This Affair

by June Gadsby

  On cue there was a crackle as my plastic carrier folded in on itself at that precise moment, then toppled over. Greg rubbed his eyes with one hand, while pointing at the bag with his fork, fragments of egg shooting all around.

  “What’ve you been buying, then?”

  It’s amazing how quickly one’s throat can dry out. “Just some art stuff. Paper, pastels, ink.” I grabbed the bag up and, clutching it to me, made to leave the kitchen. “Will you be in for lunch?”

  He took a long time to answer and I found myself hovering expectantly, halfway out of the room, trying not to show impatience.

  “No,” he said eventually, then, after a short blip of silence: “Did you go to the restaurant yesterday?”

  “Cancelled it,” I said quickly, surprised that he had remembered.

  He nodded and went back to devouring his scrambled eggs. I left him there, the radio playing his favourite channel, though I wasn’t sure that he was capable of understanding much of the hard-rock politics that were sallying forth over the air-waves. In his alcohol-saturated state, he was more likely to put his head down and go to sleep.

  In my study I could relax. It was like being switched off from one world and plugged into another. This was definitely chez moi! Small, cluttered, but all mine. Greg had his own territory on the other side of the landing where he lived, a great deal of the time, with his computer.

  I emptied my Book Shop carrier, carefully put away the Ingres paper, flattening it out so that it would lose its curl. I stowed away the inks and the pastel chalks in their various homes…and not until everything was in its place, did I allow myself the uncertain emotional upheaval of taking Callum’s book into my hands.

  ‘This Affair’ had a shiny dust cover with a black and white silhouette of a concert pianist superimposed upon a background of sunny green leaves. And peach blossoms.

  My eyes rose to the unfinished painting of the peach on the easel, then turned to the worktable. The peach was missing. I frowned curiously at the place where it had been, looked vaguely about the room as if the thing was going to materialise unaided before me. And yet, I thought I could smell it, sweet and juicy and my mouth watered as I imagined the taste of the succulent flesh. I would, I thought, eat the luscious piece of fruit, eyes closed, alone with my dreams, my memories my shameful erotic fantasies. It would take me back, transport me….

  I found the half-eaten peach lying in the bottom of my waste paper bin among lead pencil shavings, empty paint tubes and used paper hankies. There were teeth marks in it; small, carnivorous teeth; the teeth of a large carnivorous man. Only this had not been a meaty morsel. Greg had eaten the fruit of our love, mine and Callum’s. I stared at the remains of the peach and felt that everything I held dear had been violated.

  With the soggy, semi-devoured fruit cupped in my hand, I marched back into the kitchen and threw it onto the table in front of Greg’s astonished eyes. The fruit disintegrated on contact, liquid bits splurging. Most of them landed on Greg’s broad, well-padded chest. He looked down at them blankly and began flicking off the sticky mess.

  “Did you have to eat it?” I demanded, realising that I was shaking with rage from head to foot. Even my voice wobbled precariously like a clown balancing on a circus high wire. And, I suppose, that’s what I must have looked like right then. A clown.

  Greg observed me, blinking sleepily. He stuck a finger in his ear, waddled it, then inspected the waxy extract that came away under his fingernail.

  “Well?” I persisted.

  “It was only a peach, bloody hell, Megan. What were you planning to do with it? Frame it and keep it for posterity?”

  “I…I…” I stuttered and told myself how ridiculous I was being, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I was painting it. Didn’t you realise, you stupid oaf!”

  “Oh, gawd, Megan. So, I ate your bloody model. It’s not the end of the world, is it?”

  “Greg…” Now I was really teetering downhill without brakes. “Greg, I just can’t take life with you anymore. I want a divorce.”

  He was silent for a moment, then he started to laugh and stopped short when he saw my determined expression.

  “You’re joking!”

  “I mean it. Either you pack your bags and go, or I do. I don’t much care one way or the other.”

  He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. He shook his head, whether to clear it or whether in disbelief I wasn’t sure. When he looked up again he had on his ‘little boy lost’ face that I had fallen foul of so many times.

  Then the usual well-rehearsed catalogue of explanations, excuses and pleadings poured forth like water jetting from a burst main. All the reasons why he was like he was, why he did what he did. Then the bit about how much he loved and needed me and couldn’t do without me. On and on until I was ready to scream.

  “Stop it, Greg.” I snapped out when he finally hesitated long enough to draw breath. “We’ve been through all this many times. And each time you tell me how you’ll change and how you’ll make me happy. Well, there’s only one thing that could possibly make me happy and that’s a divorce. Let’s call it a day, right here and now.”

  “Is there someone else?” he asked in a low growl.

  My mouth opened, and I gulped in air before shutting it again and shaking my head vehemently. Why the hell couldn’t we have had this scene five years ago when I was the special person in Callum Andrews’ life and I could honestly tell Greg that, yes, there was someone else.

  “Well?” He had not taken my negative shake of the head as answer.

  “No!” Even as I spoke that one word of denial, I felt a down-rushing twinge of guilt in my inside. It was the truth, and yet, I felt that at the same time it was a lie. There would always be someone else. In my heart, if not in reality. The wounds caused by my affair with Callum refused to heal.

  I was so preoccupied by my own jumbled thoughts I didn’t see Greg jump to his feet and launch himself across the kitchen. Before I could think clearly, he was upon me, one iron hand at my throat, the other flat against my chest as he flattened me against the wall. My head rebounded from the plasterwork with a dull thud and I saw stars.

  “Who is it? Tell me you bitch!”

  Foetid breath and eggs spittle showered me. I gulped back the urge to retch, but when I pushed against him, beating at him with my hands, I realised how inadequate I was matched against his ferocious strength. Funny how I had thought his overt macho image exciting and attractive when I was an inexperienced, impressionable teenager and the envy of all the girls around.

  “Greg, please…don’t do this!”

  The hand gripping my throat tightened. I gagged and gave a hoarse, strangulated cry.

  “It strikes me you need a little reminder to show you just what you’d miss if you didn’t have it on tap.”

  I didn’t have to ask him what he meant. He released my throat, the fingers passing to my breast, kneading into the soft, tender flesh. His knee jammed itself between my legs, opening them effectively to allow his other hand to zoom into the target area with vicious accuracy. I closed my eyes tightly and waited for my husband to rape me.

  Nothing happened. I could hear his breath rasping away inside his chest for a long time. Then he gave a sort of wheezing, whimpering gasp and pushed away from me. I dared to open my eyes and look at him. He was staring at me, his expression creased into a mixture of disbelief and something else. Fear perhaps? I didn’t much care one way or the other.

  “I still want a divorce,” I insisted through clenched teeth, my hand going up to my bruised throat where his fingers had undoubtedly left red weals on the skin.

  The deep frown between his eyes grew even deeper. His chest heaved. He shook his head, half turned from me, then turned back and I flinched away from him, wondering if he was all set for a second assault and this time would carry it out to the bitter culmination.

  “All this over a fucking peach?” he cried rhetorically. He delved into his pocket, drew out a hand
ful of notes and coins and threw them at me. “Here! Go and buy yourself a crate of the bloody things!”

  He was already half way down the hall, heading for the front door and the street by the time I managed to force my reply out through my trembling lips.

  “It has nothing to do with the fucking peach!”

  He would have been shocked to hear me use his favourite four-letter word. He didn’t like women to swear. It wasn’t ladylike.

  Chapter Four

  “I heard everything.”

  Ros had slipped in through the back door the minute she knew Greg was off the premises. He had driven down the road in what Ros always referred to as his Batmobile. There had been a lot of gear grinding, brake and tyre screaming as he launched himself out into the traffic on the main road.

  “Come in, Ros,” I sat down limply at the kitchen table like a rag doll with all the stuffing knocked out of her.

  “Bloody Nora! You look terrible. Ros came around the table to have a better look at me and shook her head. “What’s that rat-tailed bastard done to you this time, eh? Are them red marks on your neck from him? He should be certified.”

  I put both hands to my burning neck and swallowed painfully.

  “You’ll be proud of me, Ros,” I croaked. “I actually asked him for a divorce.”

  “Phew.” She whistled and clapped her hands, a slow grin spreading over her once-pretty, but now ageing and pudgy face. “You didn’t!”

  I tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. Besides, I didn’t feel much like laughing just at that moment. I didn’t feel like much at all, to be honest. Ros saw the tears welling up in my eyes and immediately gathered me against her plump breasts, hugging me like a protective mother-hen. It was that pure, unadulterated, sympathetic act that broke the barriers. I burst out in uncontrollable sobs and soaked poor Ros to the skin.

  “There now! Isn’t that better?” she soothed, patting my face dry with the apron that was tied around her middle. “You did the right thing; you mark my words. And it’s not before time, either. Now, where’s the whisky, eh?”

  “Whisky?”

  “Well, unless you’ve got champagne on ice in that fridge over there?”

  “It…it’s in the drinks cabinet in the living room,” I stuttered, still choking on the odd remnant sob.

  “Right. Come on, flower. Might as well make ourselves comfy.”

  She hooked a hand under my armpit and heaved me out of my chair, then marched me as if I was an invalid, into the sitting room. Ros never stood on ceremony for anyone, least of all me, which I always considered a great compliment. It’s the way real friends ought to behave.

  I flopped down on the settee and watched her get out the whisky and pour two generous measures. She handed one to me and sat down beside me, taking a long slug of the golden alcohol and smacking her lips appreciatively.

  “Oh, Ros.” This time I was able to raise a wry smile.

  “Go on. Get it down you. Your need is greater than mine.”

  “But it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning.”

  “So, who’s counting? There’s no time limit for alcohol when it’s employed as a good Samaritan. Drink up, gal. It’ll make you feel a whole lot better.”

  “Are you trying to make me drunk?”

  Ros flapped a hand at me: “Gawd, I wish I had a fiver for every time I’ve heard meself say that one. She gave a wicked chuckle and downed the rest of her drink without so much as a wince, while I sipped tentatively at mine.

  “You’re right, Ros,” I said, a few minutes later when the whisky was coursing warmly through me like liquid courage. “I do feel better, but decidedly squiffy. I think I’d better make some coffee to wash it down with.”

  She followed me back into the kitchen and listened attentively while I told her the story of the peach, both past and present, though I think I had probably related the old story to her more than once before.

  “Aye, lovely,” she nodded wisely. “I can see how it might upset poor old Greg to think he’s being chucked out because he happened to eat your peach. Having a piece of fruit sighted as the third party in a divorce case would definitely raise some eyebrows.”

  She snorted with laughter and I found myself reluctantly joining in, remembering the look of abject confusion on Greg’s face. He was incapable of believing that my request for a divorce might possibly stem from a permutation of any one of his many faults. The trouble was he never saw himself as having faults. Yet, when push came to shove, he always begged my forgiveness at the end of the day.

  “It would have been funny if it had been happening to somebody on the tele,” I bit down on my bottom lip to stifle a grin.

  We were drinking coffee when the telephone rang. I stiffened at the sound of it, thinking it might be Greg and I didn’t want to get embroiled in another heated argument with him so soon after the last one. Greg could be nasty when he was riled.

  “Go on, pet,” Ros inclined her head towards the phone. “You’d better answer it. You never know, it might be Greg asking you to send his clothes on. Better than have him come back here for them.”

  I picked up and barked a clipped hello into the mouthpiece.

  “Oh, Megan. Is it true?”

  Of course. It was my mother. Greg had gone straight round to see her on leaving me. Typical. He was already bringing in the back-up troops.

  “If you mean, am I finally divorcing Greg, Mum, then yes, it’s true.”

  There was a short, shocked silence and I could see my mother’s face clouding over, her eyes becoming small and agonised, her cheeks sucked in and her mouth tightening. I was about to commit the unforgivable sin. Divorce was not known in my highly respectable family. One made one’s bed and one lay in it uncomplainingly.

  “Megan, you can’t! Think what people will say….”

  “Look, Mum, I no longer give a damn what people will say, but I can’t talk right now,” I was putting her off and she knew it.

  “You mean you don’t want to talk because you feel guilty,” she assumed with her usual flair for grasping the wrong end of the stick.

  “No. I mean…” What did I mean? “I’m sorry, Mum, but it’s not convenient now. I have someone with me.”

  “Another man, do you mean? Is that it? Oh, Megan, how will I be able to hold up my head after this?”

  “I’m sure you’ll do just fine, Mum. Now, I really must go. I have things to do.”

  When I replaced the receiver, I blew out my cheeks in an exhausted sigh. Ros chuckled at me over her coffee cup, then waggled a finger of admonition.

  “Mothers,” I said with a grimace.

  “I’ve heard about them.” She nodded wisely, and I wondered whether I’d hit a raw nerve. Ros had never known her own mother. Only a series of foster-mothers, step-mothers and, in her own words, brothel keepers.

  Five minutes later, the phone was ringing again. This time it was Greg’s father, a frail old man in his late seventies. Matthew Peters and I had become particularly close after the death of Ethel, Greg’s mother, a few years back. He was nothing like his son, being a rather old-fashioned gentleman with genteel pursuits such as collecting butterflies and recording the passage of birds in his half-acre garden for the local RSPB club. He was, however, a writer of articles on nature, from where Greg’s talents had obviously stemmed.

  The thin, wavery voice in my ear told me that he didn’t wish to upset me, but that Greg was there asking to move into the spare room until he had found somewhere more suitable.

  “I don’t wish to pry, my dear, but something is obviously very wrong with your marriage. I do hope the two of you will sort something out before long. You know, Megan, the last time you and Greg had a row, he ended up in hospital with an overdose. I’d hate to have that happen again.”

  I remembered that overdose. It was only just enough to render him unconscious for a few hours, though it did look serious at the time with the empty bottle lying on the table beside him. He was a great manipulator, was Greg. He
frightened everybody into giving him his own way.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.” I had always called Matthew ‘Dad’. It was sort of comforting, since my own father died when I was a little girl too young to remember him. Ethel Peters was always Mrs. Peters, then Ethel, but never ‘Mum’. She had been an intense, bustling woman with a bossy nature and high blood pressure, which soared regularly like the piston of a pressure-cooker. “I hate upsetting you, but this time it really is over between Greg and me. I don’t want to talk about it now, except to say that I hope it won’t affect our friendship too much. I’ll see you again soon, eh?”

  “Oh…oh, all right, Megan. I think I understand, dear. He’s always been a little too…shall we say…physical for his own good. It’s not good, you know. Not good at all, but then…well, he’s my son and I thought with you he would settle down to a more peaceful life.”

  “Must go, Dad…” I felt a sudden threat of fresh tears at the tone of my father-in-law’s voice. It was hard on a father to have a son that was a disappointment, but that’s what I sensed here. Maybe that was why Matthew had always made such a great fuss of me. He thought I had the power to bring Greg into line. We had both been disappointed.

  “Take care, Megan. Take care, dear.”

  He hung up before I did. I sat there staring into space and sighing heavily. I hated making people unhappy because of the turn my life had taken. But I could no longer live my life for others. It was time I thought of myself, of my own happiness.

  As soon as Ros had gone back to her own house, I curled up on the settee, Callum’s book on my lap. As I opened it at the flyleaf there was a slight churning in my stomach. I didn’t want to read it, but I knew I must, knew I couldn’t prevent myself. Was it really fiction, or was it, as was being suggested by the media, autobiographical? Would I recognise it one way or another by devouring every word? Reading about the man I loved finding happiness with another woman was hardly my idea of pleasure, but I had to know. Maybe the truth was hidden there somewhere in these pages, between the lines.