The Mistress's Revenge: A Novel

by Tamar Cohen

“Who?”

  More and more I find I can’t even look at Tilly these days. Girls are so unforgiving, aren’t they, so critical. I remember being the same with my own mother. She used to wear the most overpowering perfume, the kind that creeps into your nostrils and solidifies there, blocking out the air. When we’d be going out anywhere, she’d get into the car last (she was always late, my mother), and the smell would hit me like a breaking wave, so I’d have to roll down the window and stick my whole head outside. One time I wanted to borrow a sweater of hers. It was black cashmere and kitten soft and I knew, in the way teenage girls always know, that it would look loads better on me. Finally she gave in to my wheedling and lent me the sweater to go out in, but when, after a long luxurious bath, I was finally ready to put it on, I found I couldn’t. The smell of that noxious perfume lingered in every fiber, every thread. It was the smell of my mother—cloying and heavy and invasive. Attempting to pull it over my head, I found myself gagging and flung it across the floor into the furthest corner of my bedroom. What do you think Helen would make of that, hey? No doubt she’d be able to find lots of ways in which that incident has shaped the person I am today. Myself, I can really see only one. I never, ever wear perfume.

  Right, it’s getting late, so I must go. Off into the night to be cured. Who knows, this might even be the last journal entry I write. I shall come floating home, pick up this notebook and it’ll be as if someone else has been writing all these words—this autistic testament to obsession. I’ll gaze at it, puzzled, wondering how it came to be in my house, and who the rabid, ranting writer might be. I might even feel slightly sorry for her, now that I am whole again; this poor broken creature spilling her sour secrets across the page like yesterday’s milk. I will be magnanimous, I think. I will try not to judge.

  * * *

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  I’m sitting here in my stupid floaty top, and the paper is already blotchy with my stupid tears. You would be slightly repulsed I think if you could see me. Another damaged, stupid woman crying in the night.

  Do you want to know what happened? I’m sure you don’t, but I’ll tell you anyway because it’s a funny story. A funny, stupid, stupid story.

  So Sian and I went to Hoxton, to be where the young things are. We started in that pub we went to once with the dark green leatherette benches, and the one tiny toilet where girls in miniskirts squeeze, three at a time, snorting cocaine from the cracked tank top.

  We were witty and caustic, and each successive vodka made us only more amusing.

  “We’ve still got it!” crowed Sian, as a boy young enough to be her son showed us his new tattoo clinging to the sharp edge of his smooth hip bone. It was some kind of a Maori symbol if I remember. Or maybe not Maori, maybe Aboriginal. Something indigenous anyway. There was something a little unsavory about the way Sian looked at it, I thought, as if any minute she might flick out her tongue to taste it.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I think I said.

  But really it was stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  Then we fell out of that pub and trip-trapped across the road in our going-out heels, to that other one—much bigger and more convinced of its own superiority.

  There were a couple of people inside who Sian knew from somewhere. I can’t remember where. The Citalopram and vodka mix seems to have done funny things with my memory. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. Funny stupid.

  The people Sian knew were talking to the manager of the pub, a tall man with a dark brown topiary-neat goatee and an incongruous tan.

  “I’ve just come back from Sharm el Sheikh,” he told me.

  For some reason Sian and I found that hysterical. We shook with laughter about Sharm el Sheikh, and somehow ended up convincing ourselves he’d said something very witty.

  “He’s funny,” Sian whispered to me—the kind of whisper that carries over the top of all the normal voices and arrives in your ear coated with spit.

  “And I think he really fancies you.”

  I looked at him with renewed interest. I hadn’t really paid much attention before to whether he was attractive, but now she mentioned it, I could see how he might be. And he fancied me? I felt ridiculously, stupidly grateful.

  We started talking together, me and Pete. Oh, didn’t I say he was called Pete? Stupid name, isn’t it? Really stupid.

  I have no idea what we talked about, but I had another vodka. Or maybe more. I didn’t pay for them. Perks of chatting to the manager.

  It’s a weird thing with the Citalopram and alcohol. You lose great big chunks of time, swallowed up in a black, bottomless wormhole.

  The next thing I remember it was late, and the crowds of young people had wafted off into the night, and a grumpy French barman was stacking the chairs on the tables.

  ‘We’re going now,” Sian was saying, her pointedly arched eyebrows speaking a sign language of their own. “But you stay here if you want to. Have you got enough cash for the cab home?”

  So solicitous, Sian—despite being back to her old facilitating tricks. And so drunk. But not, I fear, as drunk as me.

  “Stay for another drink,” the man called Pete said. “I’ll make sure you get home.”

  I sat there on a stool at the bar, in my stupid floaty top and my stupid going-out heels and I nodded obediently. It seemed like everyone was looking out for me and had come up with a very sensible plan of what to do next. I was actually quite grateful. Isn’t that ridiculous?

  Then Pete and I were on our own. He said he lived above the pub and asked if I wanted to come upstairs for another drink. I nodded again like a stupid nodding dog and followed him up the stairs, my stupid going-out heels clicking loudly on every step.

  Pete’s living room seemed huge, with big high ceilings and massive windows looking straight out onto the building in front. There was a leather sofa, some rather naff curtains, a framed print of a 1950s Fellini film (I only know that because Pete told me. I don’t want you to think I’ve turned into the kind of person that looks at a print and says “oh, that’s a Fellini, isn’t it?”).

  I was on the leather sofa, and so was Pete. He was so unfamiliar. Every time I shut my eyes and then opened them I had to remind myself again just who he was. I saw him glance at his phone to check for texts and realized he too was probably wondering just who I was and whether he really wanted me to be in his living room. But by then we were embarked on whatever we were embarked on, and neither of us really knew how to get out of it.

  When he kissed me, he tasted of red wine and roll-up cigarettes. His beard was scratchy and his tan, up close, alarmingly orange. As soon as I felt his tongue in my mouth, fleshy and slightly rubbery like an outsized mussel, I knew I didn’t want to be there, but by then it was too late.

  He stood up suddenly and held out his hand to lead me into the bedroom. I followed unquestioningly like an abused dog that knows it is about to be walloped but goes along with it anyway.

  The bedroom was small and dominated by that Edward Hopper diner print most people grow out of after they leave college. I tried not to look at the unmade bed, where a half-filled ashtray balanced on top of a book called Awakening the Buddha Within. Stupid fucking book. Stupid fucking print. Stupid fucking bed.

  Pete sat on the end of the bed and pulled me toward him, undoing my jeans. Too late I remembered my hairy legs. I knew there was little chance that Pete would take them for a political statement. There was a fairly good chance that Pete might not know what a political statement was. Stupid fucking Pete.

  As he undressed me, his face gave little away, and I suddenly realized that I might be the oldest woman this man called Pete had ever slept with. Even though he must have been approaching forty himself, the average age of the girls in the bar was about twelve, which probably made Pete’s normal quarry not much older. I became agonizingly conscious of the puckered skin around my belly button (how you used to love to rest your tongue there, do you remember, burrowing your nose into the yielding flesh as if it were cheesecake?
), the deflated breasts, the focaccia thighs. I saw myself through Pete’s dulled blue gaze and wished to be somewhere, anywhere, away from there.

  “You all right?”

  But Pete didn’t wait for a response. His mollusk tongue was roaming my body, leaving its snail’s slick on my skin.

  And then, with a grunt, he was inside me, pressing down on me like a Breville sandwich maker. The edge of the stupid fucking Buddhist book was digging into my side and I knew the ashtray must have tipped over. When I dared to look up, Pete’s face was raised toward the wall so he was staring directly at the Edward Hopper as he moved up and down. A depressing thing to look at in the throes of passion, wouldn’t you think? I wondered what images were going through his head, who he was thinking of. I knew it wasn’t me.

  I lay there feeling him go in and out, and trying to distance myself from my own body, as Helen Bunion had once tried to teach me to do, so it wasn’t me on the bed but some other stupid woman, with her jeans around her ankles and her stupid going-out heels still strapped to her feet. But his rhythmic thrusting was impossible to ignore. I hoped it would at least be over quickly but he went on and on, scrotum slapping against me like a soggy tea towel. On it went and on and on, and each time he did one of his stupid thrusts I thought about you, and how it was your fault that I was there, in this stranger’s unmade bed, with last night’s cigarette ash pooling under my back. I hate you Clive, I hate you Clive, went the rhythm of his movements. On and on and on. Bed jerking, ash billowing.

  “It’s not really going to happen, is it?” I said, when I couldn’t bear it anymore, and my voice sounded false and ridiculously loud.

  That stupid man called Pete looked down then and seemed a bit taken aback, as if he’d forgotten I was even there.

  Then he rolled off, clearly relieved.

  “Too much to drink,” he said.

  Well, I suppose it was nice of him to try to spare my feelings.

  He lit a joint, and I noticed his fingers were covered in thick black hairs, coarse like the stitching in a wound. For a few seconds I stared at them, transfixed, then just as I was about to sit up to leave, all of a sudden, he put the joint down on the floor beside his bed and disappeared down between my legs.

  Well, can you imagine? I went completely rigid. I was dry as the proverbial bone down there and his fat stupid mollusk tongue felt like sandpaper. For a few agonizing minutes, he gamely sawed away, while I stared, clenched and wide-eyed, at the nicotine-tinged ceiling, trying to pretend there wasn’t someone applying exfoliating scrub to my clitoris.

  In the end, I put my hand down to touch his head and gently pushed him away.

  “’S’okay,” I said, inarticulately.

  His head stopped bobbing then, and he looked up at me slowly.

  “It’s okay,” I repeated, excruciatingly.

  “Oh. Right.”

  He moved off back to the other side of the bed and retrieved his still-lit joint. There was a shadow of dark stubble on his back and it crossed my mind he’d probably had it waxed for his holiday in Sharm el Sheikh.

  I sat up and pulled up my knickers and jeans, remembering too late about the ash in the bed.

  “I’d better be going.”

  Pete inhaled deeply.

  “Do you want me to ring you a minicab? Only there’s plenty of black cabs driving past all the time, and it’d probably be a lot quicker.”

  The thought of me and him sitting together waiting for the ring on the door, me with my coat on, him half dressed and desperate to be alone, clearly filled us both with horror.

  “Oh, I’ll flag one down outside,” I told him, flailing around to find the armholes in my stupid floaty top.

  “Probably best,” he said.

  At the front door (at least he walked me down the stairs. And who said chivalry was dead?), he bent down and pecked me awkwardly on the cheek, his stupid goatee rough and scratchy on my skin. Neither of us even bothered to go through the pantomime of exchanging numbers. I couldn’t wait to be out of there. And he couldn’t wait to see me go.

  There were no black cabs passing. Surprise, surprise. So instead I walked to the next junction and waited on the corner there, out of sight of Pete’s prying, probing windows. When a taxi finally pulled up, the driver asked me if I was all right and I was shocked to find I was crying—thick, fat, slimy tears with a gob of shame in each of them.

  And now I am back home again. Once more writing to you in this stupid fucking journal. I don’t dare run a shower, in case Daniel wakes up and wonders why I’m feeling the need to ablute in the middle of the night, but I long to wash away every trace of that man with his hairy fingers and gravel tongue. There you lie in your perfect house surrounded by your perfect family, while I’m sitting here with a rash on my clit and his snail trails crisscrossing my body.

  I hate you Clive, I hate you Clive. Can’t stop that fucking rhythm pulsing through my bloodstream. I hate you Clive.

  I’ve gotten out my laptop and pulled up the record company’s website. There’s the photo of you on the “about us” page, gazing straight out at me, face concertinaed into a smile. Do you remember you once told me you chose the photo deliberately so that any time I wanted to see you, even if you were abroad or somewhere with Susan, I could summon up your smiling face? “I want you to know I’ll always be there for you,” you’d told me. Always, it seems, can have different definitions. So I’m sitting here in my cubbyhole, with all those vodkas still sloshing around my system, looking into your eyes, and thinking how it’s your fault I was in that flat, your fault I was in that bed, your fault I thought I needed a man to make whole again all the broken, shattered pieces rattling around inside me. Your stupid fault. Your stupid fault. Stupid stupid stupid.

  * * *

  Really, Clive. You need to work on your anger issues, as Helen would say.

  I mean, I can understand you being upset. It’s a horrible thing to have happened. But I really don’t see what it’s got to do with me.

  As soon as I’d put the phone down to you just now (well, as soon as you slammed the phone down on me might be more accurate), I pulled up your company website to see what you’d been getting so hot under the collar about, but when I checked the comments section there wasn’t anything unusual on there. Just the normal pedants nitpicking about one of your more controversial acts. I assume you’ve already taken the offending comment out. Well, who could blame you?

  Mind you, it sounds like the person who wrote it wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the dishwasher, doesn’t it? What was it you said they accused you of? Plagiarism and serial cheating? I mean, you might be able to understand one or the other, but to throw both in together is a bit, well, odd, don’t you think?

  Still, I’m sure you managed to get rid of it before too many people saw it, so I don’t think you need to get quite so worked up. I do so worry about your blood pressure, after everything the doctor told you about avoiding stress. Just because we’re not together anymore doesn’t mean we can’t continue caring about each other, does it?

  I must say though, I don’t appreciate you coming to me in that accusatory tone. It’s quite unnecessary. I empathize with your situation, naturally, but I had nothing to do with that nasty comment. I’m actually quite shocked you would think I might. What was that you said about the person using “the same language” as me? Well, don’t you think that’s just a little bit paranoid? Lots of people use those words, and they don’t all go around writing poison pen letters, do they? And I don’t think I’ve ever used the “c” word in your company (not in that context anyway), no matter how tempting it has been.

  How lucky for you that you have the alert that tells you when a new comment has been added. And yes, I can quite see that you would be kicking yourself for not following it up immediately, but at least Susan didn’t see it, and that’s what counts, isn’t it? All in all, I think you had quite a lucky escape really, Clive. You should be feeling quite sanguine, really, instead of ringing people u
p and accusing them of things.

  “Don’t think you can get away with this, Sally,” you said, before you hung up on me.

  I thought that was quite funny, the idea that I might have gotten away with anything. You see I feel as if my life has been systematically stripped of everything that once made it worthwhile, every last vestige of value like an unwanted, abandoned house. The lightbulbs are gone, the appliances too, even the antique tiles from around the fireplace. I feel I have nothing. So you tell me, Clive, what exactly have I gotten away with? I’d really, really like to know.

  I was thinking about your “don’t think you can get away with this” comment when I got your latest email this afternoon (incidentally, I’ve christened it the Blood Money email—in a post-ironic way of course). There was just that hint of menace in it, I thought. And I remembered that poor Romanian window wiper and the fear in his eyes.

  At first I couldn’t quite work it out, why you were using such tough, uncompromising language (what’s all that about “leave Susan alone,” as if I’d done something to harm her instead of enjoyed her company on a couple of very pleasant social occasions) and yet at the same time offering me money. And quite a lot of money. £12,000 in fact. Knowing, as you do, the precarious state of our finances, I’m sure you appreciate how welcome a £12,000 “gift” would be. We could clear some credit card debts, pay a couple of months’ installment on the mortgage. No, it seemed like a very generous offer indeed on first reading, and even when I read it again and realized that it was in fact a bribe, my payoff for disappearing from your lives, I still couldn’t help thinking about what I could do with all that money, all the school trips it could buy. I did think your last sentence was a bit unnecessary though, that bit about sending me the money through some indirect means because under “no circumstances will a face-to-face meeting be taking place”!! I don’t know why you felt the need for those two exclamation marks, really. One would have quite sufficed. “It would be a very retrogressive step,” you wrote, “at a point when we both need to be moving on with our lives. Separately.” That word “separately” meriting a sentence of its own.