The Lemon Grove

by Helen Walsh

  ‘Jenn,’ he says.

  She will not look; and as long as she doesn’t look, as long as she keeps staring at the wall, this is not happening.

  The flat of his palm between her legs. She parts them slightly – but she does not spread them, she does not give in. He works her with three fingers; he is holding the entire weight of her body in his hand as he grips and lifts. Her pulse beats in his hand. The sound of the car coming up the dirt track. She rolls back and forth on his hand, clenching, trying to goad him with her buttocks, pleading with him to finish her off. His hand stays dead still.

  ‘Kiss me,’ he breathes into her clavicle. The car turns into the driveway. He increases the pressure of his hand but it remains fixed, like a clasp, keeping her stitched up, held together. Still in control; but how badly she wants to let go. A yelp seems to rear up from her guts. It is not release or ecstasy, but mercy, soaking through her pants to meet the sweat-hot cradle of his palm. The slap of a car door. Only one. Where is Emma? Footsteps on the terrace. His hand drops away, leaving her wide open, bereft. The cool sweep of the air conditioning breezes across the damp of her face; her soaking briefs. He hastens to the couch; picks up her book. She is still standing in the archway, dazed, when Gregory comes in. He is carrying Emma and her leg is in plaster.

  13

  Jenn watches day break from the kitchen window; streaks of green and pink slowly scratch the sky to life. The sea begins to glint, from grey to rippling silver. Not wanting to wake the house with the rumble of the electric kettle, she boils a pan of water on the stove. The cafetière is clogged with yesterday’s coffee and she just cannot be bothered. She digs out a jar of instant from the back of the cupboard. She has to stab the hardened coffee granules with a knife, then scrape them out. She lifts the pan from the stove; it keeps up its faint, melancholy bubbling and she pours into the cup. She drinks the coffee black, no sugar, recoiling at the first tentative sip, bitter like the residue of last night’s dreams. She swigs more, gulps hard. It scours her throat and somehow it feels right; it feels like sacrament.

  She has no concept of time, no idea how long she has stood at the window, but the coffee is cold and outside a mound of split and withered lemons is now visible in the pale morning light, raked into a compost pile at the furthest corner of the grove. Her mind loops: every train and twist of thought goes back to him. She places a hand on her chest; her heart skulks low in its cage. She would like to take it out and run it under the cold tap; she would like to wash away the grease and rawness until the juices run clear. She would like to march right up to his room and ask him to leave. She’s rehearsed the moment enough, these past few hours. But whenever she steels herself to the possibility, she is floored by the outcome. She pictures him gone, and she starts to come undone.

  She goes out to the terrace, the fresh morning light picking out the shabbiness of the recliners. The decking is dirty, its weather-proofing beginning to peel underfoot. Gingerly, she lowers herself down onto one of the chairs. Its cushioned padding is damp. Her eyeballs throb. She can feel her dull pulse through her eye sockets. It’s been a long time since she’s felt this sleep-starved. She sits a while, drifting, thinking back to the night shifts at the care home, all those years ago. Twelve-hour shifts, sometimes ten days in a row. If she could make the 7.30 a.m. bus back to Rochdale, she might be able to get four hours’ kip in, before her afternoon stint at the bookie’s. Greg put a stop to all that. He put a stop to a lot of things – for the better. Within six months of meeting him, she’d handed in her notice, gone back to college and inherited a daughter. Five years later she was managing a care home. She listened to him, back then; she trusted him. Greg always seemed to know what was right for her, and how to make it happen. She’d never had that before – not from any of her teachers, and certainly not from any boyfriend. Her dad had always shown faith in her, but that was different. His was more of a blind belief in her ability to make a go of things – to make the best of a bad hand. And she did; she was a grafter, Jenn. She was a worker, and she got herself out there, earning a living, and living the life, after a fashion. You’re a grafter, aye, love. Just like your mam. He’s there for a moment; she could reach out and touch him, until she blinks. Dad. What would he make of her now? He was very fond of Grigree. It didn’t matter that he was older, or that he was father to a baby girl. He was good; a good, solid man with a good job and a good, solid name. Grigree. He had a good, solid look too. Everything about him was big and commanding; reassuring. The sort of man a father wants for his daughter.

  There’s a crunch like the crushing of salt in a grinder as she tips her neck forward. Her shoulders hurt from sleeping in the spare bed last night, little more than a flimsy mattress on its hewn-rock base. Once upon a time it had been a treat for Emma to be allowed to sleep down there. She’d never dream of it, now.

  At one point she thought she heard footsteps. Whoever it was seemed to linger outside her door before shuffling back up the stairs. Greg? Had he come to apologise? He’d been cool with her since he got back from the hospital, and even though he didn’t say it, because he knew how unfair – how absurd – it might sound, deep down he blamed her for the accident on the cliff. She’d felt him stewing away in bed, simmering in the darkness. His eyes were closed but she could feel his mind ticking over, laying down his resentment – his vindication – between them like an unwelcome guest. When finally he did drift off, she was unable to. She took her featherless pillow and went downstairs. The footsteps outside the door were faltering, nervous; too light for Greg’s. But she couldn’t know. And once the thought had invaded – the possibility that Nathan had come to her, in the night, eager to slip between her sheets – there was no getting back to sleep. That wasn’t much more than a couple of hours ago. Now, the sun is on the rise, already starting to disperse the low bank of cloud that mottles the tips of the mountains. She can hear a van chugging down the hillside. And somewhere, on the other side of the hill, goat bells announce the new day. She is not ready for it; not yet. She picks up her chair and takes herself round to the side of the house. It’s shady here, cooler; the grass is still damp. She closes her eyes and tries to forget.

  She’s foggily aware of the creak of the gate, but she cannot drag herself awake. Then come the sighs and the panting for breath, macho sounds of exhaustion; recuperation. He hasn’t seen her up there, in the shadow. He’s bent double, his palms on his knees, catching his breath. He straightens up and comes limping up the path, stiff-legged, his T-shirt pulled over his head like a keffiyeh. The rutted ridges of muscle on his ribcage are speckled with beads of sweat. He slurps water from the standpipe, splashes his face and slumps back against the wall; and she feels it like a kick in the guts. Greg had a dozen more eloquent ways of describing the depravity of that sensation. He’d written most of them in the mist of the bathroom mirror when they first started screwing – one each morning for weeks, and she’d thought they were his. But whoever he was quoting – Shelley or Coleridge – none of them got as close as the clichés did to the naked savagery of that primal passion. Seeing Nathan was like being hit by a truck; she is seeing stars; it is gut-wrenching.

  He’s been running. His shorts are saturated. When did he slip out? Why didn’t she see him? Did he see her? He hauls himself over the little wall. As his shorts strain, she can see the outline of his cock. He pads across the terrace like a puma, then he’s gone. Out of sight. She can hear the squeak of his sweaty palm on the door jamb as he supports himself with one hand and flips off his trainers with the other.

  There’s a prolonged silence as she waits to hear his footsteps. He must have gone up to his room. The voice takes her by surprise.

  ‘You didn’t sleep either, then?’

  It seems to be coming from directly above her, from the kitchen window. She doesn’t stir. Concentrates on a sandy gecko astride the rim of a chunky terracotta pot.

  ‘Jenn? Can we talk?’

  She cannot say the words. He runs the tap. She hears him s
ighing as he fills a glass. She pictures the undulations in his throat as he slakes his raging thirst, and her stomach folds in on itself. The glass is set down firmly. She hears it hit the table with a decisive thud. She’s thinking it all out, preparing her big speech, when he comes back over the terrace. He seems to flicker in and out of her vision, like a cine film; he’s there, yet he is not real. She knows what she has to say; it must be good and it must be final.

  As though he’s read her eyes and knows his fate, Nathan turns sharply, stops with his back to her and hesitates, his shoulders rising and falling. He starts to say something then checks himself; strides back inside the villa. Minutes later, she hears the shower in the main bathroom being powered up. She feels vulnerable, rejected. She heads inside to find him but steadies herself; lingers in the kitchen, thinking, thinking. She puts the kettle on for coffee.

  He is sitting in his underpants at the desk in the bedroom, deep in thought, deep in flow, his pen moving deftly across the page. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust and the image takes her by surprise – although it shouldn’t. There was a time, not so long ago, when barely a morning went by without her coming down to find him this way, hunched over the kitchen table, hammering the keys of his clunky old typewriter. He told her that it made him feel more of a writer – the travail of banging away on his Olympia. But that last batch of rejections seemed to snuff out Greg’s flame for good.

  He still wrote – but he wrote to order, not for himself. He wrote articles for journals; he wrote about the forgotten women poets of the Romantic era, Hemans and Landon. Who even cares about this stuff? he’d say, booting up his laptop with a weary resignation as she was turning in for the night. But right now she knows it’s not a Romantic driving his motor. He is working on something of his own. Something new, perhaps – she knows better than to ask. She pauses at the door to watch him a while. His forearms and neck are reddish-brown, but his torso is white. The sight of him stirs pity in her – a new ingredient in their relationship, and one she doesn’t like.

  His pen hovers as he registers her presence, before diving back to the page with renewed alacrity. She tiptoes over and sets the tray down to the side of him. He pauses to take in the coffee pot, freshly made lemon juice and yesterday’s pastry, revived in the oven. He’s aware of what this is, a peace offering, and he takes her wrist and squeezes it, kisses it – then he takes up his pen again.

  ‘Somewhere there’s beauty; somewhere there’s freedom; somewhere he is wearing his white flower,’ he says.

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘Isn’t it? If only it were mine.’

  She hovers there, hoping he’ll elaborate, but he turns back to the page, twirling the pen between his fingertips. She lays a gentle hand on his shoulder; leaves him to it.

  She runs a bath. She tips in a miniature bottle of rosehip bubble bath. She’s going to lie back and close her eyes for ten minutes; and when she opens them she will start anew. She can draw a line and move forward. She smiles, happy, wistful, as she bins the Malmaison bottle and remembers their night in Edinburgh. Their tenth wedding anniversary. She’d impulse-bought a wine-coloured basque and matching suspender belt from a lingerie boutique on the high street, but Greg was uneasy; he hadn’t wanted her ‘trussed up’. She felt foolish as she took the unwanted underwear back the next day, still in the plastic bag with the labels intact. She took him for lunch with the refund. She still felt foolish as she ordered a bottle of burgundy she knew he’d adore but could never afford.

  The bubbles are spilling over the side and she snaps the taps off. When she slides in, water sloshes onto the floor. For a moment there is silence. Calm. The peace is broken by Greg calling out to Emma that he’ll be with her in a moment. She hears the grudging scrape of his chair, the slap of his feet as he huffs past the en-suite door and turns into the corridor. Is he talking to Nathan out there? She strains an ear through the rumble of the pipes. She can hear Nathan’s nervous laughter; see his dimple as he smiles and tries to please. His white, even teeth. She squeezes her thighs tight together; and how quickly her resolve and regret turns to hunger.

  She ducks her whole head beneath the water and tries to wrench herself free of him; dampen her thoughts with the mundane. When did Greg say they were replacing Emma’s temporary plaster? Do they have to return the crutches? Does she need to give their bank a call to check whether the travel insurance that comes with their Premium Account has excesses or exclusions? It’s useless. The smarting between her legs is painful now, impossible to ignore. She should attend to it before it takes over.

  Uneasy with the feel of her fingers, she slides the soap bar between her legs. It slips away; she has to dig her nails in to get some purchase. Slowly, she eases it to the spot where the ball of his hand had held her, his for the taking. She moves the bar gently, down then up, down then up, tentatively at first, out of synch with her accelerating heartbeat. Down then up, again and again, until she is no longer conscious of the act itself; she is looking down on her oscillating wrist slamming in and out. Bath water slaps onto the floor in rhythmic waves. Jenn lifts her hips, her face screwed up, her eyes tight shut to the whitewashed wall of the archway, just down there. Yesterday. She fills herself with the feel of his hands on her waist, the veins pumped up on his wrists as he felt for her; lifted her up. And the smell of him, the salty damp in his hair; his sweat, so complex in all its notes, all of which mingle to conjure the smell of Youth. She stops. Her wrist is numb from squeezing the soap so hard. A few more strokes and she’ll be gone; but with it, he is gone, too – and she can’t bear that. She wants to hold on to it – to him – as long as she can. She wants to turn herself right round and kiss him, like he asked her to. She wants to kiss him, hard, on the mouth. And then. And then she’ll let him go.

  ‘Jenn! For God’s sake, open the door!’

  She stiffens, drops the soap. The voice comes again.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  She can hear it in her voice, the automatic, gay cadence of a child who’s been caught with a biscuit before tea.

  ‘You’ve locked the door,’ he says. Not a question but a statement. He shakes the handle for emphasis.

  ‘Jesus, Greg – just use the main bathroom.’

  She is no longer squirming, but indignant. Irate.

  ‘I need to speak with you.’

  The angry ball of heat moves up from her thighs to her stomach and continues to thud as she steps out of the bath and pads to the door, her wet hair dripping a trail behind her.

  She pauses before she undoes the catch. She feels exposed; found out. It’s obvious what she’s been doing; what she’s been thinking. She winces at the tell-tale red of her cheeks. She swoops for a towel, dabs between her thighs and drapes it around her. A pulse in her neck beats fast as she slides back the lock and wonders: Did he tell her, then? Has Nathan told Emma? Even if not, is this how it will be from now on? Every raised voice, every question or silence met with is this it? Greg pushes his way in.

  ‘It’s Emma,’ he says. He presses his lips together, tries a smile; if anything, he looks embarrassed. ‘Can you give her a hand? She needs a bath.’

  Her relief at this stay of execution is quickly overtaken by ire. Does he not even suspect? Is it beyond his imagination that a young, beautiful male might desire his ageing wife? She slips into a towelling robe. Her voice comes out as a rasp, dried and brittle.

  ‘So do I! Couldn’t you or Nathan sort it out between you?’

  A breeze from the balcony drifts across her Judas cheeks. She puts a hand to her face, still hot to the touch.

  A spark of anger snaps in his expression. ‘Nathan? You think that’s appropriate? You’d be okay with him seeing our daughter naked?’

  No. I wouldn’t, she thinks, and a zip slides down, opening her up; her nerve endings raw and exposed. Greg bends from the waist to retrieve the bar of soap from the floor and places it back in the soap dish. Without any further deference to her, he sheds his underpants and steps
into the bath.

  ‘Oh yes! Nice …’ He lowers himself down; releases the plug to let out some of the water. ‘I was thinking we might drive up to Sóller later, seeing as we didn’t quite make it yesterday. What d’you reckon? Nice lunch at the Gran Hotel?’ He immerses himself fully beneath the bubbles. She hears him pop up again. ‘The number’s on the cork board if you fancy giving them a ring.’

  She pictures him wiping the suds from his eyes, a foamy hat on his head, looking a tiny bit baffled and a tiny bit betrayed as he registers the empty room.

  He is there in the corridor, standing barefoot on one of the chintzy pews. He is on his tiptoes, his upper body wedged in the small, circular window as he leans out trying to reach something; she tries not to stare at the taut brown back exposed as his T-shirt rides up. She keeps her gaze trained on Emma’s door as she draws level with the pew. Suddenly, with a deft jump, he’s down again, next to her. His hands are carefully cupped.

  ‘Look.’

  He opens them up tentatively, like a book he doesn’t want you to read. Sheltered in the cup of his palm is a little gecko. It limbers up on its front legs as though trying to get a proper look at her.

  ‘He likes you.’

  The space behind the creature’s front leg is pulsing wildly.

  ‘It’s terrified,’ she says. He closes his hand around it and half turns his body away, as though the creature were a toy, and she might snatch it away.

  ‘No – he just senses your fear,’ he says. ‘He’s responding to your pulse. Once you slow down, he will too.’

  They stand there like that for a while, understanding everything; saying nothing. She doesn’t flinch when his big toe presses down lightly on her foot. Encouraged, he moves across to stroke the roof of her instep. She drops her chin to watch his beautiful brown toe move round to probe the hollow of her ankle.