by Robert Ward
“No, but you leave little white specks on the wall tiles after you’ve brushed, and you don’t change your toothbrush until the bristles are all soft and frayed.”
“Anything else?”
“Erm… You don’t cut your toenails quite often enough and when you do, you do it over the toilet bowl and sometimes you forget to flush them away.”
“Oh, God, do I? That’s disgusting. I’ll always make sure I flush them away in future.”
“You’ll forget. It must be in your nature for you to have formed the habit.”
“Go on.”
“Erm… when you cut yourself shaving you dab the blood with the hand towel and put it back on the rail.”
“Are all my bad habits confined to the bathroom?”
“Goodness, no. Let me see… you fidget your feet in bed when you’re asleep, and sometimes you talk in your sleep as well. But the annoying thing is that you just mumble and I can’t make out what you’re saying, so you don’t give any of your terrible secrets away.”
“More.”
“Lots.”
“I’m waiting.”
“You mix your shoes and slippers up on the rack so that the left is where the right should be and you stamp fag ash into the carpet when you’ve dropped it.”
“There’s only one answer then,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Divorce, before you murder me in my sleep, driven to madness by my foul ways.”
“On what grounds?”
“For the divorce you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Foul ways.”
“I’ve never heard of that one before, but I’m sure it’s more valid than something like ordinary old adultery.”
“It hardly seemed worth it really, did it?”
“Did what?”
“Getting married.”
“No, I suppose not. But it might go part way in convincing people that you’re not gay, if you can say that you were married.”
“That’s true,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Or maybe I had, in denying the true nature of my sexuality in my subconscious.”
“They think it might be inherited now, you know?”
“What might?”
“Being gay. Apparently there’s a gay gene.”
“How does that work?”
“Well… heterosexual people can…I mean… it doesn’t matter whether they are or they aren’t… heterosexual I mean… I mean.”
“Start again,” he said.
She turned to rest her cheek on his chest and looked up into his face.
“Well… there’s a gene that can be passed on by… whoever, and it might become predominant in their child and make them gay.”
“I wonder how the word,Gay came to mean homosexual?,” he said.
“I don’t know. Gay means jolly and carefree doesn’t it. But most of the gays I know, and I know many, are miserable backbiting bitches.”
“Such venom,” he said. “Into the ovens with them.”
“Quite,” she said. “I hate them all. But come to think of it, some of my best friends are…”
“Gay?”
“Yes,” she said.
Miranda closed her eyes and stroked his cheek with the flat of her left hand.
“How did we get onto this, anyway?” he asked.
“The divorce,” she said.
In the afternoon they walked along the promenade and felt the breeze freshen and they saw the sky clouding over, blocking out the Sun. The weather was, it appeared, reminding them that it was not yet summer and that April is a treacherous month. In their shirts only, they began to feel cold.
“Do you want to go back and put something warm on?” he asked.
“No, we’re out now. Let’s be brave.”
The sea had changed from a calm blue-green to a choppy grey and was gathering in strength as it raised itself and then fell onto the pebble beach.
“It’s going to rain,” Richard predicted.
“Pessimist,” she said. “If it does, it’s only water.”
“More like acid,” he said.
Despite the change in the weather there were still plenty of people about, walking along the broad esplanade and on the lawns and visiting the so-called attractions, like the crazy-golf course and the marina, opened in optimism at the beginning of the season, though the big summer crowds had not yet arrived.
“Why do people flock to the sea, I wonder?” she asked.
“Trying to get back home, I suppose,” he said.
“It’s funny though, isn’t it?”
“Where the elements meet,” he said.
“Earth, fire, air and water?”
“Without the fire, this afternoon, I think.”
It started to rain, in a few fat heavy drops at first, which then became a downpour and before they could reach one of the benched shelters beyond the nearest lawn facing the sea, they were soaked to the skin.
Sharing the shelter with them was a family consisting of a couple and three small children, all of whom were now kitted out with foldable plastic macs of various colours. The children were crying, having been removed from their engrossing game of crazy-golf by their over-concerned parents about the rain. One child even threw her bar of fruity nougat to the floor of the shelter in rage.
“I told you it would rain,” Richard said.
“Well aren’t you an old clever clogs then,” she said. “But when the rain goes off a bit, just a bit that is, can we go and find a cafe? You know, a fish and chips cafe?”
“If you really want to,” he said.
“I want to sit in a cafe at the window and look out at the rain and the deserted promenade and think about how depressed we would be if we weren’t us.”
The sea no longer simply rose and fell, but crashed onto the beach, and the cold wind drove the rain against the glass sides of the shelter and swirled around inside it. The enraged child retrieved its bar of nougat from the floor and was attempting to eat it when its mother took it from it, explaining that doggy poo and nasty men’s spit might have been on the ground as she put it in the bin, the effect of which was to send the child into a second tantrum of being denied.
“Do you think that’s us, in the future?” Miranda asked, nodding at the couple sitting at the other end of the shelter, who were, from appearances, about five years older than themselves.
“If it is,” he said. “Pass the sleeping pills now. Or should we open our veins?”
The rain eased a little, and they ran across to the Lobster Cafe which was the nearest place of the description given by Miranda as her preferred destination, and they entered, shivering in their cold wet shirts and sat at a red and white Formica topped table by the window.
A girl of about sixteen, who was pretty in a hard and chewing gum kind of way, came over to them reluctantly from the counter where the takeaway people were served, and took their order. They both asked for cod and chips with mushy peas, with bread and butter and a pot of tea.
Their food arrived almost immediately and they unwrapped their knives and forks from their red paper napkins. Salt and vinegar and red and brown sauce and white sugar in a pouring dispenser were already on the table and milk was then provided in a little silver jug on a tray. Their tea came in a brown earthenware pot and their cups and saucers were blue, somewhere between sky and royal.
“Hmn, this is lovely,” Miranda said with her mouth full of battered cod. “What is it the French say? That we can only make custard? They should try this.”
“I’m glad the rain has kept up for you,” he said. “Does it complete the scenario?”
“Aren’t you enjoying it? The fish and chips I mean?”
“Yes, of course I am,” he said. “You’re right. What do the French know?”
He looked out of the window as the rainwater made little jagged journeys down the pane, and listened to the wind as it blew against shutters and signs and advertising boards outside, along the seafront.
“We’d better be,” he said. “What made you ask that?”
“I’m frightened. No matter how we laugh it off and make light of it, marriage is a commitment. It means we’re supposed to be together until one of us dies.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“I’m serious now.”
“And what is it you’re really afraid of?”
“What you haven’t told me. There’s something deep inside you that you haven’t told me about. Tell me now. Before it’s too late and I start to hate you.”
“That’s a strange thing to say over fish and chips.”
“Tell me now, please.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Now you are being ridiculous,” he said. “What’s brought this on.”
“Nothing,” she said. “There’s just something about you, that you won’t tell me, that I want to know.”
“You’re imagining it,” he said.
“Maybe so.”
The rain continued to fall after they had finished their meal, and they sat at their table looking into half empty teacups.
“You can’t expect to know everything about a person,” Richard suddenly said. “There are bound to be lots of things about both of us that the other will never know. That’s a good thing. I think. And I can’t imagine why you think I’ve got some terrible dark secret that I’m keeping from you. I wish I had. My life has been far too boring for that, though.”
“Maybe I wanted you to have a secret,” she said, smiling at him, and reaching across the table to take hold of his hand.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Liz,
Sorry you weren’t there for the big day. I knew you weren’t coming but I couldn’t help myself looking for you, just in case you changed your mind. How the hell are you anyway? I haven’t heard from you in ages.
I’m writing this in our hotel room. Yes, it’s the honeymoon suite! What a lovely word that is, honeymoon. Miranda has gone out to get something. Oh yes, a huge pink and white soft ice cream that they sell in a shop just along the seafront. The hotel ice cream isn’t the same, she says. I think really she’s gone out just to get away from me for a while. Our marriage is on the rocks already it seems, just as you predicted.
I really can’t believe I’m married, myself. Not that it means a hell of a lot, being married I mean. Why do people say, get married and make it legal? It isn’t illegal without being married. Just a point.
How are you and Charles? Are you still with Charles? The lecturer and the librarian. I bet you give him absolute hell. Sorry, not librarian, library assistant, one must be precise. How are the fucking students?
We’re going home tomorrow. We’re only having three nights here. We haven’t decided where we’re going for our ‘proper’ honeymoon yet. I seem to be saying, we, a lot, don’t I? I have already got a pair of carpet slippers and I’m thinking of getting a pipe. We haven’t started calling each other Mother and Father yet though. That’s a working class tradition by the way.
The Miranda sort wants us to be happy together. She’s worried by the prospect that we might not be. She’s a strange girl. How could anyone expect to be happy, living with either of us? Let alone being married? Am I making sense? Do you have the faintest idea what I’m talking about? If you do, that’s good, because I don’t.
I’d better finish now, because she’ll be back in a moment, I think, and if she finds me writing this she’ll beat me up. You’ve heard of husband-beating? And she’s got red hair, well, sort of reddish, and a terrible temper.
Write or telephone, no, write soon. It’s never been this long.
Rich.
Elizabeth threw down the letter onto the coffee table and rested her damp stockinged feet next to it. The glass top was hard under her heels and in a moment she moved them, rubbing them as she drew her legs up onto the chair with her knees tightly bent.
It was raining outside and a little pool of water had formed on the windowsill where the glass was ill-fitting. It rattled when there was a strong wind.
It was a basement flat and the view from the front room was restricted to the steps and the black railings at the top on the street level. She had lived there now for two months with her friend, Charlotte, with whom she also worked as a researcher for the BBC. Her mother had had some influence in getting her the job and she wasn’t quite sure if she should be grateful or not. She was grateful, on reflection, she supposed.
She shared with Charlotte to halve the rent of course, but apart from that, they got on well together and had become in a relatively short period, good friends. They felt comfortable with each other, which, when sharing with someone, is the most important thing.
Charlotte was out at the moment. She’d gone to the cash point, for the weekend, but they were due to do the shopping together at the supermarket, a weekly task that they shared and both, surprisingly, didn’t loathe. Trundling the trolley along the aisles and selecting things from the vast array on offer under the bright lights and surrounded by muzak gave them a strange feeling of being in some kind of bizarre future-world. On one occasion they had burst out laughing simultaneously, and in explaining to each other, realised they had done so for exactly the same reason. When the supermarket was crowded though and they had to queue at the checkout, they had second thoughts about not loathing the experience.
Elizabeth sipped her tea and listened to the quiet ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece and thought about nothing in particular as she waited for Charlotte to return.
Charlotte, no matter how much she had in her account, always feared that the cash point would swallow her card and announce to everyone in the queue that she had no money and was to be arrested and sent to Holloway for fraud.
The machine however, as it always did, dutifully produced a crisp bundle of twenties which she grabbed quickly and put in her purse and then returned briskly to her car, fearful of imaginary muggers who had been loitering at the cash point, waiting for her. She always went to the cash point on Friday, even though she could go on Saturday or Sunday, because it was the last ‘proper’ day of the week.
Elizabeth heard Charlotte’s footsteps clatter down from the street above and her keys rattling and the front door slamming and she snapped herself out of her trance.
“Hi,” Charlotte said, as she entered the room. “Oh, is that tea? I’ll get a cup.”
“It might only be hot-ish,” Elizabeth shouted after her, looking at the pot, though it did have its cosy on.
Charlotte returned with a cup and saucer and poured herself some tea, which still steamed from the spout, and she tasted it.
“It’s still okay,” she said. “Aren’t you having biccies?”
“No, I didn’t think to. There are some bourbons in the tin, I think.”
“I won’t bother now,” Charlotte said. “I’m just thirsty really.”
Charlotte sat in an armchair on the far side of the room from Elizabeth, next to the fireplace, which was closed-off and had a gas fire installed in front of the recess. She kicked off her shoes and rubbed the soles of her feet on the warm dark red carpet. She then took another sip of tea and threw her head back and sighed.
Charlotte was two years younger than Elizabeth but looked even younger. She was the type of person who would seem young even when she was fifty. She was of about average height but seemed if anything a little taller because she was so slender, almost slight in fact, though she did have an attractive figure in a boyish or just post-pubescent way but which nonetheless was undeniably feminine. She had long straight dark auburn hair and light brown eyes that sometimes looked like a kind of dark yellow in bright light. She was pretty rather than beautiful, but could not have been describe
d as anything other than attractive.
“Who’s your letter from?” Charlotte asked, spotting the envelope and opened pages on the coffee table from across the small room.
“Rich,” Elizabeth said. “He’s just got married and he’s been telling me how awful it is.”
“When are we going to meet the lovely, Richard?” Charlotte asked. “From what you’ve told me he’s your special pal.”
“How can you tell that? I don’t remember telling you anything… well, hardly anything about him.”
“You’ve said enough,” Charlotte said. “How long is it now since you’ve seen him?”
Elizabeth thought for a moment, and then sat up straight in her chair, concentrating.
“Eight, nine years,” she then said, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.”
“And you still write? It must be love.”
“I do love him,” Elizabeth said without thinking. “I’ll always love him, in a way, I suppose.”
“In what way?”
“Like a brother. No, more than a brother. I think. Rich is my friend and I’ll always love him, because we’re not together, not close you see? No, I didn’t mean that. We are close, but we’re not on top of one another, and I didn’t mean that either, not what you’re thinking.”
“You mean he’s like a perfect love that can’t be sullied?” Charlotte asked.
Elizabeth smiled.
“No,” she said.
“It all sounds a bit strange to me,” Charlotte said. “Why don’t you arrange for us to meet? Or do you want to keep him as a perfect memory?”
“Charlotte, dear.”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
“Yes, okay. I haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, have I? Shall we go and freak out at the supermarket before it gets too crowded?”
“You can drive,” Elizabeth said.
The larder, freezer, and fridge being stocked for another week, not forgetting the drinks cabinet, Elizabeth and Charlotte then thought about what they were going to do for the rest of the evening and decided that they would go to the Smuggler’s Club and pick up a couple of unsuspecting males.
The Smuggler’s club was conveniently close and usually full of not too bad looking men in desperate need of female company. Most of them were boys of course, but some were a little maturer and could possibly consider themselves candidates for the company of such sophisticated ladies as Elizabeth and Charlotte. They had been there many times before, and usually came away with interesting partners, and so they felt no need to look elsewhere tonight.
