The Accidental Woman

by Jonathan Coe

  She had not slept that night, or listened to music.

  Maria waited for five hours outside Stephen’s college. After one and a half hours, he had left for his viva by a back route, known only to members, and after another hour he had returned, the same way. He had then spent three hours packing, and had left for the station, by the front route, but by then Maria herself had left, in despair, and slightly pissed off with the whole business. And Maria chose to get up and leave, as it happened, at a time when Ronny was in the lavatory, so he neither saw her go nor knew where she went. The afternoon had not worked out too well all round.

  It was a clammy summer evening. Maria wandered carelessly. She tried to hear Stephen’s music again, in her mind, she played it back as an accompaniment to the fading busy life all around her. She sobbed, who wouldn’t, but most of all she chided herself for the waste, the senseless anxiety she had inflicted that afternoon. All the long evening she lay by the river, tired, angry, waiting for the light to die once and for all. Then she walked home (for want of a better word. And, indeed, for want of a better place).

  On arriving at Cribbage House, she was met by the sight of Fanny slowly and silently carving grooves in the kitchen table with the bread knife. Maria looked in, withdrew, crossed the dark hallway and began to climb the stairs. But she was stopped by a voice, Fanny’s voice, Fanny who had not spoken to her since their fight over the watch.

  ‘Maria.’

  Maria halted, turned.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A man rang.’

  Maria came down one step.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Did he give his name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he leave a message?’

  ‘No.’

  She watched her face for signs of malevolence, and saw none. Not wishing to cry in front of Fanny, Maria ascended the stairs quickly. Her bedroom door slammed.

  *

  She was awoken at about three in the morning by the sound of thunder. The storm had broken. Sleepily she listened to the rain battering her window, and the periodic crashes, forgetful in her drowse of the unhappiness which had so recently descended on her. No glimpse of the lightning was admitted by the thick, dark blue curtains, but soon Maria, impatient of this deprivation, got up from her mattress and threw them open. Then she sat by the window and watched the rivers of rain coursing down the glass, and the huge blue garish streaks splitting the sky. Sitting there, strangely frightened and fascinated, she must finally have fallen asleep again, because she felt a sudden jerk of consciousness and an instinctive sense of time lapsed when she first heard the sound of familiar feminine fists banging on her door. She swore silently but went to admit Winifred at once, knowing well that resistance was futile.

  She had expected to see a smiling face, to be subjected to a shrill torrent of praise for the splendour of the storm and the proof which it afforded of God’s majesty. But Winifred was very quiet, very solemn as she entered the room, wordless, and stood gravely by the fireplace, her head bowed. She was also very wet, and cold. Maria fetched a blanket from a drawer, and draped it around her shoulders, but she seemed hardly to notice.

  ‘Maria – ‘she began at last, and then stopped.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘Yes,’ she faltered. ‘At least I think there is. Maria, you must advise me, you must tell me what you think. I think – I think I may have done a bad thing.’

  ‘Can’t you remember? Aren’t you sure?’

  ‘I know I did it. I know that. But I want you to tell me, whether you think I did the right thing, or the wrong thing.’

  There was a pause for thunder.

  ‘Well, you’d better tell me what it is.’

  ‘There was this man, you see. A young man, I should think just a little bit older than us. He came up to me in the street, and – well, I killed him.’

  Maria was for some reason speechless.

  ‘Well, what do you think? Is that a bad thing… to have done?’

  ‘Winifred, are you sure you did this? You’re not just making it up? When did it happen?’

  ‘Just now. I came straight back here. It happened in town.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Maria sat down on the mattress, the strength having left her body, ‘tell me more about it.’

  ‘Well,’ Winifred took a breath, and then went on, in a shaking voice, ‘as you know, I’d been to the usual meeting, the Holy Truth Society, the one I go to every week, and we’d had the usual talk, this week it was about yoghurt, and after the talk we’d had a good discussion. Really,’ she reflected, ‘a very good discussion, and after this discussion we went back to Marjorie Ogilvie’s rooms, as usual – this would be at about half past ten – and she gave us some things to drink and of course some drugs – just mild hallucinogenics, you understand, it’s a little weakness we indulge occasionally – and after that, well, it all begins to get a bit hazy. I can remember us all arguing about Aquinas’s theory of the angelic hierarchy – there must have been only five or six of us there by now, as well as this big blue rabbit in the corner who seemed to be taking an unnecessarily anti-Thomistic line – and then all I can suppose is that I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew it was three o’clock in the morning and I had this funny sensation, it was as if my tongue was two hundred feet long and all coiled around the lampstand, I don’t know if you’ve ever had it. Anyway, Marjorie seemed to be turning us all out, so I managed to get downstairs and outside and I found myself in the middle of the storm. I was starting to feel very cold, and sick, and to think a bit more clearly, and I walked along for a while until suddenly I realized that I was completely lost. That was when this man came up. This beastly man. I was sheltering from the rain in this doorway, when he came up with his umbrella and offered to take me home. Where do you live, he said. I knew this was in the nature of a proposition, I could tell he was… propositioning me. You piece of filth, I said, you lump of scum, leave me alone. Hush, he said, hush, you’re lost and I want to take you home. Let me help you, he said. So I shouted, Leave me alone with your depraved filthy cravings, let me be. I know what you want, it’s my body you’re after. And then, and then, do you know what he said? I wouldn’t say no, he said, I wouldn’t say no to a bit of your body at all. So then I – then I think I must have snatched his umbrella off him and started poking him in the face with it, and when he fell over I can remember shutting it and hitting him over the head with the handle, it had this heavy wooden handle, and then… and then I came back here.’

  There was a long silence. Except, of course, for the storm.

  ‘Where is the umbrella?’ Maria asked.

  ‘It’s in my bedroom.’

  ‘And you’re sure he was dead when you left him?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Winifred, half smiling with satisfaction in spite of herself. ‘I made quite sure of that.’

  Maria got up, and forced herself to lay her hand gently on Winifred’s shoulder.

  ‘I think you should go to bed,’ she said. ‘Go to bed, and have a nice long sleep. And then, when you wake up, you might find that it was all a horrible dream.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Winifred.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Do you know what, Maria,’ said Winifred, after a few moments’ pause, ‘that’s good advice. I think that a rest is exactly what I need. Everything will seem much clearer in the morning.’

  When Winifred, this resolve notwithstanding, failed to move, Maria took her by the arm and led her back to her bedroom. Then she went back to bed. The storm was on the wane and, rather to her own surprise, she fell into a deep and restful sleep.

  The next morning, as she was getting dressed, Maria heard a car draw up in the drive outside Cribbage House. Doors slammed, and there was an impatient ring on the doorbell followed eventually by the sound of two men climbing the stairs. She heard them knocking on Winifred’s door and then questioning her in quiet hostile voices. Maria looked out of th
e window and saw, as she had expected, the shiny blue roof of a police car. She decided to leave as quickly as possible. Furtively, Maria slipped on the remainder of her clothes, opened her door and slid through the doorway, tiptoed across the landing, stole down the stairs and sidled towards the front door. As soon as she was free she broke into a run, and continued in what was never less than a breathless stride until she had reached the town centre.

  There she paused, uncertain. A curious desire now took shape within her, one which she had never felt before and which on any other day would have appalled her, namely, the desire to visit Ronny. Since we are duty-bound to attempt an explanation of this aberration, maybe the case was simply that his mindless adoration was at this stage the only dependable factor in her life, the only form of affection accessible to her when most in need of support. She felt oddly reassured by the thought of seeing his stupid smile, even of receiving the inevitable offer of marriage and of watching his face fall as she softly refused him. Pathetic behaviour, this, without a doubt, but she’s been under a lot of strain.

  Ronny’s delight and surprise upon seeing her lie outside the emotional range of this book. Naturally he wanted to know what had brought about her change of heart.

  ‘Well, I just thought… we both have so little time left in Oxford. I wanted to say goodbye properly.’

  ‘Goodbye? But we’ll see each other again. We’ll still see a lot of each other, from now on.’

  ‘We can’t rely on that, Ronny. I don’t even know what I’m going to do next, or where I’m going to go.’

  ‘Wherever it is, I’ll be there.’

  Maria did not seem to take from this statement the reassurance which Ronny had intended.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. And then, to change the subject, ‘Look, it’s nearly twelve o’clock. Why don’t we go for a drink, and some lunch?’

  They went to a pub in St Giles’. As they walked there, Ronny could not help observing that Maria seemed extremely depressed. He based this conclusion, with what counted for him as startling psychological insight, on various slight and subtle signals, such as her reluctance to raise her eyes even momentarily from the pavement, and her refusal to speak a word even in response to direct questioning. His usual way of injecting cheerfulness into a conversation with Maria was to make earnest promises of accompanying her for the rest of her life, and supporting her through the direst financial and emotional difficulties. But today, this failed to have the desired effect. Fortunately their arrival at the pub presented his limited imagination with a new subject for discussion.

  ‘What would you like to eat?’ he asked.

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘Well, the gammon’s very good here. But perhaps you don’t feel like hot food on a day like this. They do excellent salads.’

  It took Maria a long time to make up her mind, since she had no appetite whatsoever and therefore no criteria on which to base her decision. But finally she chose the gammon.

  Gammon. That was her first mistake.

  6. Her First Mistake

  Six years later, as the unfortunate consequence of having chosen to eat gammon on that hot afternoon, Maria is sitting in silence with her husband at the family breakfast table. Her son Edward, aged four, is contemplating with resentment the egg which his mother has once again failed to boil to his satisfaction. Maria’s state of mind is one of misery, a misery such that I cannot describe and you probably can’t imagine, so we’d better just leave it. Martin, her husband, is reading the newspaper, or at least pretending to, for in fact he is secretly preoccupied with a scheme which his next words will introduce, and of which Maria has not, as yet, the least inkling. It is summer again, warm indoors and out.

  It is customary, of course, when it comes to stories like this, to believe whatever the author tells you, and yet I can imagine that for some of you there might be a problem in taking at face value my assertion in the first sentence of this chapter. I repeat, that if Maria had not chosen gammon, she would not have married Martin. For gammon, as you know, is often very salty, and liable to induce thirst, and if Maria had not been thirsty she would have had no reason, no reason whatsoever, to go into a tea shop that afternoon after saying goodbye to Ronny. And if she had not gone into the tea shop, she would not have chanced upon her old friend Louise, and if she had not chanced upon Louise, Louise would not have invited her to a party that night. And she would not have gone to the party, and she would not have met Martin, for where else could she have met Martin, who lived in Essex and had never been to Oxford in his life before or since? She had never loved him, and he had never loved her, but he was looking for a wife and she was looking for something to do, so they seemed as well suited as most couples ever are. They had a whirlwind courtship, consisting of much sex and a bit of theatre-going, married in October, honeymooned on the Riviera, and produced their first and only child exactly sixteen months later. Maria was by now twenty-three, pushing twenty-four, and she was already aware that she had made a bad mistake.

  Finally Martin laid down his newspaper and coughed. Maria sensed that he had something important to say. She stiffened imperceptibly in her chair.

  ‘How long have we been married now, Maria?’ he asked.

  Edward forgot about his boiled egg and began to look on with interest.

  ‘Five years,’ she said, ‘and nine months.’

  ‘Hmm…’ Martin leant back in his chair, and gazed at the ceiling as if in thought. ‘In that case… in that case I think it’s about time we got a divorce.’

  Maria looked at Edward.

  ‘Edward, why don’t you run upstairs and play? Why not colour the book I bought you, and then I’ll come up and see how well you’ve done.’

  ‘I’d rather listen,’ said Edward, whose delight it was to refuse everything his mother asked of him.

  ‘The child can listen if he likes,’ said Martin. It was a family trait.

  ‘On what grounds?’ asked Maria.

  He pretended not to have understood her.

  ‘On what grounds do you want a divorce?’

  He made a show of deliberation.

  ‘There are a variety of grounds, of course,’ he said, ‘On which I could divorce you. You have not been a good wife to me. You are not a good mother to little Ted.’ Here he patted the child on the head. Edward smiled. ‘There are various arguments, in short, which I could put forward to a court of law. For instance, you do not fulfil my sexual needs. For some time now you have made no effort to fulfil my sexual needs.’

  Effort, indeed, was a desideratum when it came to fufilling Martin’s sexual needs. Physical effort of a high order. Maria had not suspected this at first, she had thought him a gentle lover. They had lain in bed together, naked for obvious reasons, and he had touched her so lightly, drawn closer to her so gradually, that she had not been afraid of him at all. Love making had been a pleasure, unaccountable though this may seem. Anyway, that had not lasted for long, it stopped soon after the wedding in fact. Maria was surprised, therefore, to find after eight months that she was carrying a baby, for the forms of intercourse which Martin enjoyed, and in which she was his unhappy accomplice, were not such as would normally lead to conception. Violence came to play an important part. Nothing nasty, just the occasional stranglehold or bite, it was rare for him actually to kick her in the face at such moments. All the same he did beat her sometimes, it was difficult to know why and Maria always forgot to ask at the time. She had nobody to tell about it, because she and Martin now lived in Essex, where she had no friends except for a few neighbours, women mainly older than Maria who came round for coffee now and then in the morning, and tea in the afternoon, but who never ventured to inquire whether the weals on her neck were the marks of sexual passion or merely of anger; and even if they had, Maria may not have been able to remember. No, their conversation mainly concerned vegetable prices, and the respective merits of various brands of soap powder, and the advantages and disadvantages of wearing make-up. Not
that Maria wasn’t interested in these questions as well, for Martin let her have very little money to buy food (he never did any shopping himself) and insisted that the house be kept clean (although he never helped to clean it) and insisted that Maria should look nice (or what he considered to be nice). So these things were important to her, too. But there never seemed to be much sympathy between Maria and her neighbours, or fondness, or friendship, or even liking. In fact it was as much as she could do to put up with their company for more than half an hour at a time.

  ‘Why do you want a divorce?’ she asked now. ‘Have I done something wrong?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say you’ve done anything wrong,’ said Martin. ‘But five years is long enough to be married to any woman, in my opinion. To tell you the truth, you have started to bore me. You have been boring the living daylights out of me for several months now.’

  ‘I see.’

  Maria could not meet her husband’s eye. She looked to her son for support, but this was a complete waste of time. He had shifted his chair closer to his father’s, and the two of them were holding hands under the table. She got up slowly and carefully, walked to the kitchen window, and stared out.