Halfway to the door, he stops, turns, says: ‘And just how popular do you think that would be?’
‘A girl can’t spend a little time with her husband?’
I sit forward, press my upper arms in to my sides so my breasts pop out of my top like ripe melons. In my experience, most guys will forget dinner when you do something like that. And I’ve got great bazookas, already. I can’t think how I didn’t notice them before.
The gong sounds again, echoing reproachfully through the house like a slave-bell. Rufus twitches towards the sound, havers on the carpet as I work my ancient charms. You want to see what a man caught on a cleft stick looks like? Try pulling him between his two primal urges. It’s great. I feel powerful.
‘Blow it,’ I say. I know my NLP. ‘What does it matter?’
He still looks uncertain. ‘They’ll notice.’
‘Let ’em notice. What are you, a man or a mouse?’
He drags his feet, slowly, across the room.
‘We can be a bit late, you know. We’re adults.’
And I put my pen between my lips, give it a long slow suck just to remind him what adult entertainment is all about.
Rufus gets his half-smile, looks me right back. Strike! Did I ever tell you how dark his eyes are? Like pools of oil, pinpricks of light shining in the depths.
‘How,’ he asks, ‘are you going to persuade me?’
I pop a button open, kneel up on the edge of the bed. ‘Come here and I’ll show you.’
He takes another step closer, and I get him by the belt-loops. Pull him towards me so he towers over me, arms folded, looking down.
I show him.
‘Oh, God,’ says Rufus, ‘you’re such a minx.’ Then, just: ‘Oh God.’
And after an interval when there’s not much but silence between us, I stop for a second, look up and say: ‘Do you like that?’
He says: ‘Yes. Oh God.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘How much of a whore am I?’
He starts to speak, stops because I’ve just bent back to my task and made him breathe in, fast, says: ‘You … are such a … fucking … whore.’
Which gets me happy as well as horny. So I show him just how deeply the whore in me runs, because sometimes you don’t want to be anything else. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed for better purchase, and Rufus lets out the sort of long, desperate groan that only a whore deserves.
‘Ah, Jesus, do that,’ he says like a porn star, ‘oh, yes, aaah,’ and I have a powerful urge to smile, which is sort of impossible under the circs. He grabs, sharply, at my hair, digs his fingers into my scalp and pushes, and calls me a bitch and tells me he loves me, all in the same speeding breath. So I get my hands round his buttocks and go for it, and he’s got his head thrown back and he’s talking really loudly now, bitch-slut-whore-slag-harlot-go-on-then-you-fucking …
And there’s the sound of the door handle turning and a bang as the door is thrown back against the wall, and Mary’s commanding voice going: ‘For heaven’s sake, we’re all waiting to start dinner. Didn’t you hear the …?’
Then there’s a deafening silence.
I can’t do a lot to dissimulate. And to be honest, I don’t want to. Because it’s my room, and she’s the intruder, and I’m as mad as a cut snake. I sit back, slowly, with all the defiance I can find, and look at her. Rufus just stands, frozen to the spot, refusing, or unable, to turn round.
The look on her face would turn you to stone. It’s a mixture of shock, faint nausea, and undisguised contempt. You’d have thought she’d just found me with her son’s cock in my mouth, or something.
‘Yes?’ I ask. Coldly, and refusing to show any embarrassment, because I’ve had it with her. I’ve fucking had it. Standing here giving me that ‘I’ve found you out now, missy’ look when it’s her that’s just burst into my marital bedroom without so much as a tap on the door. I can hear those bitch-slut-whore-slag words racing round her brain, and I’m absolutely fucking furious. ‘Yes?’ I say again. ‘Can we help you?’
Mary regains her composure. Addresses the back of her son’s head. Not the two of us. Not me. ‘Rufus,’ she says, ‘dinner is ready, if you’re not too … busy.’ She says this last word with vicious sarcasm. ‘We’ll see you in the dining room, if you can tear yourself away.’
He doesn’t answer. I glance at his face, and it’s a weird mix of rage and misery and profound embarrassment. I suppose it would be worse for him. Primal trauma works in many, many directions.
Mary turns on her heel and slams out of the room.
My blood boils over. I’m not having it. I’m not bloody having it. I’m not going to be made to feel guilty about making love with my own husband, in my own bedroom. I will not. She can have the run of the rest of the house, but I’m not having this.
Rufus realises, too late, what I’m about to do, grabs, ineffectually, at my arm, but I shake his hand off and cross the room, hair flying, in two bounds. Throw the door open and storm out into the corridor. Take her by her upper arm and swing her round to face me.
‘Don’t you ever fucking knock?’ I ask.
Mary blinks. ‘Don’t swear at me.’
What she’s not saying is: don’t swear at me, whore. Don’t even dare to address me, crawling doxy. She doesn’t need to say it, because her tone does all the work. And I’m not bloody taking it. Though her son’s just been calling me the same words, I’m absolutely not taking them from her. I’ve put up with months of sniping, interference, freezing out, condescension, the poisonous lies she’s spread about me when she thinks I’m out of earshot, but I will not have her stand in judgement over me.
‘Don’t ever,’ I tell her, and I’m surprised at the level of threat in my voice. Shouldn’t be. I learned at the feet of masters, after all, ‘ever come into my room without knocking again. Knocking and waiting for permission to enter.’
Mary looks like she’s bitten an apple and found a slug.
‘Do you understand me?’
‘How dare you?’ she says. ‘You should be apologising to me.’
I don’t get how she could even begin to justify a statement like that. But I don’t care.
‘Do. You. Understand. Me.’ I repeat.
‘I will not,’ she says, ‘be told how to live in my own house.’
‘What sort of sick bitch are you? Wanting to walk in on your little darling when he’s nearly thirty years old?’
‘How dare you talk to me like that?’
I sound like a strident Strine fishwife, but I don’t care. ‘I’ll talk to you like that, lady,’ I snarl, ‘because it’s what you deserve. What? Did you think I was going to just sit back and let you do whatever you wanted with my life and never utter a word? We have a right to our privacy, and you’re going to learn to respect that.’
‘Hah,’ says Mary. ‘Privacy to behave like … like … animals.’
I fold my arms and tilt my head to one side. ‘What’s the matter Mary? He’s not a kid any more. You’ve got a problem with me making love with my husband?’
She shrieks. Literally. Shrieks. ‘You call that making love? That’s not making love!’
‘Well, what do you call it?’
‘Revolting,’ she snaps. ‘I don’t want to have to walk into a room and find people doing … especially not my son. It’s disgusting. Disgusting! You behave like a … a … guttersnipe!’
‘Well, bloody knock before you come in, then!’
‘Get some bloody self-control!’ she shouts at me. ‘You’re like bloody rutting pigs! You come here, and you bring the values of your bloody funfair existence into this house, and I won’t have it!’
‘It’s what people do! It’s what people do! We’ve got hands and mouths and cocks and tongues and pussies and tits and arses, and it’s what people do! It’s what we do!’
‘Listen to you! Your values! They’re right down there in the gutter, and you’re dragging him down there with you!’
I rein it in, stand back on one he
el and look her up and down with a raised eyebrow and a twisted lip. Say, triumphantly, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, Mary. Believe me, he was right there when I found him. I didn’t have to teach him a thing.’
And she whacks me. Right across the face. So hard my ears sing. And I think for one bally second, and then I belt her one back. And I slam the door on my way back into our bedroom.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Cataclysm
I’m so berko I don’t even notice his reaction for a minute. My head is hurting and so are my knuckles, and my breath comes like a charging bull’s. ‘That’s it!’ I shout. ‘I’m out of here! I’ve had e-fucking-nough!’
I dive under the bed and retrieve my suitcase. Throw it on to the floor and start piling through the chest of drawers. ‘If she thinks she can talk to me like that she can shove it. Fucking bitch.’
‘You hit my mother,’ says Rufus.
I stop what I’m doing and look at him. He is ashen-faced, grim with shock and rage, and even Blind Freddie wouldn’t have trouble spotting that the rage is not directed towards Mary.
‘Yeah, well, a terrible bloody tragedy,’ I say, ‘but in case you hadn’t noticed, she started it.’ I pick up a handful of underwear, throw it into the case.
He speaks again, louder this time and more angry. ‘You hit my mother!’
And I’m on my feet, standing right in his face and shouting back, ‘Your mother hit me!’
He sounds completely at sea, talking like a man who’s just banged his head on a roof-beam. ‘What is it with you, Mel? What did you think you were doing? Have you no self-control?’
‘What?’
‘We’ll never get past this. How on earth can we get past this?’
I say several s-words in a row. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ I ask. ‘I don’t give a damn. Because I’m not spending another night in the same house with her! Don’t you see what she’s like, Rufus? Are you going to stay blind to it for ever?’
Rufus collapses. Drops like a stone on to the bed and wraps his arms around his head. ‘I’m in hell!’ he shouts. ‘I am in hell!’
Shocked, I go to sit next to him, put a hand out to touch him. His forearm comes up and pushes it away. ‘Don’t! Don’t! Don’t touch me!’
‘Rufus!’
‘No! No! Just leave me alone! You’ve done enough damage! Jesus! God! What am I supposed to do?’
And my calm, self-possessed husband bursts into noisy tears. Wraps his right arm around his stomach as though he has a pain and rocks, back and forth, still holding the hand nearest me out to fend me off.
‘It’s impossible! Impossible! You’re tearing me apart, the two of you, and I can’t do it any more!’
‘Rufus, I—’
‘Don’t touch me.’
‘I – darling, I – God …’
‘It’s beyond bearing. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know … you pull one way, and she pulls the other, and you don’t seem to understand, and they’re refusing to listen to a word I say about the house, and I’m responsible for all of it … I’ve got lawyers on my back, and banks and the heritage people, and Daddy’s taxes, and all the village expecting me to do something about the state of the place when there’s nothing, nothing I can do, and you came and I thought you’d help me … I thought you’d at least try to understand, but you don’t. You don’t …’
I try, once again, to put my arms around him, to show him some comfort, but he shoves me away, hard and finally, and gets to his feet. Starts pacing, up and down, up and down the carpet, his fists clenched. I am appalled. Have I done this? Has it been me all along?
‘You’re such a … God, you say Mummy’s a bitch, and you – listen to you. Look at the way you spoke to my grandmother. You’ve got such a temper, and I can’t … I’ve tried and tried, but I’m at the end of my tether, Melody. Between you, you’ve …’
‘Rufus …’ I say lamely. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he snaps bitterly. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry. Why don’t you try thinking before you do something?’
‘That’s unfair. That’s so unfair!’
He roars. Like a lion. No. Nothing as powerful. Like some animal that’s been trapped and realises that it’s about to die. It’s a sound of sheer frustration, rage and – despair.
‘Unfair? Don’t talk to me about unfair! That’s my family! I will not be … ripped away from my family. Not by you, not by anyone!’
I respond. ‘But it’s OK for you to do it to me, then?’
‘What?’
There are things you look back on with shame in life, and the words that come out of me at this moment are among them. My temper. My bloody temper. I’ve not changed a bit; it’s all been waiting in there to come out and sabotage everything.
‘Your family saw mine off without a bloody murmur from you. You get rid of my family, but yours … oh, no! Your sainted bloody family comes before everything. You won’t live your own life, you’ve wasted your opportunities and your talents, you stay around here doing what Mummy tells you and jumping through hoops not to upset Granny, and it’s bloody killing me! It can’t go on! I can’t live with it any more! I thought I’d married a man, and instead I’ve married a … a … Mummy’s boy. A pathetic bloody under-the-cosh Mummy’s boy.’
I might as well have slapped him as well as his mother. His head jerks backwards and his mouth clamps shut, and he looks at me as though I have suddenly peeled off a mask to reveal a bug-eyed alien underneath.
‘Is that really what you think of me?’ he asks. And sits down again, this time in the chair, hands hanging loose over his knees.
I sit down myself, on the bed. The gulf between us is way more than physical. Because I should know by now that the survival of relationships – the real maintenance of the happy fantasy we call love – is as dependent on the things that are not said as it is on the things that are. And I should know this one fundamental truth: that words, once spoken, can never be taken back. Apologised for, forgiven: but never taken back.
‘No … look, no. No, I don’t think that.’
‘But you said it.’
‘Please. I’m stupid. I say things. I …’
He looks down at his hands. They’re scraped and raw and beaten up from where he has spent the last two months labouring to mend and shore up and postpone the inevitable cataclysm.
‘I’m sorry that I’m a disappointment to you,’ he says eventually, reproachfully.
‘No, sweetheart, I didn’t mean that.’
But he’s shutting down, the way people do. The way they do when they are hurt without understanding the reason.
He puts his hands back down on his knees. Hoists himself out of the chair. ‘Well, I’m tired, Melody. Too tired to talk about it now.’ He walks towards the door.
‘Where you going?’
The voice that answers is drained of emotion, listless. ‘I don’t know. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
I’m on my feet, trying to go to him, but the look on his face tells me to keep my distance. ‘Please, Rufus. Can’t we talk about it?’
‘Not tonight. I’m sorry, but I can’t take any more character analysis tonight. I know you’re perfect and I’m full of failings, but there’s only so much I can take at one time.’
‘I never said … I never said that!’
‘Stuff it,’ he says. ‘To be honest, I couldn’t care less.’
‘But where are you going?’
‘Oh don’t worry,’ he replies spitefully. ‘I’m not going to Mummy, if that’s what you think. I’m just going to go and – be by myself somewhere. I know it’ll come as a shock to you, but even I need some time alone occasionally.’
I feel like all the wind has been knocked out of me. ‘Don’t go.’
He doesn’t reply. Turns the door handle and pulls the door open.
‘What will I do?’ I ask pointlessly.
‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Melody, for once I’m not going to take responsibility for that. You c
an work it out for yourself.’
‘Rufus, please!’
He pauses in the doorway, looks me up and down with the pregnant dislike I have so thoroughly earned.
‘Perhaps you can take one of your pills,’ he says, and leaves.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
The Unspeakable in Pursuit of
the Uneatable
Andy stands over the bed, pearls that were his eyes, and he is not sneering, like I would expect, or laughing, or even angry, as far as I can see. He’s just sad. Andy, who rarely sported any expression other than the dumb insolence of the unreconstructed male, has a look of such pitiful woe on his face that, if I didn’t know he were dead, I would be asking if we’d lost a test match or something.
He is wearing the clothes I last saw him in, salt-bleached and tattered now, and his hair hangs down like seagrass. I seem to be welded to the bed, my arms and legs so heavy they pin me to the mattress.
‘You killed me, Mel,’ he says. But it’s not an accusation, not a reproach: it’s a simple statement.
I want to speak, but my jaw is frozen, my tongue a lifeless slab of meat in a sensationless mouth. So I lie still and look at him, and try to show him with my eyes: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But, see? I’m getting my reward now, ain’t I? I didn’t get just to walk away.
‘I never thought you did. Though there was a time there when I thought you were running rather than walking.’
I can’t answer, because I know he’s right.
‘Don’t run away this time, babe,’ he says. ‘Stick it out.’
Why are you being so forgiving?
Andy shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You can’t be blamed for what someone else did.’
I can feel the tears stream down my face. But it was, it was. You don’t understand. Andy, I’m so sorry …
He stands and looks at me for a moment, says: ‘I didn’t come for that. I came to tell you to take care. You’re not safe, babe. They’re playing a higher game than you understand.’
What can I do? Tell me, Andy. How do I fight them?
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