The SECRET TO NOT DROWNING

by Colette Snowden

  By the time I go to pick Him up from squash the kitchen is bursting with the smell of my freshly baked pie and I smell of bleach and synthetic pine trees. I’m a couple of minutes late driving into the car park to get Him and I can feel that rising panic in the back of my throat in case He’s standing there tapping his foot in the foyer with a face like thunder. But it’s Him that’s all apologetic: He’s had to wait for a shower because two of them were out of order. Can we drop Jimmy home on the way to the supermarket? His car’s in for a service.

  So Jimmy gets in the back and they dissect the game while I drive and I feel like a mum ferrying her teenagers around. Jimmy’s house is more-or-less on the way and he asks us in for coffee and I think it might be nice to go in and chat for a bit, but He says no.

  “Jimmy was just being polite,” He says as we pull away from the kerb with Jimmy smiling and waving as though he doesn’t expect to see us again for months and months. “Let’s get to the supermarket.”

  Then a minute later he says: “Did you make a list?”

  “Yes!” And I dig it out of my coat pocket while we’re stopped at the traffic lights and He reads it all the way there.

  It’s busy in the supermarket and the trolley’s steering isn’t really up to swerving round the crowds. Of course it’s busy, it’s Saturday lunchtime, it’s full of people doing their weekly shop: harassed-looking mums with their kids; old ladies who’ve had all week to go to the supermarket while it’s quiet but like to pop to the shops every day and young, hungover couples who’ve dragged themselves out of bed just long enough to go and buy something to eat. They’ll toss a coin to decide who makes the toast and who gets to snuggle back down under the duvet first before they both abandon their plates on the bedroom floor and retreat to their crumpled, crumb-filled bed for the rest of the afternoon. I was like that once, a long, long time ago. Not in this supermarket, not with Him, but I was definitely like that and I can just about remember it.

  “I wish I could read your bloody writing,” He says, clutching my list as though it’s some essential guide to navigating your way round the supermarket. “Why don’t you write the bloody thing so that I can read it?”

  “Why don’t you write the bloody thing?” I actually say that. Out loud! But He doesn’t hear me, He’s too busy staring at the woman who’s pointing at me.

  “Marion! Oh my God, Marion.” It’s Mandy. She’s excited. She’s very excited and quite a lot more dishevelled than I’ve ever seen her. “I was just talking about you this morning and telling Guy about the recipes you’ve given me and he says we should make the lentil and Marmite thingy so we’ve come to get the Marmite. Evil stuff,” she turns to Him, assuming since I gave her the recipe and Guy wants to make the thingy that He’s the only potential anti-Marmite ally available. “But you know, what my gorgeous man wants my gorgeous man gets!” And she lets out a filthy cackle and pinches his bum while Guy tries not to look embarrassed and He throws me a ‘who-the-hell-is-this?’ look.

  She catches the look and thrusts her hand out towards Him so that He has no choice but to shake it.

  “I’m Mandy,” she says. “I work with Marion. She’s probably told you about me. We sit together. We bonded over a vanilla slice.”

  He gives her the kind of look He usually gives people who come to the door selling broadband or loft insulation.

  “We’re friends,” she adds, and that makes me smile. I have a friend and here she is and there’s nothing He can do about it.

  “Well, it’s great to meet one of Marion’s work friends,” He says, looking her up and down. His eyes rest on her cleavage for a few seconds, long enough for her to glance down and wonder if she’s got a stain or something on her T-shirt, and then the awkward silence comes back.

  “I’ll see you Monday,” I say. “Good luck with the lentil bake.”

  “Why don’t you come and help us eat it?” she says. She looks at Guy to back up the invitation and he nods.

  “Yes,” he says. “Come and eat with us. We’ve only got one other couple coming: Mandy’s cooking put my other friends off for life. If nothing else, you can help her rescue the dinner when things start to go pear-shaped. I believe you’re a dab hand in the kitchen.”

  I assume it will be like Jimmy’s coffee, just a thanks-but-we’re-a-bit-busy style polite no, but He can’t resist the chance to snoop around the life I have away from Him.

  “That’d be great,” He says, apparently forgetting that lentils don’t agree with Him. “Shall we bring the pudding? Marion’s made an apple pie this morning.”

  “I’m vegan,” Guy says, “but bring it anyway, no reason why you and Mandy shouldn’t have some.” And he puts the palm of his hand on the back of her neck so that she kind of shrugs her shoulders and smiles at him for giving her the pie to look forward to after the Marmite concoction.

  “Great,” He says.

  So before I know it He’s scribbling the address down on the back of my shopping list along with some directions and slapping Guy on the back as though they’ve been great mates for ages.

  “Any idea where they keep the Marmite in this godforsaken place?” says Mandy.

  “Near the jam, I think, way down there.”

  “Thanks,” she says. “You’re such a lifesaver.” And she kisses me on the cheek and grabs Guy’s hand and the two of them literally skip off to finish their shopping.

  “She seems nice,” He says.

  I wait for the barbed comment but He doesn’t say anything else. He’s waiting for me to volunteer some information about her.

  “Have you still got the list?” I ask. “What’s next?”

  So we wander round as usual, me pushing the trolley and putting things in it, Him clutching the list as though it’s a coded message he must crack before we get to the checkout, giving me instructions about where to go and what to get.

  When we get to the wine aisle He stops, even though I didn’t put wine on the list. I never do. It’s not like you’ll forget to get some wine if you fancy some wine. It’s not like you can’t live without it, like milk or bread or toilet paper.

  “We should get some wine to take with us tonight,” He says.

  That’s right, we’re going out to a friend’s house for dinner. We’d better get some wine. We’d better had get some wine. I look at the shelves and all I can see are bottles and bottles and I have no idea what sort of wine we should take.

  “What do you think, red or white or one of each? Or maybe some wine and some beer?”

  “Maybe it needs to be vegan wine?”

  “Vegan wine? There’s no such thing. There’s no such thing, surely?” He’s clearly outraged at the possibility that there might be such a thing as vegan wine and that we might have to find a bottle of it amongst the several million bottles of wine in front of us.

  “I’m sure there is,” I say, “I think they use animal guts or something.”

  “Nice,” He says, sticking his tongue out like a kid pretending to be sick. “I’ll ask someone.”

  So He looks round and sees a guy in a fleece turning bottles round on the shelf to make the labels all face forwards.

  “Excuse me, this might sound like an odd question but can you tell me which of these wines is suitable for vegans?”

  “Sorry, mate, I don’t work here,” the guy says turning round to face us. And then he spots me and says. “Hello love, good to see you’ve not managed to get yourself run over yet. I bet your sister wasn’t impressed with your jay-walking antics.”

  It’s the lorry driver that dropped me off at Julie’s. I feel like I’ve been caught in the bank vault wearing a stripy jumper with a big bag marked ‘swag’.

  “Sister?” He says.

  “Julie,” I mumble.

  “Oh, that sister,” He says.

  “Well, we’d better get that wine, thanks anyway mate,” and He smiles
at the lorry driver, takes hold of me by the elbow and pushes the trolley with the other hand.

  We go to the checkout in silence, put the groceries through, pack the bags and pay. All without a word. I don’t look at Him and He doesn’t look at me, we just get the shopping sorted and leave without even buying any wine.

  21

  The worst thing about the silent treatment isn’t the silence itself. That’s fine. That’s actually quite nice. The worst thing is not knowing when it will end. The worst thing is not knowing what He’s going to say when He finally starts speaking to me again. It’s not going to be anything I’m going to want to listen to, let’s face it.

  But I know how this plays out. I’ve heard it before. When He starts speaking to me again it will all be completely innocuous to start with. It will be a silence that ends with no real noise. Your average fly on the wall would wonder what all the fuss was about: “No cabaret here boys, moving on.” He’ll just ask me if I know where the phone is or whether I’ve seen the weather forecast. He’ll just pretend like He’s not spent the past few hours ignoring me. He’ll expect me to think that it’s all over, like He’s moved on and we should just put it behind us and get on with the day. Then He’ll pounce.

  So I’m playing his game. I’m pretending that nothing’s going on either and just getting ready to go out to Mandy’s for dinner. I may not be able to convince myself that there’s an enjoyable evening ahead, but I’m not going to give Him the satisfaction of watching me squirm. He won’t have much fun giving me the silent treatment if I’m not even in the room, will He? So I’ve ironed Him a shirt and ironed me a dress. It’s not the dress I want to wear, that’s still in the wardrobe, with a cardigan hung over the top of it so that it looks like a second choice, shoved-to-the-back kind of dress that I wouldn’t choose for myself. So He’ll see which one I’ve spent time ironing, tell me I’m not to wear that and dig out the other one from under the cardigan. He’ll think He’s won and I’ll know I have. One nil to me. I iron the stuff and just keep ironing and ironing until He comes in the room and switches the TV on, then I unplug the iron and pack it away and leave Him in the room not talking to me all by Himself.

  Normally I would take a bath, but baths are interruptible, especially when you have no lock on the bathroom door. There used to be a lock there when we moved in. There was a lock there for quite a while afterwards. I used to lock myself in there when He yelled at me and He would bang on the door and rattle the handle and I would have to wait it out until He calmed down or slammed out of the house in a huff. And then one day He just took it off. No big drama, no kicking the door in. He just decided I wasn’t going to have anywhere to hide myself away any more, so in the calm after a row He took a screwdriver to the door and removed the lock. So now we have a bathroom door without a lock and with a big round hole that you could peep through if you were that way inclined. Baths are not private any more. Nothing’s private. Except inside my head. Except at work and at Julie’s house. I’m in for a shitty evening but I am standing stark naked in the bathroom about to get into the shower and grinning at myself in the mirror. He won’t open the door to the shower because he might get wet. And He can’t open the door to my head because I can lock it whenever I feel like it.

  But, sure enough, when I step out of the shower He’s there in the bathroom waiting for me, sitting on the toilet with the lid down with my freshly ironed dress all screwed up in a heap by his feet. He says nothing.

  “Sorry,” I say, “were you waiting for the shower?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well I just need to get dry and then the bathroom’s all yours.”

  “I don’t want the bathroom,” He says. “It’s not the bathroom I’ve been waiting for.”

  And without another word He gets up and picks up the towel I’d left on the floor by the shower ready to dry myself and He dries my skin. Not gently like you would for a little kid, more like He’s drying the pots or wiping a dirty mark off a table cloth. And when He’s satisfied that I’m dry He takes me by the shoulders, moves me across to the bathroom wall, pulls his pants down and fucks me right there in my own bathroom.

  I don’t say anything. What am I going to say? There’s nothing much I can do about it. But inside my head I’m saying the words as loud as I can, again and again and again.

  “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” And I don’t look at Him and I don’t make a sound.

  When He’s finished He says: “You’d better get dressed. We’ll be late. I’ve put a dress out for you in the bedroom.”

  Getting back in the shower to get myself clean again is not an option. But it’s OK. When I walk into the bedroom I can see straight away that He’s pulled my under-the-cardigan dress out of the back of the wardrobe and laid it out for me. I close the bedroom door behind me, stick my tongue out at Him through the door and get dressed.

  He’s still in the shower when I finish getting ready so I go downstairs and potter. I’ve made some baked apples to take with us as a vegan alternative to the apple pie. I’ve put them in a bowl and wrapped foil over the top so that Mandy can just pop them in the oven to warm them up when we’re ready for dessert. He said I shouldn’t bother, and when I peel back the corner of the foil to admire my handiwork I can’t help wondering if maybe He’s right. They looked nice when I first took them out of the oven. They smelt gorgeous. But now they look like shrivelled little shrunken heads with their skin all leathery and discoloured like it’s been sitting in a peat bog for the past two thousand years. I wonder if there’s anything I can do to make them look a bit nicer – it’s not like I can cover them in cream or custard – or perhaps I should just leave them behind. Or pretend I’ve forgotten them. But maybe my shrunken heads have a little voodoo magic and they’ll be my lucky charms for this evening. I could pluck out a hair and slip it inside one and He could choke on it as the slippery flesh slides down his throat and by the time the ambulance gets there He’ll be dead on the dining room carpet, killed just like that by a baked apple.

  But He’s alive and well in the car on the way there and my wizened, mushy apples and my beautiful pie are balanced one on top of the other while I drive and He sighs every time I change gear.

  He’s alive and well as I park up in the rain, as we dash from the car to the front door, me now holding my apple concoctions, Him holding my umbrella.

  He’s alive and well as we ring the doorbell and Mandy opens the door with a massive grin and He lunges in for a peck on the cheek that becomes a peck on both cheeks and a well-practised accidental hand on the bum.

  “Guy’s in the living room,” she says to Him, “go on through. It’s just us, I’m afraid: Ben and Izzy have cried off.” We wait for Him to do as He’s told and go and make polite chitchat with Mandy’s boyfriend.

  She turns to me. “Is he always so friendly?” she asks in mock embarrassment, as I wonder whether to proffer my cheek or my desserts.

  “Oh yes. Always. More so, sometimes. How’s the lentil bake?”

  “Don’t ask,” she says, and bends forward, covering her head with her arms.

  “Have you been at the cooking sherry?”

  “Not at all,” she smiles. “Just a little bit of medicinal red wine to help me through the whole cooking-for-guests trauma. Come and have a look!”

  So she takes me by the elbow and leads me into the kitchen which looks as if it’s been ransacked by a gang of ravenous wolves.

  “I know,” she says.

  “Oh my God!”

  “Yes,” she says, “I know! Let’s see what you’ve brought”

  So she looks at my apple pie and says “Maybe we could just have dessert and then coffee and mints and vodka cocktails.” Then she looks at my baked apples and says, “OK. Mine doesn’t look any worse than yours. We could be OK. We could eat blindfolded.”

  And we’re laughing in the kitchen and I wish that He
would just go home. Or just disappear in a puff-of-smoke-type magic trick where he lands in someone else’s living room and we get some unsuspecting guy in his slippers reading a newspaper and going ‘where am I?’

  “I think I’m a bit hysterical,” says Mandy. “I think cooking gives me post-traumatic stress disorder and my brain just ceases to function properly.”

  We’re laughing and Guy shouts in from the next room “What are you two up to in there?”

  “Just experimenting with lesbianism while the potatoes finish roasting,” she calls back to him and bursts into another wave of giggles.

  “God,” she says when she finally recovers the power of speech, “I really need a wee. It’s in there,” she nods her head towards a tin with foil wrapped over the top. See what you can do with it, will you, and we’ll eat in five.”

  So she rushes off to the loo and I’m in the kitchen looking at the orangey coloured mush in the tin. I cut it into slices and put them under the grill. It’s the only way to go. And as I’m doing it I can hear Him talking to Guy in the room next door.

  He’s telling Guy about my mental health issues. He’s telling Guy that I struggle to keep friends for very long because I can’t control my jealousy, so I always end up trying to ruin their lives by coming on to their boyfriends or getting them into trouble at work or spreading rumours about them amongst their friends. And then He tells Guy that it’s been a tough couple of years because He’s had to come to terms with the fact that I’m just not the person that people think they see before they know me properly, but that He knows the real Marion is in there somewhere, we’ve just got to work through my issues together and hopefully come out the other side.

  I would like to walk in there and hand Him an Oscar for his excellent performance as the long-suffering husband but I’m far too busy trying to overcome the urge to inflict some actual suffering with the hot grill pan. Luckily, Mandy reappears before I do anything rash.