Hush Hush

by Mullarkey, Gabrielle

  She marched out quickly with the tray, and made straight for the bin. She swung the lid gently to reveal the rubbish clinging to the black bin-liner. The flowers had been shoved in head-first. The rich scent of fresh camellias, the glow of their creamy golden heads amid tea leaves and meal-for-one foil trays, gripped Sadie with terrible sadness. For the flowers and for their sender. If she could just edge her hand in and extract the note. She could make out its flower-embossed corner, smothered in tea-leaves like a colony of vicious ants.

  ‘When do you think you’ll be back at work?’ she called to Angela, to smother any tell-tale noises and keep a trace on her daughter’s whereabouts.

  ‘A couple of days, I reckon. No need to rinse out those cups.’ Angela’s voice reeked of suspicion. Sadie knew that she was behaving oddly, rushing off to the kitchen not long after Angela’s momentous confession.

  ‘It’s no trouble, lovey. I’ll be out of your hair in a flash.’

  Almost got it, just a bit further. The swing lid caught one of her more tender knuckle joints. Sadie extracted her hand with a silent yelp and the lid crashed down on the bin. She flew to the tap, running water over a cup, just as Angela appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Are you up to something, Ma? You’re taking the news very well. I thought you’d be bursting with “I told you so,” and “I always thought his eyes were too close together”.’

  ‘Come off it, lovey.’ Sadie turned from the sink, genuinely hurt. ‘It took me a while, but I learnt to back off and let you and Owen live your own lives. And I did like Robert, even though you seem to have thought I didn’t. I liked him for his goodness and his decency. He had old-fashioned virtues that are missing in men today. I still like him. My only beef with him now is that he might have hurt you.’

  Angela nodded tiredly. ‘Fair dos, Ma. I’m not letting you win either way, going on like this. Don’t feel you have to rush off. Would you like to stay for dinner?’

  ‘Not tonight, thanks all the same.’ The square of sodden cardboard was burning a hole in her skirt pocket. She longed to decipher it on the bus. ‘You get yourself off to bed for an early night. I’ll call tomorrow for an update.’

  Folding a tea towel to avoid Angela’s eye, her gaze strayed out of the window again, towards the dress on the line. The stiff pleats rustled in the wind, and in Sadie’s memory. Deep pink and darkest velvet rose with sharp-edged clarity out of the murky depths. Above the bodice swam a creamy neck. A stiletto heel arched daintily, its owner climbing into a car. The car door swung shut. Smoothly, the car moved out of sight, carrying Sadie’s memory with it.

  ‘Mum, did you hear me? If you don’t go now, you’ll wait another forty minutes for a bus. Look, stay to dinner and I’ll call you a taxi. I’ll call you a taxi anyway. You shouldn’t have to bother with buses in the first place.’

  ‘No, no, I’ve got to get away. Thanks for reminding me about the time. Now look after yourself, Ange!’

  Angela was half-strangled in one of her mother’s more emotional embraces before she had time to react. But she allowed it, trying not to stiffen or squirm. Her mother was permitted this indulgence. After all, Angela had said the ‘l’ word (which the poor woman had waited a lifetime to hear) and then crowned it with a juicy story of Robert’s did he/didn’t he adultery. No wonder Sadie was emotional.

  Waving her mother off, she closed the front door, weariness washing over her. She’d have to snap out of this! To hell with Conor McGinlay. People in the developing world were starving, as long as you had your health … Mentally repeating every truism she could think of, Angela shuffled back into the sitting room and turned up the fire, drawing an armchair closer to it. She’d have to go back to work before the end of the week. Pauline still had her sleeping bag. That night already seemed a lifetime ago.

  The heat made her drowsy. Around her, the house came alive with sound. She was at the centre of it, seeing and hearing, but trapped in her chair, dozing.

  Robert came in, slamming the door behind him. He looked shame-faced and sulky, but still defiant. ‘This whole thing is too stupid for words!’

  Angela leapt off her chair to face him. ‘So why didn’t you tell me straight off that you had dinner with Magdalena?’

  ‘It slipped my mind. It was only a welcome-to-the-team meal out. It was after the travel seminar, which didn’t last as long we expected. So Ian suggested we take Magdalena out to dinner.’

  ‘Before, you said it was just you and Ian at the seminar.’

  ‘Er ‒ Magdalena turned up off her own bat. She heard about it somewhere.’

  ‘So how come Ian booked a table for you two at the most expensive restaurant in town and then cleared off? Anyway, you need to give at least a month’s notice to get a table at Tosca’s.’

  ‘They had a cancellation. It was the last place Ian tried on his mobile.’ Robert warmed belatedly to his story. But he’d had a good half hour to come up with this, thinking in the bathroom, since she’d first flourished the restaurant receipt. ‘I remember Ian’s groan of anguish that the only restaurant with a vacancy that night was the priciest one, and he couldn’t even go. He ‒ he had to pick his mum up from bingo. He forgot about that until the last minute.’

  ‘You didn’t get home till nearly one!’

  ‘You know how these swank restaurants like to make a meal of it, ha ha.’

  ‘Liar, liar! Your Y-fronts are on fire! There was no bloody seminar. Just a candlelit dinner with Miss Big Tits butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-gob! And God knows what else for afters.’ Angela looked around for something to throw at him. Something chunkier than a cushion but less lethal than an ornament.

  ‘Look, Ange, it’s all true, I swear.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll just ask Magdalena myself next time I meet her. Or maybe Ian and his mum would be better bets.’

  Angela peered at the sweaty till receipt still clutched in her hand. ‘Choc and orange sundae. You hate that combination. You see, Rob, the more people you drag into a lie, the more people you have to keep tabs on, in case they let the truth slip out.’

  Robert’s soft jawline suddenly hardened. He picked up the remote control and flicked on the TV.

  ‘Robert!’

  ‘I’m not listening!’ He turned up the volume.

  On screen, Phil Mitchell was knocking seven bells out of someone on EastEnders. But Angela could roar louder.

  ‘You’re so fucking childish sometimes! Why can’t you be a man and own up to things when you’re caught out?’

  He turned the telly down a smidgen and narrowed his beautiful brown eyes at her, wary and frightened as a trapped animal’s. ‘Now who could’ve given you cause to question my manhood? Wouldn’t happen to be your old bag of a mother?’

  ‘We are discussing you!’ She flourished the receipt as exhibit A. ‘And your fancy woman.’ She couldn’t believe she was using words like that!

  ‘Did Sadie put you up to this? “Go on, love, thumbscrew it out of him. You found a restaurant receipt? My God, I bet he’s bonking the Dagenham Girl Pipers!”’ He made a rattling noise with the loose change in his pocket, in cruel and spot-on imitation of Sadie’s dancing bottom plate when she got agitated.

  ‘She doesn’t know about this and never will. It’s our shame to live with.’

  ‘Maybe she’s on her way over this minute. By broomstick.’

  Angela turned her back and strode to the window. She hated rowing with Robert. They’d had mercifully few major rows over the years. They always digressed ‒ no matter what the origin or provocation ‒ into Robert’s verbal assault on Sadie.

  His dutiful son-in-law act hid a seething resentment that surfaced all too quickly when he lost his temper for other reasons. It upset Angela and would’ve appalled Sadie.

  ‘I know what Sadie thinks of me, and at times like this, I wonder if she’s swayed you over to her side. She thinks I’m weak, unsuccessful, lacking moral fibre. So of course I’d hop into bed with a woman after sharing a side salad with her. Have you looked at
Magdalena properly? Why would she hop into bed with me?’

  His logic was comforting. Angela turned to him, almost relieved to side-step the issue of the receipt by soothing his ruffled feathers over Sadie.

  ‘Mum’s critical of everyone. Look how I’ve disappointed her, leaving my job without even being pregnant as a cover story.’

  ‘But mostly, you’ve disappointed her by marrying me, Mr Average. She sized me up long ago and found me wanting. She needles me all the time, pretending it’s a cosy bit of family ribbing. I’ve tried with her, Ange ‒ because she’s your mother.’

  ‘I know you have. Maybe ‒ you know ‒ you’ve tried too hard.’

  The wrong thing to say. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I just mean, you should always be yourself with her. I told you that from day one. Don’t even give her the satisfaction of trying to impress her. You kind of invite her to despise you.’

  ‘And this,’ said Robert slowly, ‘is the woman you were thinking of inviting to live with us. Thank God I knocked that idea on the head. For a start, we wouldn’t be able to have private slanging matches like this, would we? We’d have to go out for a drive so you could accuse me of bonking Magdalena.’

  ‘But Robert ‒’

  ‘The subject is closed! I told you the truth. It’s up to you whether you choose to believe me or not. I accept no responsibility for your paranoid suspicions. That’s my final word.’ He sat down and turned up the telly.

  Rebellion bubbled in Angela. Robert only occasionally invoked the ‘final word’ clause of their marriage contract, an unwritten clause that Angela usually acquiesced to because it was invoked so sparingly and always when she’d pushed him further than she’d accept being pushed herself. But this was different. She wasn’t being paranoid. She’d seen the panic in his eyes, the deep blush of guilt on his face when she’d pointed out the strange anomaly of stingy old Ian booking his underlings into a pricey restaurant, then happily buggering off. It was a shot in the dark, and it had struck home.

  She switched off the telly and stood in front of it. ‘You’re perfectly entitled to take Magdalena out for a meal. And I’m entitled to wonder why you’ve been so shifty about it. You’re jumping around like a scalded cat, protesting your innocence too much. I didn’t come down in the last shower, Robert, and you’re a crap liar, for which I’ ‒ here her voice broke ‒ ‘for which I’ve always been thankful. I never wanted to marry a double-talking smooth bastard.’

  He turned to her earnestly. ‘And you didn’t. You married plain old Robert Carbery, who couldn’t cheat on you if Miss World came through that door wearing a G-string.’

  His look went right through her. ‘Oh, Robert, don’t let’s fight!’ She flew to him, leaping on top of him in the chair and crushing the life out of him. Privately, she remained unsure that he’d done no more than swap fortune cookies with Magdalena. But as long as she was unsure, she had to believe him.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘Apology accepted.’

  She stiffened and drew away. ‘I don’t remember apologising for anything.’

  He threw up his hands. ‘So we’re back to square one.’ He shoved her away, depositing her in a heap on the floor, and stood up. ‘Honestly, Angela, this clinging little wife routine doesn’t suit you. This is what comes of giving up work and festering at home all day, imagining all sorts about the people who are out there in the big, bad world. Well, for your information, I can’t avoid women on the bus or Magdalena at work. I suggest you get a life before it’s too late, and give your overworked imagination a rest.’

  Tears stung her eyes. He’d never criticised her before for giving up work. In fact, he’d often commented on how much he enjoyed returning to a cosy, lit house and a hot meal ‒ especially in winter.

  ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said gruffly and stomped from the room. She ran after him, and caught his arm. He shook it off, taking the stairs two at a time.

  She clutched the banister and yelled at his departing back, ‘I’m calling Ian first thing in the morning to check on this dinner he had to cry off from at the last minute. So you’d better get to work at the crack of dawn and brief him on his story for the clinging little wife!’

  She thought about adjourning regally to the spare room. But the bed needed making up, and it was colder than a fridge.

  In the end, she went to bed an hour later and inched carefully in beside him, careful not to make bodily contact of any kind. He had to make the first move.

  His hands snapped round her waist straight away, drawing her rigid back into his chest. She didn’t resist, but made no other move, willing him to try harder.

  ‘Forgive and forget, Ange? I don’t really hate Sadie. When you get mad at me, I see her in the background, cheering you on.’

  She hesitated. He wanted her to forgive and forget everything about the night’s proceedings, presumably. And this attempt at an apology (which hadn’t included the word ‘sorry’) only encompassed his rudeness about Sadie. It wasn’t that difficult pleading mea culpa for harsh words about Sadie. He did it all the time.

  ‘What about slagging me off for giving up work?’ she mumbled, deciding on a piecemeal approach to extracting humility (and hopefully, the truth about the other thing) from him.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, course I’m sorry for that, whatever it is I said.’ He kissed the back of her head. She ground her teeth. He had a foolproof way of giving that meant she received nothing. Now she’d look ungracious and childish if she didn’t let bygones be bygones. It was his hand creeping under her T-shirt that did it. Of all the nerve! He not only expected unconditional absolution for sins not even confessed, he also expected to seal their entente with a bit of nookie!

  ‘Don’t!’ She slapped his hand away ferociously.

  He spun away, turning his back on her, dragging the duvet with him.

  She curled into a ball of misery on the edge of the mattress. The next thing she heard was his soft snoring. Typical man! Faced by the conundrum of an unhappy woman, he’d given up working her out and gone to sleep.

  In the morning, they didn’t speak at the breakfast table. His head was slightly bowed over his toast, presenting her with a poignant view of his thinning crown.

  She cleared her throat. ‘You can rest easy. I’m not going to chase up Ian over that dinner.’

  His head snapped up. ‘So you believe it was all above the board?’

  Why hadn’t she said yes? It would have cost her nothing to send a condemned man to his death with a hearty breakfast and a lightened load.

  But she’d just shrugged, offering him a cool cheek to graze with his lips. Their last physical contact. Even then, his mouth had felt wispy, insubstantial, like a frond of ghostly ectoplasm.

  She was trying to make a pineapple-upside-down-cake peace offering when the call came. It was just after midday. The phone made her jump and she cut her finger on the half-opened lid of the pineapple tin, moving slowly towards the ringing phone, trailing a shred of unravelling kitchen towel.

  At first, she couldn’t understand a babbling, incoherent Ian. She’d thought it had something to do with the dinner receipt and the row. That Ian was telling her off for impugning the behaviour of his beloved Magdalena. ‘Come now!’ he screamed. ‘I’m at the hospital, but they won’t tell me anything. It looks bad.’

  At the hospital, Ian told her that Magdalena had tried to revive Robert back at the agency. But even from the other side of the room, ringing for the ambulance, Ian had seen Robert’s face and lips turn blue. When Ian told her about Magdalena’s kiss of life, Angela had started giggling hysterically. So her accusation of snogging Magdalena was true in at least one way!

  She’d sought out Magdalena in the relatives’ waiting room, tried to drag her down to the chapel of rest for ‘moral support’, but really to show her the end result of her adulterous handiwork. But Magdalena had resisted heroically, clinging on to Ian and staving off Robert’s madwoman widow until Sadie sailed into the room, p
rised Angela’s hands off Magdalena and said she would escort her to the chapel of rest.

  At least she’d only had to look at his face, the white pallor of death overlaying the blue, like a ripened Stilton. The rest of him had lain under a sheet emblazoned with the hospital initials. She’d concentrated very hard on the W.G.H., stamped blackly on pale blue cotton. She’d wondered if a casual observer would mistake the sheet for monogrammed linen.

  The coffin was brought into the house the following day by the undertakers.

  Time passed in frame-by-frame sequence as they drew the living room curtains, draped the mantelpiece in purple crepe paper and set out the closed casket on runners next to the telly. When they left, and it was just her, Sadie and Robert’s mother, she’d stared fearfully at the closed lid.

  She imagined it padded inside with pastel silk. Robert wearing some New Age smock chosen at the undertaker’s discretion (she’d declined to surrender his best suit for the occasion; she couldn’t bear to part with it), his lids closed over brown eyes that would never sparkle on the world again, cotton wool padding out his sagging cheeks with a ‘peaceful’ idiot smile and his hands folded across his chest, the back of one still fresh with scratch-marks. She’d scratched him accidentally the previous week, during a bit of horseplay on the sofa in Coronation Street’s ad break.

  But even as she looked, the lid began to creak open. The bitten half-moons of his nails appeared, pushing up the heavy oak.

  She gasped and looked in terror at his mother and Sadie. But they’d noticed nothing. Sadie went on saying the rosary with half-closed eyes, his mother crying noisily into a bloomers-sized hanky.

  Angela turned her eyes back to the lid, shaking with terror. His wedding ring glimmered from the coffin’s maw as his hand went on pushing up the lid. She screamed.

  She woke in a terrible sweat next to the hissing gas fire.

  It was dark outside. She was bathed in the fire’s orange glow as well as its heat. She sat up, wrapping her dressing gown lapels round her neck. Bloody hell, what a nightmare! All brought on by discussing their last row with Sadie.