Push Hands

by Michael Graeme

  "But it's just a diary," said Phil, weakly. "You get it out of your system." There was no use explaining how important a diary was to him. This was not a time for exploring the intricacies of the male psyche.

  "You're obviously not happy," she countered.

  "Well who is? It's impossible to be happy all the time. It's just unfortunate we only seem to write down the times when we're not happy."

  It was serious though. He'd never seen her so upset. He felt guilty and worthless for days, before realising it wasn't his fault at all, that she should not have read the diary. The only good part was that, so far as he could work out, she'd not read enough to discover his other secret: Caroline. Now, that would really have put the tin lid on it, as they say.

  Another problem with the diary was Mrs Emmeline Parker, or Mrs Nosy Parker, as Phil preferred to call her. This was the woman Trevor, Sally's father, had engaged to clean their house for them. She also cleaned for Trevor, was possibly providing other more personal services for him, and Phil didn't trust her at all. He felt his life was an open book, literally, that anything readable in the house would be reported back, payslips, bank statements, diaries - also the number of wine bottles in the recycling container, the number of condoms used in a month - none at all this month, Mr Lomax!

  She was the spy in his midst and Phil didn't trust a vulnerable diary with her on the prowl, not even in a locked drawer. So he'd tried a coded diary for a while, rather a clever system he'd thought, and one he found quite effective. It even enabled him to write his diary brazenly in front of Sally and the children, secure in the knowledge that his feelings were safe. But of course a coded diary was like a red rag to a bull. It had to be something bad, Sally told him, if he was writing it in code, that there should be no secrets between a man and wife, that if Phil loved her, he'd let her read his diary, or stop writing it. I mean, she didn't keep one, did she? How would he feel if she did? He wouldn't mind, he'd replied, but to Sally that implied he simply didn't care enough about her to be interested, that he did not love her enough.

  But I do love you Sal!

  Then prove it! Stop keeping the diary!

  The only kind of diary to keep in a marriage, Phil concluded, was a secret one, and the only really secret diary you could ever have was an encrypted computer text-file. He didn't even keep the diary on the laptop itself - the kids used that sometimes and Sally wasn't beyond picking it up and asking what this file was with the key-symbol. No, he kept it on his MP3 player, and carried it around in his pocket.

  Saw acupuncturist, he wrote. Not hopeful. Also going to be expensive in long run. Sally does not approve. Surprise! She thinks I'm mad believing in that sort of thing. Doctor Lin was fortyish maybe? V. Pretty, though thank God she was not Caroline! Getting better at avoiding her these days.

  He'd first met Caroline in September 1977. In this one and only instance, Caroline was her real name and she'd recently moved into the old Piggot place, across the road with her mother. He'd been living at home with the old man then, and Richie. He'd just started work and would catch the bus into Wigan one day a week to attend his day-release H.N.C. course. Caroline was doing A levels at Runshaw and would catch a different bus, one that left from the other side of the road from his stop. They'd set out about the same time, those dewy September mornings, and Phil would try to coincide his departure with hers so they might share the five minute walk to the bus stop together. He was curious about girls, curious about sex and wondered if Caroline might be his first girlfriend.

  Things rarely worked out though, because for some mysterious reason his timing was always off. He'd just miss her, or she'd get a lift from a neighbour or something. On the occasions when he timed it right, his heart would leap at the possibility of speaking to her, but it would always end up with him just tailing along behind her, tongue tied and feeling stupid. Then he'd kick himself all day for being a coward, at not even having gone up and said hi, let alone asking her on a date.

  So, he was seventeen and believed himself to be in love with Caroline. And he was in love with her solely because he could not get out of love by getting to know her. Instead he imagined her as he would have liked her to be, imagined her in such detail that she became someone else entirely. Phil understood all of this now, understood that she was most likely not the girl he had imagined her to be at all, but some sort of idealised fantasy. However, to the seventeen year old Phil, his veins bursting with hormones, she was a girl, and he'd wanted her to like him, wanted it with all his heart.

  The Caroline affair was brief, he wrote, in one of his retrospective moments, barely 6 months of fruitless mooning, and hoping. Then she got pregnant by some guy at college which made it easier for me to move on.

  But then came other girls, one after the other, or even several at the same time. It was odd: he'd think he was safe, and suddenly there would come a pretty face for him to fasten his hopes on anew and fall in love all over again. In between these unrequited infatuations came the occasional girlfriend. The girlfriends seemed to sneak up on him unawares though and he could never remember if he'd asked them out, or they'd just turned up on his doorstep. There was a Jessica, a Sophie, and a Katie, and though it was to Katie he'd lost his virginity on the back seat of his Cortina one night in the Summer of '82, he'd always felt there was something lacking in all these girls, some tarnished imperfection, for they were, simply, none of them Carolines.

  Sally was different. He did love Sally, or perhaps, at twenty four, he was just that bit older and less idealistic in his expectations. He remembered kissing her for the first time outside her parent's house one night and feeling himself melt. Sally later told him she hadn't felt anything at all which ruined it, but he'd decided Sally was the girl for him anyway, because she sort of "fitted" him. He even liked her coolness. He read it as a sexy aloofness, and longed to melt through into her deeper layers, set fire to her and have her set fire to him.

  The most shocking thing though was that he continued meeting Carolines after he'd got married. I mean, he was happily married, he supposed, and it puzzled him that he could continue these fantasies of love, this madness that made him long for a woman to like him, a woman who wanted to know him. He supposed it was because, except for the periods that Sally wanted to get pregnant, she did not seem to want to know him after all and worse, it seemed her sexy aloofness had turned out to be just aloofness. Perhaps girls didn't like sex, generally, I mean not in the way that men did, he thought, and those movies where all the girls were gagging for a suck on your dick, were a load of rubbish.

  Phil once read that men thought about sex a thousand times a day, and reasoned that it was probably correct, while he wondered if Sally ever thought about sex at all. And really, once the children came along she seemed to lose interest in him altogether. Was that fair? I mean how easy was he to get to know anyway? This man with a secret diary?

  Chapter 5

  Doctor Lin was encouraged by the fact that Phil had turned up again. This was his fourth visit, and still with little to show for it. Business was slack and she needed to keep hold of him somehow - not that she'd twist money out of him unnecessarily - he definitely needed the attention. The problem was getting people to pay for the attention they needed. One day she might be able to offer her treatments on the National Health, but that was a long time off, she thought; for now, she knew most Western doctors believed that what she did was a triumph of ignorance over reason. As for the money, it cost more for people to have their hair permed in the salon next door than she charged to heal their aches and pains, and it was galling that the salon was always full, while she saw barely one client a day.

  He was well dressed, this Mr Philip Markham: decent watch, good quality shoes, quality shirt. He was not terribly rich, though, she thought, or he would not be seeing her. He'd be visiting practitioners with posher clinics in Preston or Manchester, clinics with receptionists and glossy advertising fliers. But he had money - not that this was her primary consideration; she was a
doctor after all and the relief of suffering was her vocation - but a girl still had to eat.

  She smiled. "Mr Markham. You have nice tie."

  "Tie?… oh,… erm. Thank you."

  "I think we try acupuncture today. Okay?"

  Phil was relieved. He was feeling a little better in himself, not so tired perhaps, but the ears were still ringing miserably and he desperately wanted something to work - desperately wanted not to have been wrong about this Chinese Medicine business.

  "Okay, Doctor. You're the boss."

  She told him to take off his jacket and shoes and to lie on the couch. He felt an unexpected sexual stirring as she slid his socks down but that was brought to an abrupt end when the first pins went into his ankles.

  "OUCH!"

  "Must relax please," said Doctor Lin.

  It didn't hurt exactly, but he'd felt it more than he'd been led to believe. The pins were like silver hairs, though he tried not to look. Doctor Lin seemed to rest them against his skin, as if waiting for something, or sensing something, before gently pressing them in. More pins went into the backs of his hands, his neck, face, and the top of his head. Then she turned the lights down and lit a vanilla-scented candle. "Relax, Mr Markham," she said. "Twenty minutes. If you need me I am in the next room. Just call, okay?"

  Phil would have replied except the pins in his face seemed to discourage him from speaking, so he nodded, but only slightly because the pins in his neck discouraged that as well.

  Soothing music began to play and Phil tried to relax. The pins felt like fingers against his skin, pressing all over. It was weird, but not unpleasant. And the music would have been nice, he thought, except for his ringing ears. He remembered how erotic her fingers had felt on his ankles - cool and smooth - but he chided himself at once. "Don't be stupid," he thought. "Do you want Caroline to find you here and spoil this?"

  "But Dr Lin's not married," said Caroline. "No wedding ring. She's good looking, and about the right age. She might have feelings for you!"

  "Damn you, Caroline," he thought. "Leave me alone! I know you. I know all your tricks."

  Doctor Lin returned after twenty minutes and withdrew the pins smartly, dabbing at his skin with cotton wool. Was he bleeding, he wondered? He supposed he must have been, though he didn't care to check. It could only be a tiny bead at the most, he thought, somewhat queasily.

  "Feel all right?"

  "Er,.. fine, yes. Ears still ringing though."

  She nodded. "Might make it easier tomorrow, after sleep. You must sleep plenty, Mr Markham. Remove shirt, please."

  "Eh,… oh,… of course."

  She came behind him and began to massage his neck. He liked the scent of her, liked the feel of her cool, strong fingers. Why was she wearing scent? Did she need to massage him, or was that just an excuse to touch him.

  Leave me alone, Caroline!

  "Very stiff neck, Mr Markham," she said. "Like wood. You use computer a lot?"

  "Yes."

  "Computers very bad."

  "Yes, but necessary, I'm afraid."

  "Use computer at work?"

  "All day. Then again at home."

  "Very bad. Mr Markham, I warn you, is not easy. Tinnitus very stubborn. Take time. You see me more weeks. This is my understanding. Yes? I can help you, but take time. Be patient. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Must change life-of-style."

  "Eh? Oh,… lifestyle? Yes. Yes, I will!"

  "No more late nights, Mr Markham."

  "Yes, yes. I promise."

  "And do Tai Chi."

  "Tai Chi?"

  "Tai Chi will help you. This is my understanding. Yes?"

  "Erm,… if you say so, Doctor."

  "I teach Tai Chi Sunday morning, ten o'clock. Community centre. Robin Hill. Five pounds. You come?"

  "Erm,… I don't know,… I'll have to ask my wife."

  "Yes. You tell your wife. Do Tai Chi! Very good for you. Bring Mrs Markham. She will enjoy it."

  Leaving the surgery, Phil felt a little strange. He was thinking about the Tai Chi thing, but as he walked back to the car, he realised he was aching, and suddenly dog tired. By the time he got home and negotiated his entry via the fiasco of the keys, he felt like he'd been run over by a truck. His tea was in the oven. He examined it, considered it, balanced it against the way he was feeling, then scraped it into the bin and went to bed.

  He slept like he'd been drugged, woke up in the morning, ravenously hungry and feeling like a new man, strong, bright, and seemingly a hundred years younger than the old crock he'd steered to bed the night before. It was outrageous though, what he'd done: thrown his tea away like that and gone to bed without a word. In the subtle codes of his quiet marriage, it was akin to smashing all the windows and murdering his children.

  When he came home from work the following night, Sally wasn't in. According to the note she'd taken the children with her to her fathers. Back at bedtime, she'd said. No - she'd not left him, he thought, though he supposed if she had, he could not have felt more keenly the sense of emptiness and abandonment. It was at times like this, he told himself, he realised how much he loved her, how much he missed her! But sometimes it seemed the person he really loved was no longer there. A stranger had come along and taken over her body, making the once vivacious and lovely Sally simply cross and cold.

  She confided more in her father than in him, he thought. Any upset at all, whether he was at the bottom of it or not, and she instantly thought of the old man. Once, she'd got a puncture on the way home from the library and hadn't the sense to call the R.A.C. from the car, herself. Instead, she'd called her father, who'd called the R.A.C.. When she was explaining this to Phil, laughing it all off as they shared an evening glass of wine, he'd felt a pang of jealousy, which was ridiculous really. Why hadn't she thought to call him?

  Phil considered his options now. He could stay at home and meekly await her return, await some confrontation about his tea-dumping behaviour, her lines memorised at her father's knee. This was not an appealing option. Or, he could go out, get smashed, then roll home late, and face double the music tomorrow. That was tempting, but he doubted he had the constitution to survive such a thing, plus he had work in the morning and Doctor Lin had advised him both to rest more and cut down on the booze.

  Then again, he could always go and have a chat with Richie.

  Chapter 6

  Richie lived alone in what Phil had come to consider a bachelor's paradise - an old terraced cottage on the outskirts of town with a long, narrow garden running off into a meadow beyond. There was peace and wind chimes and the soothing sound of a water feature trickling nearby. Phil had tried to recreate that atmosphere at home, but Sally had complained the tinkle of wind chimes gave her a headache and that the sound of running water made her want the toilet all the time. As for the peace - well you could just forget that until the kids left home in another ten years or so.

  At the age of 54, Richie was enjoying his chosen stereotype: Long grey hair, neatly trimmed beard and moustache, loud waistcoat, Led Zep Tee shirt and jeans. But the pocket watch that nestled in the waistcoat pocket was their father's, and Phil knew there was nothing superficial about that. The case was solid silver, hallmarked 1885, a full hunter, made in Prescott and with a movement so ornate it had always dazzled Phil as a child whenever his father had shown it to him. Richie was the eldest son, so it was right and proper that he'd got the watch, and he clearly treasured it. For all their differences, both he and Richie had fond memories of their father.

  Richie's eyes were wide and he'd just paused half way through lifting a can of Carlsberg to his lips. "Acupuncture? You?"

  The house was about twenty minutes away from Phil's, on foot, but Phil couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his brother. Six months maybe? It was another of those peculiarities that came with marriage. Sally simply couldn't stand Richie, but wouldn't actually go so far as to say so.

  "I'm just off to Richie's, Sal."

  "Can I c
ome Dad?"

  "Sure you can, Marty."

  "Me too!"

  "Course, Elspeth - go find your shoes."

  But Sally was always ready with an excuse for why she couldn't go with them.

  "It doesn't matter, love. I'll take the kids on my own, give you some peace."

  "But it looks bad, if I'm not there, like I don't want to go or something."

  Well, you don't, Phil would think.

  "I'm sorry but I've really got to finish this work. There's a meeting tomorrow." Or: "I'd come but I've got my period."

  So Phil would feel guilty about putting Sally in that position, and the upshot was he wouldn't go either. So he and Richie had sunk to exchanging furtive e-mails instead - except for the occasional rare visit, like this one.

  "What's wrong with acupuncture?" said Phil, in response to Richie's raised eyebrow.

  "Well, nothing. It just seems bit alternative for you."

  "You'll try anything when you're desperate."

  "Ear still bothering you?"

  Phil nodded.

  "Could it not just be stress? Wife and kids? When I look at you, I realise how lucky I am."

  "It's not that bad, Richie. "

  Richie tossed him a can and grew serious. "Isn't it?"

  "Really, it's not that bad," said Phil again, hoping he could convince himself as much as Richie by the repetition. "Sally's tired. Stressed all the time. Problems at work, then home to the kids and their whining. And the kids aren't bad - I mean all kids whine these days. It's part of their training for the consumer society, like a marketing tool - just something else we have to put up with. And you can't expect things to be plain sailing all the time."

  "And how's your job? I heard that place was on its knees."

  Phil shrugged. "It manages to keep going. There are fewer and fewer of us though. It is worrying, I suppose."