Rich Deceiver

by Gillian White

  And to gloat over Ellie’s reaction.

  Does it take one to know one, Ellie ponders—one cheat to recognise another? But then again, maybe Maria is wrong. Maybe she’s jumped to the wrong conclusions and is only out to cause trouble—putting jealous thoughts into Ellie’s head.

  ‘I have given up smoking, Malc,’ she tells him that night when he gets home—late, and he hasn’t rung to inform her. ‘I gave up before lunch. I have thrown my last packet away.’

  And it sounds like another gift she is trying to give him, like the blasted results of the cordon bleu. He is not particularly interested, merely polite, distracted by some letter he has to write. He says, ‘Well done, Elle. Try and keep it up because you’ll feel so much better in the end. Apart from the money.’

  ‘Has the craving stopped for you now?’

  My God what answer does she want and what is she really meaning?

  Malc says the worst thing she can imagine. ‘It all depends what I’m doing and what mood I’m in. It’s really the extra energy that I notice most, Elle. Smoking makes you feel tired all the time, apart from the fact that it’s so disgusting and you can’t go anywhere and do it these days without making somebody else feel sick.’

  ‘Did my smoking disgust you then, Malc?’ And she realises with horror that she is following him round.

  He stares at her as he passes her by, en route to his study. ‘I don’t think I even noticed you smoking, Elle,’ he says. ‘It’s so much part of you.’

  Oh my God.

  She stands at the door of his study, looking in, almost twisting her hands behind her back in her awful, sickly anxiety. ‘I have also rung a fitness place. I’ve got an appointment in a fortnight’s time.’

  I’m going to be nice. I’m going to be nice and healthy and fit and young again. For you. Just wait for me, Malc. Just give me until the week after next, for Christ’s sake you owe me that!

  Dear God she could do with a fag.

  She chews on her lip, tearing at herself.

  She knows she is annoying him. When she swallows the sound she makes is so loud he must be able to hear her. She knows he wants to be left alone to get on with his letter, she can sense the irritation he is trying to conceal with breezy politeness. His mind is on other matters and here he is, coming home tired, being swamped by mundane matters that interest him not a jot.

  She is behaving like a child, pestering for a sweet from a father. But what does Ellie want Malc to unwrap and pop into her waiting mouth? Some words. Some words spoken sincerely, that will reassure her and take Maria Williams’ cheesey, rubber-gloved fingers out of her mouth for once and for all. She feels like a person in terrible pain, a bottle of painkillers in her hand but the blasted lid is child-proof and do what she might she can’t twist it off. Eventually Malc, sitting at his desk with the paper out before him and Ellie gabbling on behind him, turns round and asks, ‘Is there anything wrong, Elle?’

  She smiles and screws up her nose in the way of Mary Beth Lacey. She shifts her feet a little. She shrugs her shoulders and departs.

  ‘Maria Williams knows nothing at all about you and Malc or your kind,’ says the voice when she reaches the kitchen. ‘You are not like her and neither is Malc. He would not go off behaving like that, breaking the vows he made in church, lowering his standards, just for a bit of fluff.’

  ‘Maybe it’s more than a bit of fluff then,’ says Ellie. ‘Maybe it’s something more serious than that.’

  ‘So you have convinced yourself that something is going on, have you?’ asks the voice. ‘You have swallowed the bait strung out for you by that vindictive woman next door in the same pathetic way that you picked up her challenge to race with her washing!’

  Ellie sits at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. She is so confused. At home all day like she is, with no friends, no work, no diversions, how else is she expected to react? She tries to calm herself down with logic. What is the very worst thing that could happen… what is the very worst scenario?

  Malc could go off with somebody else and leave her alone for ever.

  Ellie can’t take that one any further. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for that one to go. It goes all the way already.

  It could be that Malc is just having a fling. That snakey lady coiled up in his arms could be merely a one-night stand.

  It could equally be that he was dancing with her because there was no way out of it. To leave her sitting alone at their table might have been impolite. It could well be that their conversation went no further, at the Grosvenor that night, than to comment on the lighting, or the heating, or the flowers. Hell, Gabriella de Courtney could be a married woman with children of her own for all Ellie knows.

  Ellie fights her despair.

  There have been no telephone calls to the house, after all. She has not picked the phone up only to have it put down. She has not sniffed perfume on Malc’s suits or shirts or underpants… not that she’s thought about it until now. But if there had been perfume, strong perfume, surely Ellie would have smelt it. Or anything else for that matter.

  If Malcolm Freeman has been seeing another woman on any regular sort of basis then Ellie would know and there’s an end to it.

  She makes him a cup of coffee and takes it in. He has informed her that he has already eaten.

  ‘Where did you eat, Malc?’

  She has interrupted his writing again. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I asked, where did you eat tonight?’

  Malc frowns and shakes his head. ‘At the Royal.’

  ‘Was it a nice meal?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you have anything nice?’

  ‘Well, it was all right. Put it just there will you, love. That’s fine.’

  She tries to read what he’s writing over his shoulder but she can’t see from here and she doesn’t want him to know what she’s doing. ‘Will you be long, Malc?’

  ‘No, just another few minutes.’

  ‘I’ll wait for you then. I won’t go up.’ There is no upstairs in the bungalow, but they still call going to bed going up.

  ‘No, you go up, Elle.’ And as he looks at her again, his irritation shows, like small lines of writing across his brow. ‘You go up and I’ll follow as soon as I’m ready. Okay?’

  ‘Okay, Malc’

  ‘Only I’m busy just now, that’s all.’

  ‘Okay, Malc’

  ‘Right then.’

  Ellie has a bright blue bath and she fills it to the top. She wishes her body was younger right now. She imagines what Gabriella de Courtney’s leg might look like, getting in. She bets she keeps her legs waxed all the time, even in winter. Ellie splays her toes and makes herself bear the feel of the plug-chain between them. It slithers. It’s cold. She shivers. Malc used to stroke her feet for her once—she thinks that her feet are probably the most sensual parts of her body. She wonders if Gabriella’s breasts are bigger than hers—they must be firmer—and she wonders if she has pink nipples or brown ones, or if her tummy button sticks out or goes in. She thinks it’s funny how men know more about women’s bodies than women do. Does Malc know about Gabriella’s?

  She could be dead, lying here motionless like this so that the water stops lapping her and circles her throat like a hot clamp. What would Malc do if she died, if she drowned in the bath tonight? She tries to let herself float, she’s sure she’d rise to the top if she wasn’t getting so fat or if she wasn’t so full of smoke. Perhaps that’s what makes her tummy look so fat… old smoke… but surely it doesn’t get down that far.

  People don’t just throw their lives away for a moment’s pleasure. Not in Ellie’s world they don’t. She powders herself and puts on a clean nightie. She brushes her hair so it shines. She slips under the duvet and feels like the Sleeping Beauty, waiting alone for a hundred years. Only as she waits and he does not come the hundred years pass and she turns from a princess into a cadaver. There are no rosebuds to cover her, only a shroud as she waits for the pathologist�
��s hands.

  She is still and cold like a cadaver.

  She has left off her bedsocks.

  And her heart feels as if it might have died; the tick of the clock assaults her ears.

  ‘Are you awake, Elle?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still awake.’

  ‘Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘You’d never leave me, Malc, would you?’

  He jokes, ‘I thought there was something the matter with you tonight! I thought you were behaving strangely this evening. Go on… go into the kitchen and have a fag!’

  ‘You’d never leave me though, would you, seriously?’

  ‘Whatever has made you start talking like this?’ He is undressing. He is annoyed. He looks white and slender, like marble, from behind. He ruffles his hair before getting into bed like he always does and it is his hair that makes him human in the night light. She looks at his feet, they have always been hers. She feels him beside her, so familiar, and there is a long, long moment while they wait to see which way he will turn.

  Once they slept with babies between them, warm and milky and gurgling with life. They had to face each other then, when they had a baby in bed. ‘If there was something wrong, Malc, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Ellie, for goodness sake, if there was something wrong you would be the first to know!’

  And he clicks off his light and turns over.

  I have asked him, Ellie tells herself. I have asked him and he has answered.

  And he is absolutely right.

  I might not have been the first, but I do know.

  But then comes another morning, and another, and here is Ellie on that terrible carousel going round and round and round, going through the whole thing over again, quite dizzy by now, a wild-eyed sleuth searching for clues.

  He is slurping his cornflakes.

  Why?

  Because he has always slurped his cornflakes, you stupid bat.

  There is nothing else for it. She is going to have to go and have a look at this wretched woman Gabriella.

  21

  WOULD A WOMAN LIKE Gabriella de Courtney want Malc?

  It is one week after Maria’s visit and should she tell Malc that she’s been to the Royal Albert Waterside Art Gallery this afternoon? Ellie removes The Deesider from its mattress home and leaves it open on the kitchen table, quite casually, but in such a position that he cannot possibly miss it the minute he gets in.

  He’s late, it is dark, and her eyes are sore from peering out of the window.

  ‘Maria brought them round,’ says Ellie easily, puffing her face free from steam as she checks the pie in the oven.

  Malc sits down. He keeps his coat on. She watches him out of the corner of her eye. Ellie doesn’t like chaos but she senses there’s some kind of chaos here in her kitchen. Does it come from her, all red and flustered, with pastry annoying her under her nails down where she can’t quite get at it, or does it come from him? She is suddenly conscious of the past they have shared together and it is like a tight ball of hempy string, used often and re-wound again, hairy, with knots in. It used to be strong and dependable…

  Would a woman like that want him?

  Not as he used to be, certainly.

  ‘It looks as if you are having a good time. Maybe I ought to have come after all. I will, next time, if you like.’

  Silence.

  ‘That’s if I’m invited.’ She laughs hysterically, aware of her tight faded smile.

  Silence.

  ‘Maria says she’s got some gorgeous dresses in at the moment and I said I’d go and have a look next time I pass by. Maybe I ought to buy something fancy because I haven’t got anything suitable for an event like that one. I never thought I’d need to wear a dress like that but now I don’t know. I thought that I might pop in. Next time I go by. And she looks nice, Gabriella de Courtney. She looks like an interesting person.’

  Silence again while she circles him; she waits with dull eyes and dull ears but can only hear the squeak and the clank of the Williams’ wrought-iron gates closing.

  Malc moves for the first time and he brings his hands together, spreading his fingers as if to take some ache out of them. She watches him swallow before he brings himself to say, ‘She is an interesting person, Elle. You’d like her.’

  ‘Huh… you thought that I’d like Maria Williams, but I didn’t.’

  ‘Ellie.’ Malc clears his throat, and then he asks her hoarsely, ‘Hell, d’you fancy a drink?’

  ‘I’ll get it, Malc. You just sit there. Tea won’t be long.’ She ought to be laughing at that… after all these years of convincing Malc to call it dinner. ‘And don’t you want to take your coat off? It’s hot in here what with the cooker…’

  It looks as if he’s bowing to her when he shrugs himself out of it and Ellie can’t see the expression in his eyes. His coat smells of frost—she is grateful to be handed it—there are sparkles of crispy night air on it that look like sequins when she holds it up to the light of the hall.

  She plods back into the kitchen in spite of knowing that a monster waits in there. She puts his glass down in front of him, solid and heavy with golden fire inside it, and she pours herself a sherry from the kitchen cupboard.

  ‘Ellie, I have been wanting to talk to you, but you’ve been so peculiar lately that there hasn’t been a right time.’

  Ellie calms the rattling of the saucepan lid before she sits down.

  ‘I don’t know how to start.’

  Ellie felt proud to be married, yes she did, even though she was seventeen and everyone was against it, even though she’d had no choice and it was a shot-gun wedding. She’d felt proud in her heart, proud to be wanted. Proud to walk down the street, pregnant, with her man.

  ‘Things have been happening,’ Malc says.

  And Ellie could tell that all her friends were jealous because she had found a man for her very own.

  ‘I can’t tell you exactly when it first started.’

  They had broken the bank to buy the tiny ruby. They shouldn’t have done that. They bought that ruby and never caught up.

  ‘The first time we met was at Speke airport. We were booked on to the same plane; it was the afternoon I rang you to say we’d been held up by fog and I didn’t know whether we’d get off until tomorrow.’

  There had always been a kind of worship in his eyes. He’d given up his classes and they’d decorated the bedroom. They’d cleaned up the whole house and decorated that, too. When Mandy was born she’d come into a palace… new cot… new pram…. and a tiny white chest of drawers with rosebuds down the sides.

  ‘It was obvious the plane wasn’t going to take off so we went to have a drink.’

  Oh, she’d been so frightened of the birth. The midwife had tried to push Malc out, but knowing of her terror he had bravely refused to leave the room.

  ‘We were instantly attracted to each other. That’s the only way I can say it. I can’t think of any other bloody words which will explain.’

  They hadn’t planned a second child straight after. Malc had been determined, even then, to carry out his plans. ‘We’ll not stay in this bloody slum, not a moment longer than necessary. You’re worthy of more than this, Ellie.’ But yes, there had been an odd sort of pleasure in parading the pram in front of her mother… look, Mam, look, I might not be able to pass exams but I can have beautiful babies!

  ‘I wish you’d say something, Elle. This isn’t easy. I don’t enjoy causing this sort of pain, you know.’ And Malc hides his face in his hands.

  ‘What are you telling me? I don’t know what you’re telling me.’ In the small space between them is all the emptiness in the world.

  Malc lifts his face again and Ellie sees his anguish. She asks him again, ‘What are you telling me, Malc?’

  ‘That Gabriella and I want to be together.’

  ‘That you don’t want to be with me any more?’

  ‘I never thought I’d ever listen to myself talking like this.’


  ‘So what do you want to do?’

  ‘I would like to go away, just for a little while.’

  ‘With her?’

  ‘With Gabby, maybe, yes.’

  ‘And leave me here?’

  ‘We would see each other, Ellie. Whenever you needed to do that we could see each other.’

  ‘In case I’m lonely, d’you mean?’

  ‘Don’t, Elle.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Malc, I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean to sound feeble.’

  ‘It might only be for a little while. It might not work out between us.’

  ‘Would you come back then, Malc? Once you’d tried things out?’

  ‘Ellie. The thing is, I don’t think we love each other any more. I don’t honestly think we have loved each other for a very long time, and I’ve thought about this, and thought, and thought, and I’ve come to the conclusion that since I’ve had this new job everything has suddenly become much clearer. We were jogging along in a rut, Ellie, rubbing along together out of necessity and habit. We hardly had time for feelings. I know this is a shock… shit, I know what you’re feeling, Elle, honest to God I know what you must be feeling just now. But when you are able to start thinking about all this more clearly, I truly believe that you might find yourself realising that I am right. We didn’t have very much, Elle, and apart from the memories, we don’t have much now. Do we?’

  ‘You want me to answer? Is that what you’ve paused for?’

  ‘I want to know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Why, Malc? Why do you want to know that? Are you hoping that I’ll take away some of your pain by saying that what you are doing is all right?’

  ‘Sod it, Elle, no, I don’t want that. That’s not what I’m asking.’