by Thomas Ryan
Short Stories
by
Thomas Ryan
far and wide
publishing
www.thomasryanwriter.com
For Archie and Hugo
Copyright, Thomas Ryan, 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical except for the purpose of reviewing or promotion. Short Stories: Thomas Ryan is a work of fiction, any resemblance between the characters and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Nightmares… ‘Fabulous’
Ruth… ‘No doubt about it. Thomas Ryan is the real McCoy. It zings along’
The Artist…. ‘I enjoyed your story, good twist in there too’
The Dementia Man… ‘I just enjoyed your short story. I thought I saw the end coming, but you doubled-back on me’
Ruth… ‘An astonishing tale! I nearly fell out of my chair at the last paragraph! Thanks for sharing’
Ruth
After hitting the kitchen floor and suffering the sickening sensation of her head bouncing off the grey slate, Ruth Deverett found her vision blurry. Squinting eyes couldn’t make out the position of the hands on the wall clock above the fridge. No matter. She knew it was six o’clock. There was no mistaking the news signature tune streaming from the television set in the lounge.
And the day?
Easy.
From the cheese and garlic aromas in her nostrils, the dish now splattered across the floor could only have been lasagna. Robert demanded she keep a strict mealtime regimen. Roast on Sunday, steak on Monday, curry on Tuesday and….
Lasagna on Wednesday.
So, Wednesday it was.
A cautious hand lifted from the tiles and drew up the rough weave of her husband-prescribed white linen apron. Tips of fingers gently patted the side of her head. A wince as Ruth encountered a newly formed lump.
Her head never used to jar this badly when it hit vinyl. She had argued with Robert against replacing the vinyl, but as usual a forceful justification of the soundness of his decision had silenced her. How fortunate, Ruth continually reminded herself, to have a husband who was so supremely confident of the correctness of his opinions.
Out the corner of her eye she caught sight of a movement. A defensive hand flew to her side. A boot deflected off her wrist and into her thigh. Needles of pain stabbed through her upper arm. She knew another blow would come and squeezed her eyes tight. She worried her wrist might be broken. How could she iron Robert’s shirt in the morning with a broken wrist? Her own fault really, she should not have tried to defend herself. Robert had repeatedly yelled at her not to do so. It only made him angrier.
She should apologise for her foolishness. After all, Robert only ever offered helpful advice.
Without opening her eyes Ruth curled into a fetal position and waited. The toe of Robert’s boot tapped against the table leg. She sensed him looking down at her, almost certainly disgusted by her weakness and deliberating his next move. This usually meant he was calming. She held her breath, guarding against sound. A groan would set him off again. She ached, but it wasn’t so bad. Not as bad as other times.
She heard the news reader introduce a news bulletin.
That meant the ad break was over. Robert would not miss the news, not on her account.
A bowl smashed against the wall. Ruth flinched. Lettuce and tomato sprinkled across her exposed calf. Shards of crockery skittered across the floor. This was a good sign. Robert only threw dishes at the wall when it was over. A final vent. Footsteps moved away from her. The sound became muffled. He’d reached the thickness of the broadloom carpet in the sitting room.
“Don’t move yet,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
###
The echoing slam of a fist on desktop.
Eyes fixed on the righteous glare bedecking the face of prosecutor Harvey Wilson. Judge Bowden glowered over the top of his spectacles but refrained from saying anything. He disliked theatrics in his courtroom and most of the officers of the court knew this. A look from him was usually enough to bring them back into line. In this instance it was no mystery why Wilson had resorted to shock tactics. The trial, now into the third day, had driven the jury to the brink of distraction. Wilson had a high-pitched monotonous whine of a voice. His painfully slow interrogation of expert witnesses would put a hyperactive child to sleep. But the time had now come when the judge knew Wilson wanted the jury to concentrate. Ruth Deverett was on the stand. Wilson drew himself tall, tucking thumbs into a firm hold of the lapels of his black silk gown.
“Mrs Deverett, you say you lay on the floor until you were certain your husband had left the room. How much time passed? A minute, two minutes, five minutes.”
“I’m not certain. Perhaps….. five..”
Ruth Deverett’s voice was barely audible. He had asked her a number of times to speak up. Wilson’s head swung towards the jury. They looked attentive. His assessment was that they could hear the defendant well enough.
“What were you thinking as you lay there? Were you angry?”
A shake of Ruth’s head.
“Understandable if you were.”
“No. I was shaken. Frightened I suppose, but not angry.”
“The anger came later?” Wilson prompted.
“No. I didn’t get angry.”
Wilson regarded Ruth Deverett for a few seconds. A slow shake of the head and deliberate gaze-switch to the judge. The raising of Judge Bowden’s eyebrows betrayed a rare agreement with the prosecutor’s intended implication: Ruth Deverett was lying.
The judge hated these trials. After all his years on the bench, the battered wives irritated him the most. He considered them stupid bitches. Why the hell didn’t they just leave their men? They always stayed. They deserved everything they got as far as he was concerned.
The prosecutor’s voice refocused his attention.
“Mrs Deverett. You have explained to the court how your husband allegedly brutalized you and now you tell us that this did not anger you?”
Ruth nodded, “Yes.”
Wilson paused for effect. He fiddled with papers on the table - a ploy he always used to underscore a point. He would let the jurors cogitate on what they’d just heard. Spontaneous actions out of anger might be understood by a jury - even gain sympathy. But without the presence of anger any response to assault would appear more like premeditation.
Ruth Deverett had just made Wilson’s job a little easier. He could feel Bowden’s eyes boring into him like a slow-speed dental drill. He also knew the judge had grown impatient and wanted the trial over. Delaying tactics like this would only irritate him further. However, Wilson was not about to be intimidated by any judge. He counted to five before raising his head from the sheaf of papers.
“What happened next Mrs Deverett?”
###
Ruth crawled out from under the table. She reached up and gripped the edging of the bench top and pulled herself off the floor. According to sounds emanating from the sitting room the news and the world kept moving on. And despite the pain, so must she. At the next commercial break Robert would expect his dinner.
Ruth took a can of beer from the fridge and placed it and a glass on Robert’s special serving tray - the same one his mother had served his father’s meals on. Robert liked a beer. He didn’t drink a great deal, certainly not a boozer, but always a beer with his dinner.
Ruth spied the cat’s bowl in the corner. She picked it up. Spatula in hand she began scooping the lasagna riddled with slivers of glass into it. After all, Wednesday was lasagna night and it wouldn’t do if Robert didn’t get his lasagna. The bowl filled, Ruth placed it on the tray. As an afterthought, she picked up the can of beer and shook it for a few moments. A
girlish giggle bubbled in her throat. The thought of beer spraying over Robert when he opened the can drove her to the brink of hysteria. She fought to control herself. Unusual levity might alert Robert that something was amiss.
That wouldn’t do.
Doffing her apron and dusting off her skirt, she noticed her pantyhose had torn. She pulled them off and dropped them to the floor. Robert didn’t like snags. A loose thread on a blouse or jumper made him most unhappy. Bodily hair did as well so she shaved her legs every morning and then her pale skin that could never hold a tan. Robert detested lily white bodies. He made her cover up before she came to bed. Robert had funny ways. She would have pulled on another pair of pantyhose but didn’t have time. She could hear the broadcaster announce the ad break.
Ruth picked up the tray.
###
Wilson saw that the jurors now hung on every word. Ruth Deverett had come out of her shell. Now she spoke clearly, forcefully. Her eyes danced, even sparkled.
“Mrs Deverett you scraped food off the floor filled with shards of broken crockery and proceeded to serve it to your husband. In a cat’s bowl. Did you not think this might anger him, given your claim he was in the habit of beating you?”
Ruth’s eyes widened.
“Oh, but you see it was Wednesday and Wednesday is lasagna night. Robert liked routine. I couldn’t not serve it. That would never do. And you must understand that his usual his usual lasagna dish was broken. I explained that. ”
Brows knitted, Judge Bowden looked down on her. A barely disguised waggle of the head betrayed his assessment of this woman. The bitch is mad. She won’t leave an abusive husband and then she deliberately provokes him. God help us.
Encouraged by the judges body language, Wilson also adopted a frown.
“And you weren’t angry at any stage. You didn’t scrape it off the floor cursing your husband? Rage would have been understandable.”
“No. I wasn’t angry.”
“If you weren’t angry, Mrs Deverett, can you please enlighten the court as to your emotional state?”
“Thoughtful, I think. Yes, that would best describe how I felt. Thoughtful.”
“Could you expand on that a little?”
Ruth’s face lost all expression for a moment. Then it brightened. Her eyes alternated between Wilson and Judge Bowden.
“I was thinking about… God. If he exists. That sort of thing. I’m not a religious person. I did go to Sunday school as a child but grew out of it. But at that moment, I began to wonder. Is there a God?”
A sharp look from Wilson to the judge.
“You were thinking about God. Why, Mrs Deverett? Did you blame God for what had happened to you?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. I knew the fault was mine. Robert was very convincing when it came to apportioning blame. No, I had other reasons.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Your honour.” Rachel Black rose from her chair. “I fail to see any relevance in this line of questioning. Whether or not Mrs Deverett believes in God has no bearing on this case.”
“I’m trying to establish the state of mind of the defendant, your honour.”
Judge Bowden did not like Rachel Black. The woman had too much attitude. Her designer suits had not fooled him. Not for one moment. She had had them tailored to show the lines of her body in the most intimate of ways. Her wanton, provocative display would not score points from him. Her seductive prancing he knew was a deliberate attempt to win favour, but she was too skinny for his liking. She could look at him with those dreamy eyes all she liked; he did not find them enticing. He noted that she deliberately stood with her back to the window so that her hair glistened in the sunlight. He would order her to pin it up the next time she came into this courtroom. That would fix her. For the moment it would satisfy him not to concede her point.
“I’ll allow it, but wherever you’re going, Mr Wilson, let’s get there quickly.”
Wilson’s attention returned to Ruth.
“Mrs Deverett. Did you come to any conclusions on the existence of God?”
“No, and it troubled me. I mean, if someone were to die, it would be dreadful if there was nothing. You know? Just… nothing. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Even Robert.”
“I see,” Wilson said slowly, adopting his special courtroom tone of empathy. “So… you had considered your husband’s spiritual well-being in the afterlife. And it worried you that should he die, there would nothing for him.”
“Yes. I’ve always been a considerate person. Robert was my husband, after all. It only stands to reason, if I needed to be considerate about a death, Robert’s death would come first.”
Wilson paused to give the jury time to think through what they had just heard.
###
Ruth stood before her husband. Without taking his eyes from the television screen he reached up to take the tray. She pulled back. Now he gave her his full attention. Again he reached and again she stepped back. Robert’s quizzical expression amused Ruth. He made to rise then decided against it. Something in her manner warned him it would be best to stay seated. She stood firm as he studied her facial expression, searching for an answer and hypothesizing his next move like a soldier does when stepping through a minefield.
“What are you doing, Ruth?” he demanded, his voice not as forceful as it might have been.
“Bringing you your dinner, Robert.”
She held the tray out to him. He shrank back. Refused to reach for it. Ruth let it drop. All the time her eyes fixed on Robert, piercing, belligerent. His feet splayed sideways as the bowl from the tray hit the carpet and lasagna coated his lambskin slippers.
“You fucking mad bitch. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Ruth turned her back on him and crossed to the fireplace. She inspected the ironmongery on the brass stand and selected a heavy iron poker. She held it in both hands.
“What are you going to do with that, Ruth?” To Ruth’s ears Robert’s voice had a new edge. Was it fear? “T…time to stop now. Let’s talk. There’s no need to do anything silly.”
Knuckles showed white on the hands that now gripped the armrests either side of Robert. Ruth took a step closer and smiled. She raised the poker to shoulder-height. Robert screamed and raised an arm to protect himself. Ruth swung as hard as she could. The screen of the television shattered; glass exploded across the room. She squealed with delight then turned back to Robert, her eyes tinged with insanity and glazed over with feral wildness. Robert leaped to his feet and backed around the chair.
“Ruth. Please… please, calm down. Let me call the doctor.”
###
“And did your husband call the doctor, Mrs Deverett?” Wilson asked.
“No, it wasn’t possible. I left him and went and broke the house phone. And his mobile. It was on a charger next to the toaster. That one was harder than a normal phone. The poker didn't do much damage so I put it down the waste disposal.”
Although he tried, there was no disguising Wilson’s involuntary start.
“And your husband, how did he react when he saw you had destroyed his phone?”
“He tried to leave the house. But he had bolted all the doors earlier as he always did. Funny really. Robert had fitted all the doors and windows with deadlocks and bolts. He said it was to protect us from intruders but I knew it was to stop me leaving the house. Robert would lock me in before he left for work. Said it was for my own safety. I picked up the keys from the table and put them down the waste disposal as well. Robert couldn’t leave. He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me. I think it was the first time Robert had actually looked at me with genuine interest in many years. I suppose under different circumstances I might have been flattered.”
Judge Bowden almost threw his gavel at her. This woman is insane and the trial is a farce. She should be locked up in an asylum somewhere.
The court clerk handed him a slip of paper. It was from his wife, Jackie. A reminder fo
r him not to be late home. Jackie had prepared a special dinner for his birthday. He reread the, don’t be late part. As if he needed reminding. All day he had thought of nothing else but being on time. Even after all these years, it still amazed him that he had managed to snare a former Miss West Coast winner. He remembered the early days. How he loved to run his fingers over her body. The firmness of her torso, so finely sculpted. It still excited him.
###
Ruth felt taller. Certainly the light behind her as she stood in the hallway poker in hand, cast a long shadow. She shuffled forward, her injured thigh from where Robert had kicked her causing her to limp. Robert kept his distance. Well, why would he change now? Ruth ruminated. He had kept his distance throughout their marriage.
She now stood before Roberts’s inner sanctum.
His study.
Only Robert had a key. She had never been inside, never seen his secrets. She picked up Robert’s prized golf trophy from the hall table. A statuette of a golfer on a pedestal he had won in his younger days. She had always hated it. An eyesore. It stood nearly three feet tall. Robert had kept it there because he knew it annoyed her. She stood the poker against the wall and lifted the trophy. It was heavy. The square bronzed base must have weighed ten kilos. Ruth raised it above her head and smashed it into the door. It took three blows before the locks gave and the door flew open.
She heard a gasp. A quick look over her shoulder revealed Robert had kept his distance.
She retrieved the poker and stepped inside. When she turned on the light the scene that confronted her brought her to a sudden stop. Eyebrows pressed together in a deep frown. A blink. Then another. Then a slow disbelieving scan of the interior. As Ruth stepped forward, the relevance of the contents of the room dawned on her.
And she began to laugh. No, not joyous laughter. Laughter that propelled her to her knees and slowly morphed into sobs of anguish.
###
The courtroom was silent. Even Judge Bowden was attentive. All eyes were now on Harvey Wilson. He knew not to savor the anticipation beyond the point of greatest impact.
