Marianne paced around the room. It felt too confined. Too small to contain her and her emotions, which seemed to have come undone inside her, spilling everywhere, pouring out of her.
She glared around the room. Perched on top of the bookcase, she saw a copy of How to Go Around the World in 80 Days. There was no getting away from Ancaire, it seemed. The fire inside her spread and raged. Through the kitchen door, Marianne heard the ordinary sounds of the tap running, the kettle being switched on, the rattle of the cups on their saucers. She put her hands against her ears but she could still hear them. The ordinary sounds, when everything felt so alien and nothing was ordinary. Despite her best efforts to pursue a quiet, ordinary life.
‘Are you okay?’
Marianne looked up and saw Hugh, watching her with concern from the kitchen door.
‘Stop feeling sorry for me,’ she said. Her voice was loud and harsh. ‘You’re always feeling sorry for me.’ He shook his head, crossed the room towards her. She put her arms out, warding him off. ‘When you danced with me that night at the dinner-dance. You felt sorry for me. Poor, lonesome Marianne. Awkward, gawky Marianne. I’ll put her out of her misery.’
‘That’s not why I danced with you,’ said Hugh, and his voice, in sharp contrast to her own, was soft and low. It was like a match to Marianne’s short fuse. She wanted to grab her hair and pull it. Yank it.
‘I danced with you because I … like you,’ said Hugh.
Marianne stared at him. ‘Nobody likes me,’ she said. ‘Why would they? I don’t like them. I just want to be left alone.’
‘Nobody wants that,’ said Hugh, gently. ‘You don’t want that.’
‘What do I want, then?’ snapped Marianne. ‘Since you’re such an expert.’ She was breathing hard. It was difficult to keep a grip on herself.
The kettle whistled. A loud, shrill sound that filled the room, filled Marianne’s head until she felt it might split. Hugh was saying something. She could see his mouth moving but she couldn’t make out the words. His mouth. She was focusing on it now, still not hearing what it was he was saying. His lips were the colour of a ripe peach. She felt herself think of the word ‘luscious’. What a peculiar word. Luscious. Did she even know how to spell it? A tricky arrangement of s’s and a c somewhere in the middle, she thought. The clash of the peach with the orange of his hair. And his eyes. As vibrant as her anger. Fixed on her face with such sympathy.
‘Stop,’ she shouted. His mouth stopped moving. The kettle, still whistling, collided with the thump of her heart and the beat of her blood. She moved into the space between them, glared up at him. And then she kissed him.
As she had suspected, she had to stand on her toes to reach him.
As she had suspected, his mouth was delicious, like biting into a peach, sweet and, yes, there was that word again, luscious. She wasn’t thinking about how many s’s there were in that word any more. Or where the c went. She didn’t think she was thinking about anything at all. There were no thoughts, only sensations. The hard length of his body against hers. The soft fall of his hair against her face. The slide of his hands down her neck. The slick dance of their mouths. The noises she made. Like she was tasting him. Like she hadn’t eaten in days. In weeks. She couldn’t get enough of him. She grabbed fistfuls of his hair, pulled him closer. He hoisted her onto his hips and she clasped her legs around him and even then, she wasn’t aware of any thoughts. Like how heavy she must be. How cumbersome. How she never did anything like this.
Ever.
But she was only sensations. A glut of sensations. All she could feel was her pulse and it was everywhere. Along her neck, down her arms, between her legs. Even her ankles, crossed behind his back, seemed to be throbbing.
There was movement, too. Hugh, staggering around the room like a drunk, trying to gain purchase. She couldn’t see. She didn’t care. She clung on. She heard sounds. The ragged catch of her breath. The suck and gush of her mouth against his. The moan that issued from her when they glanced against a wall and the groan of the couch when they finally reached it and he lay her there, pinned her there with his body, the weight of him against her so sudden and so exquisite, she came in a series of what felt like explosions inside her body. Sharp and intense. Almost painful. She cried out. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t think it was a word. It was a sound. A guttural sound. Hugh lifted his head, looked at her. ‘Are you okay?’ She nodded. Her breath was coming hard and fast, the orgasm pounding through her body like a herd of wild horses.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such a sensation. Brian prided himself on his ability to keep going until she’d climaxed, on the occasions when they’d got round to having sex. She often told him she had and he had believed her.
She grabbed Hugh’s hair again and pulled him towards her. He looked at her, sort of dazed, his eyes black with pupil, then pulled away from her and sat up.
‘What?’ she said.
He shook his head, ran his hand down his face. ‘We need to stop.’
‘Stop?’ said Marianne, sitting up.
Hugh looked at her, reached over to push the hair out of her eyes. She slapped his hand away. ‘I don’t want you to be gentle with me,’ she said. ‘I want you to have sex with me.’
‘No,’ he said, standing up and rearranging his kilt, which had ridden around on his waist and was back to front. ‘You’re upset. You’re not yourself. I feel like I’m taking advantage of you.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Marianne. ‘I want you to take advantage of me.’
Hugh shook his head again. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair. On either of us.’
‘What’s fair got to do with anything?’ shouted Marianne. ‘I just want to bloody well feel something. I should feel something. My mother is dying and I feel nothing. I don’t even feel numb, I feel nothing. I want to feel something.’
Hugh nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said.
‘But that’s it, you’re not going to have sex with me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But we can talk.’
‘I don’t want to talk. I want to feel something.’
‘You will feel something,’ said Hugh gently. ‘You’re just in shock. I should have—’
‘Are you still talking?’
‘I should have made you tea,’ said Hugh. He bolted into the kitchen. Marianne struggled off the couch, stood up and looked down at herself. Her tracksuit bottoms had ridden up her legs but other than that, she looked the same as she always did. She even had her runners on, for Christ’s sake.
She felt spent. Like she could lie on the floor and sleep. But also twitchy with energy.
Her body was still responding to recent events, the blood charging around inside her, as if it was looking for a way out. Marianne looked around for her anorak, then remembered she hadn’t taken it off.
No wonder Hugh hadn’t wanted her. She’d never read any column where the agony aunt recommended leaving your anorak and runners on during sex.
They hadn’t even had sex.
Hugh hadn’t wanted to have sex with her.
A flavour of the humiliation she would later feel passed like a dry retch through her body.
‘Marianne?’ called Hugh from the kitchen. ‘I’ve only got Earl Grey tea. That do you?’
Through the kitchen door, Marianne heard the rustle of a packet of biscuits opening, the press closing, the glug of milk into a jug, the rattle of the cutlery drawer opening.
This time she did not put her hands against her ears to drown out the sounds. The ordinary sounds.
She moved to the door, opened it and left, without making a sound.
Chapter 30
When Marianne woke up the next morning, she felt hungover. Or at least, how she imagined a hangover might feel. The remnants of the day before were coated on her insides, leaving her mouth dry and bitter to the taste.
The raw edge of the anger Marianne had felt yesterday had blunted, leaving a sodden sort of regret in its stead, like th
e driftwood she came across on the beach, misshapen and swollen and good for nothing.
Rita.
Rita was dying.
She pulled her legs out from under George, still asleep at the bottom of the bed, and struggled into a sitting position, looked at her watch. Six o’clock. She lifted the curtain. It didn’t look anything like morning. It was middle-of-the-night dark, for starters. She could see nothing. She could hear the rain. The lash of it against the window. She forced her legs out of the bed, planted her feet squarely on the floor and waited for the shock of the cold floor to galvanise her.
It took longer than usual.
Flo’s little porcelain owl sat on the bedside locker and seemed to reproach her with his enormous yellow eyes. Marianne reached out and touched him. She hated how hard and cold he was. Why had she given Flo something so hard and cold for her birthday? She should have given her a fabric owl. With soft feathers instead of cold, hard porcelain.
She felt a yearning build inside her. To fall back into bed. Bury herself in blankets. Shut her eyes. Succumb to the dark and the quiet. Stay there. People did that, didn’t they? Every day. They opted out.
Now she remembered the incident at Hugh’s house yesterday.
The incident.
That made it sound very formal. Official. As if it was something important. Something worthy of note. Instead of nothing more than the ungainly advances of a desperate woman, trying to gain purchase.
She pulled on a pair of socks and reached for her tracksuit bottoms, on the floor where she had discarded them last night. In the last few weeks, she had mastered the art of dressing in the dark although she felt that there were people – Bartholomew and Shirley, for example – who would disagree.
‘Come on, George,’ she said, lifting the dog’s floppy ears and pulling them gently through her hands. ‘Let’s go to the beach.’
It seemed an unlikely sort of thing for Marianne to say. Especially to a dog. In the middle-of-the-night winter light of morning. But that’s what she said all the same.
She stopped outside Rita’s bedroom door. Put her ear against the wood. Listened. She didn’t know what she was expecting to hear. She could hear nothing.
She walked away.
She was a person who said cruel things. Had she known that about herself? Well, she did now. She had said cruel things to Rita. The fact that the things she had said were true gave her scant comfort.
She continued through the house, the soles of her runners making little sound against the bare boards. The kitchen was dark and cold and somehow cheerless in the murky light. It seemed emptier, without Rita in it, making potato cakes in the shape of love hearts, frying eggs and singing Doris Day’s ‘Everybody Loves a Lover’.
Of Patrick there was no sign. Marianne wondered when Rita had told him. She would have told him first. She told him everything. He probably told her everything. They told each other everything.
Because they liked each other.
They loved each other.
Marianne let herself out of the house, pulling the hood of her anorak over her head, trying to fit all her hair inside it. She walked to the bottom of the garden, opening the gate that Patrick had, of course, fixed.
This morning, she didn’t fly down the steps two at a time, daring them to do their worst, as was her habit. She felt sluggish. Heavy, like her limbs were dragging her down. She thought it might have something to do with the hangover feeling. Her regret. It was an exhausting emotion. Pretty useless, too. But difficult to dispel. Like the smell of George’s fur after he’d rolled in wet seaweed.
Marianne walked down the steps, one at a time, until she reached the bottom.
The sea was loud and restless, always moving, always thumping waves against the hard sand, the white water rushing over the pebbles on the shoreline with a fizzing sound.
She threw stones for George without being asked. He chased them, returned them to her, dropped them at her feet and waited there with his head cocked.
She had an urge then, to tell him she loved him. To kneel in front of him, gather him in her arms and push her face into his coarse, scratchy fur as if he didn’t reek. As if he smelled of rose petals and lavender. Whisper the words.
Imagine that.
Saying ‘I love you.’ For the first time in her life.
Saying it to a dog.
She and Brian had never said, ‘I love you.’ That kind of carry-on was for films and songs. It hadn’t been a discussion as such. But it had been agreed between them none the less. Theirs had been a practical arrangement. Two people were better than one when it came to things like paying a mortgage, settling bills. Even going away for city breaks, which they occasionally had. Hotel rooms were geared towards two people. Rates were Per Person Sharing. That was standard-speak for couples. Conversations were easier when you were one of two. People relaxed when they knew that someone was coming back for you. ‘My husband, Brian, has just gone to the bar.’ Or maybe it was just Marianne who people felt uncomfortable around. She had never mastered the art of making people feel comfortable. She had never considered it her responsibility. Brian had called her a hedgehog. ‘Because you’re prickly,’ he’d said, but with a smile so she’d thought he’d liked that.
Another mistake on her part.
She flung another stone for George. She threw it so far into the sea that George had no chance of retrieving it. Still, he plunged into the water, like he could.
In a rockpool, Marianne saw two minnows, which made her think of twins, which then made her think of Brian. And Helen. But the thought was only as darting as the minnows themselves, gone before she’d had time to get a good hold of it, to get stuck into it.
What did that mean? That she was over him? Or that she had never really loved him in the first place?
‘I’m not the marrying kind,’ she had told him, when he brought it up.
‘Neither am I,’ he said, his smile wide, as if this was an advantage. Perhaps it was, at first.
Both of them shared a deep, intrinsic distrust of relationships. It was what they had in common, like other people shared a love of theatre, say. Or badminton.
Perhaps they thought, by being in a relationship, they could protect each other from relationships. As a philosophy, Marianne knew it was not exactly romantic. And she was fine with that. She had not reneged on their deal. It was Brian who had done that.
George had found a crab, sidling back towards the sea, and was jumping around it, pushing his nose towards it, then leaping back when the crab lunged at him with its claws. Marianne held the dog’s collar, drew him back and they watched the crab, wary at first, continue its journey towards the water, faster now until he was a blur of shell and claw, until he disappeared beneath the first foamy wave that reached him.
Marianne wished she could disappear too.
She looked up to the top of the cliff. Her eyes settled on Ancaire. Her rock bottom. As isolated and weather-beaten as Marianne felt.
She wanted more than anything to walk away from it. To walk away from Rita.
But it would be Rita who would walk away from her in the end.
Chapter 31
There was no sign of Rita back at the house. She must be in her bedroom. Having a lie-in perhaps.
Rita didn’t have lie-ins any more.
But much had happened yesterday. It was enough to induce exhaustion into the hardiest of beings. Even Rita.
There was no sign of Patrick either. Marianne remembered it was Saturday then. Patrick was probably on his bicycle, delivering the fruit and vegetables he grew in the kitchen garden to some of the local restaurants and cafés.
All around her, the house was quiet. Still. It felt like an animal, hibernating through these endless winter days.
Although it was spring now. March. Marianne looked out the window. The sun was struggling up but made little impact behind a thick band of low-lying grey clouds that suggested rain.
A floorboard creaked overhead and Marianne heard Aunt Pe
arl’s bedroom door open, the clip of her shoes along the landing, the low rasp of the bathroom door being persuaded open, then shut, the slide of the bolt in the lock.
Marianne looked at her watch. It was too early to collect the clients but she did not want to be in the kitchen when Aunt Pearl arrived with her newspaper. She would have questions and Marianne had no answers.
She grabbed the keys to the Jeep. George’s ears shot into twin peaks on his head and he hauled himself from his warm spot in front of the range and followed Marianne out of the house.
Marianne belted him in and petted his head before she drove away.
Today, the flowers leaning against the small wooden cross were daffodils. Marianne tried not to look but the splash of bright yellow they made on the side of the road was impossible to miss. She drove on. If anyone saw her they might possibly assume that she was just some ordinary woman out for a Saturday morning drive with her dog. Perhaps taking him to be groomed. Or for a walk. They wouldn’t know that Marianne was not a woman who drove for pleasure.
She did not do anything for pleasure. This thought washed up an image of yesterday, at Hugh’s house. The way she had wound her body around his, like a parasite, feasting on him. And Hugh, disentangling himself from her. His face, when he looked at her. Like there wasn’t enough sorrow in the world to express how sorry he felt for her.
Marianne wanted to clench her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to see his face, but she couldn’t because she was driving and no matter how bad things got, she would never be a woman who drove with her eyes shut.
Things were bad.
The arresting officer thought it was likely she’d get community service. Since it would be her second conviction. His face when he said that. Not angry or disgusted but sort of sad. Not as sad as Hugh’s. But there could be no mistaking his pity, all the same.
Marianne drove on. She was glad she was driving. Not for pleasure, obviously. She was simply driving in the absence of anything else to do. And not finding it as tedious or unsettling as she might have imagined. It might have something to do with the road she was on. The coast road to Skerries, the careless wend of it, the reassurance of the sea on her right and the fields on her left, running riot to the horizon, some wild and fallow, others brown with soil, neat lines of furrows waiting for tender, green shoots to emerge.
Make Yourself at Home Page 24