The Secrets of Married Women

by Mason, Carol

  I manage to run a bath, cock a leg over the tub into the too hot water, almost numb to the scorch that slides up my body. I let the water run, draw my knees up and rock on my bum, feeling the soothing wake down there where I feel so sore. I stay like this, with my chin floating, until the water goes cold. Then I crawl out, shiver, and throw up again before I reach the bowl. The phone rings repeatedly. I hear it from the floor of our walk-in wardrobe, where I somehow find myself, sitting wrapped in a wet bath towel. Even as a kid, I loved to cry in cupboards.

  I should have told him to stop. Or did I? Why can’t I remember? All I really remember is that he had me up against a wall and I mumbled something about how I had fallen for him. Did I really say that? Then there was that grubby ceiling, and he was calling me Bebe.

  I screw my face up and press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.

  I don’t sleep Friday night at all, but by Saturday I’m so worn out I sleep half the day. When I wake up some time in the early evening, with a fuzzy a headache, it hits me—strangely only now—that we didn’t use a condom. My mind rattles through dates. I think I’m safe. Thank God. The damage doesn’t seem quite so devastating.

  Sunday is a blur. Monday morning, I wake up in a whole other panic. I’m at the doctor’s as the doors open, convinced I’m riddled with diseases. When you think how old he is, all those years of bachelorhood, he must have had hundreds of women. And he clearly doesn’t care about condoms. What if he’s one of those blokes who take the attitude Well, somebody gave it to me so I don’t care who I give it to…

  I don’t know him, do I?

  I never did.

  What if I give Rob something? I think of his gorgeous clean body. How would I live with myself?

  Diane Wilson, my doctor, doesn’t work Mondays, the receptionist informs me. So I’m forced to tell a sheltered-looking young male locum that I’ve had extramarital sex and I’m going to need testing for STI’s. He asks me, dispassionately, if my partner and I used a condom. I feel like I’m back in school. I can’t tell him why we didn’t, because I’m not even clear myself. I want to say, Look, I’ve been married for ten years. My husband was my only lover. I don’t just carry a box of them around in my bag, on the off-chance. I’m not that sort of girl. The entire condom culture is something I feel passed me by. But I don’t tell him anything. I just sit there cringing.

  Then he tells me to undress from the waist down. Next, my feet are in stirrups and my crotch is about two millimetres from his face. The tears quietly roll down my cheeks as he scrapes away beyond the turquoise sheet. He gives me the morning-after pill just to be certain, looks at me like a disappointed parent, and I skulk out of there clutching my prescription.

  I can’t drive. I just sit there in my hot car gripping the steering wheel. A burly traffic warden taps on my window, tells me I have to either move or feed the meter. I tell her I’ve no change, hoping she’ll see the state I’m in and take pity. ‘Then move it will you,’ she orders. So I do. It’s a miracle I get home alive, or that I don’t kill somebody.

  Rob calls on Monday night from some hotel in Yorkshire, and I am feeling violently ill, probably from that damned morning after pill. He says he’s been ringing and ringing and when he tried my mobile some man with an accent answered. I’d completely forgotten my phone was in my bag! So now I have to make up some story about how I was mugged, to account for this, and for why I had to cancel our credit cards, and our bank debit card. We got a new pin number recently and I could never remember it, so I’ve been carrying it around in my wallet. Rob would kill me if he knew.

  I babble out my pack of lies. The agony he clearly feels for a trauma I’ve not been through shames me almost more than the trauma I have. I have never lied to Rob beyond your average white one.

  ‘Well I can’t believe you’d not call the police!’ he says after he’s asked me to describe in precise detail every last cut or scrape I’m tired of telling him I don’t have. He can’t seem to believe the bloke could have mugged me without at least leaving a bruise.

  ‘It was a bag grab,’ I keep telling him. ‘He pushed me. I fell, but I just went down on one hand.’

  ‘Please tell me you went to see the doctor Jill.’

  ‘Like I’ve said sixty times, Rob, I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine.’ Oh no. What if the doctor’s office calls if they find I’ve got VD, and Rob answers? How will I explain that?

  There’s another exasperated pause. ‘For Christ’s sake Jill, just do me one favour, call the police. Just call them. Right this minute.’

  I break a cold sweat. ‘But they never go after muggers -’

  ‘That’s not the point! You can’t go around not reporting crimes because you think the police won’t do anything. What kind of society would we be living in if everybody did that?’ He sighs again. For a brief and shining second I think he’s giving up, then he says, ‘Look, I’ll phone them for you. In fact, I’m going to hang up and ring them right now.’

  ‘No!’ I blare.

  ‘What do you mean no? Why can’t I call, if you won’t?’

  ‘Because… because I don’t want you to!’ I’m practically shrieking. ‘This is my business! I’m the one that was hurt!’

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t hurt.’

  I pause. ‘I’m not. I mean… I’m not.’

  I can hear his frustrated breath. ‘Jill, you’re acting very weird. What’s wrong with you? You’ve got me very worried.’

  I start to bawl. ‘Don’t you understand, I want to try to put this behind me.’ I am incoherent. I am over the top. For somebody who has supposedly just been mugged.

  He pauses. His voice softens. ‘Don’t cry like that. Please don’t cry, when you’re there and I’m here and there’s nothing I can do to comfort you.’ He breathes steeply through his nose and I hang on to that phone thinking, My God, Rob, please don’t ever stop caring about me like this. But I’ve got some awful sixth sense that my days are numbered. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘why don’t you call Neil. He’ll tell you what to do. I’ll even call him if you—’

  ‘—Rob, please, please stop wanting to call people. Just drop it.’

  He’s silent for a moment or two. Then he says, ‘Hang on a minute. I’ve just realised something.’

  I hold my breath.

  ‘Your mobile got stolen. So when I rang… that must have been your mugger! The bastard answered your damn phone!’

  My heart stops.

  ‘Right then. I’m calling him back. The fucker. This’ll shock him…’

  ‘No!’ I scream.

  ‘Yeah! Never mind no!’ He sounds excited, like he’s relishing putting the boot in.

  ‘No! Leave it. Just leave it. Please, please, leave it.’

  I can tell by the heavy sigh, and his even heavier silence, that he’s throwing his hands in the air. ‘I tell you Jill, I really don’t understand you sometimes. All I want to do is call the bastard and give him a piece of my mind. Or maybe I’ll call the police and give them the number—’ He’s thinking aloud.

  ‘No! How many more times do I have to say it?’

  ‘Christ,’ he says, clearly shocked by me. ‘Okay. Okay. Keep your hair on. I won’t if you don’t want me to.’

  My hysteria comes down a peg or two. ‘D’you promise?’

  ‘I don’t know why it matters to you, but… look, alright, if you insist… It’s forgotten about.’ Then he says, brightly, ‘Why don’t you come down here? Take the train in the morning. Put the dog in the kennel. We’ll check into a hotel in York. It’ll take your mind off this.’

  ‘No,’ I snivel.

  ‘Argh!’ he says, in a heart-goes-out-to-me sigh. ‘Why not, Jill?’

  I ache at his concern for me. ‘Because I don’t want to. I just want to be alone for a bit. Can’t you leave me alone?’

  ‘Why are you acting like a freak?’ he asks me, with his peculiar brand of affection. ‘I mean, you said it yourself, you just got your bag nicked. They didn’t hurt you. You�
��ve not been raped. I don’t know why you’re acting like a nutcase.’

  If I don’t get my act together my behaviour’s going to give me away. ‘You’re right. I’m fine. I’m being stupid. But I’d still rather not travel all that way there.’

  He sighs. ‘Well, if there’s no persuading you, I’ll see you some time tomorrow.’ There’s a pause and then he adds, ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ I cringe.

  We hang up. I immediately ring up and cancel my mobile, then rack my fuddled head to see if there’s anything else I’ve overlooked. Then I crawl onto the bed and hug his pillow and tell it the one thing I can’t tell him: how sorry I am for what I’ve done, what a disgusting, disgrace of a human being I am.

  That corridor. The wonky number six nailed onto that door. Why didn’t I run when I saw that hovel? The thin bedsheets. His penis inside me, and however many others he’s been with. I look at Rob’s pillow. This pillow used to belong to my one and only lover, on my sanitized bed, in my fragrant life.

  I run another bath, dumping some salt in it to act as a disinfectant. Then I dig out a turkey baster from our kitchen drawer. Then, crouched in the water, I fill the baster and inject the warm salty water up inside myself. It feels melodramatic, like something I’ve seen in a Mike Leigh film. But with every squirt I imagine I’m cleansing every bit of his disgustingness out of me, ridding myself of him thoroughly.

  Some time on Tuesday—or is it Wednesday now?—I remember I have an animal and I take him around the block. He charges down the street, tall, head perky, scanning the scene for entertainment and mischief. So when he finds it, in people and their dogs, I have to stand and pass the time of day, and act normal, which is a massive strain. As I come back in the door the phone rings. It’s Leigh. ‘Wendy and I have been ringing you at work but they said you’ve been off, they think you’re sick but they’re not sure. Your mobile’s dead. We’re worried. What’s the matter?’ So I tell her the mugging nine-yards and how I had to cancel my phone.

  ‘Jesus, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ It’s an unconvincing yes. I cannot, I must not tell Leigh. Nobody, for that matter. Ever.

  ‘Well, in that case, given that you’re okay, can we go out tonight? There’s something I’m bursting to tell you and it won’t wait.’ She has that irritating glee in her voice.

  ‘Look, I’m not well enough. I think it’s—a bug—on top of the mugging. I really can’t go to any bar.’

  ‘Do you want me to come over?’

  She wants to for her own reasons, I can tell. I just want her off the line. ‘Look, no. I’ll ring you when I’m feeling a bit better.’

  ‘Well, don’t take too long, because we have to talk.’

  A bit later on I hear my doorbell. The impatient ding-a-ling-a-ling. The dog barks up a storm. I hold my breath until I’m convinced they’ve gone away. Then the phone rings. It’s Wendy. I don’t answer, but hear her message:

  ‘Where are you?’ The concerned voice of a friend seems to reverberate off the sad walls of my heart. ‘Leigh was insisting on coming round so I thought I’d come with her to see how you are. We’re worried about you. But you’re not there. We thought you were sick… well maybe you went to the doctor’s. Anyway, we brought you something. It’s on your doorstep.’ Then I hear Leigh chime in, ‘Along with your belated anniversary present. I researched high and low on the Internet for this company, so you better use it. Anyway. I hope you get better. I’ll try you later.’

  I go downstairs when I’m convinced the coast is clear, and peek out of the window. On my doormat is a big carton of ‘homemade’ soup from that lovely new place, Stockpot, that just opened in the town centre. And under it is an envelope. I open it and it’s some sort of registration papers… to Canine Obedience school. Leigh has attached a Post-It note that says, ‘They’re the best in the area. Trust me, I am now an authority!!! I’ve got you eight lessons. If the little effer doesn’t pass with flying colours I want my money back!!!’

  I go back in the house, look in the mirror. I’m a weird shade of taupe and I’ve still got burst blood vessels all over my cheeks from how hard I threw up. I have good friends. For some reason this makes me sadder, especially given that I can’t confide in either one of them. I crawl back into the wardrobe and cuddle one of Rob’s sweaters again. Kiefer sits sentry outside champing through a shoe.

  Next thing I know, I hear my name. I open my puffy eyes, not knowing if it’s day or night, except that I am still sat there, and Rob is crouched in front of me with the dog in a cinnamon-bun shape at my feet. ‘What the…?’ he touches my face. ‘Jill?’ his thumb dusts my cheek. ‘What’re you doing sitting in here for God’s sakes?’

  Slowly coming around, I shake my head.

  He pulls me into his chest, circles me in his arms. ‘This is all because of the mugging?’ He sounds sceptical.

  I lay my head on him. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’m not feeling very good.’ I wasn’t planning on being like this when he got in. I was planning on being washed and made-up and ready to do a very good impression of someone who was okay. But he has come home early. My sweet, worried husband. Of course he would.

  He kisses the top of my head, plucks me up. ‘The bastard, I’d like to kill him,’ he says, of the phantom mugger, and I bury my face in his shoulder. He carries me over to our bed, where he cradles me like I’m a needy little bundle of vulnerability. ‘You’re alright now. If he comes near you again I’ll tie his feet in a knot and ram them so far up his backside they’ll come down his nose.’ He kisses my head again, as though his life depends on healing me. And I bumble something about how it’s not just the mugging, but I think I’ve come down with a bug too.

  We lay there ages until he has comforted my tears away, and I’ve picked up the pattern of his breathing and I’m breathing in step with it.

  Later on I tell him I want to go out by myself for some fresh air. ‘Well just take my phone and call me at some point and let me know you’re okay. And for God’s sakes don’t carry a handbag,’ he tells me.

  I am pitiably aware that I don’t deserve this man. An odd change for a girl who not so long ago was so sure that she deserved better.

  I walk down the Quayside, umbrella-less in the lashing rain, and stand on the Millennium Bridge overtop The Tuxedo Princess, the floating nightclub where Rob and I met. Then I drag myself up Grey Street, the street that today looks like its name, dodging squashed chips on the pavement, smelling the reek of urine up walls. A drama is going on outside of a clothing boutique between a young security guard and a pensioner who has a shirt dangling from a coat-hanger that’s somehow got itself attached to the back of her mac. I disappear down another street and come out at Fenwick’s where I order a cappuccino and am overcome with the urge to throw up again. I try to will the feeling away by being very, very still. Other than the odd crust of bread, I don’t think I’ve eaten in days. My lips are chapped, my mouth parched, and I’ve still got that ache in my pelvic region.

  I walk back to the Monument Metro, get on a train with half a million single mothers and buggies, and babies with tattoos and pierced ears. I go to the end of the line and back with my head resting on the window, staring, as we pass through tunnels, at alternating light and dark. And then I go home, not having reached any sort of clarity that I hoped coming out would give me. As I walk in our front door, I register how different everything feels now, once something’s done that there’s no taking back, since I let a third person into our marriage. Rob is on the sofa, in a room with no light. He hasn’t put the telly on, and the dog is beside him chomping through a bone. The air is filled with loss.

  I will win him back again. Even though he doesn’t know I’ve lost him. I get an odd comfort from this.

  ‘Something terrible happened while you were out,’ he says. His face is pure end-of-the-world misery.

  I reach backwards for the nearest chair. Andrey has been here. I sink into the seat. It’s something equally as bad. I j
ust know it.

  ‘What Rob?’ I can barely croak. My heart is hammering.

  ‘It’s too awful to put into words,’ he says.

  ‘What? For God’s sake?’ I am about to collapse with dread.

  He looks at me with that face. Then he holds up one of his best leather loafers. ‘The fucker half ate it, didn’t he. Look. Two hundred quid shoes and it’s got a sodding tongue now,’ he shakes the shoe so that the sole flaps against the upper, like the mouth of a leather puppet.

  I’m so relieved I could practically kiss the dog.

  ‘I’ll never get a pair as comfortable as these again,’ he says. Then after a few more moments of mourning his loss, he asks, ‘So how are you, anyway, after your walk?’

  ‘I’m fine. Really. Back to normal again.’

  He looks at me with uncertain faith.

  We eat fish fingers and oven chips, which he makes for us. I watch him secretly as he lines up three chips on a bun, rolls it up and stuffs the end into his mouth. Poor naïve Rob. What a higher price I should have put on his love. Then I’m a little angry at him. If only he had talked to me… If he had stopped things from getting so bad. I stare at his fingers, the upward-turning tips, his jaw, his ears, the expression of concentration as he eats. And I cannot, cannot believe that I’ve had another man inside my body, that I told another man I might have fallen in love with him.

  What was I thinking?

  ‘I don’t want to push it, but are you sure you’re feeling better? You seem…’ He looks at me across the table. ‘Still not yourself.’

  I nod. ‘I’m fine. I keep telling you.’

  ‘I know. And it’s not very convincing, obviously.’

  I fake great interest in a fish finger. Thank God he doesn’t know. And as long as only I do, he never will.

  He tells me about his weekend away. As he talks, I get a sinking thought. Shit. My mobile has my entire telephone address book on it, including Rob’s work numbers. What if the Russian copied numbers down before the phone got disconnected? If he rings Rob to tell him?