The Artificial Wife

by Rachael Eyre

  I kept my eyes on his chin, nodded. “I will decide what I will do with you,” he said at last.

  As I went to go back upstairs, my eye fell on a crystal dish on the hall table. It contained ancient peppermints, a nutcracker - and a key. I knew which lock it fitted.

  ***

  Robert took an inordinate amount of time to get ready that morning: humming, stumping around, nicking himself with his razor. The racket drowned out any other noises. I worried she had been switched off.

  I still didn't know her name. Somehow it hadn't come up. I'd spent the long sleepless night trying every name I knew; none of them suited her. And she thought I was called Audra.

  The front door clanged, Robert’s craft squealed down the road. Now the coast was finally clear, I came out. I clattered downstairs and snatched up the key. In another moment I was slotting it into Robert’s bedroom door. As I thought, a perfect match. Another twist and I was in.

  Robert’s room proved an anti climax. Like the rest of the house it was cold and bleak with a taint of must. I approached the bed. She lay with her head propped up on her arms. She was clearly naked. I hated to think what indignities she had been subjected to that morning.

  I touched her elbow and she sprang awake. “Holy crap, you scared me! I thought you were His Nibs.”

  I waved the key at her. She stared at it, at me, and leapt out of bed.

  “I don't want to be in this scabby room another second. Take me out.”

  “Um, you might want clothes.” I could only imagine what our inquisitive neighbour would think if a big, beautiful black woman started cavorting in the garden.

  A rummage under the bed produced a bright yellow shirt, patterned with red and green ladybirds. She looked at it askance. “D’you think it's me?”

  “Where did it come from?” I couldn't envision Robert buying it.

  “Vivaan, I'll bet -” which did make sense. It wasn't an exact fit but it was better than nothing.

  “I never asked,” and “C’mon, Audra” collided. Another beat and we did it again: “Elle,” “Summer, not Audra.”

  She pondered this. “Much better. Audra’s an old lady name. Summer’s brighter, breezier. Sexier.”

  I felt uncomfortably hot. “Elle? Who chose that?”

  “I did. At our place you picked the name you wanted to be.”

  What do I want to be? I wish I knew.

  ***

  The past few weeks have been like the holiday I've never had. I hover in the attic, wait for Robert’s clomping tread to fade away. I dash down, grab the key and let Elle out. She's built up a trousseau of tasteless shirts; Vivaan must have bought Robert one for every year he's known him.

  “What are we doing today?” she asks.

  We’re exploring the house, one room at a time. It's big, it'll last. It's steadily growing dirtier now I'm banned from cleaning. I wonder how Robert bears it - the cobwebs spill from the beams, the dust clouds billow. All the time we’re sharing our stories, bringing ourselves up to date.

  Our lives have been so different, yet with that common factor: we’re both arties. Even then, our experiences are inverse mirror images. She has always known and keenly resented her inferior status.

  “I know I'm as good as a human,” she says. “Some of the guys who came to Juno’s had the souls of pigs. We'd bow, scrape and fuck them, but they were no better than us. Worse, generally.”

  Thanks to Ms Adelaide’s sleight of hand, I was kept in complete ignorance. I think of things I accepted - never looking at the menials, the gardener’s boy’s stuttering - and see them for what they were. A confidence trick. I was robbed; we all were. I even feel sorry for Leda - her schemes were for nothing, her fate decided from her creation.

  I've never had a friend before. I never knew how badly I wanted one, what a difference it makes. I show her my discoveries: the veebox, the garden, Robert’s ludicrous theories. She does a faultless impression of him: hand in one pocket, the other looking like it's up his bum, swallowing continually. Sometimes she improvises passages of his book and they're indistinguishable from the real thing. We end up in fits of laughter.

  I've spent all this time wishing for my release. Now I don't want to leave.

  ***

  I worry I've ruined everything.

  I was venting about Ms Adelaide and her duplicity, not for the first time. I'm surprised Elle hasn't told me to get over it.

  “I wish I could get my hands on that woman,” I groused. “What did she think she was doing, giving me to him? She always told us we were special, but she sold me to the first man who opened his wallet!”

  But strong emotion is alien to me. As much as I'd like to scream and shout, stamp my feet and punch the cushions, I worry I'll be overheard, I'll offend someone. I've been trained too well.

  Elle laid a hand on my shoulder. “She must've had reasons.”

  “Like your Juno did?” I asked snidely.

  I don't know why I said it. Her madam had barely featured in her stories; now I think about it, she was conspicuous by her absence. But for an instant I saw a pain beyond anything I've experienced: an all encompassing, crushing grief.

  I've been blind.

  “You loved her,” I said.

  The Elle I know - the tough, feisty one - would have fired back, “Yes. Happy now?” This Elle, the one I've never suspected, whispered, “More than anything.”

  There was nothing I could say to make amends. She spent the rest of the day upstairs, alone with her memories, and I couldn't blame her.

  ***

  Robert came home late tonight, tipsy and hectoring. I lay with my ear to the boards, as I do nowadays. I want to know how she is.

  He crashed into the bedroom, disturbed her. “I've had a bitch of a day. Kiss me.”

  Her voice was so faint, I barely heard it: “I'm not in the mood.”

  I expected a storm - he rages when I disobey him. Instead he asked, almost plaintively, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

  Stick it in your ear!

  “You're drunk,” she said soothingly. “Sleep it off. You'll feel better.”

  Incredibly, he did as she said. It wasn't long before the house reverberated with his snores. “The snargly gronker,” she calls him.

  She padded across the landing, clambered up the ladder. Talked to me through the crack in the door.

  “Sorry, Summer. I've been a mare.”

  “I shouldn't have said it -”

  “You didn't know.”

  Heart full, I said, “See you tomorrow.”

  I could hear her grin through the door. “See you, sweetie.”

  Robert: Corrections

  Time for scrupulous honesty: it's obvious my experiment with Audra has failed. I set the most basic standards and she doesn't meet them. The debacle the other night only confirms what I've been thinking for some time.

  Why not return her, you might ask? Send her back to Ms Adelaide’s where she belongs?

  Percivals are not quitters. So my father used to snap, every time I choked on a disgusting vegetable or let him down socially. My mother was more lenient, but that's no argument.

  I can't abide the thought of being proven wrong. Whether it's by Lemuel with his high pitched giggle and his barbs, or Vivaan saying, “Cheer up, mate. Plenty more fish in the sea.” Especially Vivaan. He's to blame for this sorry charade.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures. I've appealed to the only people I know who have been in a similar fix: my contacts on the Storm. One, let’s call him Chad, shared his methods. “Training your artificial wife is not indifferent (sic) to training a dog. They pick up bad habits if their (sic) not watched. If they come to link a wrong behavior with something unplesent (sic) they will learn not to do it.”

  Abortive spelling and punctuation aside, this seems sound reasoning. Another said that if you switched them off as punishment, or at least threatened to do so, they would obey your every command. There were several unsavoury entries about sex,
which I ignored. I am not in the least interested in Audra as a bedmate, for all her wintry beauty. Giselle more than satisfies my needs on that score.

  You might wonder why I don't nominate Giselle as the wife, seeing as she is a superior companion in every conceivable way. The truth is, she is my secret treasure. I don't want to think of her out in the world, other men laying their grubby eyes and thoughts on her. Whatever happens, I know she is safe, my princess in the tower. Waiting for me.

  Besides, I've given Vivaan such grief about Thao over the years. I can hardly flaunt an exotic lover myself. Audra is the kind of woman other men covet. I saw it the night of the party, their barely concealed envy. I will waft this choice morsel before them; they need never know it bores and sickens me.

  I draw up one itinerary, followed by another. I have always been a meticulous person; my teachers used to describe my work as “ruthlessly thorough,” “verging on anal.” I need to account for her every movement, mould her from the faulty doll of the other evening to a polished work of art.

  It's already encroaching upon my working hours. I completely lost track of where I was yesterday afternoon, three quarters of the way through a lecture. It's a good thing one of the frumps at the front (an obvious Pervert) raised her hand. “Doctor?”

  I snapped back from wherever I had been. I wasn't watching Audra descend a staircase, weights on her wrists and ankles. I was in the auditorium, a hundred glassy eyed students staring at me.

  “Yes. I see.” By the time I had poured myself some water and consulted my notes, I'd returned to normal. Though I jotted in the margins: Weights. Where to buy them?

  The incident taught me a sobering lesson. I can't allow myself to be distracted from this course. It's only now, lying sated beside Giselle’s sleeping body, I see what I must do. I have many of my best ideas post coitus.

  It's years since I went on a sabbatical. It's become a joke among the staff: “Percival will only rest when he's dead.”

  I can take the time off, say I'm writing a book. Which isn't a lie.

  Ingenious, if I may say so myself.

  Elle: Doll in a Box

  I've programmed myself to wake at the same time each day. It started at Juno’s, where I rarely had a moment to myself. Now it's granting me time out from this, whatever it is. From Robert’s clumsy attempts at affection, from confidences about his life and childhood. He winds around me, breathes clammily on my neck.

  “You are so beautiful,” he says, running a reverent hand over my breasts, stomach, minge.

  I don't know how he can say this with Summer under the same roof, who is beautiful. It's hard to keep a straight face.

  Outside the window is real life. The tree, its minty leaves blushing orange (I'm a city girl, don't expect me to name it). Kids joshing each other, leaping into puddles. Lovers with matching haircuts, making out by the street sign. A dog barking on and on, somewhere out of sight.

  Inside is Robert's domain, where he is king. We're like those dolls in music boxes, dancing when he turns the key. Zena was given one by a client - suggesting, I suppose, she was his special doll, to play with when he felt like it. Though what happens when the doll breaks or the clockwork gets stuck?

  One time, when Face Ache was out, I tried to smash the window with the doorstop. I thought I'd crack it open, pull Summer down to freedom. But the Robotics Code defuses any such urges. I can't escape, any more than I can bash in the greasy, bedraggled head on the pillow next to mine.

  I want to see Summer. She was crestfallen the other day, when she guessed about Juno. Thinking she had upset me.

  Nothing she could ever do would upset me.

  ***

  Robert had me twice last night, meaning he overslept. He kissed me fishily, scoffed his breakfast and walloped out of the house. I found the day’s tacky shirt - flamingoes - and waited for her by the door.

  Even though we'd made up, she was on her best behaviour. She watched me shyly from under her hair; that stupid bastard decrees she has to wear it up. It's moving to see her unpin it. She went softly, carefully, at pains not to offend.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Smells like he's cremated the toast again.” She threw the window open, erasing the last trace of his existence. She paused as she did it, then drew back - something only another artie could understand.

  We helped ourselves to tea and biscuits, and took them out into the garden. I wasn't surprised she chose there, it's quickly become our favourite place. Tall pale trees press against the fence, shield us from the street. Ivy and weeds have locked together.

  “You expect a knight to come hacking through, looking for dragons,” she laughed. “Rescuing virgins.”

  “Poor dragon, it’d starve round here,” I said.

  “What about the knight?” she dimpled.

  It was the last warm day of the year, according to the news. We intended to make the most of it. Summer waded in a pair of Robert’s slippers, I clunked in his gumboots. We leaned against the tree bark, sitting on the grass. Every few minutes a leaf drifted down, landing in our laps or our hair.

  “Tell me about Juno,” she said. She was hugging her knees to her chest. I couldn't see her face.

  “She was older. Smart. She didn't talk about her past - I got the impression she'd reinvented herself. She wasn't your average madam. She really cared about us.”

  Summer seemed sceptical. Seen from the outside, I couldn't blame her. When you're caught up in love or lust, it seems so plausible. Your heart and body rule your head, you cast everything in the best possible light. “Did she say she loved you?”

  I chuckled. “Of course -” But now I played our relationship back, the edited highlights, there was no such declaration.

  “No,” I said quietly.

  “It's none of my business. Forget I asked.”

  “No. I need to tell someone. I couldn't at the time.”

  Out it splurged. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at her. I didn't sorry she would judge me - she wouldn't. I didn't want her to feel sorry for me, see me as some kind of pathetic love martyr. It fitted a depressing, clichéd narrative: naive young woman seduced by a more experienced one. But I doggedly insisted that this was different, that she wasn't a sleazy old pimp testing the stock.

  “She stopped Lucy, though. And she was willing to go to jail for you.” Summer was determined to salvage something from the wreck.

  “Why didn't she write, though? Find out where I was?”

  “Maybe she couldn't. Would Madam Felicia pass messages on, if she'd received them?”

  “No,” I said sourly. “She'd have sniggered and ripped them up, to spite me.” Not for the first time, I wished I could spit.

  “Well, then.”

  “It's pointless talking about it. She's never going to get out of where she is, I'm never getting out of here.” I thumped the ground. “It's over. Done.”

  Her hand moved across the grass, found mine. It sounds maudlin, but of all the touches I've received, her fingers laced with mine felt the most intimate. It didn't take from me, only gave.

  I wanted to stay there, holding her hand, but she jerked to her feet. “Damn!”

  “What is it?”

  “The old lady next door.”

  I only had the swiftest glimpse - iron waves, stern jaw, baleful eyes - but I could sense the woman’s horror before she closed the curtains.

  “So what? We aren’t doing anything wrong.”

  Summer stumbled over her words. “I don't think it's that. She was appalled last time, when it was just me. She must think Robert keeps women chained up or something.”

  “Doesn't he?”

  I was trying to be flippant, but she was rattled. Clouds were gathering, giving her a convenient excuse. “Looks like rain. We should go in.”

  Once inside we were easily distracted. “Goddess, this place looks disgusting,” she said as we sat down to a sticky table. “Do you think he'll notice if we spruce it up a bit?”

  I shrugged. “He's a
lways got a bunged nose. We could do it if we don't make it obvious.”

  We found aprons, rolled up our sleeves and tied our hair back. “We look like a pair of nuns,” I grimaced.

  Summer turned out to be a fount of knowledge about housework: vinegar to polish glass, lemon juice on the banisters. We sat on the mop heads and spun away down the hall.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked. We'd transformed a mouldy barracks into a clean, inviting home - and not a spray or detergent in sight. “We had functionals to do our chores at Juno’s. I've never even boiled an egg.”