by June Gadsby
I sat there for a long time looking at the screen even after the programme credits had rolled and the publicity pages were trying to persuade me to buy toilet paper as preferred by executive babies, tablets to clean my washing machine and a free Internet site where I could meet the partner of my dreams.
I switched off the set as the telephone rang out shrilly by my elbow. I picked it up and waited, not trusting my voice before I knew who was on the other end.
“Did you watch it?” Ros hissed in my ear. “Did you see him?”
“Yes,” I croaked. “Yes, I saw him. Oh, Ros!”
“Aw, gawd, did it upset you that much?”
Ros knew about me and Callum. She was the only one. There had been a time when I had to confide in someone or disintegrate into a million pieces. She had seen me through the crisis.
“Yes, I’m afraid it did.” I sighed.
“Sorry, luv. I thought I was doing you a favour.”
“Oh, it’s not your fault, Ros. It was…well, a bit of a shock, seeing him like that…after so long.”
“So, what did you think?”
“He hasn’t changed much,” I said, my mind conjuring up Callum’s face, that last image of it being indelibly imprinted on my brain. “One or two more grey hairs, but then… Oh, Ros, I didn’t think seeing him again would hurt this much. I thought I was over him.”
“No, you’re not. I could have told you that. So, are you going to rush out and buy his book, then?”
“What…and read about his affair with another woman?”
“If that’s what it is. Anyway, I’d read it if I were you. It might help get him out of your system.”
“Or give the knife another nasty twist.” I said with a grimace and raked my fingers through my hair.
There was a short silence, then: “I saw Greg go out this morning and he hasn’t come back yet, has he?”
“No.”
“He looked angry. You two had another barney?”
“No, not this time, Ros. This time he was angry at not getting the exclusive story on Callum.”
“Ah! But weren’t you supposed to be going out for lunch?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell are you doing still married to that fella for anyway, Megan? He doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“Oh, Ros, don’t!”
“Don’t what? Tell you things you already know, but won’t admit? You know what you are, don’t you, Megan Peters?”
“Yes, Ros. A fool. A damned great fool.”
“I’ve got the kettle on, gal. Why don’t you come round for a cuppa? And tomorrow you can go out and buy yourself a copy of that book.”
“I’ll come round, Ros, but I don’t know about the book. Maybe I’d be better off just forgetting the whole thing.”
“Try! Just you try, my girl!”
I didn’t say so, but I knew she was right.
Chapter Two
Monday morning rain, I thought, as I waited for the bus the next day, always seemed more miserable than the rain at any other time in the week. I looked about me at my fellow-commuters and recognised the familiar signs of stress. Weekends were always too short. The first day back at work came around too quickly and once again the workers were plunged into their individual worlds of supply and demand. After a few short hours of freedom, they were once more part of the national statistic, whether it be employed person or its common alternative.
There was a small huddle of people at the bus stop, shifting impatiently and wearily from one foot to the other. The government were campaigning for less cars on the road, less pollution, more use of public transport. People were doing their best to comply, but they were on a loser. There weren’t enough buses or trains and what there were didn’t run on time, if they ran at all.
The man at the head of the queue was leaning against the metal pole of the bus-stop sign. He was, despite the rain, trying to read his morning newspaper. From time to time he shook the pages out, peered over them anxiously in case he missed the arrival of the bus, then rattled the damp pages again with a shrug that was all part of his practised impatience.
The girl next to him was inadequately dressed. Not so much for the season, but for the unfriendly drop in the temperature and the dampness in the air. She shivered convulsively, and her lips moved as she made complaining utterances under her breath. There was a spanking new diamond engagement ring on her finger. She waved it about a lot, hoping that someone would notice it and she could react coyly to their congratulations.
A young pregnant woman with a pre-school youngster clinging to her hand and another small child in a pushchair, stared into melancholy space, while a teenage boy in a black leather bomber jacket jived to the barely masqued rap music emitting from his headphones.
I was the last in the queue and felt slightly guilty about being there. It was prime commuter time and I wasn’t one of them, since I had no job to go to in town. I was one of the lucky ones and could choose my times of travelling. I worked comfortably and independently from home as a freelance artist, so there was no boss to please or displease. I didn’t have to be there, standing waiting for this damned bus in the rain, taking up someone else’s essential place perhaps. But Greg had parked his car in such a way that made it impossible for me to get my own car out. If I’d really thought about it, I could have gone into town much later, but I was gripped by a feeling of desperation. I couldn’t find Greg’s car keys and waking Greg up was out of the question.
Greg wasn’t being very sociable. He came home in the early hours of the morning, long after I had gone to bed. I lay there, feigning sleep, listening to him fumbling about in the dark, cursing in slurred, inebriated tones as he wrestled with his clothing.
My stomach curled up its toes at the smell of him as it wafted across the bedroom. Stale alcohol and cigarette smoke mixed with greasy, spicy food was enough to make me vomit, which is what he had obviously done very recently. And there had been something else that I tried not to recognise, but Opium is a potent woman’s perfume that has the habit of clinging on close contact. Greg used to buy it for me. Once. I wondered who he was buying it for now.
My pretence at being asleep was hardly necessary. Greg finally collapsed on his own bed, asleep and snoring resonantly within seconds. In the days when we were still amicably having regular sex together we had agreed on single beds. It was a compromise that worked. Greg’s work demanded that he came and went at odd hours, very often in the middle of the night. My sleep was being disturbed too often. I was starting to fall asleep over my drawing board, which was not doing my own career any good. Greg wasn’t too taken by the idea at first but came around when I gave him the choice of single beds or separate rooms.
The fact that soon afterwards he started staying out all night, sometimes two or three nights in a row, made the arrangement somewhat futile. In between long periods of non-interaction between us sexually, he would get on a high and then I wished that I had insisted on separate rooms. Rooms that had doors that locked from the inside. As Greg’s career took off like a rocket I suddenly found myself married to a bedroom Jekyll and Hyde. He became an animal. A monster with a cruel, sadistic streak that scared me. It was only the memory of the good times we had together as two young adults that kept me from walking out on him.
I had left him once. He caught me out by turning on the age-old psychological blackmail. The I love you, I can’t live without you; if you leave me I’ll kill myself type of blackmail. I had tried to harden my heart, reminding myself by the minute of all the bad things he had done. But I lacked the kind of hard moral fibre that was necessary to turn my back and walk away.
People, friends, relatives, all came at me, wanting to know what I was making ‘poor’ Greg suffer for, pleading with me to go back to him on his behalf. And he was joining in the chorus, assuring me that he would change if only I’d give him a second chance. I ended up feeling like the guilty party and ran back with my tail between my legs. For a while he plied me with plea
santries and presents and everyone told me how pleased they were that I had acted wisely and not split up our ‘perfect’ marriage.
Then he started slipping back into his old ways and I realised he would never change. We went in and out of peaks and troughs. Brief moments of snatched happiness and long periods of demoralising despair. The silly thing was that we were on a good upward slide when I first met Callum Andrews. But all that was old history now and I was still married to Greg, still waiting for him to revert to the happy-go-lucky, dynamic young man I had married. He tried. I had to give him that. He tried to be a good husband, over and over again. Then something would happen, and we would be back to zero, with me feeling that maybe I was the one to blame.
So why was I standing here in the pouring rain, waiting for a non-existent bus, just so I could rush into town and buy Callum Andrews’ book? A love story, of all things! I grew out of reading romances when I was a teenager. It was ridiculous. I should be back at the house in my studio working on the illustrations for my own latest book commission. I was already late in keeping the deadline and the publishers were up on their hind legs roaring their displeasure.
I looked at my watch and took a half step away from the bus-stop, fully decided that I was being a fool and that reading that damned book was not going to help matters one way or the other. It was silly, obsessive behaviour worthy only of a lovesick schoolgirl, which I was far from being. I was a mature, adult woman of thirty-five and I had better things to do with my life than waste time dreaming and dwelling on things that could never be.
He could never be. Callum. We had called our affair impossible three years ago. It hurt to think that Callum had since met someone with whom a future life was possible. I wondered what the new woman possessed that I lacked. Or was it Callum who had changed? Lost his Mister Wonderful image, his faithfulness, his integrity. He had been married to the same woman for thirty years. What was it that had made him decide to finally cut the cords that bound him to Hilary?
The yellow bus turned the corner at the end of the road. I heard sighs of relief from behind me, but I kept on walking away, teeth determinedly gritted. The bus was probably full, anyway. It might not even stop. And if I couldn’t get on, what was I going to do? Stand there and wait for the next one?
Don’t be ridiculous, Megan Peters!
That reproaching voice in my head kept repeating itself as I walked slowly away, my eyes fixed on the middle distance. The bus drew up with hissing tyres on the black, oily surface of the road. I heard the wheeze of its air breaks as it came to a halt, not at the bus stop, but exactly at the spot where my reluctant feet had carried me.
There were cries of annoyance from the people I had left behind, and I heard a stampede of desperate footsteps. The bus driver stared ahead, oblivious of the complaints from the boarding passengers who accused him of being perverse, among other, less polite things.
They were all on. The man with the newspaper, the young woman with the engagement ring, the pregnant woman with her children and the boy with the iPod. The driver started to close the doors, then hesitated. The doors gave an asthmatic cough as they were arrested in mid-closed operation. I looked at the driver and he looked at me. We both frowned.
“Well?” he asked with a head jerk that asked me to hurry up and make up my mind.
I answered him with an impatient grimace, then gave my head a slight negative shake, meaning that I had changed my mind. Only he misinterpreted the gesture and opened the doors fully again. I opened my mouth to say something, excuse myself, tell him I’d made a mistake. But no sound came out. Instead, I climbed onto the bus and paid my fare into town.
I had to squeeze onto the seat with the pregnant woman and her children. She looked at me with a dead expression in her eyes, then turned to stare out of the window. I smiled down at her little boy, who scowled at me from an unwashed face smeared with jam and chocolate. The sickly-sweet smell of him rose to meet my already nervous stomach. The baby was being sick down its stained bib and over the woman’s hand. She looked at the milky spillage wearily and wiped at it with a crumpled paper tissue. Then she returned her gaze to the rain-washed window that was quickly steaming up and obliterating the view of the passing world outside.
The bus careered down the road towards Newcastle’s Haymarket and the Civic Centre. I followed one or two other passengers who had got to their feet and were intrepidly making their way down towards the exit, hanging onto whatever came handy, mostly each other. The bus lurched to a stop and we all fell forward in a teetering mass of slithering feet. There were gasps and grunts and spat out oaths. Nobody apologised.
Behind me, the pregnant woman was struggling to extract herself from the seat, intact with children and folding pushchair. The little boy jammed his fingers and started to yell blue murder. The woman slapped him, pushed him ahead of her and finally managed to release the pushchair from whatever was wedging it. She rudely refused the help of an elderly man who was nearer to her than I was. The baby was sick again, necessitating me to push myself out of its range, fighting my way out into the damp, but blessedly fresh air.
Bloody book! You must be mad! It had better be worth it, that’s all.
“Sorry? Were you speaking to me?”
The man with the newspaper got off the bus just ahead of me. Now, he was turning towards me, tucking the folded daily tabloid under his arm. He looked offended. I had thought that my words were internalised, but obviously I spoke them aloud without realising it.
I shook my head and blinked at him with an it wasn’t me kind of smile, looking to left and to right as if searching for the person to whom he should be addressing himself. He gave me a hard stare, then made a clucking sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth and marched away in the direction of the Civic Centre. At a guess he worked in Accounts. He had that sucked in, constipated look of a man who knew how to account for every penny spent.
The rain had almost stopped, and a pale sun bled into the grey sky, turning it into opal. People with umbrellas were putting them down, shaking off the excess drops of water and hurrying on, their expressions and their footsteps lightening. Everyone was going about his or her ordinary, everyday business. There was nothing ordinary, everyday or normal about my business in town that day. I walked along like some furtive criminal hoping not to be seen by anyone who might recognise me and ask what I was doing there.
The Book Shop was just across the road on my right. I stopped at a pedestrian crossing and watched a suicidal old lady dash out, creating havoc. The already stressed motorists blasted her with their horns and raised menacing fists. She came back to the kerb where I stood and giggled foolishly up into my face, all innocent embarrassment, new dentures, flustered and breathless.
“I’m never sure whether the green man is for me or the red one,” she said and gathered herself together for a second attempt to cross the busy road.
“Wait for the green man,” I told her, taking the liberty of slipping my hand through her arm, ready to haul her back if need be. However, we managed to cross together safely without incident and she thanked me profusely. She then decided she had forgotten something at Marks & Spencer and dashed back across the road again without looking for either of her colour-coded men. They say that cats have nine lives, but I think little old ladies have the feline species beat.
I was walking past the windows of The Book Shop for the second time when I finally made myself stop and look in. I couldn’t understand why that small act should have required so much courage, but it did. Of course, I had already seen the book and the huge poster of Callum Andrews ‘as seen on television’ out of the corner of my eye. Now, I was face to face with him, albeit in soft focus, black and white.
“He’s lovely, isn’t he?”
It was the same old lady. She was pink-cheeked, panting and clutching her Marks & Spencer bag. Her arthritic fingers fumbled clumsily as she attempted to put a handful of change back into her purse, spilling most of it at my feet.
“Yes, he is,” I heard myself reply as I gathered the escaping coins together and poured them carefully back into her purse.
“My daughter collects all his CD’s. I’ve just been in and bought his book for her.” She giggled again. “Well, I say for her, but I think I might just keep it for myself, you know. It’s a love story, they say, and my daughter doesn’t care much for love stories. She prefers those horrible suspense books. I don’t know how she can read them. They’re full of violence and dirty language and sex on every page. I stopped reading Mills & Boon years ago because of that. I told them why, too. Filth!” She gave a shudder, then grinned up at me as though we were sharing a private joke. “Well, dear, I mustn’t keep you. Have a nice day, won’t you?”
She marched off at a trot and I turned away quickly rather than witness my nameless companion of the morning being splattered on the road like a squashed water melon.
With an air of confidence, which I didn’t feel, I marched into The Book Shop and was taken aback with the number of people milling about already, though it was only half past nine. I squeezed around the crowd of women and one or two men pressed around the sales counter and headed for the art section. At least I could browse for a while until the place quietened down.
“Why, Mrs. Peters. What a pleasant surprise.”
I flinched at the sound of Mr. Gruber’s loud, managerial voice and saw him bearing down on me from the languages section. He and I were old sparring partners. I sort of liked his old-fashioned false charm and gaiety and his amazing ability to know just exactly where everything was in his shop. He was an Austrian anglophile who would have been sorely upset had anyone referred to his Germanic accent which still clung to him despite his fifty something years in exile from his homeland.
“Hello, Mr. Gruber,” I smiled sheepishly and received the usual handshake he dealt out only to his best customers.
“But you have only been in here last week.” He was stroking his bristly moustache with a delicate finger and regarding me curiously. “Was there something we forgot? Oh, I trust everything you acquired on your last visit is of satisfaction. We aim to please, you know. You must tell me if there was something wrong with the goods we sold you. A fault, a blemish perhaps?”