by Jennie Ensor
She turned her key in the lock. The TV was blaring from the living room. She opened the door, saw Paul slumped in his armchair, a bottle of beer on the table beside him. He hadn’t changed out of his suit.
She went closer. ‘Hello, darling.’
He seemed not to notice her. She would have bent down and kissed him, but sensed that was not a good idea.
‘So, you decided to come home after all,’ he said, in a caustic tone, not looking away from the TV. Gun-toting cops were chasing the bad guys again.
‘You didn’t forget, did you? I always have the group on Tuesday evenings.’ He flicked channels, to a bird’s-eye view of a glossy car being driven around a hairpin bend.
‘Have you eaten?’ She knew she ought to go upstairs and leave him to it. He flicked to the next channel. ‘There’s some risotto in the fridge, I can heat it up if you like?’
‘Don’t trouble yourself. I can do without yesterday’s leftovers, thanks.’
A flash of anger. ‘Do you have to be so goddamn rude? What’s the matter with you?’
He swigged from the bottle then looked at her.
‘If you really want to know, I’ve had a shit day at work. Chris dropped me right in it again, making me look like a prize idiot in front of the directors.’
‘Why, what happened?’
‘He pulled me up for giving the customer an earful about fucking us around with their requirements – he said I was harassing the customer and the whole project was in danger. Carlton was sitting there, lapping it up.’
‘I’m sorry. You’ve been working so hard on this project. I know how stressful it is at the moment.’
Paul laughed, a mirthless eruption from deep in his throat.
‘That’s a joke. You go rushing around like a twenty-five-year-old, forgetting you’ve got a husband at home.’
‘I’m not your slave, you know. I have a right to my own life.’
‘Well, why don’t you fuck off then?’ He got out of the armchair, pointing the remote control at the TV. ‘Go back to that pack of weirdos you hang out with.’
Her composure vanished, along with any trace of compassion and willingness to understand.
‘For God’s sake, Paul, you should hear yourself! What the hell gets into you?’
‘I’d like to be able to come home once in a while and know that you’re going to be here and not getting up to God knows what.’ He stood over her, glaring. ‘The house is a fucking disgrace, if you hadn’t noticed. When did you last get round to cleaning the bathroom?’
Her mouth fell open. For a moment, she was unable to speak.
‘Well,’ she said at last, anger overtaking her, ‘if you weren’t so bloody paranoid, accusing the cleaning woman of snooping around your things, I wouldn’t have to fucking well do it all myself!’
‘Oh, give me a break, will you?’ He lowered his voice. ‘You’ve really let yourself go, haven’t you? Is it my fault you don’t turn me on anymore?’
She had a fleeting urge to pummel her fists into his body.
‘You can talk, you …’ She couldn’t think of any words strong enough. ‘You arrogant bastard. Who do you think you are, Robert bloody Redford? You’ve got all the charm of a … fucking gorilla!’
She stomped upstairs, slamming the bedroom door. Then she undressed and climbed into bed, teeth unbrushed, face unwashed. His words swirled around in the darkness, making her seethe. How dare he sneer at her and everything she believed in? But, what stuck in her mind, what really hurt, deep down, was his final thrust:
‘Is it my fault you don’t turn me on anymore?’ As if she were a sack of potatoes. If that was true, then what was left?
Suzanne opened her eyes. Chill morning light leaked through the drawn curtains. The images in her dream lingered, and with them a sense of profound sadness. Snow hurling in through gaps in the ceiling, swirling into her face, covering the furniture. Piling up into deep mounds, trying to obliterate her. She must get out, before she was buried forever.
I’ve hung on too long. This wasn’t the life I was meant to have.
Paul was kissing her brow, she suddenly realised. She turned her head away, pushing herself up in bed. The night before came back.
‘Darling,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘I want to apologise for the things I said last night. I shouldn’t have got so angry. It was just that I so much wanted you here with me last night, after what happened at work.’
He was trying to find his way back into her heart. It was uncanny how easily he could do that. The hurt welled up again, strong as ever.
‘Is it true, what you said to me?’ She held her breath. ‘I don’t turn you on anymore?’
‘I didn’t mean it, Suzanne. I just wanted to hurt you.’
She caught sight of her reflection in the dressing table mirror. Her face, crumpled with sleep, the texture of an old apple. She turned his words over in her mind, examining their inflection. He might be telling the truth, or half the truth, or none at all.
‘Darling.’ His voice suddenly anxious. ‘Please, I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t.’
‘Just go away and leave me alone. I’m going back to sleep.’
He rustled around the room getting ready for work.
‘How about dinner this evening? That French place you like in the village?’ She opened her eyes. Paul’s hand rested on the door handle. He wore his pinstriped suit, the one she liked best. ‘I can call and book from work. You can get all glammed up.’
‘No, thanks, I’d rather not.’
‘Come on, Suze. Don’t be so hard on me.’
He waited, but she stayed silent.
She heard the front door close, the Porsche’s low, powerful rumble and, for a long time after he’d driven away, the resigned, melancholy tone of his last words.
I’ve been too hard on him. I should have let him make peace with me.
No, he’s gone too far. He has to understand that.
Her thoughts came and went. A sort of deadness seemed to have taken root inside her. Through the window, the sky was flecked with cloud, promising a fine day ahead.
She could go downstairs and make a cup of tea. Or she could just lie here and do nothing. She looked at the pair of thin, wavy cracks that travelled along the ceiling then diagonally down the wall. They had been there for months; Paul said it was from the speed bumps, there was nothing to worry about. Even so, sometimes she couldn’t help thinking that if it were to rain very hard one day, the ceiling might cave in.
It came back suddenly, another strange dream she’d had, a few hours before. With it came the sense of desolation. She’d been alone, clinging to the side of a hulking ship. There’d been no lifeboats or survivors, only endless iron-grey water all around. Again and again, the ship lurched down, taking her with it, towards the water.
She shivered. It meant nothing. It didn’t mean she was going to drown one day, as her father had. Though she didn’t want to, she found herself imagining his last seconds, floundering in that cold, merciless sea while the yacht sped ahead without him. What had gone through his mind? Had he prayed? Had he begged God to save him?
It would have been a quick death, her mother had said. He hadn’t been wearing a life jacket – none of the crew had. The weather had changed a few hours into the race and surprised them. By the time they’d turned the boat around and headed back to where he’d fallen overboard, her father had disappeared.
Suzanne heaved herself out of bed. Perhaps she was drowning already, only very slowly.
No, she must stop thinking like this. She must get up and do something.
Downstairs, Marmaduke greeted her. She fed him and went back to bed with a cup of tea and her laptop. It contained all four features from the upcoming issue of the dry, jargon-filled magazine. She was supposed to finish subbing them by the end of the week. She opened the first piece, about advances in call centre technology, and began to make changes. Soon, red blotches of crossed-out words and altered punctuation were breaking out all
over the screen, like an attack of chickenpox.
After ten minutes, she’d had enough. Why was she doing this? One didn’t need a degree in English to change it’s to its, or delete a herd of unnecessary apostrophes.
What about her affirmations? She hadn’t done them lately.
Suzanne took the list from her bedside drawer and read the first one aloud.
‘I trust the universe to bring joy and harmony into my life.’
She frowned. Living with Paul was one guarantee of not having joy and harmony. What was the universe going to do about that?
She went on to the next.
‘I am a beautiful, desirable woman.’
She put down the list. She wasn’t in the mood for affirmations either. Perhaps Katherine would be able to meet her for lunch. She went into the kitchen and put two thick slices of bread into the toaster.
Paul used to like her curves, she thought as she sat down and crunched into her toast. He used to say they were womanly. That was before the children came though, and she’d put on a few kilos. Now, however much she dieted and went to the gym, her weight stubbornly stayed the same. It was no use hoping that one day she might shrink back from a size 14 to a size 12… However, Paul was ageing too. His hair had started to thin and he had to take pills to control his blood pressure. His teeth had seen rather a lot of the dentist lately. Apart from death, of course, there was no way either of them could avoid getting old.
‘Hello, m’dear.’ Katherine wore a T-shirt, jeans and a leather jacket. Debbie’s jacket, probably – Katherine was always swiping Debbie’s clothes.
They ordered salads and a bottle of wine. The café was Katherine’s choice, fashionable and expensive, the latest eating place to spring up in the village. Voices echoed in the airy, light-filled space, competing with shouting and clanking from the open-plan kitchen.
‘You’ll never guess,’ Katherine announced. ‘Debbie’s got the job with BT. In their marketing department.’
‘That’s great, Kat.’ Suzanne hoped she sounded sufficiently pleased. Lately, good news about other people’s children only served to remind her of her own daughter’s troubled career, or, more precisely, her string of unsatisfactory jobs punctuated by unemployment.
‘I hope Laura finds something too, soon,’ Katherine said quickly. ‘So, how are you? Things are bad with Paul again?’
She related what had happened the night before, aware of the progressively grimmer expression on Katherine’s face.
‘Suzanne. You can’t keep on letting him do this to you.’ Katherine’s response was as it had been at least five times before. ‘Tell him you’ll leave him if he carries on treating you like a doormat. Tell him if he talks to you like that again, you’ll walk out – to a solicitor.’
‘Katherine, I love him. I couldn’t leave him. If I didn’t love him, it would be different—’
‘Well, he doesn’t show his appreciation for you much, does he?’ Katherine cleaved her beetroot in two without mercy. ‘Maybe you need to make him realise that you’re a human being too, you haven’t been put on this planet just to tend to his needs—’
‘He told me I don’t turn him on, I’m too fat.’
Her friend made a face. ‘Well, he’s hardly a sex god himself, is he? I know he works out and swims ’n’ all, but really.’
‘I’ve been worried about Paul, lately – something’s going on, I’m sure. Do you think he could be seeing someone else? He says it’s the stress of his work, but I don’t think that’s it. He’s been so withdrawn lately. His moods seem to be getting worse and he’s wound up so tight. I don’t know how to describe it. He just seems so … strange, lately.’
‘Suzy, listen.’ Katherine squeezed her hand. ‘I really don’t think he’s having an affair, or he’s becoming unhinged. I’m sure it is all down to the stress of work – and realising he’s getting old. His work is challenging and he feels pressure from the young ones coming up below him. He knows he isn’t a spring chicken anymore. I’ve had it from Jeremy, I know what it’s like.’ Her voice hardened. ‘You need to make him understand how his behaviour affects you, and you’re not going to put up with all the shit he throws at you. You’re not chained to him for life, are you? Alright, my love?’
Suzanne nodded, summoning a smile. It was good advice, no doubt.
The waiter cleared their plates. Katherine whipped out a compact and retouched her lipstick.
‘So, how are the swimming sessions going?’
‘Very well, by the sound of it. Paul says Emma’s really coming on. She can manage several lengths non-stop now.’
‘It’s good of him to help her like that, I must say. How long is this going to go on for?’
‘He’s happy to take her for as long as Emma is happy going to the pool with him. Jane told me she’s pleased about how it’s going, she thinks it’s having a good effect on her. Emma’s behaving much better now.’
‘I must give Jane a ring, we haven’t chatted for ages. Maybe the three of us could meet up in Covent Garden and treat ourselves to an evening at The Sanctuary, like we used to. Oh, by the way.’ Katherine leaned towards her. ‘David phoned the other day. He asked me to say hello to you and to pass on his best wishes. I think he fancies you.’
There was something undeniably pleasing about the thought.
‘Why don’t you give him a ring?’
‘I might be pissed off with Paul, but I’m not looking for an affair.’
‘Maybe you ought to be.’
She pictured David on his knees, slowly unrolling a sheer stocking from her leg, and laughed. ‘I’m too old to have an affair, Kat.’
‘Don’t be daft! Since when did age matter? It’s not as if women have to worry about getting it up, is it?’
‘Shush, not so loud,’ she said, and then found herself laughing as loudly as her friend, provoking curious stares.
‘Seriously though,’ Katherine said, after their mirth had subsided, ‘if you made Paul a little jealous, would it be such a bad thing?’
Paul arrived home early that evening. Before she could say hello, he’d thrust two bouquets of red roses into her hands and kissed her on the lips. An unusually long and tender kiss, as if they were new lovers who’d been parted for too long.
‘Suze, I don’t deserve you,’ he said. They sat on the sofa in the living room. On the coffee table, two of their most expensive crystal glasses, filled with a Bordeaux from the cellar. ‘You have every right to be upset. All I can say is, I’m sorry. I love you, I didn’t mean those things I said last night.’ He leaned over and looked into her eyes. ‘You believe me, don’t you?’
She swallowed the lump in her throat. He wasn’t going to sweet-talk her out of what she had to say, not this time.
‘I don’t know anything for certain, Paul. When you talk to me like you did last night, I don’t know who you are. You say you love me. How can you love me when you’re thinking those horrible things?’
‘Darling, don’t talk like that.’
‘Please, listen to me.’ She gulped her wine. ‘There’s only so much more of this I can take. If you keep on treating me like this, I … I’m going to leave you.’
There, she had said it, those words she had never said before. The look on his face almost made her wish she hadn’t – as if he were a child who’d had his favourite toy taken away.
‘Please, stop. I’ll change, I promise. I don’t want to hurt you anymore, please, my darling. Let me make it up to you.’
Later, he insisted on cooking dinner.
‘Why don’t we go away somewhere different for our holiday this year?’ he said as they sat down at the table. ‘For two weeks this time.’
She thought of the ten days they’d spent in Barbados last year. Paul had spent most of it thinking about work and checking his emails, then, just as he’d started to unwind and enjoy the holiday, it had been time to go home.
‘How about Mauritius, or Madagascar? You’ve always wanted to go there. And why don’t we
go somewhere special for our anniversary? What about that hotel Andy and Fiona liked?’
Her throat tightened. Apart from her father and her brother, she loved Paul more than any man she had ever known. How could she not forgive him?
They went to bed early.
Paul kissed her mouth and brought her towards him, pressing his hand into the small of her back. He began caressing her. Her skin became super sensitive under his touch, every stroke of his fingers sending a shiver through her. Then she was floating, falling from the tops of great clouds, then rising up again, weightless. She had no choice except to go with him, wherever he took her.
‘I love you,’ he said as she lay beside him. She knew it was probably foolish of her to be reassured by his words, but she needed his love now, more than ever. For a few moments she felt elated, as if she’d unexpectedly come across a dear possession given up as lost.
Then she remembered. What was it Paul had said last weekend after he had come back from the pool? Jane had wished he could be taking her to the theatre; that was it. Jane hadn’t been serious, surely. Paul was stirring, that was all. He’d said it in the joking way he often said things, so you weren’t sure if he meant what he was saying or not.
Was Paul having an affair with Jane? Was that why he was so keen to help her out with Emma’s swimming lessons? She was slim, even now, without effort. A little younger than her, Jane had attracted plenty of male glances in her prime. She still had an I-don’t-care-what-you-think glamour, that careless, sassy swagger that men loved. Even without make-up, her face had acquired a steely beauty.
Paul could hardly be shagging Jane at her house, though, with Emma and Toby around. Anyway, he wasn’t interested in Jane, not sexually. He’d said once after a dinner party that she was slovenly and wore frumpy clothes, and she really ought to pluck her eyebrows, people would think she was a lesbian. They got on well, that was all. He wasn’t having an affair with her, or with anyone else. He wasn’t that type of man.
Then she wasn’t so sure. What if he was that type of man, but she’d never realised?