Not Playing the Game

by Jennifer Chapman

  ‘It’s alright. I was thinking about David,’ she said.

  ‘We’re not doing very well, are we?’ he replied, resignedly, but finding her hand and clasping her fingers.

  ‘Are you in love with her?’ she enquired.

  ‘With Mickey? No, but I have a certain amount of affection for her.’

  ‘I am with David,’ she said.

  Dan was surprised by this confession, not because David was Mickey’s husband and therefore Josephine had no right to be in love with him, but because he did not consider David worth the effort of love; but then men rarely understood women’s attraction to other men, and vice versa. He remembered lying in bed with Charlotte after they’d made love and discussing the people they knew, suggesting those the other might fancy and invariably getting it wrong.

  As if reading his thoughts, Josephine then said: ‘Oh I know he’s a selfish bore and not good enough for Mickey, but I’ve loved him for years, everything about him. I can’t help it.’

  Dan understood this very well, but Josephine’s low opinion of herself, and her candour in expressing it was beginning to creep under his skin. He let go of her hand.

  ‘It’s a sort of masochism, to keep seeing him when there’s absolutely no hope, even if he and Mickey break up,’ she went on. ‘Oh, he might sleep with me if he’d had enough to drink but I don’t think I could stand the indifference the morning after, the “You’re a good sort, Josephine” but nothing more.’

  Dan realized this was exactly how he would feel in the morning, but a sudden sense of injustice checked him, halting the despairing drift of his thoughts.

  ‘Stop being so bloody abject,’ he said fiercely, but he might have been saying it as much to himself as to her. The peculiar kind of isolation that came from lying in bed with someone as forlorn as oneself was reminiscent of the last few nights of his marriage, the nights he’d lain sleepless beside Charlotte, a million miles in the inches between them, the sensation that even to breathe might crack and shatter the last, lingering, absurd hope.

  He reached across the bed.

  ‘Again?’ she said.

  ‘To get rid of other people,’ he answered.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as if apologizing for ill manners.

  He realized she’d taken his reply as relating only to herself, and that this was her problem, the root of her misery: he almost envied so simple an explanation.

  ‘That hurts,’ she moaned.

  ‘Don’t you want it to?’ he said, beginning to lose himself in this new roughness.

  She didn’t answer.

  The grey light of dawn had spread across the mess of tangled bedding before they eventually slept – she, curled into his back in an attitude of submission he found vaguely sickening. It was the first time he’d made love with aggression and it had been like finding the cure for a fatal disease, but too late.

  In his sleep, images from the past and present were superimposed on upon another; familiar faces with edited vision failed to recognize him but knew each other and plotted a survival in which he would have no place. Looming largest among these faces in his dream – the process similar to a child’s game with hands, one overlaying another, but the underneath one snatched away and out on top again the moment it was covered – was Mickey’s. The face was predatory and therefore unlike hers except in its features. It leered past him in grotesque fashion to a future that was seemingly salacious and unnatural, but the only one and therefore he had to struggle to see it for himself, to twist round and glimpse the degradation of his fate. But he couldn’t. His head wouldn’t turn that far, not without his eyes popping out of their sockets. The others could all see what would happen and had metamorphosed into ugliness because they knew, while he was left with his back turned but wanting to go with them because anything was better than to be isolated in the terrifying despair of introspection.

  When he woke up it was like an escape and an involuntary sense of gratitude came to him. He registered the presence of another body in the bed and in the time-confusing moment between waking and reaching full consciousness, said his wife’s name.

  Chapter Ten

  That Sunday Arthur made a mistake. The pride he thought he had conquered, the ‘showing off’ he had always despised in others, got the better of him and he took Mickey to see his old ladies.

  Of course, she was surprised and impressed when he told her, in the most modest of terms, about this charitable activity.

  ‘There was no reason to tell you before,’ he said, ‘and I’m only telling you now because I can’t visit them tomorrow. I have to go to an auction.’

  This was a lie, but not a troublesome one. He wanted her to see him in this surprising light and the old ladies to see him with a young and attractive woman; but more particularly, it was Matron who needed a jolt.

  Mumsie Matron had been getting above herself lately: she’d started making demands of a sort he found not only tiresome but disgusting. He’d noted the first danger signals some while back; she’d brushed against him in her office during the tea ceremony, and done this more than once. She’d become distressingly coy too much of the time they were alone in too greater contrast with the manner in which she addressed him in front of the girls and the other staff. She was a frustrated woman, he could see that, and sooner, rather than later he was going to have to set her straight – before she said something really foolish that would freeze him up and result in her despising both of them. He’d gained the upper hand with her, but he knew it was a delicate balance and all too easily she might turn on him, the full weight of her bullying nature reminding him of why he was there, maybe using it as blackmail.

  He’d developed a recurring nightmare, so vivid maybe it had really happened. Matron’s huge breasts, as big as cow udders, suffocating him, and the great hole between her legs, sucking him up, devouring him. She smelt of disinfectant and stale urine, the constant, all pervading odour of the nursing home. But Mickey – Mickey smelt of talcum powder and youthful juices – that was when he was aware of her in their lovemaking.

  And love her, in his own menacing fashion, he did. It was a burning, engrossing love though he did his best to hide the extent of his passion, fearful that if she saw it too clearly she would lose interest. He couldn’t allow her to see any weakness or uncertainty because his hold over her was based entirely on his seemingly insular strength compared with the mass of uncertainties and confusions he encouraged her to indulge and explore in herself.

  She used him and now he was using her. He saw the dismay in Matron’s face the moment he introduced her, Mickey, his ‘friend’. Anybody else doubtless would have assumed there could be no more to it than friendship, so disparate were they in physical attractiveness, but then Matron was besotted by him and therefore jealously suspicious.

  ‘May I introduce you to my friend, Mickey,’ he said, and poor Mumsie had to rally all her professional vigour to manage an icy smile and words to indicate that they might find their own way to the conservatory.

  Arthur felt positively buoyant as he led Mickey along the corridor.

  ‘She seemed a bit put out,’ she whispered to him.

  ‘Change of routine – it unsettles the sort of people who run institutions.’

  ‘But I thought you’d phoned?’

  They reached the door to the conservatory. Arthur peered through the glass and was surprised to see a number of other visitors, but of course, there would be on a Sunday. Never mind, he’d make the most of attending to those who had no one else to come and see them.

  He opened the door and looked around. Grace was alone, but he wouldn’t get much mileage there. Then he saw that the chair beside her, Hilda’s place, was occupied by a newcomer. It shouldn’t have been so very surprising, but it was.

  The visit passed tolerably well, though Arthur felt that his performance was lacking as he introduced Mickey to all the old ladies who were sitting alone. Those whose families were with them didn’t seem to notice him at all, which
was an added shock, but all the time he was thinking about Hilda. He couldn’t get rid of her, the image, in his head, of the frail, sagging face with the all-seeing eyes. What a fool he was to have thought she didn’t really know him, and now there was no chance of altering that knowledge. A distressing sense of vulnerability and failure nagged at him, and when he and Mickey went to leave he quickened his step past Matron’s closed door. Outside, in Mickey’s car, he saw the starched face peer briefly from the office window. He felt ill at ease, dissatisfied. It had not been the triumph he’d anticipated. Matron had received her jolt, but he wasn’t certain now that it had been a wise move. The image of Hilda’s face remained, piercing little eyes, rat-like and minacious.

  Mickey started the car and they drove back to the shop. She was nervous about the journey, worried that they might be seen by someone who knew her. There were times now when she lost sight of the reality – that no one would suspect anything even if they did see her with Arthur. Her anxiety was partly due to guilt but also because she no longer viewed her lover as he was in outward appearance.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ she ventured as they turned off the main road and into the village.

  In a rare piece of honesty, Arthur replied: ‘I’m thinking about the old lady who’s died. I wish she hadn’t.’

  Mickey had been considerably touched by Arthur’s apparent fondness for the elderly residents of the nursing home. It had been an unexpected side to him, though everything about him continued to puzzle and intrigue her. She never knew when he might turn on her with one of his cruel, incisive observations and yet he was capable of tenderness and not only when they were in bed.

  It was on this day that she came the closest to believing herself in love with him and no longer David. She was intoxicated by the mystery of him and the fact that he was ugly seemed to add an exquisite perversion to the illicit affair.

  In the room over the shop he remained quiet and evidently troubled. He sat down on the chaise longue and Mickey, unused to his not dominating the situation with his characteristic intensity and perception, retreated to the kitchen area and the business of boiling the kettle.

  As she waited for the water to heat she turned and looked at him, his back to her, his balding head tilted forward to reveal the almost baby-like narrowness of his pale, hairless neck. Her heart began to beat unevenly and her breath seemed to catch in her throat. An overwhelming confusion of emotions reeled in her head, but the strongest was a tender pity and the realization of how lonely he must be to grieve so for the old lady in the home.

  She moved further into the room then coming round to face him, knelt down on the floor at his feet.

  ‘She was very old,’ Arthur said slowly, meeting Mickey’s anxious gaze. ‘But she did so remind me of my mother.’

  They continued looking at one another. Arthur had removed his spectacles when he’d come in, further indicating his distress. His vision was now very limited but Mickey was close enough for him to see the compassion in her eyes and for a moment he very nearly believed in the grief himself.

  ‘Do you know why I took you there today?’ he said, not waiting for her to answer. ‘It was because I wanted to show you off. I wanted other people to see you with me. I wanted them to know.’

  Mickey began to look anguished and broke away from his gaze.

  ‘I take such a lot from you,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel I give enough back.’

  ‘My expectations have never been high,’ he said. ‘I’m just happy that you come here when you do.’

  ‘Nobody else in my life has . . .’ she paused, awkwardly, then looking up at him again she continued, ‘has taken such an interest in me, I suppose. Oh dear, that sounds terribly Orphan Annie-ish and it isn’t exactly what I mean. I think what I’m trying to say is that you make me feel like an interesting person to be with – even when you make me feel bad.’

  He smiled at her. She was so engagingly candid and yet a feeling of meanness had come over him, a desire to make her suffer.

  ‘Ah, but I don’t have cricket to fall back on,’ he said.

  Mickey stood up swiftly and moved away from him.

  ‘You really know how to hurt, don’t you!’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I’m a master at it,’ he answered.

  ‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ she continued. ‘I feel I can tell you anything and everything – exactly how I feel – it’s almost as if I can’t stop myself, and yet I know the chances are you’ll use it against me when it suits you – say something bitter and cruel.’

  ‘It’s jealousy,’ he said, brightly. ‘Don’t you recognize it?’

  *

  Mickey had watched for signs of suspicion in David but had been disappointed, and if the thing with Arthur had started for no better reason than deliberate deception it was no longer that simple. In one sense Arthur had pulled her out of the shadow into which David had allowed her to slip, and yet it seemed that the reality of her life was still with David.

  Once, when he came back on a Sunday night before she’d gone to bed, she rashly asked him if he had been home at all over the weekend.

  ‘No, we stayed over at Kempley,’ he answered, exaggerating a sigh of exhaustion as he collapsed on the sofa. Poor David, he was too busy avoiding his own culpability to consider the implication she’d laid before him and because Mickey lacked the self-assurance to let it lie she provided an answer to the question he’d failed to ask, making up a weekend spent with her sister in the certainty that David would have forgotten by the time he might see Laura.

  So it was guilt on both sides that kept them from quarrelling and made it seem as if each were generously tolerating the absence of the other. They went to bed and made love with energetic and false enthusiasm because the rest of their life was too divided to risk the half-hearted, comforting sex that would suffice in a closer marriage on a Sunday night after a tiring weekend.

  Chapter Eleven

  The clean, echoing knock of bat against ball cracked across the expanse of green. Ancient, sun-dappled oaks beyond the far end of the pitch jostled gently in a warm breeze. It was the last match of the season, blessed with the conditions of an Indian summer, a sun that was warm but not too hot, enough light but not to dazzle, and turf that suited the fast bowlers.

  The ball reached the boundary and disappeared in the long grass that bordered the outfield, retrieved a minute or so later by Samantha, nine years old and the daughter of Mickey’s cousin.

  David, whose bat had sent the ball into the undergrowth, took this opportunity to call across to Mickey and request that she keep the child away from the sightscreen.

  The match resumed and Samantha ambled over to where Mickey was sitting with Emily and Laura and baby Lucien.

  ‘Don’t go near the big white things, there’s a good girl,’ Emily said before Mickey had a chance. ‘It distracts the players.’

  ‘Which would you prefer – to eat a slug or be run over by a bus?’ Samantha asked with serious enquiry.

  ‘Neither,’ Emily replied, marking the score book at the end of another over.

  ‘No, you’ve got to choose,’ Samantha insisted.

  ‘Why?’ Emily asked, blankly.

  ‘I think I’d want to be run over by a bus if I’d eaten a slug,’ Laura interjected. ‘How long till tea, Mickey?’

  ‘You won’t be able to eat in the pavilion,’ Emily informed. ‘It’s players only at this club, not that their teas are up to much. Biscuits and bought cake.’

  Mickey looked at her watch. Only a quarter to four. The afternoon was dragging. Samantha, who was spending the weekend with her and David, was evidently bored. It had been a mistake to bring her to the cricket match but David had suggested it and as it was the last of the season and . . . well, she hadn’t been to watch for weeks.

  Arthur had asked her to bring Samantha to the shop. He’d promised a splendid tea and doubtless they would have had a lovely interesting time, inspecting all the strange and wonderful objects, suits of a
rmour, stuffed owls, but to Mickey it had seemed too reckless a plan. Besides, Samantha belonged in her other life, with David, and to overlap into the one she shared with Arthur at weekends was against the unspoken rules that enabled her to, in effect, live with two men in different places.

  The illicit cohabitation with Arthur at weekends had become established during the summer. Every Saturday, after David left the house, sometimes on Friday evening if he was away for a double fixture, she would go to Arthur and remain with him until Sunday evening. It was a crazy, precarious pattern of existence and surely doomed to be temporary, but as the weeks went by and David never questioned her whereabouts, she allowed it to continue, drawn to Arthur yet not fully comprehending the extent to which he had insinuated himself into her life. She knew it was wrong, perhaps the more so because nobody would suspect – not her, she wasn’t the type; but although it was impossible to escape the guilt pangs of deception, there was, undeniably, an improvement in her relationship with David during the week. The resentment had gone – after all, she hardly had the right to it any more! Her life with David had settled into a civilized routine achieved, partly, by the purchase of a microwave oven. Meal times were flexible around the variables of squash matches and cricket nets, and Mickey found she was able to endure, even enjoy, at least one night a week at the club.

  Occasionally she stopped to ponder the extent of her duplicity, finding it as extraordinary as if it was happening to someone else. She could imagine Josephine living such a life, even Laura, although she would be open about it, declaring the arrangement as a justifiable stab against the stultifying rigours of convention. Though Laura had changed since the birth of her son, embracing more of the conformities of motherhood than Mickey had expected, and sadly, out-growing Lawrence.

  Poor Lawrence, he was a nice boy really, and still crazy about Laura. Several times he’d called at Mickey’s and David’s house, on two occasions breaking down in a most distressing way, but only when he and Mickey were alone.