by Karen Perry
A warm breeze is ruffling the skirt of the tablecloth. She smooths the fabric, places the vase at the centre, straightens the cutlery and tucks the napkins under the plates, then stands back, pleased with the scene she surveys. As pleased as she can be with that word lodged in her heart.
Loyal. Is that really what he thinks of her? It’s true that she has stayed with him. That she held on in the immediate wake of the storm that blew the roof off their marriage, until the days turned to years, birthdays and anniversaries passing so quickly she hardly noticed the time. But sharing a home, sharing a life, taking an interest in the other person, looking out for them – it isn’t everything. It doesn’t tell the full story. For the truth is she has been waiting, all these years, keeping things ticking over, until the day would come. And now that day is almost upon them, it makes her wonder at his use of that word. Loyal. Spoken innocently enough, but the way he had held her gaze made her distrust it.
‘They’re here,’ he calls, from inside the kitchen.
She puts these thoughts aside and goes in to greet them.
‘So, come on, then, tell us,’ Jake says. ‘What actually happened?’
It is late in the afternoon. The food has been eaten, the plates cleared away, and Greg has gone into the kitchen to fetch another bottle of wine from the fridge. In the grass nearby, the little boy lies on his tummy, building up a mound of earth and stones – a bug hotel, he calls it. He’s banging it now with a trowel he’s alighted upon, savagely beating down the earth, sending little flecks of muck flying. Mona lies in the shade of the tree, half watching the boy with wary interest.
‘What do you mean?’ Hilary asks, smiling politely, but she knows full well what he means.
‘Anton and his wife. I have to know. Is it true he stabbed her in the kitchen?’
‘Yes. It’s true,’ she says, draining the end of her glass just as Greg emerges from the house with the fresh bottle.
‘But why?’
She shrugs, unease cutting through the soporific effects of the food, the wine, the heat from the sun.
‘But you knew them, right? You were living there at the time it happened, so you must have had some idea, surely.’
Wine has loosened Jake’s tongue. When he first came in and sat down he had been all nervous affability. After the food and the wine, which he has been quickly imbibing, he slipped down in his chair, his grin has grown wider, his talk looser and more confident. He’s wearing long khaki shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with a still from the movie Jaws. Hilary glances down, notes the tiny blond hairs furring his legs, glinting in the late-afternoon sun.
‘Actually,’ Greg says, ‘we’d just moved out of the flat when Charlotte … when it happened.’
‘Oh?’
‘A few days before, if I remember correctly.’
Hilary watches her husband carefully, notes the manner of his speech – quiet, thoughtful, precise. He pours wine into the three empty glasses. Leah is the only one of them not drinking. Pregnant, Hilary suspects. She casts her eyes over the younger woman – the green print dress, the demure ballet flats, her figure still svelte, no pregnancy showing. Throughout the lunch, as her partner has become ever more garrulous, Leah has remained polite, elusive, reticent. Hilary feels a sudden push of desire to see her lose her cool. To see that pale skin flushed with temper. Yes, she would like that.
Hilary invited Leah and Jake for lunch because she felt guilty. At least, that was what she told Greg, and it was partly true. The look on the young woman’s face when Hilary broke the news to her about Anton’s history – the shock registering in her eyes, the blood draining from her cheeks – had caused a sharp twinge of regret within her. She almost felt ashamed for revealing it. But, if she’s honest with herself, Hilary knows the real reason for her revelation was not to inform or protect the woman. Rather, it was the reaction to a spike of resentment – a little flare of jealous anger.
‘But what were they like?’ Jake persists. ‘I mean, were they at each other’s throats all the time? Were there violent rows?’
‘No,’ Greg answers. ‘I mean, there was the odd tiff we’d overhear, but on the whole, they seemed happy.’
‘They weren’t happy,’ Hilary corrects him firmly. ‘They were just good at putting up a front. You never know what goes on behind closed doors, do you?’
‘Indeed you don’t,’ Greg says softly.
‘And she was difficult. Unpredictable. One minute she would be all charm and affability, the next she was at your throat. And a flirt. My God, when I think of the way she carried on. She tried it on with Greg once – right in front of me!’
‘No way!’ Jake laughs, enjoying this.
‘She had her own problems,’ Greg says, something of a warning in his tone.
‘Did you see much of them?’ Leah asks. ‘Anton seems so shy.’
‘Well, it’s not surprising he’s keeping a low profile,’ Greg answers, again in the low voice that Hilary can’t quite read, ‘given his history. But back in the day, he was very sociable. They both were. Forever throwing parties. In fact, we were at one of their parties the night before she died. Weren’t we?’
His eyes flick towards her, two hard stones, and there’s challenge in them. She thinks of that night, an image quickly summoned, Charlotte’s sneering gaze: ‘My God, Hilary, whatever are you wearing?’ A small shudder passes quickly through her that she attempts to shrug off with a quick shake of her head.
‘Really?’ Jake asks, sitting up a little now, interested. ‘And? Did you notice anything? Any signs of what was to come?’
‘Well, Charlotte was drunk, of course,’ Hilary states, recovering herself, ‘but Charlotte was always drunk, nothing unusual there.’
‘She had a drink problem?’ Leah asks quietly.
‘Oh, yes! Once, when Greg and I were living in that flat,’ she says, warming to the subject, ‘there was an afternoon when I was in the garden and I looked up and saw the two children sitting on the windowsill of the bedroom upstairs, their legs dangling out over the edge. Two little ones – younger than Matthew is now. And you’ve seen the height of those windows. It must be a drop of twenty feet at least.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I called out to them to get back inside, but they just kept sitting there.’
It had been raining that day, Hilary remembers. She had been outside, her shoulders up around her ears as she hastily unpegged her washing when she had spotted them.
‘So I ran up to the back door of the house and started madly banging, trying to get their mother’s attention. But nothing.’
‘Where was she?’ Leah asks.
‘In the living room. Asleep.’
‘But the children – did you manage to wake her?’
‘Eventually. I broke into the house.’
‘No way!’ Jake says, impressed, and she assures him that, yes, she actually did.
The one and only time in her life she’d ever smashed a window. She still thrills to the memory of taking that rock from the edge of the flower bed and sending it crashing through the pane of glass. Then, manoeuvring her hand in to turn the lock and open the kitchen door, crunching over the glass on the floor. She’d gone straight upstairs, her heart in her mouth as she entered that bedroom, praying with every step they wouldn’t fall before she got to them.
Afterwards, she had felt rage as she pulled the window shut, the two children scampering away from her downstairs. Such carelessness! People like that didn’t deserve to have children.
‘I found her afterwards – Charlotte,’ she tells them, unable to keep the cold disgust from her voice. ‘Laid out on the couch. Drunk. And, my God, the uproar when she found out about the broken window. Accused me of vandalizing her property, claimed I’d made the whole thing up about the kids. Of course, there was no love lost between us, not after she forced me to put my dog down, but I was trying to help her children. You’d think she’d be grateful. If it hadn’t been for me they might have fallen.’
‘She made you put your dog down?’ Jake says, and she sees his eyes flickering to the boy who has abandoned his bug hotel, turning his attention now to Mona stretched out on the lawn.
‘Oh, it was just a silly misunderstanding. Our dog, Bella – she was just a puppy, really – snapped at their son. She hardly touched him. A playful little nip. But Charlotte made such a fuss about it – kicked up an absolute storm. And we were their tenants, remember, so I could hardly object too strongly.’
She is surprised to find her heartbeat accelerating in her chest. All these years later, that indignation kicking to life again.
Jake rubs his chin, quietly forming his own opinions.
He must think I’m quite mad, she thinks.
‘She was a very unhappy woman,’ Greg says. ‘I don’t think the suburban life of a south-Dublin housewife suited her. I suppose she felt trapped.’
Hilary finds herself listening carefully. Something thoughtful in his voice. It makes her wonder how often those memories of the past turn over in his head. Do they stir to life inside him as they do in her?
‘Trapped by what?’ Leah asks.
‘By the choices she made. By her marriage. He was very controlling. I’ve no doubt he was a difficult man to live with.’
Hilary doesn’t say anything. She makes no attempt to contradict him. Instead, she sits very still.
‘I once overheard her telling someone about how he picked out the clothes she was to wear each morning. He used to write lists for her of the meals she was to prepare, the activities she was to organize for the children, what music she was to practise on the piano. That’s how controlling he was.’
‘It doesn’t sound like Anton.’
Hilary’s eyes flick to her. Does she imagine it, or does Leah sound defensive? A cold feeling pools in her stomach. ‘Do you see much of him?’ she asks, keeping her voice neutral, though her thoughts are racing.
‘Not really. He’s in his garden sometimes.’
‘We hear him upstairs,’ Jake says, ‘dragging across the floor at all hours of the night. The keys on that bloody piano going plinkity-plonk at three fucking a.m., right above our heads! He’s like a crab, scuttling sideways around that house.’
‘Jake,’ Leah says, a warning in her voice.
‘Mark claims the old man is innocent,’ Jake continues, ignoring her, ‘but I’ve my doubts. He gives me the creeps. And now he’s started sending Leah love notes.’
‘Stop it,’ she says, a little more insistent now.
‘Love notes?’ Hilary asks. It’s an effort to keep the smile from falling off her face.
‘Not love notes, and there was only one,’ the younger woman says.
Two spots of colour have appeared high in Leah’s cheeks. Hilary notes them, the tightness of her mouth, that sense of drawing in.
‘Oh, come on, all that guff about Greek mythology – the gods and the mortals and their various trysts.’
Hilary sees Leah nudging him with her foot, but Jake just laughs and looks to the others to join him. Greg smiles and Hilary gulps her wine. He cannot know the shot of anguish that’s going through her, the harsh abrasion of those words.
‘It’s just so hard to imagine him doing that,’ Leah murmurs now, as if to herself.
‘What makes you say that?’ Hilary asks. Outwardly, she is calm, smiling in the sun, but she remembers that night in the garden, the way she’d seen Anton leaning forward to touch the young woman’s wrist. ‘There’s something so familiar about you,’ he’d said.
‘He just seems so sad, I suppose. When he talks of his wife, he still sounds sort of broken about it. Like he misses her.’
‘Did he actually say that?’ She keeps her voice level, careful not to betray the emotions bubbling inside.
‘Yes, he did. I think he’s lonely, and sort of lost. I feel sorry for him. And I know that sounds crazy, given what he did, but …’
Jake has been listening to all this with a growing sense of unrest. Now, he leans forward, and says to her: ‘You haven’t been talking to him again, have you?’
‘Not lately, no.’
‘Good.’
The word is spoken emphatically and Hilary can see the instant effect it has. Leah’s face grows solemn, her eyes cold. The glance she gives him is hard, flinty. Then she looks down into her lap, her voice dropping as she says: ‘There’s just something about him that’s very calm. That’s all.’
‘Cold, I think you mean.’ Hilary surprises herself by saying this aloud. Surprises herself with her sharpness. ‘That calmness you speak of is really the ice in his veins.’
Leah looks up at her, and for just a split second, Hilary sees the challenge in the woman’s eye – a surprising fierceness piercing her expression. But then she blinks, the challenge sinking down within her, and casually turns away.
After they’ve gone, Hilary pours herself a tumbler of brandy and takes it upstairs. Her bedroom is situated at the front of the house and she pulls the chair from her dressing-table up to the window. She rests her hot feet against the cold radiator as she sips the unfamiliar drink. Brandy doesn’t agree with her. The hangovers from it are punishing. But this evening she’s feeling a little reckless. She has half a mind to knock back a couple, then march over to Anton’s house, demand he let her in.
Instead, she sips slowly and waits.
Hilary is a watchful person, although that was not always the case. Now, when she thinks about it, she realizes the sense of surveillance that forms such a deep part of her had first taken shape in the summer of 1999, and it was because of Anton.
So much of her time, that summer, was devoted to watching out for opportunities for them to be together. Charlotte was always there and, besides, Anton had a day job – some kind of financial position. He never talked about his work, and she wasn’t curious about it. That side of him didn’t interest her.
She found herself growing alert to the comings and goings upstairs. The sound of their front door closing became familiar to her, as did the noise of their car engine starting. Hilary would peer out of the window and watch Charlotte piling the children into the back seat and driving off, knowing that, minutes later, he would come calling.
Their encounters were erratic and charged. She could not be sure if, taken as a whole, it could even be termed an affair. They had made love only a handful of times, and while the sex was pleasurable, she had enough acuity to realize the pleasure was mainly derived from the sense of transgression rather than from any deep carnal connection. He was affectionate towards her in a way that seemed special – the way he stroked her hair, the way his eyes lingered over her face, taking her in. Sometimes they just talked. And she loved to listen to him. The timbre of his voice hit the perfect note in her ear. There was a lazy quality to the time he took to tell a story. He had a fondness for Greek mythology. Reading between the lines, she knew his wife had lost interest in the stories, if she’d ever had any in the first place. But Hilary loved it. She listened, enraptured.
‘Tell me again,’ she’d say to him.
And he’d stroke her arm, her head resting against his chest, the two of them sitting together on her couch, or lying in her bed, and he’d say: ‘Who will it be today?’
She always picked one of the Greek women. The blighted queens, the avenging goddesses. Hilary had no interest in the men and their battles. So she asked for Circe, Penelope, Elektra, and he would take a lock of her hair and slowly twist it around his finger, his voice reverberating in his chest, her ear against it, and she would feel herself at peace.
‘Which one am I?’ she asked him, and he thought about it for a moment and smiled.
‘Helen.’
‘Flatterer.’
Helen, possessed of such beauty it drove men to war. Hilary knew she wasn’t that.
‘You don’t see the correlation?’ he asked teasingly. ‘Helen, stolen away from her husband, Menelaus, by a man who was e
nraptured?’
‘Are you Paris, then, in this little Greek tragedy?’
He frowned comically, and she laughed, resting her chin against his ribcage. It was mid-afternoon. The sun was shining through the closed curtains. Greg was away at a summer school. Charlotte was shopping in town. Hilary wasn’t sure where his children were.
Their time was limited. She had the sense that he was already thinking about returning home.
‘What about Charlotte?’ she asked tentatively. ‘Who is she?’
He didn’t like talking about his wife. Hilary had taken to observing Charlotte from a distance. If anything, she thought, Charlotte was Helen. Of the two of them, she was the more beautiful. Her figure was statuesque, her bearing elegant. She had classical features, and it was clear she was careful with her appearance as she was always perfectly turned out. Hilary nursed secret feelings of inadequacy over Charlotte. She couldn’t help feeling mousy and small in comparison. But Charlotte had a reputation. She was a flirt who liked a drink. Her beauty turned ugly when she was drunk. And she was a snob. The supercilious manner in which she addressed Hilary lessened any feelings of guilt Hilary might have had about sleeping with the woman’s husband. Besides, she still remembered that first evening – Charlotte and Greg on the sofa, her hand resting on his thigh.
Anton’s face grew serious and thoughtful. After a minute, he said: ‘Clytemnestra.’
‘And who was she?’
‘Agamemnon’s wife.’
While her husband was away at war, he explained, Clytemnestra took another lover. And when Agamemnon returned, she waited until he had sunk into his bath, war-weary, filthy, exhausted, and then she had killed him.
He looked so grave in that moment that Hilary hesitated before teasing him. ‘You’d better be careful so,’ she said, keeping her eyes on his, ‘when you get home. She’ll be waiting for you with her net and harpoon.’