by Mavis Cheek
When we reached London I saw my friend in the distance trundling her bag behind her, head held high, fury in every step. I wondered how long it would take for that bravado to sink into the stooped back and sunken head of misery. I just hoped Arturo and the children were too bleary-eyed to notice. There was going to be an almighty splash otherwise. As for me, well, I arrived back at the silent, dark house as morning was just hinting at her emergence from sleep – and in that colourless, cold crepuscular light I felt chilled and old and very stupid but at least I felt certain that Robert would return. I would go to the airport and wait for his flight and hope. It was all I could do.
No messages of note. Nothing from Robert. Sad. Nothing from Tassie. Good. Nothing from Toni. Bad. Nothing from my mother. Unsurprising. And another call from Brando. If he used the house phone, which he regarded as the office phone, then he was clearly in serious working mode. Or I was supposed to be. He was telling me to look out all the information I could find on those cages, particularly where they were hung. I already knew about them but my one-step-aheadness that usually pleased me now left me flat. Mary McCarthy was graphic on the subject. The cage, or cheba, was the Venetian idea of a hanging basket – only rather than pansies and trailing verbena it contained, usually, a miscreant monk or priest who’d been caught doing something immoral or criminal (the one being the other in fifteenth-century Venice). Torture was not part of the punishment – Brando would be sorry to hear this – but hanging there for anything up to a year and being fed on only bread and water was. Though I even had my doubts about this. Someone, surely, would sneak up to the cage at some point and push a bit of meat or cheese or fruit between the bars? A friend, a mother, or a wife …
I rang him. He sounded pleased to hear from me. ‘Fascinating, isn’t it?’ he said.
Brando had been shown one of the original hooks, high up near the Rialto – courtesy of the Italian – and he wanted to know some other likely locations. ‘We could plot a walk through the city describing where each was hung and the kind of crimes committed. That’d be original.’
‘And horrible,’ I said.
‘Yes, but people like to be scared once in a while.’ And shocked. It makes their own settled lives so much more delightful.
He was right. Lovely it was to look over the edge, into the pit, and then scurry off home to hot Bovril and The Archers.
‘And you’ll like this – mostly they were hung up there not for telling lies, but for telling the truth.’
‘Such as?’
‘You mustn’t trade with that merchant for he is a murderer.’
‘Inconvenient. The Venetians wanted to go on trading with anybody, murderer or not? Is that your point?’
‘Exactly. Not unlike the wonderful world of commerce and empire today. If the merchant was a good contributor to Venetian business, he never committed a crime … Good, eh?’
‘Very good,’ I said flatly.
‘It’s a cruel old world, the world of capitalism.’ He paused, delighted with himself.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Oh come on, Nina, we used to have such fun.’
‘And we will again,’ I said bleakly. ‘But not right now.’
He added, quite gently, that he hoped things bucked up and that I was to let him know … He was only being partly selfish and that really was too much. Not only had he confessed to actually missing me, now he was being kind. Down came the tears.
‘Could you please stop being kind to me?’ I said.
‘Certainly.’
‘It’s making it worse.’
But he had rung off.
One of our urban foxes was making its piteous last call for love as the morning crept on. It seemed to express everything I felt. If this was the moral high ground, then, frankly, you could keep it.
Eighteen
Chessiker: an unpleasant surprise.
R. L. Abbott’s Manuscript Collection of Nottingham Words, 1905
WHAT DO YOU wear to meet your husband when you don’t actually own a set of sackcloth and ashes? You go through your dull wardrobe, is what you do. And you try not to make an issue out of what to wear because part of you tells yourself that you have been married for years and years and that it doesn’t matter that much: if he loves you he loves you, Dior and pearls or jeans and sweatshirt. But the other part of you – the irrational part – and you know it’s irrational because it is accompanied by words from an irredeemably awful song about keeping young and beautiful spinning around in your head: ‘You’ll always have your way / If he likes you in a negligee …’ – thinks differently. In a parallel life it would make you weep with laughter, the thought of turning up at Heathrow Airport in a diaphanous, floaty thing, but you are far too concerned with what to wear to find anything funny at all. Bad. Very bad. I held on to Brando’s words ‘I miss you’ for their friendship. Life felt like a giant chessboard at the moment, pieces moving forward and back and the one taking the place of the other – Toni back with the pawns, Brando up with the knights, my mother behind with the bishops, Tassie ahead with the queen, the Italian checked rather than mated, and Robert, well, obviously, he must be the king. I, of course, was the board.
It was the white linen again – after all, look what it had done for me in Venice. And I then – carefully and slowly – began putting on make-up. That most basic of deceits, the painted face. It was nine thirty in the morning and I was applying mascara. Unheard of. I rang Brando before I left just to say I was sorry for being such a misery and letting him down, but if I expected more of the same soothing warmth, I was disappointed. This time it was too early for him and I got a few unrepeatable words followed by the suggestion that I call back at a sensible time. That was more like it. Or better still, he added, get on a plane and get straight back here where there is work to be done.
‘Brando,’ I said, ‘I’m going to the airport to meet Robert. This is make or break for my marriage. Your book will wait. This won’t.’
‘That kind of attitude,’ he said, sleepily, ‘is why women do not rule the planet and we men do.’
When Brando starts referring to himself as one of ‘we men’ you know he is very cross.
‘Go on then, run to hubbie. But remember – you’ve got a fan here if ever you want one.’
I softened. ‘Why, thank you.’
‘Not me, you klutz, the Italian. If it doesn’t work out with Robert you can cut your losses and –’
‘Yes, thanks.’
I put the phone down fast. It was as if just by hearing those words I had committed the deed. And despite the irrationality of it, all I thought was that if I felt so guilty Robert might take one look at me and guess. The white linen, I hoped, had a virginal quality to counter this. The jeans might remind him of our innocent youth.
The plane was slightly early so by the time I’d parked the passengers were starting to come through. No time to do what I felt like doing which was to pass out with anxiety. Everybody in that long stream of trolley-pushing travellers was smiling and waving or looking around with benign expressions for a familiar face. And they looked suntanned and healthy. It was a happy band. And then, suddenly, there was Robert, pushing a trolley and wearing his old familiar sloppy denim jacket and the blue shirt I’d bought him before he left. He was not smiling. Nor was he looking around benignly. Nor, really, was he looking particularly healthy. And his suntan, which was definitely there, had more of a jaundiced look about it. My heart felt heavy at the sight. On the other hand, how galling it would have been had he come leaping through the barrier with ravening good cheer on account of having had such a good time.
He was pushing the trolley in front of him as if he were on tracks. The rest of the group were scattered around, Hugo and Lorna, Polly and Susannah and a couple of others behind them. Hugo and Lorna looked perfectly normal, if a little more subdued than the rest of the passengers. They still clutched their Burberrys though I didn’t think they looked quite so ironed and crisp somehow. Indeed, the whole of the g
roup looked slightly flat. Maybe that was how we always looked when we returned from these jaunts. Those trips were usually tiring affairs. That was probably it for they were certainly moving slightly floppily, as if they were still half-asleep. Or maybe Florida had softened them up. Cut a few strings.
I smiled and gave a tentative little wave as they came closer. Lorna remained considerably less bright and bouncy than usual as she gave me a little wave, a strange half-smile, and they walked on. Odd – and rather chilling. No one seemed to have much to say. Robert still wasn’t looking very hard for me. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t be there to meet him. Or maybe he didn’t want to be met. Only one way to find out. He reached the end of the barrier and he still hadn’t seen me. His eyes were fixed and rather hooded. This did not bode well. So I went over to him as he came through the barrier, and I touched his arm. He looked round. I said, stupidly, ‘Did you have a nice time.’ And he said, rather flatly, ‘Thanks for coming.’ To which I said, ‘That’s OK.’ And we set off for the car park with no further words. There was an invisible barrier between us – I didn’t touch his arm again, or hold his hand, or any of the things I might normally have done. Nor did I ask about Florida. Instead I trotted a pace or two behind like a good, obedient wife until he had to stop and ask which way we should go. He looked haggard in the glare of the airport lights, and in pain. My heart hurt just looking at him. He also had bags under his eyes. I wondered if he had been having – miserable, miserable thought – late and abandoned nights.
At the car I asked if the flight had been OK and he said that it had. ‘They do you well on a Virgin,’ he said. In the old days I would have laughed at the innuendo. Not now. ‘Thanks for picking me up,’ he said again, and immediately seemed to fall into a doze. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I didn’t say hello to the others.’ He gave a little half-smile with his closed lips but did not open his eyes. ‘They’ll live,’ he said. And we drove off.
*
It began to rain as we arrived at the house. If I was looking for omens then this was one. It had been sunny and warm while he was away and the light evenings had that usual early-spring sense of good, warm days to come. Now it was back to cold, dull dampness. Robert lugged his case out of the boot, I zapped the lock of the car, took a very deep breath and marched up to the front door. In we went. Robert did not even look up at the house. He kept his head down and walked up the path without looking left or right.
Once indoors my husband, whom I thought I knew like myself, left his case in the hall and did a most extraordinary thing: he went into the sitting room and turned up the thermostat. I did not dare to crow as I would once have done. By now I was a little frightened. Then he slumped down on to the sofa and closed his eyes again. He really was a strange colour. Perhaps the Florida sun was different? I went into the kitchen and did the utterly British thing of turning on the kettle. Rain lashed against the back door, wind bent the trees in an agony of cruelty and the gas boiler burst into life. I had never, in all the years I lived with him, known Robert turn up the central heating. Never.
‘Coffee?’ I called. ‘Or tea?’ But when I went back into the sitting room, he was half upright and sound asleep. I slid onto the space beside him and snuggled into his crumpled body. It smelled of shampoo, aircraft, his own unique scent – and – oddly – faintly of alcohol. With the radiators warming up and steam on the windows and our comfortable closeness, I, too, fell asleep. And as I began to lose consciousness I had a cold, hard stabbing thought that all this unusual behaviour, his pallor, his monosyllabic responses, could mean only one thing. I was still persona non grata – time and separation had not smoothed away any of it. I looked at his nice, familiar sleeping face and wondered how often in the future, if at all, I would be invited to look upon it at such close quarters. And had anyone else?
The telephone roused us both. I opened my eyes and jumped up, startled out of the deepest of sleeps. Robert looked about him and blinked. Then he focused on me as I headed towards the noise. ‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘If it’s urgent they’ll leave a message.’ He rubbed his eyes and took a sip of the water I’d put next to him. The room was like an overheated greenhouse. ‘Come and sit down.’ He patted the space beside his but I said that first I would bring us some tea – I was thirsty and so must he be. In fact I was buying myself time. We were like strangers with a code of delicate behaviour between us and I was wondering where my husband – my marriage – had gone. I passed the answer-phone which clicked towards message but then went silent. As the number only registered as unavailable I knew it was Brando. At least he had shown some tact. Then – hilarious moment – I turned down the thermostat as I passed it and from behind me Robert said, ‘Well – that is a first.’ The sound of his laughter was so unexpected and so welcome that I took heart, just a little, even though there was a definite edge to it.
When I returned with tray, mugs and teapot, he was sitting up and emptying his pockets of all the palaver that goes with travel. This was a characteristic of his and I liked the fact that he seemed to be behaving more normally now. It was now the afternoon and we had slept for nearly three hours – extraordinary. I handed him his tea. He had a line down his face from the sofa’s piping. I touched it. ‘You’ve got a furrow,’ I said. He ran his fingers over the crease. He still looked tired, his eyes were pinkish and he was certainly no advert for the benefits of Florida. My only mental picture of Florida was rows of men and women of retirement age sitting in reclining chairs facing the sun, wearing oddly shaped straw hats and with paper shields over their noses. I think it was Miami and I think it came from a movie.
‘So – how was Florida?’ I asked, a little too heartily.
‘Big and hot and humid,’ he said. ‘Quite wearing really. All right if you want to laze about on the beach or travel in air-conditioned limos but if you just want to walk to places or do some kind of sport it’s – exacting. I liked it though.’
‘Culture zero?’
He looked offended. ‘Actually, no. We were at Lauderdale beach – just up from Fort Lauderdale – mainly art deco and with a full-scale imported twelfth-century Cistercian abbey church all of its very own.’
‘You’re kidding?’ I felt so happy. If he’d been tramping around architectural sites and whatnot, he hadn’t been clamped to the casino and the waiting arms of a blonde.
‘Randolph Hearst brought it over – lock, stock – piece by piece – and then lost the numbering for the bits …’ He began to laugh – same edge to it, I noticed. ‘So when they finally reconstructed it about thirty years later they had a heap of the stones left over … Still – it looks good – if a little out of kilter with all the rest. Just not quite – true.’ He gave me a look. ‘Miami, by the by, is beautiful in a modern way – they know how to build high and build elegantly. Such is capitalism.’ He said this last a little wistfully. I let it go. The dead hand of international financial collapse was fairly low on the list of current interests.
‘Did you go to a casino?’
‘Loads,’ he said.
‘Did you win?’
‘Broke even.’
‘Gamblers always say that. And what else?’
‘Surfing. Eating a lot. Getting out what you call my antlers with Hugo and the rest. You know the sort of thing.’
‘So you had a good time. I’m glad. Am I forgiven?’
He got up, holding his mug in a tightly clenched fist. He put his hand to his head which looked worryingly dramatic. The line of the sofa piping still there. ‘For what?’ he said.
‘For not coming with you.’
He put his mug down on the small table and sat down again quickly, as if his knees had buckled. This was bad. He dropped backwards against the sofa cushions and then – most curiously – he laughed. Only this time it was a proper laugh. He still held his forehead but with his free hand he squeezed my knee and said, ‘Forgiven? I think it’s me who should be apologising to you. I should at least have rung.’ He held his head again. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘but
I don’t half feel ill.’
‘Is it the food? On the plane? Or have you caught something?’ I was really anxious by now. His colour was definitely not right.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘It’s much more likely to be –’ He looked down at his feet, ‘It’s much more likely – oh God –’ He winced again. ‘It’s definitely a hangover.’
A hangover? Robert? He was never a big drinker. He couldn’t take too much and hated the aftermath of feeling ill. Two or three glasses of wine with a meal was his absolute limit and usually far less.
‘It was tequila sunrises’ fault,’ he said.
My turn to laugh. ‘Nice girl, not too bright. What did she do. Hold your nose and force you to drink?’
He dropped his head into his hands again and groaned. Perhaps the blonde at the casino was called Tequila Sunrises?
‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘I’m so glad to be home … I think I’ll go and have a bath.’
And for the time being I had to be happy with that.
Later – when he’d bathed and shaved and put on fresh clothes and I’d unpacked his case – good wives unpack their husbands’ cases – but I’d never been a good wife – I’d never done it in my life until now and now I knew why good wives unpacked their husbands’ cases – it was so they could look for any clues of an untoward nature – Tequila’s underwear or something unspeakable purchased at the chemist’s of which I found none – well – he suggested we went out for an early supper. Just round the corner at Douro’s. Portuguese – so much less common than Spanish went the family joke. At least I was spared the Italian which did a fine line in Venetian cuisine. I was beginning to think that I had more to hide than my pale, jaundiced husband.
I didn’t know whether it was ominous or not, to be going out. I’d thought we’d stay in and I’d be an even better little wife and knock up a little something and salad – but Douro’s it was. Douro’s is quite dark, quite intimate and – at that time of the evening – quite empty. We’d never actually been to Portugal but we knew the menus pretty intimately – whenever one of our neighbours came back from their holiday they’d invite us and others round for an authentic Portuguese meal – which was invariably feijoada (bean stew), acorda (bread stew), or something flavoured with piri-piri. What we liked best were the sardines and the tuna dishes and that is what we usually ate at Douro’s – only this time Robert ordered cozido, which is like cassoulet or pot-au-feu, saying that he needed something substantial. He declined wine and ordered water instead. I did not decline wine. I thought I might need a little drop to get me through whatever it was he was going to explain. Let me tell you there is something shuddery about your husband of longevity saying he thinks he owes you an apology when he just might have been locked in the arms of a leggy blonde.