by Helen Slavin
‘Just what I want when I get home. To relive the fucking episode.’ His voice low, snarling at the edges. What he wanted when he got home was exactly that, to be home. Safe. Sound. Shut up.
Later. After not speaking. He stood in the kitchen doorway. Tell me about your day, Jeannie. Here, let me help you with the washing, as he took off her clothes.
What she wanted at first was to try to joke about it. But it wasn’t a joke, jokes made it worse. Made the first plate smash. That white plate spinning in orbit through the room, towards the back door. There was a serene magic about it, somehow, as she felt it slice past her head, barely brushing her hair, spinning and spinning, the chicken forestiere and potatoes anna, the carrots vichy, all travelling through space and time. She had to wash out the doormat. Even now on damp days it smelled of mushrooms and red wine.
What did I do? When did I do it? If I could just find out. It was as if someone had been there ahead of her and turned all the road signs around. Jeannie quizzed herself instead of sleeping. Each night that week there were more plates until there were no more plates—‘And whose fault is that? I’m sorry?’
On her knees. Down. On her knees.
When he was pleased or sated her head was flummoxed with a terrible euphoria. Then a screeching panic that she couldn’t remember exactly how she had cooked the steak or what particular variety of potatoes she had cut into chips.
But she could remember the bedroom. The territory where she tried to make it all up to him. In the bedroom. Or on the table. Or in the shed at the bottom of the garden. They could be together. She could reach him there. She was greedy for him. Jeannie wanted to be naked with Nathan, to be astride him or feel his tongue trail over her nipples. She wanted to be queen of all the women whose buttocks his hands had squeezed at. She loved him. She took him inside her, inside her mouth. Tried to claim him. Do anything, that was what she wanted. To him. With him. For him.
If he was moody that had to be worked with. This was what being married was about. It wasn’t about hearts and flowers, it was working together. She was his partner. He had a need for her to be there. She thought of what he saw at work, the mess and disaster he was trailing after, picking up everyone’s pieces. He needed her. If he didn’t speak to her for three days he had a reason. He was burning it all up inside and when he was ready he would be back. And she would be waiting. With opened legs.
Until.
She was with Debs, tilling up for the day. Nathan arrived unannounced.
‘Let Debs do that.’ A handsome, strong wink at Debs. Jeannie nodded and tried to finish counting. He simply lifted her onto his shoulder.
‘Me Tarzan, you Jeannie.’ And he slapped her arse, his face mocking lust. Even Irene from the coffee shop stopped puffing on her fag for five minutes.
‘Where can I get me one like that?’ she growled, disgruntled, as Nathan carried Jeannie out through the greenhouse to the carpark. At the back. Out of sight.
Where no one saw him putting her into the boot of his car.
He drove to the nature reserve. She could hear bottles clinking and then he opened the boot. Stood over her with a glass of wine. She wasn’t sure about this, was it going to be thrown in her face?
‘Take them off.’ He sipped at the wine, kissed her with it. ‘Take them off.’
She took her things off. They were in the Mereside carpark, right out of the way, the furthest reach of the nature reserve. Only the Watchtower Hide to look over them. It seemed enticing, exciting, intense. She remembered their first time here. Thought there was a message in that, a reaching back. The smell of him mingling with the cool undercurrent of the water, the baked scent of the dust in the carpark. Jeannie let go with no one near, felt released, as if everything had evened up. He’d worked it out and was back with her. For now. Hold on tight. Never let go. Finish the wine.
She suggested skinny dipping. Wandered, naked with her glass, towards the skewwhiff jetty through the reeds.
Before hearing him drive off.
He was gone for half an hour. Jeannie cowered, naked, in the water. Keeping within the reeds, uncertain whether he would ever come back.
When he did he strode along the jetty and looked down at her. ‘You don’t remember do you?’
‘Yes. Our first time. Here. Before. I remember. I remember.’
Nathan snorted as if that wasn’t important. As if that was the least of it. Jeannie panicked, if it was a test she was going to fail because she’d no idea what he meant. What was it? What else should she have remembered?
‘How can you be so fucking ungrateful? You have no idea have you? How I’ve loved you. What I’ve fucking done for you.’
Jeannie couldn’t answer. Could only feel tears and didn’t want to cry. He could just turn round and leave her. She’d have to find her way home, stark naked up the dual carriageway. Christ, she’d be in the reading pile at the Golden Monkey Chinese Takeaway again before Friday was out.
Then he reached down into the water, grabbed her arm, lifted her, flailing like a netted fish. As he carried her back to the car she was pinpricked with cold, too shocked to ask why. Too afraid.
So when he suggested they try for a baby she thought that whatever might have been wrong, whatever she had done wrong, was over with. Forgiven. He had rounded a corner somewhere and this was their way forward.
But in the end she knew it was just an excuse. To be at her. You can’t refuse me. We want a baby. Don’t we? And so he broke their spell in the bedroom. They did not share each other any longer. He took. He picked her over. And he needed to do it, she told herself, over and over and over.
Chainsaw buzz. She chips and chisels and carves into the memories. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle to her. There are straight edges she wants to keep so she can remember what the picture on the box was. But there are other pieces that need to be lost forever. Kicked under the rug; eaten by the dog.
Salvia officinalis purpureum
purple sage
aid to memory, wisdom
* * *
‘What did you do to your forehead?’ Geraldine asked.
Jeannie looked up, felt at her forehead as if she didn’t know there was a bruise. ‘Where?’ she asked, and had to look away because it was clear Geraldine didn’t believe her.
Or was it clear? Was it just that Jeannie didn’t know whether she was standing upright these days?
Geraldine reached forward with a tender thumb. ‘There, just there…’
‘Must have knocked it when I was down by the summerhouses.’ Jeannie brushed it aside. She couldn’t say that the bruise was part of their trying for a baby.
‘Turn over.’ His hand in the small of her back. Her body shunting up the bed as he shunted up inside her. Until she crashed into the carved wood of their headboard but he was going to come then, no matter what, and if she really thought about it, the black stars bursting and exploding might be beautiful.
She was a black star exploding. She didn’t eat well. The thought of spaghetti bolognese at her dad’s house made her physically sick. She grew thin, thinner than she had ever been in her life.
She dyed her hair blonde. On a whim one afternoon after a meeting with the garden designer, Alexandra, whose hair was soft and sandy coloured. As they sat outside at the coffee shop Jeannie thought it had the tone of a Bahamian beach and the sun caught it and played with it like light on water. They were meant to be discussing the way things were going with the garden design side of Jeannie’s business. Jeannie found she hadn’t really been listening to a word that Alexandra had said. She’d been mesmerised by the light and shade in her hair. She stared so hard she made Alex uncomfortable.
‘Are you all right Jeannie?’ She had to ask three times before Jeannie heard her. Then Jeannie quickly reached for one of her smiles and mentioned just how glorious Alex’s hair was, and they talked about the hairdresser and the shade she’d gone for.
Half way home from the salon she stopped off at the supermarket, saw the desert sunshine glar
e of the lighting bounce off her new hair, and panicked. What would he say? What if he didn’t like it? What if he shaved her head? Why had she done it? She didn’t even like blonde hair.
She didn’t like the way her ankle and wrist bones had begun to jut out so that she was angular and birdish. She wanted to be someone else. She had no idea how it had happened, but Jeannie Gaffney had been horribly lost. There had been an accident along the way, a hit and run. She had gone wrong somewhere—not shown him how much she loved him, perhaps? Why couldn’t she remember the wrong turn?
And then she was happy for a while because the blonde hair pleased him. His blonde was not going to cook, they would eat out, he would show her off. A thin figure draped in expensive clothes. She was his, and he was pleased with what he had made.
Ted Gaffney began to find that the only way to contact his daughter was to visit her at the Hanging Gardens. If he called at the house, Nathan was surly and Jeannie seemed distracted. Ted felt uncomfortable, out of place. He felt, if he was honest, as if he was creating tension, as if there was some secret challenge or test going on and his being there was counting against her. He had a terrible urge to take Jeannie’s hand and lead her away.
But it wasn’t up to him, not anymore, and whatever he thought he couldn’t act upon it. It seemed ridiculous, paranoid. But he had telephoned on a number of occasions and Nathan answered, brusque, unwilling. The first few occasions he put it down to a hard day at work. Later he had no idea what to put it down to because the ideas that came frightened him.
And who was she anyway, this brittle blonde woman posing as his daughter? At least, as Geraldine said, there had been no more bruises.
What Jeannie thought as she organised the perennial displays, as she showed the new girl how to void a credit card transaction, as she posed for publicity pictures for the local paper with Santa and his elves, what Jeannie thought was that a policeman brings his handcuffs.
It became obvious after a year of persistent, not to say dogged, sex that she was not getting pregnant. Jeannie blamed herself, a terrible double agony of guilt and relief each month. A baby was not going to help; a baby seemed more terrifying and Jeannie knew that her terror was keeping a baby away.
And she had lied. He did not like to go near her when she was menstruating and so she added a couple of days to her cycle, to keep him at bay. She needed the rest from him, from It. But it just made him greedier. Harder. Worse.
* * *
‘No.’
Jeannie had booked a stand at the regional Grow it Green Show at the Exhibition Centre a couple of hours’ drive away. She had spent months preparing a stand, growing all the specialist plants that Barbara had made the Hanging Gardens famous for. Nathan was furious because it meant Jeannie would have to stay away for a few days. A ‘No’ moment arrived.
‘No, let Debs go. You’re always ranting on about giving her more responsibility. Give her this.’
Jeannie tried to argue. It was her nursery, her garden centre. This was a huge event. Networking. Business.
‘Don’t argue the toss with me,’ he said, cold and calm. ‘You arguing the toss with me? Is that it? Calm down. Will you calm down? Look at the state of you. You’re not fit to be let out.’ It was a free-flowing torrent towards her, speedy and quiet, flooding her words of protest.
She was calm. She was so calm. And then as he wouldn’t listen she’d been so furious, wanting to beat at him, wanting to throw things and trying not to be hysterical, not to play into his hands. He laughed in her face in the end. Catching her by the wrists as she wrenched and pulled against him, not caring how much he hurt her. All he had to do was twist her around and he laughed, wrestling her, as if she was no effort at all.
‘Don’t try me.’ Pinning her onto the table. Strapping her hands to the chair with his belt.
He thought that was settled. So he didn’t notice that the Grow it Green event clashed with a stag do for one of his police buddies. He was going to be in Scotland for four days getting rat-arsed drunk and kite-surfing as criminals rampaged across the town. Jeannie knew that if she kept her mouth shut she could attend the event. She did whatever he asked. Stopped her mouth up with his cock.
* * *
Jeannie had just grabbed herself a takeaway coffee when the phone rang in the first quiet moment in two days.
The exhibition had been a huge success for the Hanging Gardens. She felt inspired and invigorated, had ideas of new things she wanted to do when they got back. Enough things to keep her so busy she might never have to go home. This is too good to be true and you know it. As she dug deep into her apron pockets for change, she thought it felt dangerous. Whatever happened she could never go back from this, this freedom, this feeling of lightness and sleep and daylight. And then he phoned.
She was feeling elated, reeling in the confusion of faces, plants, talk, PA announcements. Busy with change. With getting her hands dirty. Busy thinking that who knew a leather workman’s apron could make you feel so indestructible, so powerful. She should always dress like this, her hair a piled-up, pinned-up mess, her face smudged with John Innes No. 3. So she didn’t check the phone, was only expecting Debs or maybe Irene to be calling. A woman had bought all five of their Japanese acers and Debs had followed her home with them loaded in the back of the van, saying she’d ring to let Jeannie know where she was.
When the call came Jeannie thought she knew who it was. ‘Hello? Debs?’ she said. In the background the public address system announced a Pests and Prevention Q and A in Arena 2 beginning in five minutes.
‘Hello?’ Jeannie couldn’t hear. Thought the call lost. ‘Hello? Can’t hear you Debs. I’ll call you back.’
A hanging up. More than the call had been lost as Jeannie clicked on the screen and realised that the last caller had not been Debs. The last caller had been Nathan.
She knew now, had always known, there was no chance she could get away with it. She reasoned that the punishment would be got through, it would be worth it just for this space and time. This coffee. This would be a place she could go to in her head. A new place, safe. The smells and scents were crisp and wild in the vast exhibition hall, contained and concentrated and wonderful.
Alone in the Travelodge the last two nights, she had remembered what sleep was. Deep, refreshing sleep. She was not sticky with Nathan’s spillage. The battered ache of her pelvis faded. She hadn’t had to scrub her teeth five times to rid her mouth of the tang of him. She slept. He couldn’t touch her.
Now it was all going to be over. On the last afternoon as she and Debs packed up the stall she found hot tears rolling down her face, couldn’t keep control of herself. Hands shaking, face muscles working. Debs embarrassed to ask.
‘Ignore me,’ Jeannie whimpered at last, ‘It’s just my hormones. Ignore me.’
‘Here,’ Jeannie said, fumbling the keys out of her fleece jacket pocket. ‘Fetch the van round, Debs. Go.’ Anything to get rid of Debs. To try and stifle the thought that she did not want to go home.
Homeward, she drove slowly trying to savour the moments alone. She had only twenty-four hours before his return. She wanted to stretch them out. Maybe he wouldn’t come home tomorrow, maybe he would postpone it, lulling her into thinking it was no big deal. Then he’d be back. Bang.
Then she pulled into the driveway and saw Nathan’s car already parked up. Panic. Adrenaline. What lie could she try and tell? She’d been to Dad’s? She could lie that the PA was at the shopping mall. The giant mall that he hated. The panic tripled when their neighbour rapped on the window as she reached for her handbag.
‘He’s over at your dad’s.’ Looking very agitated. ‘Do you want me to drive you over there, Jeannie?’
Why? Why would Nathan be at Dad’s? Why couldn’t she just drive herself?
The phone call had pulled him home early. To catch her out. He had found the house empty and driven straight round to Ted Gaffney’s house. Ted was shocked by the way his son-in-law barged in, as if he thought Jeannie was
hiding out. As if his son-in-law was looking for a criminal and not his wife. There had been what Ted Gaffney politely called ‘an exchange of words’. Ted Gaffney did not tell anyone how Nathan had cuffed at him, or of his white-hot rage when Geraldine put herself between them. Nathan had left then, slamming the door so hard a pane of glass shattered.
Later, Uniform was called out to a hit and run. A WPC was first on the scene, a friend of Nathan’s, everyone called her simply Bailley. She thought Nathan should get out there. Because it was a woman walking, on her way home. Just parted from friends at her Wednesday night Spanish group and ploughed into, made into a rag doll at the roadside. A woman who was Geraldine.
Bailley had found the car involved. It had been driven up the dual carriageway, into the woods and set alight. Stolen. Joy riders. No hope of finding the bastards. But Bailley would be checking the town’s cctv system. She was going to go far, that girl.
Jeannie was shaking. Her fault. Why had she answered the phone? He had come home to catch her. Catch her out, and she hadn’t been there. So. What had he done?
What had he done?
Nathan drove them both home. Jeannie couldn’t say it out loud, couldn’t ask the question. Did you? Did you do this?
She didn’t have to ask. He had warned her: don’t try me.
* * *
The world dimmed to black and white for the funeral.
She spent what time she could with Dad. She spent the time trying not to blurt out what she had done to him. That it was punishment for her transgression and she wanted to take it back.
She found herself in a windshear of panic that if she spent too much time with Dad maybe that would endanger him. She had to keep him safe. Nathan did not like her spending too much time ‘over there’. He had taken to calling Dad and asking, ‘Is she there?’ as if she was an errant schoolgirl.