Push Hands

by Michael Graeme

  He let out a surprised grunt, and like a thing finely balanced, thrown suddenly off balance - he came to a jarring halt. And like a marionette who's strings had suddenly been cut, he sank to his knees. "I'm sorry Lara," he said, as she rushed to him.

  "Philip dear, are you all right?"

  "I feel a little weird,… but I think I'm all right."

  "You've been here for hours."

  "I have?"

  "Aren't you cold. You'd better come in."

  "No, no. I didn't mean to intrude. I just got a little carried away."

  When she looked at him she felt herself drawn back in time forty years and to her children's little illnesses - the mysterious tummy aches, the sicknesses that came on a particular night of the week. After a while you could tell the difference between truth and sham. This was slightly different of course - Phil would complain of nothing - even if someone had run him through with a red-hot poker he would have covered up his grimaces and tried not to make a fuss. But that only made it easier to tell something dreadful had happened - and not knowing much else about him, she could not help but jump to the conclusion that Penny Barnes was at the bottom of it.

  "My wife's kicked me out," he said, unable to quite believe he was in the position to use such a stock phrase. "She thinks Penny and I are having an affair."

  Lara hid her dismay, then swallowed back her natural urge to say she'd told him so. "But,… whatever gave her that idea? You've not been,… indiscreet, have you?"

  "Oh, only a little. I wrote her name endlessly on a piece of pink note-paper, wrote it in a spiral round a love-heart. Was that indiscreet? I suppose it was. I've only myself to blame, really. It was very stupid of me."

  This didn't sound quite right, given what Phil had already told her about the peculiar nature of his relationship with Penny. "Come and have some tea. I was persuaded by Doctor Lin to buy it - you must try some - I swear its psychotropic! If the authorities ever catch on, they're sure to make it illegal."

  "Then we'd better enjoy it while we can I suppose."

  "That's the spirit."

  It was a tea that cleared the head and Lara made a very strong brew of it while settling Phil down in her living room. It was like his grandmother's house, he thought - a lifetime of old things - old photographs and furniture, solid and comforting, a comforting nostalgia that put him in a peculiar frame of mind. Three hours of Tai Chi had exhausted him but it had also snapped him out of his slide into self pity. His life had taken on a new perspective, literally overnight, but these were the circumstances he'd been presented with and he thought he'd better get used to them. Perversely, he longed for the familiar whistling in his ear, but it seemed even the tinnitus was something he could not longer rely upon. It was a different Phil who took the murky brew from Lara's slender hands, a stronger Phil who settled back into paisley patterned cushions, under the twinkling eye of a Lara who had begun to remind him of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. If only she could solve this one, he thought.

  He began to talk. And as Lara listened she grew sadder by the minute. She had no reason to doubt anything he'd told her. He and Penny had formed an innocent friendship - one that had perhaps been deliberately misconstrued by vindictive busy bodies who were so unaware of their own shortcomings they saw no harm in obsessively moulding the world into an image of their own stupidity.

  "It all sounds so far-fetched," he said. "but it's the only conclusion I can draw."

  "Have you spoken to Trevor?"

  "I'm not sure I can trust myself to remain civil."

  "But you're not the angry type Philip."

  "I know. I'd just end up feeling frustrated, stuck for words, and he'd run rings around me. To be honest I just want to pretend he doesn't exist any more - and I can only do that if I don't see him."

  "But if he was responsible, then he shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. It's not just you who's been damaged by this - it's your wife and your children. And it all seems so,… so,… silly!"

  "I know, but the damage is done. And Sally will always take his side."

  "Even when he's wrong, like this?"

  "Well, put it this way. If I was wrong, and he was wrong, both of us at the same time - she'd forgive him first."

  "Phillip, really! I'm sure that's not true."

  "I think it is."

  "But you've done nothing wrong,… and Sally must be made to see that."

  "Have I done nothing wrong? I might have thought of Penny, thought of her fondly and wondered: what if things had been different, you know?" He shook his head. "Is that wrong? Does that make me guilty? I didn't write that childish note, but is there sufficient tender feeling, that the note might have been telling the truth anyway?"

  Lara thought for a moment. No - if we could be judged by our thoughts, then we were all in trouble. "You're tying yourself in knots, my dear and you're sounding a little silly if you don't mind my saying so."

  "Silly? Yes,… perhaps. But if my marriage had been stronger, Lara, Sally would have looked at that note and known straight away it wasn't true, that someone was playing games. It seems you can go for years, telling yourself it's okay, that you have a successful life, a successful marriage, when all along you're just sleepwalking, fantasising, fooling yourself - and then something happens, something small and silly, and it blows everything away." Phil still felt odd, his head light yet somehow very clear. "Lara,… please don't tell Penny about any of this."

  Lara nodded - that was exactly what she'd hoped he would say.

  Chapter 29

  Phil found that he did not miss his family. He tried to miss them, but those first days of his estrangement were more like decompressing into the vacuum of zero responsibility. He would miss them eventually of course, miss them dreadfully once the shock of it wore off, but for now there was only work, followed by what he came to call the quiet time. He did not pause to consider that his adult life had been wasted, that he might as well have catapulted himself back twenty years for all that he had to show for his labours. His fifties were looming, but he dared not look them squarely in the eye yet. Nor did he allow himself the to dwell upon the fact that from now on he would be just another guy who'd failed to hold it together. His future was as a weekend father if he was lucky, and a purchaser of frozen meals for one.

  What's the question of the week, Elspeth?

  How the hell do I work my way through this?

  He did not return to the orchard for fear of bumping into Penny. He also avoided the class for a few weeks. Rick's garden consisted mainly of decking and minimalist planting. It was enclosed by tall bamboo and formed a private and tranquil place for practice. At first Phil was self conscious in case his brother began taking the piss, but one evening, under the deck lights, after watching Phil for a while, Rick began to join in.

  "I've not corrupted you have I?" said Phil.

  "I'm not a total Philistine - show me how you did that one again?."

  "Like this,… watch."

  Sally would get in touch. Any day now, she'd ring, or she'd just turn up with a squeal of tyres and dump the kids on him. At least that's what he thought, but time passed, and it began to feel as if Phil's former life, forty seven years in the making, had ceased to be. He did not go home for more stuff, as he'd planned, but went out and bought fresh shirts, underwear and socks as he needed them. His personal writings were on his MP3 player, and he'd had the presence of mind to bring his laptop with him. He did miss the Internet though, the information that was on tap, the ability to know what anything was in a couple of mouse-clicks.

  He was puzzled by the fact that he did not want to go home for more things, and it eventually dawned on him that their value was far outweighed by the fear of returning. But fear of what? Making things worse, or making them suddenly better? So it was a minimalist Phil, a monk-like Phil, with few possessions and no attachments who found pleasure in the simplest of things, like a long soak in the bath, and the sound of a house breathing without the pollution pouring from a
T.V. set and Gamestation.

  Sometime during the second week, Phil visited the barber, a trendy youth with ripped jeans and bleached blonde hair pulled severely over his eyes. There wasn't much Phil could do with his hair - it had begun to recede in the general pattern for a man of his age, and for years he'd told the lad just to tidy it up as best he could - but on this occasion he looked at himself n the mirror, and at the reflection of the lad hovering, ready with comb and scissors and he said: "What would you do with it?"

  And the lad nodded, as if he'd been waiting for this moment, waiting years to tell Phil what he needed. "A number one, mate."

  Phil had been expecting that. "A bit severe perhaps?"

  "No, no,… just try it. You can always grow it back."

  Phil sighed. "Okay, number one it is."

  With a nod, the lad set down his scissors and picked up his shaver.

  Rick did a double take when Phil returned. "You're not going all mid-life on me are you? Did you get tattoos done while you were at it?"

  Phil was feeling light headed and sufficiently different in himself for it to have been worth the risk. He smiled, then wondered if Penny had ever gone through with her nose-piercing. Penny! Damn it! Why did he have to think of Penny? He'd not seen her since the retreat, and the time was weighing on him. See? He was guilty after all! He could have written that note. He wanted to see her, talk to her. And if Penny had told him to go and see Sally and put it right,… then he assured himself he would have done so.

  Of course none of this was real. He was existing in a parallel reality where his most outrageous thoughts had become concrete fact, because the concrete fact of his life had given a heave and pitched him off into a state of complete sensory depravation. He wondered about going out to look for her - who? Penny of course - stumble into her accidentally at the supermarket perhaps. But he knew the rules: she would have changed jobs the day before. Except, she was not Caroline and therefore her presence in his life, or lack thereof might not have been dictated by the normal rules at all. If he wasn't looking for her she would appear with ridiculous regularity - but if went looking: well, he'd never done that before, and he had to remind himself why.

  Penny had her nose pierced the first Saturday she could slip away. She'd picked out a small stud in cubic zirconia and a more ostentatious ring of nine carat gold - she didn't want to push the boat out just yet in case she hated it. She'd had the piercing done in a tattoo parlour in the seedy back end of town. It had a down and dirty look about it, and she'd felt nervous waiting her turn in her nice clean uniform, sitting beside a couple of grungy girls and a greasy bruiser of a boy, all of whom had more piercings than she could count. She wondered where on earth they had room for more.

  The process was not entirely painless and she felt a little sick as she walked home, felt also like she had an enormous sparkling zit on her nose. But she gritted her teeth because whatever David said, she was determined to keep it. It was a statement of her independence, her defiance, though of course had she not been so insecure about her self, she would not have needed to make a statement about it anyway.

  David was predictably horrified, his mouth falling open, his eyes popping.

  She feigned surprised. "What?"

  "What have you done?"

  She dabbed at her nose gingerly with a piece of tissue. "Is it still bleeding? I thought it had stopped."

  "Take it out before the boys see you."

  "I can't. It'll heal up."

  He took a breath, then turned his head in a particular way and Penny suddenly had it in her mind that he was going to call her a stupid woman. It was a peculiar intuition that married couples sometimes have, brought about by reading body language and other subtle clues over the years. It was not that he'd ever called her a stupid woman before, but she felt sure he was going to do it now, and if he did it, then Penny was going to really shout at him. And as she had read his mind, he also read hers, read the flicker in her eyes that could only be interpreted as: "Back off." So he caught his words, then sighed and shook his head. Then he remembered it was Sunday tomorrow and he wondered what his mother would have to say about Penny's "adornment". But worse than that, he wondered what the vicar would say - the vicar he'd invited to lunch, but hadn't got around to telling Penny about it yet.

  It was now two weeks since the retreat. Penny had not seen Herbert Blakedon, and nothing in David's manner suggested that he knew anything about it. So, David had not hired Blakedon then, which left Angela, and Angela had been noticeably frugal with her company of late, but Sunday would tell. Penny had decided that if anyone mentioned the retreat, she would say that it had been spoiled by Blakedon's presence. And who might have hired him I wonder? Would Angela have the poker face and the brass neck to sit that one through without betraying herself?

  That night she checked her underwear drawer like Phil had taught her - the little piece of matchstick was on the carpet, so she knew someone had been rooting in it. David was unlikely to have been interested in the underwear, so it was the Buddhist stuff she kept in there that he was keeping an eye on. This had been going on for ages now and it angered her more and more. What was he afraid of? That she might corrupt the boys? What the boys believed in was their business, not Penny's, and not David's either. Allegiance to David's religion seemed to be demanded at the barrel of a gun and she did not want that for herself - she also trusted that the boys had sufficient common sense not to want it either, but it was going to cause a lot of trouble eventually. For now the boys were still wrapped in the day to day care of their parents, but soon would come college, then university and the wide world of independence. They would disappoint David if they did not both become smart suited Bible bashing business men, and they would disappoint her if they did. She only prayed they would not embrace some hedonistic nightmare of a life instead, just to spite the both of them.

  On Sunday, it was announced at the very last minute that Frank's stomach forbade him from attending lunch. David then mentioned that he'd asked a friend round after church, to take Frank's place. Penny made no objection, and only wondered who David's friend might be, because to her knowledge David had no friends at the church, or at work - only rivals. The friend arrived late, as Penny was dishing up. The lateness was on account of the friend having been given the wrong time by Angela, or rather the correct time so far as the day's machinations were concerned - which meant less time for Penny to evade the plot.

  The Reverend Starkey was a dark haired, dark eyed man in his middle thirties. He had doctorates in divinity, philosophy, and psychology. He was an Oxford man, with refined manners and a plummy accent, a studious air and a serious countenance. He was also rumoured to be a member of several influential Masonic Lodges. Penny did not dislike him - she just wondered what the hell a man like that was doing in Middleton.

  She sighed as the full extent of the trap was revealed, though she could tell by the startled look in his eye that Reverend Starkey was not exactly a willing participant. She'd always known from her few attendances at church that the poor man was hopeless with large groups of people, also powerless to prevent himself from being manipulated. All of this was very bad, she thought, but he had brought flowers and so she found it easier to forgive him.

  "Penny, this is a magnificent lunch!" he said and then, turning to the others. "You're very lucky to have one so capable among you."

  Don't go too far in your flattery, Vicar, she was thinking, but he sounded sincere and she allowed herself a smile. It was rare to be appreciated. Usually two hours of preparation, and perfect timing, was consumed with no more grace than feeding time at the zoo - the only sounds of satisfaction being a sort of grunting, reminiscent of piglets around a trough of swill. Except for Frank. Frank was a gentleman and always thanked her, though softly, as if not to attract Angela's attention.

  Penny felt slightly ridiculous now, sitting opposite the Vicar, who, once you saw past his dog collar, was rather a handsome young man. Unfortunately she'd gone out of her
way to look as outrageous as possible - the gold ring in her nose and loud clothes were more fitting for a teenager - yellow and black striped tights under a long pink tee shirt emblazoned with the caption: "Forget love, I'd rather fall in chocolate." She'd also spiked her hair using some of Adam's gel - a substance David had forbidden him to use.

  Looking at herself in the mirror, before lunch she'd looked like an eighties rock-chik, but that was fine because the target had been the pomposity of her husband and his mother. They would have had a fit about the amount of money she was spending on matching bras and pants these days, to say nothing of the chain around her waist, and the locket she was now in the habit of tucking down the front of her pants - matching lilac today. She imagined Phil would somehow approve of this, would appreciate the prettiness she wore closest to her skin.

  But to be suddenly sitting in front of the Vicar was not something she'd expected, and her appearance, she reflected, was not something he deserved - no matter what he was going to say to her later on.

  David and Angela could not have made matters more obvious than when they scuttled into the kitchen and began the washing up. Penny felt like she'd been set up on a date, and from the Vicar's blushes she suspected he felt the same.

  "More tea, Vicar?" she heard her self say, then stifled her amusement as she remembered the old joke.

  "No,… but thanks anyway."

  "Some wine then?" she suggested.

  The vicar's eyes lit up. "Oh? Wine would be lovely."