Michael, Michael

by Wendy Perriam

  Okay, she told herself as she followed his instructions, encouraged by the other Michael’s sudden gasp of pleasure – spontaneous, near-passionate. She made her tongue as loving as she could – gentle yet insistent, licking a slow path from their lumpy base to the tautening root of the prick. She tried to blank out the aversion she was feeling, the unpleasant texture of puckered flabby flesh; take comfort from the fact he was responding – his excited cries gradually crescendoing.

  He was stiff, at last – really stiff – a triumph for them both. She changed position, sucked his small but swollen prick right into her mouth, kept her lips braced around it, tongue flicking back and forth. She could feel him thrusting, pumping, as if he’d suddenly been galvanized, transformed from a shy spaniel to a wolf. She relaxed her throat, to try to make more room for him, and also stop herself from gagging; was rewarded by an exultant strangled shout.

  ‘Oh, darling, it’s so wonderful! Oh precious, precious, precious …’

  Semen spurted on to her tongue – warm and salty, the consistency of blood. Michael gave a jarring cry, then slumped back silent in the chair, his deflating prick sliding slowly out. She dropped down to the carpet, hands across her ears. She couldn’t suppress that cry – a baby’s cry, anguished and accusing, screaming on and on. She was tasting blood, swallowing blood, the blood of her murdered baby. She spat it out on the carpet, kept spitting, retching, spitting, in an attempt to purge her mouth.

  She could hear a voice somewhere far above her, an appalled and anxious voice, but trying to offer help. It must be Michael, come at last, realizing the date.

  She lunged towards him, started pounding on his chest with her clenched fists. ‘I killed him, Michael, don’t you see? I killed our child, our son! If I hadn’t murdered him in that hospital, you’d have held him in your arms today.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘Tell me about Oxford,’ Michael said, sipping his schooner of sherry, which had come free with the meal – a special St Valentine’s Day promotion.

  Tessa broke a piece off her bread roll and stuffed it in her mouth, to give herself time to think up a reply. There was only one thing she could tell him about Oxford – and that was Michael – but the moment wasn’t right. It seemed never to be right, and she was becoming increasingly impatient at devoting so much time to Michael Chalmers with so little in return.

  ‘Don’t you miss it?’ he was prompting. ‘I mean, all your friends and the social whirl and the lectures and …’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’ She could barely remember her friends now, and since she’d ignored their Christmas cards and letters, they had stopped writing altogether. And ‘social whirl’ was hardly an apt description of her leisure-time at Oxford.

  ‘What periods of history did you study? Or did you start at the beginning and …?’

  She arranged the crumbling flakes of roll into a pattern on her plate. It was a sign that things were strained between them that Michael was reduced to this polite interrogation. She had snapped at him ten minutes ago, when he told her he adored her; refused to drink the toast he’d proposed to Saint Valentine and love. Now he was trying to make amends, sticking to safe subjects, showing a pathetic interest in a life that was dead and gone.

  She answered dutifully but flatly, still fiddling with the crumbs. ‘Well, we were meant to cover a good chunk of British history – to give us a basic grounding, I suppose – and if I’d stayed, I’d have ploughed through a fair bit of that. But we also did special subjects which we studied in more detail. I chose Early Gothic France the last term I was there.’

  It obviously didn’t mean much; so she reeled off a few twelfth-century names – Abbots Suger and Guibert, Galbert of Bruges, Orderic Vitalis, Abelard, Saint Bernard – but he looked still more perplexed.

  ‘Have you never heard of any of them?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t.’

  ‘Not even Abelard and Heloïse?’

  He shook his head in embarrassment. ‘You must think me dreadfully ignorant.’

  ‘Not at all. They’re only very marginal.’ She could see now how she had wasted time and effort studying esoteric subjects which meant nothing to most people. All that arid stuff about Abelard’s dialectic was all very well in the ivory tower of Oxford, but what relevance did it have to normal life? Abelard had championed logic, regarded it as an instrument of order, applied it to all fields of thought, including matters mystical, used it to elucidate his faith. Saint Bernard had opposed him, been equally pig-headed; the two twelfth-century giants entangled in abstractions and irrelevances, and fighting tooth and nail. And to top it all, Bernard had been made a saint, when he was actually an intolerant fanatic who bungled most of what he touched.

  ‘I have to admit I was never any good at history,’ Michael confessed, unfolding his paper napkin, which was embellished with a red heart in the corner. ‘I just scraped through my O-level, but I found it a bit musty – you know, all those dates and battles. Though I wouldn’t go as far as Henry Ford.’

  ‘Oh, you mean history being bunk?’

  ‘Yes. Except I don’t suppose he meant that. I’m sure it’s tremendously important, but I simply wasn’t bright enough to do it proper justice.’

  ‘Abelard saw history as the Truth,’ she told him, suddenly envying the philosopher his certainty. ‘Truth with a capital T. In his time, most people took it for granted that history had to mean something, because it was part of God’s plan, and the product of His will. So all the musty dates and battles, as you call them, make ultimate sense. But if you don’t believe in God,’ she shrugged, ‘then Truth and history go out of the window as well. But maybe you’re religious?’

  Michael appeared as awkward as if she’d asked him about his bowel-habits. ‘Well,’ he answered hesitantly, ‘Eileen and I always used to go to church on Sunday. And I like to think there’s Someone up there. I mean, it helps with death, doesn’t it? – to know you’ll be reunited with your loved ones, and even with your pets. Eileen used to believe in a sort of doggy heaven – green fields with lots of lamp-posts, and no leads, or baths, or horrid spoilsport notices saying ‘‘Keep off the grass!’’’

  Tessa didn’t laugh. A phrase from the Historia Calamitatum was suddenly twingeing in her mind – Heloïse’s chilling words to Abelard: ‘Now only one thing remains; that we shall be destroyed, and that there will follow no less pain than there was love before.’ She could already feel the pain – the bitterness of failure in her hopeless search for Michael. Yet she mustn’t let her suffering show. Michael Chalmers was quite anxious enough about her state of mind; had been so distressed in Somerset when she’d screamed and sobbed over the corpse of her dead baby, it had wrecked the whole weekend. This weekend was an attempt to set things right, to have a second mini-holiday without the trauma of the first. He’d chosen a much cheaper hotel, only fifteen miles from home; was trying to keep things casual and relaxed; save her from the strain of a long drive. If only she could explain to him that it wasn’t the motoring which tired her, but the never-ceasing conflict in her head: the pull between the Michaels; the images of babies – dead, alive, deformed.

  ‘Was it you who ordered the soup?’

  A beanpole of a waitress had sauntered up to their table, carrying two bowls of murky liquid with tiny globules of yellow fat floating on the surface.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Michael. ‘Oxtail.’

  Tessa peered at the pallid khaki-brown, wondering if the girl had brought mushroom by mistake. The menu described it as ‘home-made’ and ‘heartwarming’, but was mistaken on both counts, since it was clearly from a packet and only just lukewarm. They had booked dinner in the hotel restaurant because it was offering ‘a lovers’ feast’, with the lure of a free aperitif and ten per cent off every couple’s bill. It was really a glorified Berni Inn, but the basic steak and chicken had been romanticized with pretentious names. She had ordered Chicken Cleopatra, while Michael had chosen Rump Steak Madame Pompadour. The rest
aurant itself was called The Far Pavilions, for no other reason she could fathom than the presence of a few panoramic photographs of Thomas Cook’s Far East. There was a plastic rose in a plastic vase on every red-clothed table, and schmaltzy muzak was playing in the background, all in honour of Saint Valentine. Michael had made an effort, too, and was sporting a new ambitious tie in a swirl of vivid blues, which was entirely out of place with his stolid tweedy jacket. He had also grown his hair, presumably because she’d mentioned several weeks ago that she liked long hair on men. She hadn’t meant on older men, and poor Michael’s just looked messy, straggling over his collar and slightly curling at the ends.

  His eyes were on her – as always – and she sensed that he was about to ask another question. If he couldn’t keep the conversation circling endlessly around their love, then he liked to quiz her about her health, her past, her future; storing up each answer like a new jewel in his treasure-trove. If only she’d been as zealous in enquiring about her own lover. Yet she hadn’t even managed to bring the subject up, despite the fact that she was constantly on the alert for some convincingly casual lead-in, some context which would make it seem appropriate. The occasion hadn’t arisen so far, but why not now – tonight? Wasn’t it the perfect date? – the one day in the year dedicated to lovers, when the birds were said to choose their mates, start to build their nests.

  She decided to take the plunge, leaned forward in her chair. ‘Nice soup,’ she said, to please him, then made her voice sound chatty and low-key. ‘You know Dr Alan Reynolds?’

  Michael put his spoon down. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wondered if you could tell me a bit about him. I want to change my doctor, you see, but I’m not sure where to start. I mean, would you recommend him, or maybe one of the other GPs in his practice?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know him as a doctor, of course, but he’s extremely nice as a person – an easy-going sort of chap; always got the time of day for everyone. I’ve played golf with him on a few occasions, and he’s a very decent sportsman, not one of these prima donnas who sulk if they don’t win, or go storming off the course.’

  ‘And how about his partner, Dr Edwards?’

  ‘I hardly know him at all. But Eileen met him several times. You see, she was very close to Paula Reynolds – they went to the same dog-training class, every Tuesday night – and as Paula and the Edwardses were good friends, they sometimes found themselves together at various social gatherings and what-have-you.’

  Tessa smeared butter on the remnants of her roll, silently blessing his late wife, who, though unconscious of the fact, had been pre-ordained to play her part, lead her closer to Michael. ‘And what did Eileen think of them?’ she asked.

  ‘To be honest, she preferred the wife.’

  ‘Joyce, you mean?’

  He nodded. ‘She’s his second wife, you know.’

  Her spoon was halfway to her mouth. It fell back in her bowl, soup splashing on her dress. ‘His … his second wife?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently he married very young, just a month after he qualified. Hey, careful, Tessa darling! You don’t want to spoil that lovely frock.’

  She let him mop up the spills, glad of the distraction; only wishing he could wipe away as easily the dark and threatening pictures in her mind. She could see Dr Edwards’ first wife – ravishing, provocative, a figure she knew well, since she was more or less identical to Michael Edwards’ fiancée. She pressed both hands against her forehead. Why were there so many dangerous rivals – all those nurses at the hospital, Joyce herself, and now this bolt from the blue? How could she compete? She was a nothing, a non-starter. ‘Get out!’ she shouted soundlessly, trying to drive them all away; focus only on that first wife – the most recent threat, contender. Did Dr Edwards see her still? Were there any children – other Michaels, Jon-Jons – whom he loved and fed and cherished?

  Michael gently prised her hands away, his own hands cosseting, like his voice. Did she have a headache; should he go and buy some aspirin; was the room too hot? She answered no to everything, doing all she could to appear calm and in control, swilling down her panic with a determined draught of sherry. She mustn’t frighten him again, spoil another evening. She wiped her mouth, feigning an air of nonchalance; resumed the conversation, as if she were simply making small talk. ‘So what happened?’ she enquired. ‘Did the first wife die, or …?’

  Michael cleared his throat. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It ended in divorce.’

  ‘Oh, I see. D’you happen to know why? And when exactly? And did he leave her, or the other way round?’

  Michael drummed his fingers on the table, infected with her own unease. ‘Look, it’s a rather tricky subject. D’you mind if we don’t go into it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do mind.’

  The fingers stopped their drumming, started worrying at a loose thread in his jacket. ‘It was all years and years ago, Tessa. And I was only told in confidence. Eileen made me promise never to say a word to anyone. I couldn’t break that trust.’

  ‘It must be something pretty horrendous if it has to be swept under the carpet.’

  ‘Not at all. It was just an unhappy chapter in his past, and according to Joyce, he prefers to leave it in his past, and get on with the present.’

  Tessa pushed her soup away, all appetite lost for anything save news of Dr Edwards. ‘It sounds more and more mysterious.’

  ‘Not really. I suppose he’s scared of gossip, especially in his line of work. Doctors are so much in the public eye, they don’t want people tittle-tattling.’

  ‘Well, it’s because he is a doctor I feel I have a right to know. After all, I don’t want to change to a GP who’s hiding something scandalous.’

  ‘I can absolutely assure you, darling, that it isn’t scandalous – nothing of that sort. More rotten luck, I’d say – the sort of awful tragedy which strikes without any warning.’

  Tessa picked up her fork and jabbed the prongs viciously into her palm. The physical pain was nothing compared with the wound and shock of Dr Edwards’ tragedy. How could she have researched his life, spent so long hunting down the details, yet missed a major disaster? ‘You’ve got to tell me, Michael. It’s not fair for you to hint at things, then leave me in the dark.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, honestly. I’d no idea it would matter to you a jot. I mean, you don’t even know the fellow.’

  ‘Yes, but he may be my GP.’

  ‘But I thought you were going to change to Dr Reynolds.’

  She frowned, played for time by re-buttering her roll. ‘I … I was, but someone told me Dr Edwards is better.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t give an opinion on that, but from what I’ve heard, they’re both extremely sound. And it’s not their private lives which matter, surely, but their expertise and training and …’

  ‘Didn’t you like the soup?’

  The waitress had frisked up again, and was gazing reproachfully from bowl to bowl; both scarcely touched and now congealing with a scum on top.

  ‘Yes, it’s … er … very tasty.’ Michael grabbed his spoon and took an eager mouthful, as if he couldn’t bear to upset another female.

  ‘We’re just saving a bit of room for the main course,’ Tessa put in tactfully.

  ‘Well, it’s ready when you are. Want me to fetch it now?’

  She removed the bowls, returned in minutes with two thick brown oval platters. ‘One Chicken Cleopatra with French fries and onion rings, and one Steak Madame Pompadour with baked potato and sour-cream dressing. Now who was having what?’

  ‘The Cleopatra for me,’ said Tessa, shrinking in dismay from the daunting pile of chips, the greasy onion rings in their thick overcoats of batter. Both the chicken and the steak were decorated with little paper flags, again bearing a red heart. She checked the other tables – red hearts in profusion. If only love were as simple as that – a word, a colour, a symbol – mass-produced, renewable.

  ‘And you get a free trip to our salad bar, remember. But one
trip only, I’m afraid. You can’t go back for seconds.’

  Tessa glanced across at the array of oblong dishes – sweetcorn, coleslaw, hard-boiled eggs, and at least a dozen other salads, all slurped with gluey mayonnaise. She couldn’t cope with that lot, as well as what was on her plate. Yet if she didn’t eat, Michael would start fretting, and they’d waste time on the problems of her appetite and health, rather than getting back to Dr Edwards. She cut a chip in two, forced down the smaller piece.

  ‘Just tell me who his first wife was – I mean, her name and what she did.’

  ‘Tessa, darling, let’s leave that subject, shall we? Don’t you see how difficult you’re making it? I feel torn between you and Eileen, and, anyway, it’s a complicated story – not so much the wife, but …’ He broke off, as if he’d said too much already; pulled the flag out of his steak and began fiddling with it nervously, poking its sharp end into the tablecloth.

  Tessa put her fork down, her whole attention riveted on those last few cryptic words: ‘not so much the wife, but …’ What on earth could Michael mean, and if it was so complicated, then why hadn’t she discovered it when she’d been working on her thesis? Dr Edwards must have hushed it up. That would account for the big hole in her biography; that worryingly blank stretch, which she had never understood. Didn’t it point to some disaster which had to be concealed, some trauma he’d kept under wraps? She chewed the lemon slice which had garnished her braised chicken, to kid Michael she was eating still, then slipped in a few more questions. ‘You say there was a tragedy, but what sort of thing do you mean? Tragedy’s a frightening word, so I can’t just shrug it off. And did it happen to the wife, or to Dr Edwards himself? And why was …?’