Yellow Room

by Shelan Rodger

  ‘What?’

  ‘You! Look at you – you’re strangely gorgeous!’

  ‘You mean simply gorgeous.’

  ‘No, definitely strangely. You know what I’d like to do tomorrow?’

  ‘Close the doors to the rest of the world and live for ever and ever with me in De Hoop?’ He looks at her oddly for a moment and Chala feels embarrassed, but what he says next takes her completely by surprise.

  ‘I’d like to draw you – out there on the sand, naked.’ He is looking at her intensely and she feels a sexual thrill flush through her, mixed with horror at the idea of such exposure and scrutiny. But then he looks away sharply and she wonders if she has somehow disappointed him. What would she say, she asks herself quietly, if he were to ask her to marry him. Her lottery obsession again.

  * * *

  He had drawn her, Chala remembered, and yes, it had been oddly sexual and excruciating all at once. Her hatred of being the centre of attention was so ingrained that it took Paul a good while just to relax her. He fooled around and made her laugh and was patient. Eventually she stopped thinking about herself and watched him instead, the patient intensity in his face and his hands as he turned her into an idea on his sketchpad.

  That afternoon she had insisted on him boiling water so that she could wash away the sand that had stuck to her inner thighs. That night, they had made love with more abandon than usual.

  Chala bit back the memory of a different night’s abandon. She rarely thought consciously about Bruce, but every now and again the feel of him would grip her unawares. And then remorse would take over and she would try and banish the memory, as if she could persuade herself that it had never really happened. Once, she’d wondered cynically if Philip’s death was an excuse to avoid confronting the consequences of what she had done. Yet the question taunted her: did Paul have a right to know about a single night with no meaning? Sometimes she wished there was someone she could talk to, but it would feel like another betrayal to tell Amanda, and the loneliness of her guilt felt like a fitting punishment.

  She closed the photo album on their South African holiday and put it to one side of the bed, hugging a mug of hot chocolate to her knees. Paul couldn’t understand her need to rake up the past. She knew he was getting increasingly irritated by it and yet she was just responding to an impulse, attempting to create some semblance of order out of chaos. Like sorting a deck of cards into suits. As if the cards falling into place might provide the answers to the questions that burnt holes in her grief. Should she tell Paul about that night? Had Philip chosen to die?

  They had returned from Devon a week ago now and a small wooden box of ashes nestled in the bottom drawer of Chala’s bedside table. For the first few days after the funeral Chala had busied herself frantically with the business of sorting out the will, stung by the sad irony of the real-life lottery question she was now facing: if you inherited a house with no mortgage and about £50,000 in shares, what would you do with it?

  She had made one decision, not altogether supported by Paul – to resign from her job. His words still rang in her ears.

  ‘I just think you need a sense of normality. Going back to work will be good for you. You’ve already had change forced upon you, so why create more change when you don’t need to?’

  ‘Do you remember how you felt when you gave up being a lawyer?’

  ‘Yes, but that was different. There was a reason for it, something to replace it.’

  ‘Look, maybe there’s a reason for this too. Maybe this is the moment to do something different. I don’t know – get involved in some voluntary work or something, feel I’m doing something that means something. You’re an artist, and art makes a difference to people’s lives. Philip had a huge impact on people’s lives. What I do feels … so worthless.’

  ‘Well, I just don’t think it’s the right time.’

  ‘Perhaps there is never a right time.’ She wondered in a tiny, judgmental part of herself whether this was all about making amends. She wanted to reach across the space that was swelling like a river in the rain between them, yet the shadow of a new wrong hung in her way.

  * * *

  When she phoned her boss about her resignation, he refused to accept it, insisting that she took another week’s leave and gave herself time to think about it, but the resistance her decision met at home and at work hardened her resolve. She thought fondly of Philip’s refusal to judge. He had never tried to steer her path through life. And yet he had judged in the end; he had judged his own existence – of which she was a part – and rejected it.

  Chala opened another of the photo albums on the bed. This one had pictures of a windswept Irish coast with pink houses. There had only been one day warm and dry enough to remove their coats, Chala remembered, and yet it had been a wonderful week, with one evening Chala would never forget. After a day in the wind they were sitting around a pub fireplace with pints of Guinness and Chala had drifted into a conversation about other people’s marriages.

  ‘What about Amanda and Richard – do you think they’re happy?’ They had got married just a couple of months previously and Chala had never been sure about Richard, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was that bothered her about him.

  ‘Yeah, they seem happy enough to me.’ Sometimes Chala succeeded in engaging Paul in this kind of conversation and sometimes he just didn’t seem to get it – she guessed this was a man thing.

  She tried again. ‘But I wonder how much she actually tells him about herself. How well he really knows her.’ What was it that bugged her about Richard?

  ‘Maybe that’s not important.’

  Chala was about to give up the conversation, assuming that Paul was just doing the man thing again, but then he continued.

  ‘Do two people have to bare their souls to each other to be happy together? Can anyone ever really know another human being? If you love someone and want to make a life together, isn’t that enough?’

  ‘So, if you and I were to get married one day,’ – the lottery obsession slipped out without her meaning it to – ‘that would be it – no more exploration, just your paintings downstairs, television dinners upstairs and a shag on Sundays?’ She was laughing and their knees were touching under the table.

  ‘You missed out the slippers and the blowjob when I get home from work.’

  ‘But you don’t work! Whoops, I mean you don’t go to work.’

  ‘Every time I come upstairs, then. In fact, I think that should be a new house rule!’ They were already living together.

  ‘OK, but supposing one of us had an affair?’

  ‘Then it would be over.’ Black and white. Sometimes he seemed complex and yet sometimes he would slip into certainty with no warning. It always jarred slightly for Chala. She was too used to Philip’s lack of absolutes.

  ‘How do you know that? What if it wasn’t important? Something totally out of character? Something meaningless?’ Chala couldn’t know how ironically these words would echo in her own head three years later.

  ‘It couldn’t be unimportant. If something happened, it would happen for a reason. But—’ Paul looked pensive all of a sudden, reconsidering his own reasoning. ‘I suppose, in the end, that would be up to you to decide. You would be the one who would have to live with it. I would only stay with you as long as I knew I wanted to and I would expect the same from you. So, yes,’ Paul looked self- conscious all of a sudden, ‘two individuals, living our lives together, but separately.’

  Chala caught the use of the word ‘you’ in the pit of her stomach and felt herself blushing, but Paul continued.

  ‘I could only marry someone I trusted.’ He lifted her chin and stroked the red blush on her neck. ‘And I trust you.’

  He looked nervous now, and she realised that the lottery question coming was for real and it all felt ridiculously like a fairy tale as he produced a ring rather bashfully from under the table and they sealed their commitment to each other, oblivious to the cosy hum of voice
s around them. She had never doubted her decision. In black moments she had doubted his, wondering if she was good enough for him, but the only time she had tried to voice this he had laughed it off. He was so optimistic. Chala loved his optimism and it made her stronger.

  Her eyes were wet as she closed the album on the conversation that had marked a turning point in her life. How could she tell him about what had happened in Australia? What right did she have to inflict her guilt on him or expect him to forgive her? Why should she ask him to live with what she had done? A single, meaningless night – was it such a high price to suffer this alone? Look at what Philip had suffered alone. But, in the end, had the price been too high for him?

  The questions came and went. In silence.

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘Now, stand in line, all of you!’

  The order is barked by a sweaty man in a green uniform holding a rifle. Women of all ages, sizes and colour grit their teeth and stand side by side in the white sand.

  ‘You!’ The man strides up the line, stopping to look a thin Asian woman up and down. He prods her in the stomach with the butt of his rifle and smiles as she flinches. ‘Like a good prod, do we?’ And he pushes her so that she falls backwards into the sand. A gasp of fear rattles through the women. Who is this man? What is he going to do? What does he want of them? They were just women, walking along a beach.

  Now he comes face to face with Chala. She lowers her eyes, wishing for Philip. Where did she lose him?

  ‘Step forward. Let me look at you.’ His tone is almost gentle. She steps forward, but doesn’t look up. He reaches out and grips her chin. ‘You’re a bad one.’ He says it quietly, and tears sting her eyes. ‘We don’t want people like you on our beach.’ He pauses, looking up and smiling at the row of women. ‘Do we, ladies?’

  There is a sound of muted acquiescence and Chala feels as if she is back at school. All eyes are on her. How do they know? What was it that gave her away? Why did he single her out?

  ‘Take off your clothes.’ The words are barked again. She looks at him now with panic in her eyes and he laughs back at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re shy all of a sudden. Ladies,’ he makes a sweeping gesture as if they are all on the same side against her, ‘your friend is shy on the outside.’ Then he pushes her roughly with the butt of the rifle, like he did to the Asian woman. She recoils but doesn’t fall, and she feels the rifle again, almost winding her. ‘Take them off!’ His eyes are deep in their sockets now, the pupils tight and unforgiving. His flesh strains inside his uniform.

  She trembles as she unbuttons her shirt, trips over as she tries to pull off her jeans. There is no desire in his eyes as he watches her, just vague disgust. She realises that for him this is all about power. In front of the women, her sense of humiliation is worse. She does not blame them for keeping their distance. She is not like them, and the man in the green uniform saw it straight away.

  In her underwear now, and backed up to the water’s edge, she looks at him pleadingly for a second as he makes another jerking movement with his rifle. His face is fleshy and hot and something inside her shudders. Shaking, she pulls off her knickers and turns away from him to unclip her bra.

  ‘Turn around,’ he barks. ‘Face me!’

  But she keeps her back to him and looks out at the sea. And suddenly she understands its pull. This is what Philip wanted. There is a sharp crack in the air as the man in uniform fires a warning shot. She flinches, but keeps walking. Another shot is fired and still she keeps walking.

  Then she looks back for a second over her shoulder. The women have gone. It is just the man in the green uniform now, but his rifle has gone too. And then she sees that his posture is different, pleading, and his uniform hangs on him now. The jolt of recognition is like another shot in the air around her head. It is Paul. He is standing at the water’s edge, calling her name, but she keeps walking, further and further into the cool sea. She starts swimming towards the horizon. Paul’s cries are gone now. She is alone. The water laps at her body and she feels her nipples tingle as she gives herself to the sea. She floats and closes her eyes, feels warm sunshine on her skin.

  And now there are hands caressing her and she opens her eyes to see a man’s form above her, about to enter her. His head is silhouetted against the sun. She cannot make out his features, but she recognises him through the sense of longing that flares up suddenly, unashamedly, in the closed-off core of her being. Bruce. For a second she remembers the man with the rifle who turned into Paul, but the water has softened her and she opens herself to this other man without a face, drawing him down inside her, into the sea.

  * * *

  Chala woke slowly, still wet from an unremembered dream. Something in the way that her body moved against Paul as she went to hold him must have given his own sleepy body a message. For once his morning erection had somewhere to go! He had been careful, wary of sexual contact since Philip’s death. They had made love once, surprisingly, just after her return from Australia – a tender moment of reunion in the midst of her heartache – but it had made her cry. She had cried and cried and just wanted to be held and he felt a little frightened of going through that again. They had both drifted away from sexual contact after that, and the longer it went on, the harder the distance was to cross.

  Their sleep-aided lovemaking was a relief to both of them, she realised. She closed her eyes as he entered her. She knew his eyes would still be open, taking her in. She used to hate that and love it at the same time, her eyes seeking his out, trying to hold them in hers and keep them from her body. But now it was too much, and she hoped that he would forgive her, offering herself deeply in return. It was over quickly and then he was the one to close his eyes and she held him to her, laughing and stroking his head, the only time she could ruffle his hair, his defences post-coitally gentle.

  ‘I love you, Paul. You do know that, don’t you?’ Chala suddenly wanted to do more and more to please him. She prodded him. ‘Fried egg and bacon for breakfast?’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask!’ He was smiling at her now, eyes open, warm, satisfied.

  She sang in the shower and felt more cheerful than she had done in what felt like a very long time.

  While she was patting out potato cakes from leftover mash, an odd image floated into her head of a fleshy man in a green uniform pointing a rifle at her as she stood in a row of women on a beach. She laughed – that TV programme about the Spanish Civil War must have got into her dreams.

  Over breakfast, they found themselves talking about subjects that weren’t personally loaded for the first time in ages – the latest news headlines, the latest diet and celebrity fads. Paul was laughing and Chala felt light-headed. This is what normal couples are like, she thought, oblivious to the irony of thinking in those terms.

  ‘What are you working on at the moment?’ she asked.

  ‘At last!’

  ‘At last what?’

  ‘You said working!’

  ‘Well, obviously I didn’t mean literally. Can I see?’ She was tentative, childlike all of a sudden. It wasn’t taboo, exactly, but there was an unspoken agreement between them that she never went uninvited to his studio. He liked to finish a painting before he showed it to her, as if the risk of exposure was just too great.

  ‘OK.’ He pulled her over to him and she sat on his lap, straddling him, facing him, loving him, happy. ‘But don’t expect too much. I haven’t done a lot lately.’

  When she saw the half-finished painting, she blanched. It was a woman standing between two mirrors, looking at her own reflection. Because of the way the two mirrors faced each other, the images of the woman created a domino effect of ever-smaller mirrors. In the first reflected mirror a young, red-haired woman stared back – Chala noticed the likeness to herself; Paul often sought inspiration from her untamed looks – but the next reflection showed the same woman with lines under her eyes and the beginnings of sagging cheeks, and the next the same woman with deeper lines and grey in her hair, and
in the one after that her neck had begun to gather empty folds of skin, and there were still unfinished diminishing mirrors receding into the shadows of the background. The effect was shocking. She stood still, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Do you like it?’ It was Paul who was childlike now, like a boy showing his mother something he’d done at school, eager for approval.

  ‘I don’t know if I like it.’ She struggled to put her reaction into words. ‘But it’s powerful, shocking, incredible. I don’t think I could bear to have it in my living room, but it’s the kind of thing I’d go back to see again and again in a gallery. There’s something haunting about it, like staring into a fire.’

  ‘You see why I love you.’ Paul was full of her, delighted with her response.

  Chala ached suddenly. Ached with the knowledge of the wrong she had done him, and she felt Philip’s absence slice through her. It came in waves, a shooting pain that would come and go, leaving her feeling empty and vaguely angry. She wondered if the memory of Philip would grow old, like the woman in the mirrors.

  ‘Do you think I should contact Denise?’ The question caught her as much by surprise as it did Paul. She had mentioned their exchange at the funeral, but they had not talked any more about it.

  His eyes dropped for a second and when he looked back into her face, the inevitable frown was tender and weary at once. ‘You don’t think that’s just going to stir things up again too much?’

  Chala thought about the fox that Philip had saved. About how long Paul had avoided stirring things up with his parents. About how much, for all his apparent spontaneity, he clung to the status quo. Was their marriage like a fox that could be saved by maintaining the status quo?

  CHAPTER 14

  ‘Get a fucking life, will you!’

  Chala feels winded. Paul’s face is taut and ugly and she thinks she sees hatred there. She feels like walking out – out of the room, out of the house – but she doesn’t trust herself. What if he’s not there when she comes back? He walked out on her once and disappeared for six hours. When he came back – refreshed, renewed, with a sense of perspective about the pointless argument that had prompted him to walk out in the first place – he was shocked by the state of her. For every inch of perspective that he had found, she had lost two.