by Liz Lawler
She broached the subject carefully now. ‘I wonder whether we should invite your parents over sometime. Invite them for a Sunday lunch perhaps?’
He seemed momentarily at a loss for words. He stared through her, frowning a little, before focusing again. ‘They’re simple people, Tess. Our lives wouldn’t suit them.’
What a sad reply, she thought. ‘You’re nothing like them, from what little I remember of them,’ she commented as he turned away from her to attend to the food he was cooking. ‘What were they like as parents? Strict? Or did they spoil you?’
He shrugged. ‘One makes do with what one has.’
His reply stunned her, it sounded so unkind. She wondered if this was the cause of his behaviour, if he had a deeply rooted identity problem.
He turned and caught the surprise on her face. ‘The trick is to know when to let go of what one doesn’t need.’
Tess was struck by the coldness of his words, more so because he was saying it in a tone that was light and matter-of-fact. It made her aware, though, he had no admiration for his parents.
The mushroom risotto he’d made was served in deep white bowls and looked perfect, yet each mouthful was a struggle to get down her tight throat. She had to concentrate hard to swallow and not let her mind wander as she could become immediately overwhelmed if her thoughts didn’t lay dormant.
Across the dining table, she noted his amenable manner, as if nothing was changed between them.
‘I thought we could go away when all this business is finished with your job,’ he said in a pleasant tone, gaining her instant attention. ‘Would you like that?’
She smiled and nodded automatically. He made it sound like this business had nothing to do with him. Had he allowed himself to believe that?
‘I’m thinking Vienna. Autumn should see it at its best. Fewer tourists.’
‘Have you been before?’ she asked, knowing she had to respond at some point. She must learn how to cope with conversations like this as he might decide not to help her at all. He was her best bet right now. If she could persuade him to at least admit to that nod it would be something. Even if he were to say he was nodding at something else it would show she had not acted wilfully.
‘Yes. And I think you’d like it. I shall take you to the Vienna State Opera House and then maybe dine at the Vestibül. It’s rather wonderful.’ He smiled. ‘Won’t that be something nice to look forward to?’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ she agreed, thinking of the happy holiday they had on their honeymoon. Cornwall in July should have been sunny. For most of the two weeks they were away it was rainy and cold, but she’d been so happy she hadn’t cared. She’d frolicked on the sand and gone in up to her thighs in the cold sea. Happy to be loved. She wanted to pinch herself and wake up from this nightmare. How could that happiness have just gone?
He put down his knife and fork, placing them neatly together on the plate. He drained his wine glass, patted his lips and wiped his hands with a linen napkin. ‘Now,’ he said, standing. ‘Let’s forget dessert. I think you and I need to do something about this baby-making. What do you say?’
Tears pressed behind her eyes. He was asking her to make love with him, make eye contact with him as if completely infatuated.
Her world had been tipped upside down, pushing her unanchored into darkness, and now this. She smiled, compliant, and rose from her chair.
Chapter Twenty-One
In the bathroom she swallowed two paracetamol with a cupped hand of tap water, before seeing a glass she could have used. Her brain was pounding inside her skull. It had been another night without sleep and she was feeling ill from it. Dizzy, disorientated, dulled. She sleepwalked through her chores, struggling to get to this afternoon, unable to sit or relax. Her body wouldn’t allow it. She kept feeling the ghost of his hands still touching. It humiliated her to recall how she used to want him, how forward she had been to have him inside her. Last night she thought it would never end and had willed herself to stay in that bed until it was over. Pretended to moan and enjoy, while her insides corroded. He had killed her soul with his lies. He had broken her heart.
She climbed into the bed and buried herself beneath the covers. If she could sleep she could cope. Or at least have the energy to try.
She was drowning. She couldn’t breathe. The wet pressure on her face was suffocating and terrifying. She opened her mouth to scream and choked on water pouring down her throat. Her lungs were desperate for air and the added weight on her chest was crushing the life out of her.
The weight on her body suddenly lifted. Something wet was dragged off her face. She raised her head while gagging and spluttering and heaving for air, then opened her eyes. He was standing right beside the bed and was waving something in her face. Her heart skidded to a halt as she saw her pills. Stupid, stupid her. She forgot about them.
‘I asked for the truth and yet still you lied. You have deceived me again,’ he said in a low voice.
On the bedside drawers she saw an empty glass and a sodden flannel. He tapped his finger against the glass.
‘Did you think you were drowning? It’s shocking how effective a glass of water can be. You’ve made me do something I’m not proud of, but after seeing you sleeping and seeing tablets left out on the sink… Then the relief when I realised you hadn’t taken them all. The relief of putting them safely away, only to be shocked again as my fumbling hands knocked things. Your lies fell out into the sink.’
He stood over her and held the blister pack of contraceptive pills. He shook his head at her sadly and flicked them towards her face slowly, one at a time, while he talked.
‘Lies, Tess, have got you to here. Lies even on our honeymoon as you so deviously demonstrated when you spat out that pill.’ He let the empty packet drop on her face. ‘You’ve made me not trust you after this,’ he said bleakly.
Tess felt her insides buck, forcing her to pitch sideways as more water came up her throat. Coughing, with a heave of breath she spluttered out a sorry, desperate for him to go and to leave her alone.
‘I won’t again,’ she wheezed in a high thin tone. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you?’ he said, looking in her eyes. ‘I wish I could believe you. After all I’m trying to do for you with this mess you’ve made at work. Tell me, Tess, do you think that’s fair?’
She numbly shook her head.
He stared at her and then at the wet on the bedside drawers, on the pillow and sheet. His eyebrows rose.
‘What a mess. What a mess. You’d better clean this bed up. It’s not fit to lie in.’
Through stunned eyes, Tess watched him walk towards the door. Too shocked to cry, too drained to find the energy.
He carried on walking to the door, before stopping and turning to look at her. ‘You’re breaking my heart, Tess.’
Then he closed the door on her.
He was gone when she went down the stairs at five o’clock, and she was surprised it was so early. She’d thought when he woke her in that terrifying way it was evening, that she’d slept for hours, but it was only the middle of the afternoon. He must have left work early to check on her, and having punished her gone out somewhere.
She had been upstairs for what seemed like hours cleaning her mess and didn’t hear him leave. She’d dragged herself out of the bed and moved like someone recovering from an operation as she bundled up the linen. Now the bed just needed remaking. She downed a glass of water and climbed wearily back up the stairs.
She was down on her knees by his side of the bed, exhaustedly pushing the overhang of sheet under the heaviest mattress imaginable. She had too much of it over this side and was too tired to get back up and pull more the other way. She wanted to stop having to move altogether and climb into a bath, then into a clean bed.
Making one last effort, she pushed the sheet in further and was surprised when her fingers touched something solid. She groped to get a hold of it and ended up pushing it away. Raising an edge of the mattress she was able to
get her head beneath it and hold it up while she pushed her arm in up to her shoulder and stretched her fingers until the palm of her hand landed on it and she pulled it out.
Breathless from exertion, she slumped back against the side of the bed staring down at the small black book in her hand. It had a black ribbon tied around it to keep it closed. She fleetingly wondered if it was his, a notebook bought perhaps at another time then discarded as too small to write down all his lists of ‘Improvements’. Tess undid the ribbon and opened it to the first page. The book did not belong to her husband. The three lines of cursive handwriting bore no resemblance to his penmanship whatsoever, which was choppy and hard to decipher most of the time. This handwriting was quite beautiful.
She could see no name written anywhere. Not on the inside of the cover, nor at the back of it. Yet flicking through she saw lots of pages filled with writing. She wanted to get more comfortable, as she was too tired and too achy to sit there slumped. She turned around and got back on her knees. The thought crossed her mind that if he walked in and found her like this he’d think she was kneeling at the bed in prayer. The irony of it was not lost on her – that she would pray when she had no faith in any god anymore.
She shook her head, turning away from her thoughts, and settled the book on the bed. Then, in the surrounding silence, she began to read:
I am writing this in the event that should something happen to me there is a record of what I am enduring. If it is found beneath this mattress then I am lucky as he hasn’t found it, and therefore I must be free.
Tess felt her skin crawl with unease.
The book must belong to the woman who once lived here, left beneath the mattress for goodness knows how long. The mattress must have been on this bedstead for years. It was old but not shabby, in fact very comfortable and in pristine condition. But it had a real old-fashioned quality about it. It wouldn’t surprise her if she put a slit in its side to find it filled with horsehair. It fitted the bedframe perfectly, which looked antique. Made of solid walnut, it was carved with foliate details, and had a decorative crest on the headboard like a crown on top, its wood having a warm patina with age. It would take fit men to lift the mattress off the bed it was so deep, and probably a small army to lift the bed when it was in place.
How long had the book been lying there? she wondered. How old were the people who lived there? The woman who wrote it? It was hard to judge if the book was old or new. The design of it was hardly different to the one her husband had bought. Maybe what was written inside would give her some clue to its age. She turned the page and read the first line.
This house he calls my home has become my prison.
Tess felt her heart catch in that one sentence. It could have been written for her. This house was now her prison.
These walls I’m sure have eyes. It cannot be just his ability to see through me as he is able to relay back each day my every move. Today I did not wear the brown uniform he provided me with. I scrubbed the front doorstep wearing my ordinary clothes. There is nothing about them to be able to tell him this. And yet he knows. He always knows.
She had to stop reading. She closed the book and closed her eyes. It felt like she had just invaded someone’s very private and painful life. The few lines she’d read struck a chord deep within. Someone else had been unhappy in this home. She felt she owed it to this woman to at least read it, but not yet. She wasn’t ready to read this secret book while her brain was trying to deal with another shock.
His behaviour. Not accidently or in rage, but deliberately, intentionally, he had done that to her. He had now given her an even deeper reason to fear him. History had taught her that if someone hurt you once and they got away with it, they would do it again. To justify it, they would blame you. You made them do it.
She remembered the old lady’s words. You need to ask him what happened to her.
What did this actually mean? Had he hurt his first wife? If so, how? That’s if there was a first wife. She did not want to outright accuse him with everything else going on unless she was a hundred per cent sure. But if it was true… what happened to her?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Martha stood forlornly in front of the grave. She used her headscarf to give the headstone and surrounds a dusting, trying to make it look shiny again. The flowers from the Co-op she couldn’t get to look right as they were too squashed together in the vase. She sighed heavily, and wished she hadn’t bothered. The man in the shop hadn’t been friendly, eyeing her up and down like an unwanted customer as if he begrudged taking her handful of copper and silver. She should have taken the money out of the jam jar first and put it in her pocket. Which reminded her, where had she put the jar?
She went back to the headstone and smoothed it as if it were a living thing. ‘It’s all right for you down there, Ted, enjoying your rest. But you should be up here with me, helping me sort out this matter. I’m getting tired, Ted, and I want to come home to you now.’
She was getting maudlin because she would be leaving him soon. It wasn’t so much the physical leaving of the grave that hurt but the thought of leaving the man beneath it. She liked talking to him here, felt close to him. On a better day she’d joke with him that he’d better be keeping things tidy down there for when she arrived. Not today, though, not in her present frame of mind. She was too worried by far for any joking. The new wife was still in that house.
Why was she still there? Had she asked him about his first wife? Or worse, not believed what she’d been told. Thinking she was safe and having the same thoughts as Jim: Poor old fool is losing her mind. She stroked the headstone one last time before taking her leave. She had to get home now. She had the police coming to see her. The nice man on the phone had said someone would come and talk to her, but next time she rang could she ring 101 and not 999? He’d told her that was the emergency number and she’d told him back that that’s why she was calling it. This was an emergency. When she got home she’d tell Jim. Then let the police talk to him so he’d know she was right.
She hurried her footsteps as she headed along the pathway, feeling that it was later than Ted’s watch said. It didn’t feel like ten past three. It felt later than that. Though that could be from all the trees surrounding her, blocking out the light and making it look dusky. If she had her proper walking shoes on she’d get home a lot faster. How she managed to leave the house in her slippers was anyone’s guess, but they were getting ruined from soaking up the damp in the grass. She’d kick them off when she got back before mister-see-it-all saw them. She hoped he had something nice for tea. She’d like a nice piece of haddock if it was their fish and chips night.
She shuffled and shivered a bit as cold air swept in along the path, wishing she hadn’t stayed out this long, but not actually knowing how long she had stayed out. It felt like yesterday since she’d last eaten. She was now in the older part of the cemetery, where the graves were very old and caved in and sunken. It was difficult to tell where to walk so as not to step on the consecrated ground. Difficult to identify the graves as lettering had long rubbed off and trees had grown through a few. There were two little graves here somewhere that Father John had shown her. Two little angels.
Martha stopped walking, getting suddenly stressed. Two little graves? She had to think, were they hers? She took a shaky breath and carried on walking. Not hers. It was two little girls. Someone else’s loss. A lot of the graves she was passing had their crosses lying down, the stone so old they had fallen. The gothic-looking chapel ahead didn’t bother her. There were usually a few old fellers there, down on their luck taking shelter, supping something to keep them warm. Passing under the main archway she saw no one.
A short walk later she stopped again, this time stressed for a different reason. She had passed this great big mausoleum of a grave on her left once already and there it was again. How had she got lost? Jim would start panicking if she got home too late. She’d have to go back to Ted’s grave and start again. When she got her
bearings she’d be all right. She’d buy Jim some chocolate on the way home for worrying him. As much as she hated to admit it, she’d be lost without him.
It was getting dark, she realised, and the dimly lit pathway was treacherous. She suspected the lightbulb covers needed a clean. Still, she couldn’t complain. Who needed lights on at night in a graveyard? She was relieved when she saw the silhouette of someone coming towards her. She could ask for directions now. Then felt a bit unnerved as the person got closer and she saw how tall he was and how dark his hair was. Her instinct was telling her to hide.
She moved off the path and back onto grass further away from the weak white light, to stand close to a tree. She wanted to see his face before she showed herself to ask for his help. The shopping bag in her hand was getting heavy. She should have shaken the dead hydrangea out of the earthenware pot and left the pot there. She was tempted to put it down, but something was telling her not to. She had a feeling she should start walking away from this person, head through the graves if necessary. Or just stay still until he’d passed and was gone.
Her legs suddenly weakened as she recognised the walk and the broad shoulders, and like a child she squeezed her eyes shut so that he couldn’t see her. She must have unnerved him with her outburst. His wife may have told him she’d called and now he was going to make sure she didn’t say anything ever again. She wished she could shut her ears too. His footsteps were coming slowly, moving the loose gravel along the path, making soft little scrapes of sound, the noise so deafening, so threatening, Martha couldn’t help her whimper. Once made, her little noises got louder, until she was crying to God and to all the angels above, and to Michael the Archangel to save her from Satan, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the queen of heaven, who had lost her only child. ‘Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary—’