Difficult Husbands

by Mary de Laszlo

  She reached the tube station, she had a busy day ahead and travelling on the tube would save her the most time. Inside it felt warm and fetid, taking off the edge of her feelings of isolation. She joined the stream of people passing through; a Rastafarian in a woollen hat, two giggly school girls, a Muslim woman holding tightly to a small boy, preoccupied men in suits, all together, yet not together, all intent on their own lives.

  She got out at Sloane Square and, not seeing a bus, walked down the King’s Road to the Chelsea Town Hall. There was a pre-Christmas Fair held in aid of Cancer Research, and she was sharing a stall with Gloria, who sold cashmere jerseys and scarves. Lorna, now with more time on her hands, had taken up a previous interest in making jewellery. They were casual pieces with unusual beads and buttons she bought on the Internet; twisted rope bracelets which looked great with jerseys and day clothes. She’d also put in a couple of boxes of her homemade cakes advertising the shop she had with Martha, hoping they might draw people in to buy them.

  The first stall she encountered was a table laden with pâtés and cheeses, with a large half-cut ham in pride of place in the middle. The smell of the ham brought back memories of her childhood, her mother had cooked one every Christmas, and the aroma of tangy marmalade and Bourbon whisky mingled with the cooking meat wafted round the house for days.

  This memory enclosed her like a security blanket from the past. Her mother would have stood no nonsense from that girl; she’d behave as if Stephen couldn’t possibly have left his wife and family for such a person, making him see how foolish he was being. She smiled in spite of her pain. Oh, Mum, I wish you were here, she thought, still sore from her death two years ago.

  ‘Could I have a slice of ham, please,’ she addressed the man wielding a knife on the other side of the table.

  ‘Just one slice?’ He frowned at her, two furrows biting into his forehead. His brown hair fell in unruly locks over his eyes. He kept looping it back behind his ears with his free hand and Lorna expected the imminent arrival of some Health and Safety inspector who’d decree that he imprison his curls in a hat to avoid germs polluting the food. He wore a navy and white striped apron over his clothes.

  ‘Yes, please.’ She felt a flush of embarrassment. Why ever should she explain? But seeing Stephen had unhinged her and she was overcome with this tiresome feeling that she had to justify herself.

  ‘Samples are there.’ The man gestured towards a green plate that held slivers cut from the edges of the ham. Before she could ask him again for her one slice, a gushing woman pushed herself in beside her and began to scoop up armfuls of pâtés, cheeses and chutneys in their festive wrappings and hand them to him. Once he’d taken the first load from her she picked up some more with little trills of excitement. ‘How lovely, beetroot and blueberry, and this homemade marmalade, such a treat, bought stuff is so jammy.’

  The man beamed – no frowning eyes at her – as he added up her purchases, packing them into smart blue bags. Lorna picked up a sliver of ham from the plate of samples and put it into her mouth. It was so succulent, with a richness of orange coupled with muscovado sugar, and a hint of brandy in the glaze. She took some more and then, as the man was still dealing with his extravagant shopper, found she’d emptied the plate. She must hurry now or Gloria would wonder where she was and she must wash her hands before working on the stall. She turned to go and find a washroom.

  ‘I thought you were going to buy a slice, not scoff all my samples,’ the man called after her.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you were busy and I couldn’t resist it. It’s wonderful ham. I’ve got to rush now and go and help my friend. I’ll buy some for supper on the way out.’ She fled, washed her hands in the dank washroom and then, keeping well away from the food stall, went in search of Gloria, who was, to her relief, on the other side of the room from the man with the ham,

  ‘There you are! Was it ghastly?’ Gloria hugged her.

  She nodded, Gloria’s concern flooding her eyes with tears. ‘Been busy?’ she managed, sniffing madly, taking off her coat, rolling it up and storing it and her handbag under the table.

  Gloria laid a jewelled hand on her arm in a gesture of comfort. ‘Not bad, cakes are almost gone and I sold two of your bracelets and quite a few of your button brooches, they love them with the jerseys.’

  ‘Good, I must make some more.’ Lorna’s tears were mercifully halted in their tracks by the same woman who’d bought all those chutneys and pâtés and was now scooping up armfuls of cashmere and throwing in some rope bracelets. Whose money was she spending, she wondered idly as she packed them up, her husband’s, her lover’s or her own?

  Gloria was a friend from childhood who had also married an older man, a friend of Stephen’s. Adrian was an alcoholic, an amusing cheery man when well, and utter hell when not. Gloria did all sorts of jobs to make ends meet; threw him out, took him back in, and some of their friends remarked, perhaps unfairly, that she saw her role in life as his saviour. Their only child, Justin, found his father’s behaviour intolerable and rarely came home, much to Gloria’s distress. But every time Adrian lapsed and Gloria was called upon to come and collect him yet again out of the gutter or from some sordid club, she stoically went. ‘I’m used to him,’ she’d say, as if he were an old coat she could not bear to part with. ‘Besides we had such good times together. I cannot leave him now.’

  Lorna respected Gloria for that and had, in the bleak loneliness of the night, even envied her for still having him, though she feared that her care for him was destroying her. No one ever asked how Adrian was, they knew just by looking at Gloria. She looked fine now; her long blonde hair tied back, her face less strained than usual, yet Lorna, who knew her like a sister, could see the pain deep in her eyes.

  The jerseys were selling well. They were well cut with a good selection of colours – they were every man or woman’s cashmere, not the best stuff. Lorna was going to buy one at cost price when she had a moment. She dithered between a raspberry pink and a pistachio green.

  A male hand appeared among the colours, picking up the last raspberry pink jersey and thrusting it at her.

  ‘Seeing there are no samples I shall pay for this,’ he said, and she saw it was the man from the ham stall. He was about her age; his skin tanned more from being outside in the fresh air than sunning himself in some foreign sun. He gave her a weary smile; his face strained with exhaustion.

  ‘Are you sure you want this one?’ Lorna said, bossily. Perhaps she could persuade him to take that china blue or the primrose instead. It was, no doubt, for the woman in his life and she wanted it. It was on the tip of her tongue to say it was not for sale.

  ‘I am quite capable of knowing which colour I like. This is the one I want,’ he said. He pulled out his wallet and thrust some money at her.

  ‘Fine.’ Lorna cursed herself for saying anything; if she’d wanted it so much she should have taken it sooner. She took his money, frantically working out the change in her head. He’d given her two fifty pound notes, which she could easily cope with, but somehow by standing there so close to her, his eyes homing in on her face, he flustered her.

  ‘Twenty-five pounds change,’ he said with a laugh, as if he knew she was hopeless at maths.

  ‘I know,’ she said, though she was relieved that he’d confirmed it. Maths eluded her – that was another reason she missed Stephen. He was a wizard at figures, so she hadn’t bothered to try and improve herself; even the children laughed at her incompetence. She handed the man his change and with a last stroke of farewell, she slipped the pink jersey into a bag for him. She saw now, with a little unwelcome jolt, that he wore a wedding ring and wondered if her own smashed-up marriage would sour her towards all married men, imagining them cheating on their wives, trading them in for peculiar women who perhaps knew some bedroom tricks their wives did not. She wondered too if his wife or maybe his lover – he might have both – would look better in the jersey than she would.

  ‘Thank you.’ He took the ba
g from her. ‘If you still want your slice of ham I’ll keep you a piece. It’s almost time to pack up, thank goodness; it’s been a long day. Oh,’ He caught sight of the last cake in the box with its swirl of dark chocolate icing studded with nuts, ‘can I trade this in for the ham?’ He picked it up with a smile and disappeared before she could say anything.

  An elderly lady approached the stall slowly as if mesmerised by the bright colours. She took a long time to make her choice, so by the time everything was packed back in the large, plastic zip up bags Gloria kept them in, Lorna assumed she would be too late for the ham. The room, before so festive like an Aladdin’s cave of tempting presents; luscious silk wraps and jackets, bright painted toys, shimmering jewellery and lots more was now half-empty; the stalls bare, boxes and bags piled up on the floor making the place appear tawdry and bleak.

  She passed the ham stall; it had all been packed away. The cheap wood of the table now exposed was stained with years of pinpricks and ink. She felt a tinge of disappointment and turned away.

  ‘There you are.’ He appeared from another room, a small bag in his hand. ‘Don’t forget your ham. One slice.’ He smiled the weary smile of someone who wanted to be on his way.

  Was he sorry for her for having no one else to share it with? She must curb this ridiculous self-pity she scolded herself, there were so many people worse off than her and anyway, why should he think of her at all?

  He held out the navy bag and she took it from him. ‘Thank you so much, what do I owe you?’ He’d helped himself to her cake as a trade in but she felt she ought to ask.

  ‘Have it on the house as I had your cake, which, by the way, was delicious.’ he said with a tired smile. ‘But I’ve packed everything away now and it is rather an end piece.’

  She wanted to say that she wished for a nice piece, a succulent piece from the middle with a thick layer of the glaze, but she did not; perhaps he’d sold it all and it was the last piece left.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he turned away and walked out of the room, making her feel she’d offended him somehow. She really must stop being so sensitive; she’d never see him again. He’d go back home to his wife; she may even be here having helped him on the stall. He would give her the raspberry pink jersey and perhaps grumble to her about this mad woman who’d eaten all his ham samples as if she hadn’t had a square meal in days.

  She peered into the bag and saw on top of the waxed paper wrapping the ‘end piece’, a cream card written in dark blue lettering. ‘Nathan Harwood, Victualler’, it read with an address in Sussex.

  2

  Another Difficult Husband

  Gloria Russell dropped Lorna at her house in Putney on her way home to Wimbledon. It had been a long day at the Fair; her back and legs ached and she longed to get home, throw off her shoes and flop down in front of what was left of the seven o’clock news, but when Lorna suggested, her eyes slightly pleading, that she come in for a drink, she accepted.

  She knew only too well the empty, panicky pain of being alone waiting for one’s husband to return; far worse for Lorna suffering the loneliness of waiting for Stephen who wouldn’t come home again.

  She still had Adrian, though she rarely knew where he was or what he was up to. It terrified her that one day he, like Stephen, would not come back. He’d be found dead in a gutter or go off with one of the women he’d sometimes been found with, women that wanted his money – or anyway someone that assumed he had money. His body had conked out as far as sex was concerned. He could no longer perform with her, which hurt her deeply.

  Even though her head knew that impotence was common among older men, especially alcoholic ones, her heart ached with the fear that he no longer loved or desired her. A warm cuddle in bed at night would have been reassuring and she’d tried to say this, holding him close and explaining that full, frantic sex was not necessary to show that two people loved each other. But he’d clammed up and moved to the further edge of the bed, protesting he was too tired. Many a night she cried herself to sleep, stifling her sobs, as she could not bear to provoke any more reasons for him to want to leave her. Any moment she expected him to make some tawdry excuse and move into the spare room.

  She was being pathetic, she thought now, as she followed Lorna into her empty house. She’d seen how hard it was for Lorna to be on her own and she couldn’t do it. She’d rather live with Adrian as a hopeless drunk with occasional bursts of contrite gratitude and vague affection than be abandoned and live alone.

  Lorna walked ahead of her, scrabbling in her bag for her keys, mildly grumbling that they needed more street lighting, as she couldn’t see what she was looking for in the muddle of her handbag. She looked so much better now than she had a few months ago when Stephen had left her. Gloria hoped that Lorna’s trip to see him and his sluttish-sounding girl, would, with luck, mark the start of her new life without him, and open the possibility of finding someone new.

  The break-up of Lorna and Stephen’s marriage had unsettled her; it had unsettled all of them, but especially her and their younger friend, Rosalind, who had married Ivan, one of Stephen’s friends, as his second wife. All three husbands, now in their sixties, were playing up, though only Stephen had actually left home, upsetting the balance of their long friendship.

  Lorna unlocked the door and went in, dumping her bags on the floor. ‘Thanks for coming in, Gloria; I still find it difficult since Stephen left. An empty house has a sort of lost, barren feeling doesn’t it? Waiting for people who never come – though the children do, of course when they’re home from Uni.’

  ‘I know love, perhaps you should have some music switching on the minute you open the door, give it some life, or get a cat or something.’ Gloria said, though she didn’t think either much of a good substitute for a loving husband.

  Stephen would not come home again. He had rung her, sounding like a stranger, defensive; as if he expected her displeasure, but didn’t deserve it. She had not told Lorna about his call, it would hurt her too much. She felt guilty that’d he’d called her at all and said such dreadful things about his wife – her friend. She felt tarnished by it. She’d always liked Stephen, fancied him a little in the early days, but it seemed that he’d changed dramatically from the kind and friendly man he used to be.

  ‘I feel stifled by my marriage,’ he’d begun, belligerent and defiant as if he had no control over his emotions, which perhaps in the circumstances he did not, though Gloria thought he was not on the mind-changing drugs then. ‘I’ve met this person and she’s given me a new lease in life, shown me a new freedom. I’ll never go back to my dead marriage now.’

  For a moment she’d been stunned by him ringing her at all. She’d just come home after spending most of the day with Lorna who’d been distraught; incoherent with grief at his desertion. He’d gone on. ‘Lorna expected too much of me, she was suffocating me.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish, Stephen, you had a good marriage, better than most,’ she’d scolded him wondering – as they all did – if the shock of his sudden redundancy had brought this on. But when he’d gone on about their love life being almost non-existent she’d said with fury – fury directed at Adrian too – ‘Just because some tarty bitch can turn you on with some clever tricks you want to exchange all the wonderful, precious things in your long marriage for a bit of grubby sex.’ And she’d slammed the phone down, shaking with misery and indignation.

  She went to the loo while Lorna opened a bottle of wine. She wondered which was worse, knowing your marriage was really over and you must move on as best you could, or exist in the sort of limbo she lived. Adrian did come back, or was more often brought back, always the worse for drink. Perhaps he too felt suffocated and was frantic to leave her, only because he was often so comatose with booze he never made it.

  ‘You’ve got more courage than me,’ she said to Lorna as she dropped down on the sofa, letting her large handbag clunk onto the floor beside her. She watched Lorna coming towards her, carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses. She’d l
ost weight since Stephen had left her and it made her look younger; her grey eyes larger, and her features finer. She’d had new streaks put in her hair, making it lighter, and it suited her. She’d never admit it but she bet she’d had it done to impress Stephen, perhaps hope she’d find the man he used to be waiting to come home.

  ‘Courage, whatever do you mean?’ Lorna laughed as she poured Gloria a glass of wine and put it on the table beside her.

  ‘Letting Stephen go, striking out and going it alone.’

  ‘You make it sound as if I’m leaving civilization and going out into the wilderness.’ Lorna curled up in a chair facing her, cradling her wine glass in her hands.

  ‘You are, in a way. Marriage is so many things. It’s still a sort of protection, even today. You can use a husband as an excuse to get out of things, know you’ve always someone to go home with. Well, perhaps not always.’ Gloria took a large gulp of wine. Adrian had been known to slope off without her to go on one of his benders.

  ‘I had no choice. He left me, remember.’ Lorna said. ‘Even I, who strongly believe in marriage and doing all you can to make it work couldn’t stay when I was so obviously not wanted. I sort of hoped the effect of the drugs might wear off and he’d come back, just as he used to be, but seeing him and that girl today … and knowing that he’d started seeing her … or someone like her … before he was put on the drugs ...’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘I’m so sorry, love. I still find it hard to believe that this happened to Stephen, of all people. He always seemed so sane and predicable, but then, you never really know someone, do you? How they’ll react if their stability is snatched away.’ She sighed.