Trio

by Staincliffe, Cath

  Caroline winced at the light, looked at him with suspicion.

  ‘I'm going to clear up a bit,’ he said. ‘All this mess isn't helping. Why don’t you sit downstairs? I’ll call you if Davey wakes up.’

  She sighed and got up sluggishly. Her chestnut hair had lost its gloss and hung in lank strands, her complexion was sallow.

  ‘Or would you like a bath?’

  ‘Have you put the water heater on?’ She spoke sullenly.

  He sighed. No, he ruddy well hadn’t. He didn’t know how to do all this. The house was her province. ‘No, but I can.’

  ‘Don't bother,’ she said coldly.

  ‘My mother’s coming to help us out.’ He tried to sound matter of fact. He propped his stick against the wall, started picking up the baby clothes from the dressing tables and putting them on the bed.

  ‘No!’ she cried as though he had hurt her.

  ‘Just for a few days, till we’re on top of things.’

  She stood there, her face crumbling, shoulders shaking.

  ‘Oh, Caro,’ he said gently. He moved towards her.

  ‘No!’ she yelled and swung away from him, stumbling and knocking into the bedside table, knocking the lamp over and a glass. There was a crash followed by a beat of silence then the stringy wail from Davey in his cot in the next room.

  Paul moved but she was quicker, sobbing loudly. He followed her, feeling frightened but not sure why.

  He watched her lift Davey up, hold him close, humming a tune broken by her irregular sobs. He wanted to join them, to comfort both wife and child but he knew there would be another rebuttal if he tried.

  ‘I’ll get on then,’ he said. ‘Call me if you need anything.’

  He returned to their bedroom, his chest tight and a pulse hammering in his head. Glass on the floor. He went downstairs to get the dustpan and brush.

  His mother’s arrival seemed to make Caroline worse. From being moody and prone to tears she had started raving. A stream of accusations directed at him and his mother, dark mutterings about them plotting behind her back. His mother had cleared up the kitchen, prepared the baby’s bottle and made a simple meal. Caroline refused to come down. She refused to eat. When he went up to see her she spoke more gibberish and acted as though she was scared of him, as though he intended some harm.

  ‘Call the doctor,’ his mother said.

  He hesitated. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘She needs help, Paul. He can give her something to calm her down.’ She smiled at him. ‘It’s probably depression, getting a bit out of control. Call the doctor.’

  By the time the doctor arrived Caroline had barricaded herself and Davey in her room. Davey was hungry – Caroline had not given him the bottle her mother-in-law had made up – and crying incessantly. Paul had begged her to open the door, reminded her that Davey needed his bottle, but she refused.

  ‘Caroline, let us in now, the doctor’s here, he wants to have a look at you,’ he said. There was no response. He felt his temper rising at the stupidity of it all. ‘Caroline,’ he threatened, ‘if you don’t open the door I’ll break the bloody thing down.’ And how would he do that? With his poor balance it would be hard to put much force against it. ‘I’ll get the fire brigade,’ he added.

  He wasn’t sure if she could hear him over the screaming baby but after a minute there was the bumping of furniture being moved. When he tried the door it opened.

  Once inside, Paul took Davey from the bed and passed him to his mother. Caroline, perched on the bed, panting from her exertions but outwardly calm, watched them like a hawk.

  ‘You remember me, Mrs Wainwright?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she nodded. ‘You’re the Devil. You eat the babies.’

  An hour later Caroline was admitted to the psychiatric hospital. The doctors assured Paul that a short stay, the use of tranquilizers and possibly a session or two of electro-convulsive therapy would relieve her of her distress.

  ‘Some women react like this after childbirth,’ the psychiatrist told him. ‘This is your first child?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘Most women get a bit weepy a few days after they’ve had the baby but this is something more serious, a form of depression. We still don’t understand exactly why it happens and/or why some women are more susceptible than others, but it is treatable and I’m sure your wife will be back home, enjoying family life very soon.’

  Kay

  The lemon was rotten. It looked fine on the outside but when she halved it the centre was brown and slimy. She couldn’t make a lemon cake without a lemon. Joanna might have one. Knowing Joanna, she probably had a plastic squeezy one to squirt into her gin. She certainly made a virtue of being a lazy cook and a fan of all the latest gimmicks.

  Kay Farrell took her apron off and washed her hands. She checked on the twins, who had gone down for their nap half an hour ago. They were sound asleep, head to tail in the cot. They liked to share it for their daytime sleep. She went round the back at Joanna’s, the kitchen door was always open. The climbing rose around the back door was in full bloom. She inhaled the scent. They must do more with their garden, get some nice shrubs. All they had was the lawn and the apple tree. Bit dull.

  She let herself in and called out. ‘Hello, it’s only me!’ She went through the hall into the dining-cum-living room. A blur of bodies on the sofa. Naked. Skin, limbs, hair. She froze. Joanna and Adam. Her Adam. The pair parting, scrabbling away from each other as she gawped. Her heart shattering, mind numb.

  ‘Hell!’ Adam stood, scooping up clothing to cover himself. Joanna remained seated, curling up, face averted, her pendulous breasts still moving slightly. Kay turned and ran. Her world crashing about her. Panic clutching at her throat. Betrayal flooding her stomach with acid, adrenalin furiously pumping her blood faster than she could breathe. The bastard, the bitch.

  At home she steadied herself on the sink, tried to slow her breathing, drank water from the tap to wash down the bile in her gullet. Then she got out the brandy from the drinks cabinet, poured a tumblerful. She took a large mouthful, relishing the way it burnt her mouth and made her lips tingle. She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, flicked the lighter. Her hand shook. Everything shook.

  ‘Kay.’ He stood in the doorway.

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘Kay, I’m sorry.’ His voice was dry, like grass rustling.

  ‘That’s all right then, is it? That supposed to make me feel better?’ she said coldly.

  ‘Kay, I love you. This . . . it . . .’ He moved into the room, sat down. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘It means something to me,’ she shot back. ‘My husband committing adultery with my best friend. Means quite a lot, actually.’

  ‘Kay—’

  ‘Shut up!’ She drank again, a fiery mouthful, sucked angrily on her cigarette. There was so much anger. It was like a great cannonball inside, hot and heavy and rolling, rolling. How could you? she wanted to scream at him, How could you hurt me so, how could you risk all this, our marriage, our children? Why? Questions that had no answers.

  ‘Get out!’ she managed.

  ‘Kay.’

  She flung her glass at him, the drink splashing on his shirt and his neck, the tumbler crashing to the floor.

  He hesitated.

  ‘Fuck off!’ she screamed. Words she had never spoken before.

  He went.

  She found another glass, poured another drink, smoked more cigarettes. Looked out at a brisk, bright afternoon and felt her eyes swim. How could it all be there, looking just as it had before?

  When the twins woke she got them up, went through the motions of feeding and changing, the drink making her move a little more slowly, more carefully. She put Martin and Michael out to play in the garden. All the while nursing her anger, chewing over the shock of her discovery, seeing again Adam’s darker leg against Joanna’s, his buttocks, her breasts swaying as she sat and turned away. She wallowed in it, soaking up the misery, feeling
the bite of jealousy and the ache of grief settle in, the streams of emotion seep through her till it was all she was. Every hair, every cell sharing in the pain.

  She let her imagination run riot, fantasising about the two of them, her friend and her husband, digging out a conspiracy that dated back months – assignations, plans and schemes, efforts to cheat on her. She was a fool, such an idiot. How she had sympathised with Joanna when she’d told her about Bev and Ken that time. She had felt so sorry for Joanna, so glad that she and Adam were different. Hah! They had played her for a fool and that knowledge scalded her with shame.

  When Theresa and Dominic got back from school she made peanut butter sandwiches for them and mandarin oranges from a tin. She let them watch Crackerjack and then she got them all bathed and into bed earlier than usual. She couldn’t eat. She had a headache from the brandy but she didn’t care. A headache was nothing. She smoked more cigarettes, drank strong coffee. Poured herself the last of the brandy.

  He came back when it was dark. She heard the door, then his walk along the hall. She was sitting in the lounge. She hadn’t put the light on.

  ‘Kay.’ He’d been drinking too. She could smell it on him as he came closer, a yeasty smell, beer, not the spirit she’d doused him with. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she spat at him.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to do,’ he said in anguish.

  ‘It’s a bit late for that now, isn’t it? I wanted you to honour our marriage vows. I wanted you to love and honour me, to forsake all others. To be true to me.’

  ‘Kay, I promise—’

  ‘You promise? You promise what?’ she began to shout. ‘You don’t know how to keep a promise, you bastard! You rotten, cheating, bloody bastard! I hate you, Adam, I hate you for this.’

  There was a silence. She heard the blackbird outside trilling in the dark, the hoot of the train in the distance. Adam’s breath, harsh as though he’d been running. Then she heard him sit. The creak of the chair and a sigh.

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Well, I can’t divorce you.’

  He made a sound. Had she shocked him? Good. She wanted to frighten him, though, make him feel an ounce of what she was feeling. ‘I don’t know about the rest. Separation, maybe.’ Had he any inkling how unlikely that was for her? ‘I’d need to get a solicitor, maintenance for the children. And we’d need to stay in the house.’ She wouldn’t do any of it, though, would she?

  ‘Kay, please. It was one mistake, a stupid, bloody mistake. I love you, and the children. You mean everything to me. There’s no need to—’

  ‘What? Take it to heart? Don’t tell me what I need or don’t need, Adam.’

  ‘I just meant—’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How long have you been fucking Joanna?’ She swore to shock him.

  ‘Kay, really.’

  ‘The truth, Adam. How long?’

  A pause.

  ‘A couple of months.’ He cleared his throat.

  ‘When did it start?’

  ‘Kay . . . I don’t . . .’ He fell quiet.

  ‘Don’t remember? Why not? Do you sleep with the neighbours often? When?’

  ‘Why?’ He said softly.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Easter.’ he cleared his throat again. Four months, not two. ‘The dinner dance.’

  At the Tennis Club. Kay had left early so their babysitter could get home. ‘But Ken was there?’ The four of them had sat together.

  Silence.

  ‘You didn’t take her home. Where then?’

  ‘In the gardens.’

  She lit a cigarette, the flare from the lighter illuminating her face, the flame just catching a wisp of hair. She smelt the acrid stench as it shrivelled up, a tiny crackling sound.

  ‘Where else?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Did you do it here?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly.

  Liar. ‘Adam?’

  ‘No,’ he insisted.

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘Joanna’s.’

  ‘That weekend at Southport,’ she said flatly. ‘After the picnic? When we went horse riding?’

  ‘Kay, please, don’t.’

  ‘Tell me, Adam.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said and sighed.

  She felt her past unravelling. The memories distorted now by the image of them having sex. Bitterness flooded her anew. Joanna had lent her a stole that weekend. They’d all got drunk in the chalet bar. She’d been wearing Joanna’s stole and Joanna had been borrowing her husband. How ironic.

  ‘Since then, how often?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Lost count.’

  ‘What’s the point,’ he yelled, ‘dragging it all out. It’s not doing you any good. I’m sorry. What more can I say?’

  ‘The point,’ her voice trembled with fury, ‘the point is that I have a right to know. To know the truth. To know exactly what you have been doing. In her arms and between her legs. Twice a week, more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Once a week?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘And what do you like? When you get together? Fast or slow? Do you usually do it in the lounge or was today an exception? Do you satisfy each other?’

  ‘Kay, that’s enough!’ he shouted.

  She knew it would never be enough. No matter how many details she had she would never believe that he’d told her the whole truth. But she kept on.

  ‘Who started it?’

  ‘It’s not that easy . . .’

  ‘Someone must have made the first move, that night at the Tennis Club. You went outside together. Who suggested that?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Adam!’

  ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘That’s handy. Drunk but not incapable.’

  ‘She tripped, I helped her.’

  ‘How gallant!’

  ‘We didn’t plan it, Kay. It just happened.’

  ‘And today? Does Ken know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because he’s been unfaithful too, you know. Did Joanna say? With Bev, last time I heard. Regular Peyton’s Place round here, isn’t it? Must be catching. Have to hope none of you has picked up anything nasty, won’t we? Spread like wildfire.’

  Silence again. She drew on her cigarette, listened to the sizzle of tobacco. ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘No. It’s just a silly fling. It got out of hand. I never meant to hurt you. Neither of us did. I’ll make it up to you.’

  What a stupid expression. How could he ever do that? He’d ruined it. Ruined everything. No matter how good things were in the future he had taken the one thing that you couldn’t repair and damaged it. Time might reduce the sting and erase the clarity of the details but she would never trust him again. He had broken her trust and broken her heart.

  And as for Joanna, she couldn’t bear to think of that too. All those confidences, Joanna’s sardonic tone, sharing secrets. All a front, a con.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. ‘There’s blankets in the spare room.’

  ‘What are we going to do, Kay?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Joanna had the barefaced cheek to turn up at Faith’s coffee morning two days later. When she arrived, Kay had two urges – she wanted her to slap her, she wanted to run and hide. Of course, she did neither, she ignored her completely and gave a tight smile when Joanna made one of her acerbic remarks that made the others laugh. It’s as though nothing has happened. Kay was incredulous. So blasé about it. She hated her, with her flip comments and her boutique clothes and her rotten deceit.

  Kay left early, exhausted at the strain of maintaining a facade. She was halfway home when Joanna caught up with her.

  ‘Kay.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Let me explain.’

  ‘Go away. I don’t
know how you dare.’

  ‘Don’t be like this.’

  ‘How do you bloody well expect . . . !’ She broke off determined not to be drawn into talking about it.

  ‘Some of us make mistakes.’ Joanna put out her hand to touch Kay’s forearm, Kay wrenched her arm away.

  ‘We can’t all be saints,’ Joanna flared up.

  Kay flinched. Was that how she saw her, how they saw her? Goody two shoes? ‘Leave me alone. I don’t want to see you again. Don’t come to my house and don’t even look at my husband or I’ll make sure everyone knows what a slut you are, including Ken.’

  Joanna gave up – contempt and then resignation crossed her face. She turned away.

  Kay continued home, trembling with outrage.

  She buried their friendship: when she chanced upon Joanna at the shops or the park or in Church she treated her like a stranger: more than that, cut her dead. Inside, she seethed with bitterness. Over the weeks that followed, Kay gradually engineered it so that Faith and she spent time together and drifted apart from the larger group of women. She mentioned that Joanna was too flip and implied that she had been bitching about people behind their backs. She told Faith that there was never a chance to have a proper chat in a big crowd.

  She found managing the children and running the house increasingly hard, she felt tired and irritable but had trouble sleeping too. She made an appointment at the doctor’s. He prescribed tablets, they would take the edge off things, he said, calm her nerves.

  Slowly, begrudgingly, she resumed her relationship with Adam. As time went on there were moments when she forgot the damage that had been done, but she was aware that her love for him was tainted. And any affection and forgiveness was tempered by an abiding lack of trust and a current of suspicion that played through her all the time.

  Caroline

  He hated the visits. The first time he went, Caroline refused to speak to him, face blank, eyes heavy. He made an effort to talk but his words soon petered out. He sat and held her hand and tried to cut out the sights and sounds and smells around them.

  After a week he asked the nurse if he could see the doctor but was told he’d need a separate appointment for that. He made one. Aware it would mean even more time away from the business.