For all its beauty, the room held fearsome associations for Kathryn. She was always taken aback when visitors made approving, envious comments: she fully expected them to inhale the misery that lodged in every nook and cranny and would not have been surprised to see the oceans of tears she had cried seeping from the walls and the mattress, forming pools on the floor.
Kathryn removed her shoes and skirt. She paired her tan leather loafers with their heels together under the old, overstuffed, chintz-covered chair that sat in the corner of the room. Her skirt she rezipped and folded in half before hanging over the back of the same chair. Her shirt she rolled into a ball and placed in the wicker laundry basket along with her discarded pants and bra. She undid her earrings and pearl necklace, carefully placing them in the jewellery box on the dressing table. She brushed and flossed her teeth and combed her hair, removing all traces of make-up. Finally she slipped into one of five identical white cotton nightdresses that she owned. They were rather long, plain and Shaker in style, each with a Peter Pan collar and small ivory buttons at the base of pin-tuck pleats on the cuff and neck.
Kathryn then knelt at the foot of the bed, bowed her head and waited. Just as she had done every single night for the last seventeen years and five months.
She heard the creak of the top stair, followed by the telltale tap of wedding ring against wooden banister rail. Her muscles tensed as they always did at the familiar sounds; it made no difference how many times she had heard them. Finally she heard the bedroom door snap shut into the frame and the scraping of the old brass key in its lock.
The creep of fear plucked at her muscles, invaded her bones and pricked at her skin. Closing her eyes briefly, she shuddered involuntarily as her heart performed its customary jump.
Mark walked towards her kneeling form and stood behind her in his usual position, with his hands behind his back. His thighs almost grazed the back of her head. She could feel an almost incandescent heat coming off him in waves. His voice, as usual, was calm, lilting, almost soft.
‘Well?’ he asked.
Her mouth twitched and she swallowed as she tried to form the words. Experience had taught her that it was better to speak concisely, honestly and audibly… Much better.
‘I think four points.’
‘You think four points?’
‘Yes.’ She swallowed again.
‘Well you would be wrong. It is seven points.’
‘Seven?’
‘Did I ask you to repeat that figure? Did I tell you to speak?’
She shook her head. No, no, he hadn’t. Don’t look and don’t speak.
‘Four points indeed!’
He gave a small laugh before tutting as though admonishing an amusing child.
‘I shall now tell you why seven points.’
He cleared his throat with a small cough and began.
‘Firstly, I would ask you to cast your mind back to this morning. When I gave you a flower, you did not raise your face to me with thanks, preferring instead to stare at the floor like an insolent teenager. Two points. You had also been chatting in an overfamiliar way with two of the pupils. Two points. When I asked you what was for supper you gave me some hesitant, irritating comment, “Chicken, blah blah, chicken”. One point. And finally, after being given specific instructions, you forced me to leave my masters’ meeting to call you to serve the appropriate refreshments, which were not only late but were rather average. This, Kathryn, embarrassed us both. Two points. Which makes a grand total of…?’
‘Seven points,’ she replied, in a small voice.
‘That is correct.’
He ran his fingers through her hair, gently stroking the nape of her neck. Bending low, he kissed the top of her spine and she felt the air blow cold against the wet imprint from his mouth.
Mark went into the en-suite bathroom to take his nightly shower, leaving his wife kneeling on the floor to contemplate the error of her ways.
Her legs went numb and, as usual, pins and needles consumed her feet and toes.
Fifteen minutes later Mark emerged, damp and lemon-scented. He sauntered over to the bedside table and flicked the button on his alarm clock. All set. He then walked to the wardrobe and selected a tie for the following day: cornflower blue silk with a yellow spot, very dapper. From the drawer of his tallboy he chose some cufflinks, silk knots of course, in a corresponding blue and yellow. He reached for his cologne, Floris No. 89, and daubed the citrusy top notes behind his ears and across his chin. Next, he slid open the lower drawer and removed the small square of waxy paper, which he unfolded to reveal the shiny steel razor blade. He pinched the blade between his thumb and forefinger and examined it in the lamplight.
‘Come.’
His outstretched palm pointed towards the bed as if calling a dog to heel.
Kathryn stood on wobbly legs. She knew what to do, she knew the drill; she had done it more than six and a half thousand times. Six and a half thousand! Unbelievable. Unthinkable, but true.
She lay face down in the middle of the bed with her nightdress raised to just above her bottom. At this point he always asked, ‘Are you comfortable?’ and she would either murmur or nod into the creamy silk comforter that yes, she was comfortable. She had learned through experience that there was no point in saying or indicating anything different.
Over the years, Kathryn had come to view Mark’s behaviour as ‘normal’, in so far as ‘normal’ meant something that occurred commonly, regularly, as standard, something that was routine, predictable, a benchmark; something that happened every day.
Mark had a method and rhythm to his cutting. He would never sever an incision that had not properly healed and he would cut in a pattern of lines, only millimetres apart, always with precision, on a slight diagonal and always working from the outside in. The backs of Kathryn’s thighs were a dense matrix of lines and tracks, over six and a half thousand of them, in varying states of healing and recuperation.
Mark only ever made one cut per night – a single line – regardless of the number of points he had dished out. The points were not about quantity: they were a measurement of depth.
The points allocated ranged from zero to twelve. In all their married life Kathryn had never scored a zero and did not believe she ever would. Twelve points meant she would lose consciousness, but this was sometimes preferable to the lingering pain of a nine or ten.
She found it morbidly fascinating that her blood continued to flow. A thick, sticky trickle, night after night. Would she never run out? Would the day come when he would make his incision and there would be nothing? A barren source: used up, finished, gone, enough.
The cutting could take anything from three minutes to ten. Her blood would meander, warm and viscous, down between her legs and onto the white linen sheets. There it would form lake-shaped patterns; on a good day it might be Placid, on a bad day, Geneva. When he had done cutting, Mark would rape her.
Kathryn was not allowed to wash following this nightly ritual. In fact she wasn’t even allowed to move until her husband had fallen asleep. She would then wince as she shuffled across to her side of the bed; sleep would come to her eventually when the throb of pain subsided slightly. Sometimes she would cry hot, silent tears into her pillow, but mostly she did not, not any more. This too, experience had shown her, was futile; there was no one to see or hear those tears.
The alarm pip-pipped its irritating echo around the room; it was 6 a.m. Kathryn reluctantly opened her eyes. Mark was already awake and standing by the side of the bed, watching her come to. He reached out and tenderly took her hand as she slid off the mattress, still foggy with sleep. Her nightdress, as was customary, had dried and stuck to the bloody cuts on her thighs. She stood still and upright as he gently gathered the fabric in his free hand and, pulling it taut, yanked it from its plasma tethers. It woke her up.
He took her hand and led her into the bathroom. She watched as he turned the nozzle and allowed the shower to run into the tray.
‘To
day, Kathryn, you have two minutes.’
He smiled and bent forward, grazing her forehead with a kiss. She raised her bloodied gown over her head and let it fall into a cotton heap on the tiled floor. Stepping into the current, it took a few seconds for her body to adjust to the temperature, which was as usual slightly too hot. But there was no point raising an objection. The fresh cuts always stung in protest, but that too would settle down to almost bearable.
She closed her eyes and let the water run over her face, washing away another night and heralding a new day much like any other. Reaching for the bottle, she squeezed out a blob of apple-scented shampoo, a little larger than the size of a fifty pence piece, just as her mother had taught her all those years ago. Now that the fifty pence piece had become considerably smaller, should she apply a little bit extra to compensate? Kathryn’s mind flitted to other things that had diminished in size since she was a little girl: Wagon Wheel biscuits, telephones, journey times to Cornwall…
Kathryn applied the shampoo to her hair and scalp, feeling it grow into a mound of froth. Mark stood on the other side of the glass screen, watching her every action. She closed her eyes and scoured her scalp and hair, enjoying the sensation. Suddenly the water stopped running. She yelped slightly in surprise, the suds still in her hands and eyes.
Mark opened the door and she stood there dishevelled, slightly disorientated and covered in sweet-scented foam. Her hair looked like an uncooked meringue.
‘I said two minutes.’
She knew that protest would be pointless, even if she were able to find the courage. It was her own stupid fault, daydreaming about rubbish from her childhood. She wouldn’t say anything; she didn’t want to start the day any more points down than was absolutely necessary. Shivering, she stepped from the steamy cubicle into the cool air. Mark placed a large towel around her body and with one free end he wiped the foam from her eyes and face.
‘There now,’ he cooed, ‘that’s better.’
She padded into the bedroom and got dressed while her husband showered. Despite using the towel to remove as many of the suds as was possible, her hair was still a sticky mess. She ran a comb through it as best she could. Looking into the mirrors on her dressing table, she practised her smile. Was it her imagination or was it becoming more and more difficult to get it right?
Kathryn stripped the bedclothes as she did every morning and tried not to look at the scarlet pond of misery that spoilt the white perfection on which it sat. She added her nightdress to the middle of the bundle of linen. As ever, she would have this on a hot wash before the children surfaced, and they would never know. They would never know.
By the time Lydia made her way into the kitchen nearly an hour later, the laundry was ready to be pegged out, the table was set for breakfast, bacon was crisping under the grill and Kathryn was standing at the sink, ready to face the day.
The first she knew of her daughter’s arrival was when the chair legs scraped on the wooden floor.
‘Good morning, Lydi! Did you have sweet dreams?’
There was no response from her daughter, whose head lay on her arms which formed a triangular cradle on the table.
‘Lydia, I said did you have sweet dreams?’
Kathryn approached her slowly and stroked her hair away from her shoulder.
‘What?’ Lydia shouted, yanking the two tiny white headphones from her ears.
‘Sorry, darling, I didn’t realise you were plugged in, I was just asking if you—’
‘Oh my God! What on earth have you done to your hair? It looks awful! Really awful!’
Kathryn chose to ignore the comments, as she had no adequate response.
‘Would you like some bacon?’
‘Would I like some bacon?’ Lydia’s voice climbed in incomprehension. Why had the subject been changed? Had her mother finally flipped?
‘What are you two shouting about?’ Dominic was an unwelcome addition to the already uncomfortable conversation.
‘I wasn’t shouting.’ Kathryn corrected him.
‘Jesus Christ, Mother, what’s with the wet look? You look like a mental patient. Seriously, like a real total freak! For God’s sake, sort it out. My friends might see you!’
‘Would you like some bacon, Dominic?’
‘Would I like some bacon?’
‘That’s where you came in, Dom.’ Lydia rolled her eyes. ‘I was telling her how totally weird she looks with whatever you call that thing going on with her hair and she replied with “Would you like some bacon?” I think she’s finally lost the plot or, as I’ve been saying recently, not that anyone listens to me, she is seriously menopausal—’
‘Can you two please stop talking about me as though I am not here; it is really very rude and hurtful. What does it matter what my hair looks like? It’s only hair! Now, more importantly, can I get anyone some bacon?’
For some reason this was hilarious to her teenage children, who chortled and slapped the table until tears began to gather, among wheezes of ‘Bacon!’ And then back to laughing.
‘Good morning, family Brooker! My goodness, what is all this jollity for, first thing in the morning? What have I missed?’
‘Mum…’ Dominic managed before pointing and collapsing again.
Mark ruffled his son’s long hair and smiled at the twosome.
‘Come on, you two, nothing can be that funny.’
‘It is!’ Lydia squawked.
He shook his head.
‘Kathryn, is there any chance of some bacon?’
This sent the two into hysterical convulsions and their dad had little option but to join in, the laughter being impossibly infectious. The three sat at the table and laughed and prodded each other and laughed some more and occasionally pointed at Kathryn’s head. It was all very, very funny.
Kathryn picked up the wicker basket and loaded the wet bed linen into it. She wandered out to the clothes line with her floral bag of dolly pegs.
‘Come on, Peggy, time to go to work.’ She ran her thumb over the little smiling face as it took up its position.
As she stretched the sheet taut on the line and watched it billow in the breeze, she thought of something else that had diminished: she had. She was getting smaller and smaller and of less and less consequence. She was quite certain that one day she would simply disappear, and absolutely no one would notice. She shivered as she pegged her nightdress next to the sheet.
‘Morning, Mrs Brooker!’
‘Morning, Mrs Bedmaker!’
Again the two spoke simultaneously, suspecting that she would miss the cruel moniker. They were right, she didn’t notice a thing.
‘Morning, Luca! Good morning, Emily! How are you both today?’
‘Good, thanks. Is Dom ready?’ Luca spoke for them both. Emily had the guilty and furtive air of someone who was sleeping with her son.
‘I think so. Feel free to go in. There is breakfast ready if you are hungry.’ She smiled at the two of them.
Mrs Bedmaker, Mrs Bedmaker, Mrs Bedmaker… the words spun around inside her head, a silent taunt.
Clearly they were in too much of a hurry for breakfast as within a minute the four children were making their way back down the path and off to morning lessons.
‘See you later!’ Dom shouted over his shoulder. Lydia was once again plugged in and oblivious to the rest of the planet.
‘Bye, love! Have a good day!’
Kathryn hated the false brightness of her tone and the smile that she knew was an inadequate veil to her silent misery. She watched them disappear behind the hedgerow and seconds later heard a roar of laughter. She knew instinctively that they were laughing at her – about her, at her, it made little difference which. It hurt just the same.
As she walked into the kitchen Mark pushed his breakfast plate into the middle of the table, ready to be tidied away by his wife.
‘Kathryn…’
He always said her name when starting a conversation, to make sure that he had all of her attention,
so that she wouldn’t miss a detail or even a nuance.
‘Kathryn, I think fish for supper would be good.’
‘Fish. Yes of course.’
‘Good.’
He rose from the table and pulled his double cuffs to the desired length below his suit jacket.
‘I don’t know if you have heard on the rumour mill, but I, and as a result the school, are being honoured. I have had it on good authority that the National Excellence in Education Awards are naming me Head Teacher of the Year. How about that?’
She blinked at him. Speak now, make it something nice.
‘That is very well done, wonderful.’ She tried hard not to make it sound stilted or mechanical.
‘You are right, it is very well done and wonderful. You know why I am being honoured in this way, don’t you?’
‘No, well, yes, I’m not really sure…’ She didn’t know what the correct or expected response was.
‘Fret not, Kathryn, I will tell you why. It is because I am quite brilliant. Why did I get it?’
‘Because you are brilliant, Mark.’
‘That is very kind of you to say so, my sweet wife.’
Pulling her forward by the tops of her arms, he kissed her full and hard on the mouth just as Judith opened the back door.
‘Only me!’
Seeing that she had interrupted an apparent moment of tenderness, Judith felt the scarlet stain of embarrassment creep up her chubby neck.
‘Oh, Headmaster! Kathryn! I am so dreadfully sorry to impose! I’m obviously interrupting at a delicate moment.’
She was flustered, jealous and intrigued all at the same moment.
‘Not at all. My wonderful wife was just telling me that I am brilliant!’
No Greater Love - Box Set Page 48