‘It’s her lungs,’ Briony explains. ‘Nothing much wrong with them, but she gets very twitched about dust. It’s Dad’s emphysema. It was the mines that really did it, of course, but there’s no telling her that. I wouldn’t normally go to the bother of washing curtains this often, but if I don’t do hers she gets a bee in her bonnet. And, fair do. They’ve not been down in six months.’
Six months? My curtains have not been down in six years. I must, I decide, pay more attention to my soft furnishings. Soft furnishings and their husbandry could become the lynch pin of my life. I could get my carpets steam cleaned, I could have my loose covers Scotch guarded. I could spend many a contented hour sewing contrasting piping cord round all my cushions. Oh, and I could scrub.
‘Are you OK?’ I hear Briony say now. ‘Sally?’
Curtains. That’s the thing. I shall become a good and reliable housekeeper. For if you take away my heart what else is there for me to be?
‘Dust’ I quip. ‘Bit of dust in my eye, that’s all.’ Here, hand me up that one and I’ll get this end hooked on.’
When we come back down to the sitting room, Briony’s mother is sitting in the dark with the television off. The only light in the room is that still filtering palely through the slight chink in another set of curtains, these swagged and rouched and colour-matched with the sofas. You could cosh a prop forward with the tie-backs.
‘There’s been a noise,’ she announces with a warble in her voice.
Briony flicks the light switch back on.
‘A noise, Mum?
‘I thought it was coming from the television so I turned it off. But it started up again. It’s not the lights.’
Briony strides across and picks the remote control from her mother’s lap, then puts the television back on as well. ‘You’re missing your programme, aren’t you? Why didn’t you call me? What sort of noise?’
Her mother tuts. ‘A buzzing noise. I didn’t like the sound of it. It stopped but then it started again.’
‘A bluebottle?’ says Briony.
‘Or a car alarm?’ I suggest.
She shakes her head.
‘No it wasn’t. It was in this room. Very loud. Very buzzy.’
‘The smoke alarm, maybe?’
Briony glances upwards then shakes her head.
‘That doesn’t buzz. It peeps. Perhaps it was something on the telly, mum. In a programme, or something.’
Briony’s mother shakes her head now. ‘I told you, it started up again after I turned the television off. I didn’t like it. I don’t like strange noises.’
‘Well,’ says Briony, with her infinite patience. ‘It’s stopped now, mum, so no need to worry. It was probably just –’
‘I don’t like all these electrical things around the place. You never know if they’re – there we are! There it goes again! Listen!’
We listen.
‘Oh, yes, I can hear it,’ begins Briony. ‘A sort of –’
Tropical insect in bean tin-type buzzing. ‘I know what it is,’ I say, picking up my handbag. I fish around in it. ‘It’s my phone.’
And it is Jonathan. What is he ringing me for?
I push the connect button.
‘Where are you?’ he growls.
I’m so taken aback by the tone of his voice that I can’t remember for a moment.
‘Pardon?’ I say instead, flustered.
‘Where are you?’ he says again. If such a phenomenon actually existed, the hairs on the back of my neck, by this time, would be standing to attention and waving at me. Briony and her mother look on politely.
‘What d’you mean, where am I? I’m next door.’
‘Next door?’ the words come out in spits, like bacon.
‘Yes. I’m helping Briony with –’
‘Next door? Really? Honestly?’
‘Honestly! Why on earth –’
But he has put down the phone.
And then the one in Briony’s hall begins ringing.
‘Fancy that!’ she says gaily, going off to answer it.
Briony’s mother looks up at me suspiciously. ‘I don’t like electrical things,’ she says.
I look at my own phone, which says six missed calls. I switch it back to vibrate. I’m inclined to agree with her. Even more so when Briony comes back into the sitting room.
‘Goodness me, you’re in demand tonight, Sally!’ She cocks her head. ‘It’s Jonathan, of all people! For you.’
For me. Jonathan. Jonathan 4 Sally. I walk out into the hall on feet that are suddenly as heavy as lead. A rush of heat floods my face. A rush of anger is not far behind.
‘Is this some sort of joke?’ I ask him levelly. ‘Where are you?’
His voice is less sharp now, but not so you’d notice. Unless you’d been married to him for eighteen years, of course.
‘I’m at home,’ he says.
‘Home?’
Home? Jonathan? On a Monday night? ‘Yes,’ he barks.
‘How come?’ I feel cold.
‘Why do you think?’ I feel colder. ‘Well? Are you coming or not?’
At the junction of our lane and the main road there’s a bus stop. I can’t remember the number of the bus that stops there, or, for that matter, its destination. Only that the buses stop running at about nine in the evening. I know this because it’s one of the many reasons why I spend so much time ferrying Kate around. It is half past nine. It is not, therefore, an option. I could walk, of course. I could walk in any direction and in time, with luck, I would be somewhere else. Brighton, perhaps. Or Croydon. Or, if I strike lucky and sprout some wings, a suburb of Neverland perhaps. I don’t much care. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a powerful, passionate, overwhelming need to be somewhere else at this moment.
Nevertheless, I fetch up at our door because that is where my legs take me. I don’t need to use my key because the front door is already open. Jonathan is framed in the light from the hallway, Merlin beside him, a grim Hammer horror silhouette.
I don’t know what to say to him. It’s impossible to know what to say in such a situation. How does one feel one’s way back into a conversation that has been put on hold for the best part of two decades? He, clearly, doesn’t know either. So he stands back against the door to let me walk past him then shuts the door quietly behind me. Here we are, shut in and alone with each other. The air is shuddering with unspoken thoughts and thick with the backed up resentments of years. I can smell drink on his breath. I feel trapped. I want to scream.
‘Well?’ I say instead.
He moves past me and heads off towards the kitchen. Merlin and I follow. There is a bottle of malt whisky open on the kitchen table, an empty glass beside it. He splashes another half inch of drink into it and puts it to his lips. Then he lowers it. I watch mutely while his expression hardens further.
‘I’ve spoken to Morgan,’ he says suddenly.
I watch Merlin turn circles underneath the table. ‘And?’
He grimaces at me. ‘And I’ve driven home, of course. And now I’d like you to tell me what the hell is going on.’
My immediate thought – the thought that crowds out every other cognitive process in my brain – is that I should tell him nothing. That whatever Morgan has told him, I should deny everything. Keep things on track now. Settle down. Do curtains. What has she told him?
‘What’s going on?’ I echo. ‘Jonathan, I –’
‘Let’s not play games, Sally,’ he says, as if talking to an infant. ‘What’s going on between you and this – this – this man you’re seeing?’
Well, that’s that one answered then. So there’s little point in denying it. But I can certainly tell him the truth.
‘I’m not seeing him any more,’ I say.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What I said. I’m not seeing him.’
‘So you’re not denying you’ve been seeing him?’
‘No.
’
He blinks at this conversational dead end. Then clears his throat and picks up the glass from the table. He tips the rest of the whisky into his mouth and puts it back down again. I feel frightened. Not because I think he’s going to hit me or anything, but because I can already feel the fabric of my existence fraying. That the safety net of long established routine is unravelling beneath me. That I’m going to fall at any moment into a void.
‘For how long?’ he says.
‘Not long.’
‘How long?’
‘A few weeks.’ He looks relieved at this. Which strikes me as a huge misjudgement where feelings are concerned. It took no time at all, after all.
‘And?’
‘And I’m not seeing him any more. You must know that. Morgan must have told you that.’
‘She told me you’d said that but that she didn’t believe you.’ He looks at me through slightly bloodshot eyes. How drunk is he? How long has he been here? ‘Are you telling me she should have? That I should?’
I feel suddenly as if I have already fallen. And that I’m now at the bottom of a big, craggy rock face and that the summit is shrouded in cloud.
‘Whether you believe me or not isn’t relevant, Jonathan. It’s the truth.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Then why not? If not, why not?’
How many times am I going to have to answer this question?. ‘Because I’m married to you.’
‘That’s not a reason.’
‘It’s the only reason I can give you right now, Jonathan, so I’m afraid it’ll have to do.’
There is, sometimes, a little road noise in the kitchen but at this moment the silence is so dense and woolly you could pluck handfuls from around you and ball it in your fist. Jonathan pulls out a chair and sits down at it, then puts his face in his hands. I don’t know quite what to do, so I wait, gripping a chair back. He lifts his face again, rubbing his fingers across his temples.
‘Have you slept with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you in love with him?’
I pause to swallow the bitter taste of the untruth before I utter it. ‘No.’
There is another silence and this time I let it wash over me. Merlin is beside me now, his flank pressed close against my thigh.
Looking at the table, Jonathan says, ‘Do you love me?’
‘Jonathan, I – it’s –’I spread my hands. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Jesus,’ he says, so quietly that I can hardly hear him. ‘Jesus. I can’t believe this is happening to me.’ He looks up at me now, his eyes glittering. ‘How many times?’
‘Christ, what?’
‘How many times have you slept with him?’
‘God, Jonathan, that isn’t important!’
But he ignores me. ‘Where have you slept with him? When? When did all this happen?’ There is a tremulousness about his voice that is entirely unfamiliar to me. ‘Who is he, Sally? Who is he?’I am shaking my head now. ‘Come on, Tell me. Please. I need to know. When did you meet him? Who is he? What the hell did he think he was playing at? Christ – you’re my wife! Sally, you’re– ‘He’s up on his feet now and moving across the kitchen towards me. I can feel the dog tensing against my leg. ‘Christ !’ He bats away Merlin’s face with his hand. ‘Get away, will you? Damn dog!’
‘Don’t hit him!’
‘I wasn’t hitting him!’
‘Yes, you were!’
He’s not listening. ‘Who is he?’ he hisses, a foot or so from me now. Merlin retreats, whimpering, back under the table, his claws rat-a-tatting on the quarry tiles. ‘Where does he live? How could you do that? How could you –’
‘Jonathan, stop this! It’s not important! You do not need to know, OK? None of that’s going to help anything! All you need to know is that I’m here!’
He is standing so close to me now that I can feel the heat coming from his face. There is a tic at the corner of his jaw.
‘Not important! Of course it’s important! You breeze in here and tell me you’re sleeping with another man and you tell me it’s not important! Christ –’He raises an arm and I lift my own instinctively. I am truly frightened now. He is not a person I know any more. My action seems to shock him and he looks at me, horrified. Then he sits back at the table and lays his head on his wrists. His shoulders start moving. And with a jolt I realise he’s crying.
Accepted wisdom would have us believe that the thing to do when someone dear to you is crying is to put your arms around them and make consoling noises and tell them that everything will be all right. Accepted wisdom has a lot to be said for it, but in the space I had been now granted two things became clear to me. One of these was that Jonathan was very dear to me – a simple and gratifying moment, made no less intense for the fact that the man I loved, truly loved, was not this one – and the other was that to move on to the safe ground of consoling and touching and saying everything would be all right would be an absolute mistake. Cue another eighteen years of not talking to one another. Cue status quo. Cue a shed load more quiet unhappiness. Cue curtains. We needed to move forward. I needed not to hug him. Instead, I pulled out a chair at the other end of the table.
‘Shall we talk about Constance Perkins? I said.
His head remained on the table a moment more and then he lifted it.
There was no surprise in his eyes. Only pain.
‘What’s the point,’ he said dully. ‘What the hell can I say to you?’
‘You could start by saying sorry –’
‘Christ, Sally. You must know that! I’m here, aren’t I? God, you can’t imagine how sorry –’
‘OK,’ I said, the bile rising in my throat. ‘You could start by telling me about her, maybe. You could start by explaining what you thought you were doing. You could start by –’I stopped. Start by what, exactly? He was right. It was pointless. Valueless. Useless. ‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘Let’s not talk about her. Let’s talk about something much more to the point. Let’s talk about Tricia instead.’
His head snapped back. And in doing so it became instantly clear that we didn’t even need to. Eighteen long years – no – twenty since she’d died – and his expression, that tiny spark of anger in his eyes, told me everything I needed to know.
‘What?’ he said, staring at me. ‘Christ, Sally! Tricia?’
‘Yes, Tricia,’ I said again, fury welling inside me. ‘The real other woman in your life!’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sally! What’s the point in going there?’
‘Don’t Christ’s sake me, Jonathan. Don’t you dare say that to me! She’s the real reason we’ve come to this! Can’t you see that? Jonathan, she’s the whole point!’
He looked at me coldly then suddenly stood up.
‘I can’t talk to you any more,’ he said.
For some minutes after the front door slammed behind him I stood and stared bleakly at my reflection in the kitchen window. The air in the kitchen smelled stale and cloying. He had been drinking. He had drunk God only knew how much. I marched back across the room and seized the bottle from the table. Still two thirds full. Was it full to start with? No. No, it was already opened. When Bob and Androulla came. That was it. A new sound reached me. One that I recognised. The motor on the garage door. I ran out into the hall and yanked the front door open again. His tail lights were just curving out towards the main road.
And then there was silence. A hollow one this time. And I didn’t know what to do. I had reached a full stop, and I didn’t know how to begin the next sentence. I simply didn’t know what to do next. There was a wetness against the back of my hand, and I sank to my knees, burying my face in the musty folds of Merlin’s neck, my dog who loved me. Loved me above all else.
But I couldn’t just sit there forever. I had to do something. But what? Where had he gone? Should I just stay here and wait for him? Get myself together? Go to bed? What? I took myself back to the kitchen and made myself a mug of
good strong coffee, gave Merlin a dog biscuit and sat down to think.
She had been buried in the cemetery at St Mark’s church. Buried, not cremated, so there’d be a grave to visit. Somewhere for Morgan to place childish posies on her birthday, on Morgan’s birthday, on the anniversary of her death. I had been there only once before – at my insistence, we’d married elsewhere – yet as I pulled up in the quiet lane that led to the churchyard it was as if that day had been mere moments before this one. Nothing had changed. The trees had grown taller, the bushes a little bushier, but it was a view that had not changed substantially, I guessed, in the several hundred years since the church had been built. I locked Merlin in the car and walked carefully along in the darkness. No moon tonight, though a thick spread of stars, casting a pearl wash over the silver tinged stone. The church clock said twenty past one in the morning. Where had the time gone? Had it really taken me three long hours to arrive at the truth that had brought me up here?
I spotted Jonathan’s car almost immediately. He’d parked a little way further down the lane, the car listing half up on the grassy verge. I put my hand on the bonnet as I passed. It was cold. So he’d been here a very long time.
Tricia’s grave was at the far end of the churchyard . I passed gravestones of every conceivable type. Old slabs of crumbling stone, grey-green with lichen, black marble, white marble, nibble-edged granite. It wasn’t cold, exactly, just chill with the sombre taint of death in the air.
He was standing still as a monument himself, head slightly dipped, hands in pockets. He turned at the sound of my approach.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said as I drew alongside him.
Straight on Till Morning Page 33