himself to leave. His work is done.

  ‘Yes, I am sure,’ says Michael.

  ‘Then,
Mr Michael, sir, I’ll leave you,’ Kazmi says, an operatic flourish of farewell.

  The young doctor hovers in the doorway after the cortège has left the room. ‘Do you have any questions?’ he says.

  How long? I want to say. After this struggle, will he have some days in peace? Or only hours? Can you actually see him? I want to ask.

  ‘I’ll be on the ward for a while,’ he says.

  I open two slats of the window blind between my finger and thumb. ‘It’s a nice day,’ I say to Michael. ‘In some ways,’ I add.

  He smiles. He seems brighter now, as if making the decision has freed him of the need to ration his energy.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ I say.

  ‘Not of this,’ he says. I sit down and take his hand. We never hold hands. The pose is awkward.

  ‘Go and get your coffee, Moo,’ he says huskily and although I prevaricate, I leave.

  Two nurses walk down the corridor, just behind me. We’re separated from time to time by people coming in the opposite direction but come together again without losing pace. It’s as if we’re all dancing, knowing the steps without thinking, keeping to the rhythms of our steady, living hearts.

  I sit in the cafeteria. I’ll get a drink in a moment. The queue snakes back past the biscuits and almost to the magazines. It vibrates with tension. Everyone who joins it comments, with or without words, on its length. Progress, I think, has not affected how frustrating it is to stand one behind the other, waiting. We have not evolved to cope any better than we did. I certainly have no more patience now. I remember how waiting to see if Adrian would appear later that day was tortuous. Ennui had settled on me like snow. It filled every corner of the house and my head. I went from room to room without purpose. I sat at the kitchen table and stretched my arms above me, feeling the discomfort as my spine lengthened, grateful for a physical response. If I had to be energetic, I hoped I could manage it. If Eddie was marooned halfway up a cliff, or too far out to sea, surely I’d be able to get to him, wouldn’t I? If I needed to, surely I could swim. Or climb. Or run. I concentrated on making a fish pie, glancing out of the window from time to time to see if the car had arrived. To see if Adrian had come. I grated cheese and arranged sliced tomatoes on the mashed potatoes and tried to stop thinking about Bridget and whoever Richard was, going round a gallery supposedly gazing at the pictures, but really just looking at each other.