for you, and you hadn’t been drunk, you would have been the murderess, and would I have been implicated then?’
This retort confused her aunt’s resolution somewhat, and when she replied, it was in a more desperate tone. ‘Yes, I hate him— I don’t care if Davey chops him into pieces— but I’m afraid for you, Artemisia. How could you do it, and live with yourself? How could you look at the dead body of your husband, knowing you’d arranged his death? Oh, what would become of you? You’d have to have a heart of metal to look on him!’
‘Well, I’ve a mind of metal to do it already, haven’t I? So my heart may follow suit.’
Jenny covered her face in distress, and Artemisia, with a beguiling smile, embraced her warmly.
‘Don’t worry,’ she soothed. ‘Mettle’s all I need, and I have that. There— a pun for your qualms!’
The surprise of Artemisia’s revelation subsided somewhat, and soon Jenny felt collected enough to consider the notion a little. But before long, her niece leapt up and hurried her to take her leave.
‘The devil will be up soon, for his dinner,’ said the wife. ‘You’d best be off before he sees you. It’s time for me to be a harridan— if I played the angel I was to Davey, my husband wouldn’t know me!’
Quick to be prompted, the relative slipped out through the street door in the sailor’s wake, and before long, Tom Parnell came stomping upstairs from the Red Ship bar. He entered (and filled) the kitchen, where Artemisia was cooking him a beefsteak, and rubbed his belly, stretched his arms and kissed his lady without once abating a loud and boisterous account of his day, which continued solidly throughout the meal’s preparation. As a landlord, he was used to holding an audience, and besides, it never occurred to him to ask how his spouse had passed her time, since he had not let her out.
Artemisia, like a good wife of fable, listened attentively to every word he spoke, but not, of course, because she doted on his elocution, or even expected to hear anything to interest or amuse her— she listened in case he should drop a single hint that she might take advantage of— an opinion, a decision, a doubt, a hope— that she might snatch, turn, and use against him later. However, she rarely gained anything by this effort, except reassurance of Tom’s thorough predictability, and daily practice in the art of dissembling agreement and approbation, when in fact she defied and detested his every assertion.
Tom’s monologue was finally interrupted when she placed the food before him at the table, and this so absorbed his attention that she might have dived out of the window into the harbour and he would not have glanced up. So, to amuse herself, she began a prattle of her own.
‘I stole your car today, Thomas,’ she began (it was her habit to extend familiar, jovial Tom to sibilant, freezing Thomas), ‘and drove down to Land’s End. There’s such a feeling of liberty on those cliff tops that I couldn’t help rolling the car into the sea. But don’t worry, I hitchhiked home quite safely.’
He grunted something incoherent and shovelled the last morsel into his fast-working maw. Then he pushed back the plate, wiped his mouth and observed brightly: ‘No trouble at the barber’s today!’ as if she had been mute all the while. ‘Last time he cut the key off my neck— cut the string, you know— and the key dropped off. I didn’t realise it until I was walking out the door, and just then, I hears a sort of rattle— well, let’s say a ring— and I look down, and what do you know? There’s the key on the ground. Of course I pounced on it— see how I’ve knotted it back on? What a lucky thing, huh? I might have lost it for good.’
‘Has it taught you a lesson?’ she snapped. ‘No? Well, here it is: get another copy cut! Why must you insist on keeping that front door locked fast, and carrying the only key wherever you go?’
He frowned. ‘I can’t do that— you might run away.’
‘How dare you!’ She stood up, offended. ‘You’re a madman! I’m your wife— don’t you trust me?’
‘I do, I do,’ he grumbled, unconvincingly. ‘But it’s hard, Artemisia.’ (Just as she never shortened his name, she would not suffer him to contract hers.)
‘Hard to trust me?’ she pleaded. ‘When have I ever given you cause to doubt?’
‘I don’t trust myself!’ he barked, riled by her noise. ‘What if that door was unlocked, and someone came up here— carried you away from me— some man? I don’t trust myself to spare him— I’d rip him apart! For God’s sake, woman! I’m not in control of myself when I think of it!’ His temper shook in his frame as well as his words: he clenched his teeth and fists both, and twisted his linen napkin until it ripped into two. ‘Any man who touched you,’ he seethed, ‘whether to hurt you, or— or— if he so much as touched you— I’d throttle him— I’d throttle and throttle him until his neck was a paste in my hands!’
‘So you keep threatening, over and over!’ she retorted, as he stood sweating and twitching with fury at the very idea. ‘You’re always making some terrible oath— I’ve a mind to leave that door wide open myself, just to dare you!’
‘Don’t cross me, Artemisia,’ he snarled. ‘I swear—’
‘There! Another one!’ she cried, frustrated. ‘What will you swear this time? Make sure it’s binding, though— swear it in blood!’
In an instant she grabbed one of his taut fists, prized open the fingers (malleable to hers alone) and held it palm-up against the table.
‘What’s it to be?’ she demanded, snatching one of the steak knives with her free hand. ‘What do you swear? Who will you throttle, and why?’
‘You drive me to it,’ he replied, riled and enraptured by the vehemence in her eyes. ‘I can’t help myself for you. And I know I would— I know I’d have to kill the man who touched you.’
‘Sworn!’ she declared, and drove the point of the knife into his palm with all her might.
If she hoped thereby to open some artery, and have the pleasure of watching him bleed to death at her feet, she was disappointed: Tom’s hands were, like the rest of him, all brawn and muscle, so that though there was blood enough, even to sign the vow in it, the wound was nothing to him, hardly hurt him, and rather made him admire her all the more for her beautiful wrath.
‘I do swear it, because I mean it,’ he confirmed, taking both her hands in his single, bloody one. ‘I adore you, Artemisia, and I am a madman if I ever let you go.’
And this made it plain enough to her that the marriage was a trap from which she would never escape by fair means, since no matter how horrible she was to him, he wanted her all to himself more than ever.
So she carried on with her stratagem, and through fortnightly, urgent meetings with Davey, whose desperation and passion built and developed on every encounter with his paramour, she finally brought him to the state she required: an out-and-out loathing of her husband, and a frantic anxiety for her safety. But this was not accomplished without a complete exercise, and indeed stretch, of her cunning powers, and a long run of hurried half-hour encounters— summer was flown, the clocks changed and the evenings dimpsy before she was ready to execute her plot.
Meanwhile Jenny had taken to drinking too much too often, and when she chose to patronise the Red Ship inn, the spirits were certain to loosen her sarcasm at the landlord’s expense. One afternoon, having just heard Tom make his hackneyed declaration in defiance of anyone daring to aspire to his Artemisia, the tipsy aunt cried out, for the entire bar to hear: ‘How can you all stop yourselves laughing when you hear him gibber on? Won’t one of you firm friends tell him what a fool he’s making of himself? Kill the man who touches his wife? He’s never killed a man yet!’
‘I’ve no need to,’ Tom boomed back.
‘Oh, haven’t you!’ she laughed.
‘Any more of that, Jenny, and you’re barred!’ he roared, to stamp down her insubordination and show himself master of the premises at once.
‘Go ahead, Tom! But take my advice— keep your hollow threats to yourself, since you never mean to do what you say!’
Tom rushed from behind the pumps, yanked
her to her feet and steered her firmly towards the door. ‘You’ve had enough,’ he rumbled into her ear, ‘and I’ve had enough of you.’
‘Let go of me, you bully! Save your strength for making empty promises. How pathetic you are! There’s not a customer in this place who doesn’t know— and they all hate you a little more, each time you say what you’ll do, and do nothing!’
‘What are you getting at?’ he hissed, having manhandled her outside.
‘Oh, Tom, you idiot! It’s not for me to open your eyes— I enjoy watching you make yourself into a laughing-stock.’
‘Open my eyes— you mean about a man— and Artemisia!’ He immediately became slightly incoherent with rage, and gave the aunt a vigorous shake. ‘What do you know? What? You tell me now— now, Jenny!’ —Another rattle, which jostled her from her feet, so that she was held up for a moment by his grasp alone. ‘If you won’t tell me, I’ll force it out of her.’
‘Don’t you go near her! Don’t you dare threaten her!’
‘Then speak up! Speak!’
‘Everyone thinks it— the whole town,’ she winced in his grip. ‘Some of the fishermen, setting out to sea, claim to have spotted her at her window— with somebody else— when you’ve gone to the barber shop.’
‘Who? With who?’
‘They don’t know— they say they can’t make him out— but I know why they
The Sleight of Heart: a modern folk tale Page 5
