Push Hands

by Michael Graeme

  Phil finally broke the surface of his consciousness as the first pale light of dawn touched the curtains of his room. He remembered having the needles inserted and at first he was reluctant to move in case they were still there. Gently, he tested himself, flexing his fingers, then tensing his arms and legs. Good: No needles. He felt refreshed and calm. He would have to call round at the clinic, he thought, to thank Doc Lin.

  But there was no need. She was in the garden. He saw her through the French window when he went downstairs. She was practising a very slow and fluid form of Tai Chi that was eerie to watch. He wasn't used to seeing her doing the form herself - not properly - but only as an instructional aid, for others to copy. This was altogether different; she was moving, obviously, but the impression was one of profound stillness.

  Then it struck him: it was dawn and she was still here?

  "Coffee?" asked Rick.

  Phil turned to find him in his dressing gown, his grey hair messed up, and what Phil could only describe as the light of revelation in his eyes. He was unable to hide his astonishment. "You slept with Doctor Lin?"

  Rick gave it a moment's thought, as if he had to check and confirm that it had indeed been real and not a dream. "Yes - is there a problem with that?"

  Phil looked again at the figure of Doc Lin. He was seeing her suddenly in a new light - as a woman, and as a human being, instead of a mere saviour goddess. "Erm,.. no,… " he said.

  "You don't sound so sure."

  "Just a bit,.. sudden, isn't it?"

  "Well,… it might seem that way to you. But we must have talked until three in the morning. It felt like the most natural thing in the world."

  "Sorry Rick,… I,.."

  "You'd no ambitions in that direction yourself had you?"

  "What? No! Are you forgetting I'm married?"

  "And are you forgetting that you're separated?"

  "Separated?"

  "Well, what else do you call it?"

  "Okay, you're right. But it's just a temporary thing. I feel different this morning. I'm going to ring Sally - maybe call and see her after work. Just,… "

  "What?"

  "Go easy - Doc Lin's a very special lady."

  Phil watched as his brother's eyes were drawn to the window. "Let me ask you one thing," he said, but Rick was unable to peel his eyes away. "What she's doing, does that embarrass you? Are you thinking: oh, please don't let the neighbours see? Is it weird to you?"

  "Don't be daft."

  "Then what are you thinking?"

  "I'm not thinking anything. All I can see is her,… "

  Phil smiled and went to put some clothes on. It was the craziest thing he'd ever heard: His brother and Doc Lin, but he was cheered by it, and happy - for both of them. It also meant he'd be seeing a lot more of her himself - and that had to be good.

  Sally wasn't answering the telephone and when he called round after work, the house was empty. He had a key but didn't want to go in - partly to avoid testing the uneasy feeling that she might have changed the locks, but also because it felt more like her place now than his - that entering alone would have been to trespass on her privacy. They were round at Trevor's then. He swallowed hard and rang the number.

  It was Marty who answered.

  "Oh, hi Marty. It's Dad." He used the same cheery tone as when calling from work to say he'd be late - but given everything that had happened he realised it perhaps wasn't appropriate here - it was just that upon hearing Marty's voice, he'd had to armour himself with something.

  "When are we coming home, Dad?"

  Pause. Deep breath. "I don't know, Marty. How long have you been there?"

  "Came last night. Mum said it's easier for getting us to school, but I think we're here for good."

  "Is your mum there."

  There was a pause, muffled voices, then Trevor came on the line - blustering, officious. Phil deliberately didn't listen or he'd be jumping down the bastard's throat for setting him up. He just waited for a pause. "Is Sally there, Trevor?"

  More bluster, more words that seemed oddly disconnected. He caught the phrase responsibility towards one's family, then the words, "disgrace", "selfish" and "arsehole". Phil raised his eyebrows at that - evidently Trevor was upbraiding him for walking out on a marriage that Trevor himself had torpedoed. Could it be that the man was so deluded he believed his own lies? It was possible - Phil had done it himself that time, sort of hypnotised himself into believing in a different version of reality to the one everyone else saw.

  He waited for a pause again.

  "Put Sally on please, Trevor."

  But Sally was behind the steel bars of Trevor's slightly insane protection and Phil could see that although things had gone badly for him - they had gone even worse for Sally. What was she doing there? Could she not see that she had given up on her life - handed it over to that overbearing monster and his sneak-thief of a mistress?

  Phil waded patiently through a few more turbulent moments of incoherent bluster, then ended the call and sent a text directly to Sally's mobile: "Couldn't get past your father. Call me when you're ready."

  He was still in the car, parked outside his own house. It was obvious what he had to do - move back in and wait for Sally to come home. There'd be bills that needed paying, dripping taps that needed new washers and the radiator in the Elspeth's bedroom still needed the air bleeding out of it. It troubled him that he couldn't bring himself to do it at once. But then he remembered what Penny had said to him: that he was not a lie. He could hold his head up. Also, if Doc Lin was going to be calling round again to see Rick, he needed to give them some space didn't he? It was all right him saying it would be good to see more of her but did he want to lie awake at night listening to them make love - it was only a small house after all - and he needed to maintain a respectful distance from Doc Lin, maintain an air of mystique and sorcery. But in returning home he also felt he was closing the door on other possibilities, possibilities he had denied himself for noble reasons. That didn't stop him though from longing for the comfort Penny might have brought to his life and crossing back over the threshold of this house would be like returning to a land she was absolutely forbidden to enter.

  But he was forgetting the coincidences.

  Chapter 31

  Phil returned to the class, and was glad for it. He was no longer choosy about where he stood in the group during practice, and so found himself behind Penny one Sunday morning. She was wearing jogging bottoms and the pink "fall in chocolate" tee shirt, which he'd found hilarious. But it was when bending during the warm-up exercises - a full stretch, touch your toes sort of bend, that Phil happened to notice the rise of a pink thong above her waistband - and the rise of a leather chord above that, a chord that encircled her waist and made him remember something.

  She wasn't, was she? No,… steady on Phil.

  After practice, they drank tea like old times, Phil, Penny, Lara and Arthur - also Doc Lin and some new recruits to whom everyone was friendly and welcoming. Afterwards though, as the group split up, Phil found himself alone with Penny and out of earshot of everyone else - only the beady eye of Lara observing them from a distance. It was then Penny told Phil that she had seen Sally.

  "You saw Sally?"

  "I knew you wouldn't do it yourself, so I did. I am not your mistress Phil, and I wasn't having her just assuming I was. I wanted to tell her the truth, and the rest was up to her."

  "What did she say?"

  "She didn't believe me of course. Didn't even want to believe me."

  "Ah."

  "You're not angry that I went round are you?"

  "Angry? No,… no you were right to do it. I'm just not surprised, that's all - I mean that Sally felt that way."

  "I hope I've not made things any worse for you."

  "I don't think that's possible."

  "I'm really sorry Phil. Are you still managing okay?"

  Her concern cheered him, made him feel quite stoical. "I'm all right. I've moved back into the h
ouse, actually - Sally's taken the kids and set up camp at her father's for some reason - serves him right. And thanks, by the way, for talking to Doc Lin. She came round and stuck some pins in me. I felt great afterwards - well not great but,… you know what I mean,… thanks."

  "I wasn't sure about it - it felt like interfering - but you looked so rough last the last time I saw you. Plus, there's a part of me suspects she fancies you and that makes me jealous of course - but I'm only joking."

  "Good,… anyway, you'll be relieved to hear it's my brother she's set her sights on, and not me."

  "Your brother! Oh,.. Phil,… is that good? I think that's good, isn't it?"

  "Yes - but that's partly why I'm not living there now - I didn't want to be in the way. "

  Penny thought for a while. "You brother and Doc Lin? Interesting!" She linked arms with him. "Walk me out slowly and tell me all about it. Does anyone else know?"

  He was smiling, talking animatedly and Penny was hanging on his every word, laughing and tugging his arm to encourage him to reveal more. To a passer by they might have appeared like lovers, or friends - there was an indefinable innocent intimacy about them. But to a husband, waiting in his car with an already suspicious and vindictive mother beside him, their body language was altogether more revealing - as if they had been discovered half dressed in an hotel room.

  David felt his world implode - not so much his marriage, as his constructed sense of respectability, and normality. Angela had been hoping for more, but seeing the expression on David's face she realised that this was probably going to be sufficient - and well worth the stigma of having missed church just to be there.

  "I'm so sorry, David," she said, as if she had not dared to have her worst fears confirmed.

  David was not a violent man, but he came out of the car like an angry bull. Phil and Penny only realised at the last minute that there was a man coming at them, shouting, ranting - but he was wearing a suit, so he couldn't be a mugger, could he? Phil thought to dodge aside, but the man changed tack and raised a fist. He was too slow though and Phil had ample time before it was launched at his head to ready himself and he deflected it with a sideways hook. He heard Penny shouting: "David! What are you doing!" before David came at him again with another clumsy punch. However, though he was a big man, and obviously worked up, there was no energy in it and Phil once more deflected it. He was puzzled by this ability, and half hoped David would throw another so that he could try again, just out of curiosity, but David had him by the lapels now and was attempting to shake the life out of him instead while Penny tried to pull him off. "David, you idiot! Have you gone completely mad?"

  Phil began to catch up: "David?" This was Penny's husband? He heard himself saying: "But this isn't what it looks like David." That was just before David jabbed his knee in the direction of Phil's groin. Fortunately they'd covered this one in class as well Phil was able to raise his own knee in self defence. The next move though, according to Doc Lin was a follow through and a strike with bunched fingers which would result in a broken collarbone. Phil didn't want to try that, too complicated anyway, but David was getting more and more worked up, and he had to do something! Circling his arms and dropping his stance, he managed to break David's grip, then gave a firm push. Phil didn't want to hurt him, didn't want him to go down and lose his dignity - because he was Penny's husband for pity's sake! David staggered back several paces, teetered on the edge of losing his balance but managed to stay upright and decided finally that Tai Chi was something he didn't know enough about to want to tangle with.

  Penny saw the car, saw Angela sitting with an expression that reminded her of a crocodile that had just eaten. And suddenly, David seemed to fade away. He was still there, physically, but he lost all his former substance and meaning. She heard the words: "Fucking whore." Was that David's voice? Had he really said the word fucking? Then came Phil's voice, reasonable and calming: "You've made a mistake." Then David, ranting: "It's you that's made the mistake, dickbrain!" And Penny was thinking: Dickbrain? Had David just said that? And all the while she was looking at Angela, looking into her eyes, staring hard, waiting for her to blink, but the woman had the lidless stare of a snake, and in the end it was Penny who blinked.

  The game was lost.

  Her life was over.

  She looked at David and saw his future, saw him as a fat, middle aged scold of a man - pompous, severe, judgmental and narrow minded. These past fifteen years, she had been a way out of all that; a road he might have chosen, a route to an easier going sort of life - less bitterness, less anger, less chance of a heart attack before he was fifty. But people are what they are, and there's only so much one can do. So let his mother have him, she thought. Except, in handing him back, she was also handing over her children.

  "Thank you Phil," she said. "Thank you for not getting angry over this."

  Something in her tone alarmed Phil - the inappropriate calm, the politeness, the poise. "I'll see you at the class next week," she said. Then she blanked David and walked past him, heading for her car.

  Phil called out: "David, stop her,… talk to her."

  "What? Are you talking to me, dickbrain?"

  "Pen,… "

  Penny called back over he shoulder. "Later Phil,… thanks anyway."

  She drove off smoothly, very calm, even smiling and waving - as if nothing had happened. But instead of turning left out of the carpark, and heading in the direction of home, she turned right, towards the ring-road, and goodness knows where. Phil remained where he was, staring at David, then he became aware of the older woman in the car. David's mother. My God, Penny had been right: she was a monster! Had he anything to reproach himself for? Had he ever once touched Penny? Had he ever once been guilty of more than thinking fondly of her? And were fond thoughts enough to justify what had happened a moment ago?

  "I'll see you in court then," said David.

  "Eh?"

  "How does it feel to break a marriage up? Make you feel good, does it?"

  "David, if you divorce Penny you're an idiot."

  Were these two people also the architects of his own demise then? He wanted to say they were because that would have made it all very simple - but they weren't. Trevor was the sole mastermind of that particular disaster - it just happened to be the same lie that he'd hit upon. What were the chances of that? What were the chances of any of this?

  "How will your wife feel when I tell her you're an adulterous bastard?"

  Was David threatening him? Would it make any difference what he told Sally? Yes, he thought: It probably would - to have the name Penny Barnes coming at her from another angle would confirm it beyond all possible doubt, but there was nothing Phil could do about that. It all seemed to have an energy and a momentum of its own, like a mad bull, and it would run its course whatever Phil did or said to try to head it off.

  The peculiar thing about dangerous situations is that it's only afterwards, having survived them that one has the time to think them through and actually feel anything. Phil was in the conservatory, looking out at the garden, bathed in winter sunlight, as the whole list of feelings caught up with him - fear, anger, dismay, disbelief. He'd pieced together a very pretty garden over the years he thought, but he was looking at it now almost as a stranger might - he felt no connection with it, nor even any connection with the house that he'd always thought of as home. Home, he realised, was not a house.

  He was more or less living in the conservatory - only going into the house to use the kitchen, the bathroom, and to sleep. The vast majority of his time - the lonely sitting time - he spent in this odd sanctuary. He'd been able to clear it of all evidence of family life - the kids toys, their shoes and bits of cutting out,… and free from Sally. He was calm now, but it was not a healthy sort of calm. It was the calm he'd seen in Penny's eyes, a bewildered feeling, a mask, something to pull down over your face so the world would not worry, while the real business of irreconcilable anguish went on quietly underneath: Please don' t worr
y, I'm all right.

  ARRRGH!

  The temptation to want to be with Penny was overwhelming. She knew where he lived, and he wanted her to come to him, so they could sit together and lick their wounds, even lick each other's wounds. And they could shake their heads at the madness of it all, then fall into bed and make love - I mean what possible difference could it make now? And if everyone thought they were at it anyway, what had they to lose? Certainly not their self respect. No,… hold on Phil. Self respect was exactly the one thing they had to lose - respect for their selves, in the eyes of each other. And that was everything!

  Still, the only happy ending he could think of lay in the direction of Penny. Was that childish of him? You lose one woman and immediately start thinking of getting yourself another? Stupid! Then his mind conjured up a picture of Sally returning home with the kids to find him and Penny in bed, or maybe not even that - perhaps just sitting at the dining table eating a romantic dinner while sipping wine, or even just innocently drinking tea in the conservatory.

  Don't be an arse Phil. This changes nothing. He checked his 'phone - still no messages from Sally. He wished he'd caved in to pressure to buy Marty a 'phone, becasue then he might have been able to at least keep in touch through the lad.

  Things didn't improve much and on Monday morning, he found Scrotum in a bad mood. The youth suggested to Phil that he wasn't pulling his weight. Phil took this in with a strange detachment. He'd possibly had the worst few weeks of his life, and now this arrogant and obnoxiously ambitious youngster was lecturing him about something that wasn't his fault. The obvious answer was to hit him, and walk out into even deeper trouble. Instead Phil told him he was sorry he felt that way, that he would try to do better. These were the correct words, the words Scrotum wanted to hear, but unless the machines were either repaired or replaced, there was little Phil could do. On reflection over a cup of coffee, Phil decided this was a fair assessment of things. He had kept his head, stated his position, and bore the young man no real malice, but something in Scrotum's eyes had put Phil on alert.