A FREE-RANGE WIFE
Michael Kenyon
© Michael Kenyon 1983
Michael Kenyon has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1983 by Collins, London
This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
“Chérie,” he breathed.
In the circumstances he could have done little with chérie except breathe it. Blonde tresses and an earlobe filled his mouth. He could hardly have proclaimed chérie as if he were president. He would have had a job beaming the presidential smile and raising both arms above his head.
“Chérie,” he breathed, more raspingly this time, lifting his head. If the woman had looked, the light being on, there would have been the whites of his eyes and the irises wetly swivelling like two peeled muscat grapes. “Chérie,” he rasped like tearing calico. “Je viens!”
That, she knew, having heard it before, was French for “I’m coming,” which she knew he was because she was too, he had not needed to tell her, for with or without explanations he was a lovely lover, Jean-Luc, and she loved him. Dependable, always on time, and above all bilingual, without which their love never could have blossomed. There would have been no advance beyond Bonjour and the handshaking.
If he had not been dependable she might still have loved him for his intellect, his soul even, but she doubted it.
“Oh, mon coeur!” he said. In moments of passion, Jean-Luc Fontanille, Professor of English, reverted to his native tongue. “Chérie! Oh, ah, merci! Merci!”
Mercy McCluskey, shuddering agreeably, found that a corner of her mind remained detached in spite of everything. The trouble with the name Mercy, she reflected, not for the first time, was that in this country she never knew whether people were addressing her or saying thank you. Or, still more confusingly, saying no thank you, which was what the French meant, often, when they said merci. If Jean-Luc was telling her no when he plainly meant yes he was even more confused than she was.
He was not confused about his body or, more to the point, hers. The only lover to match him was Heinz, but Heinz was never around. The other trouble with Heinz was his name. How could you take seriously anyone named Heinz? Some Christian names had much to answer for.
“Mercy!”
Mercy McCluskey was at least an advance on her maiden name. Mercy O’Toole had been a gift for the wits even at Bennington, where one would have supposed sights might have been set higher. She still sometimes wondered whether she had not married simply to change her name: too abruptly, too young, on the very bank and shoal of the feminist breakers which had been about to boom in. Had they boomed in a little earlier they might well have sent her scampering back up the beach.
Twenty years. Unbelievable.
Distantly a doorbell was ringing. Mercy tried pretending that the summons was not from her doorbell but from the bell to one of the apartments above, or from a telephone somewhere, not hers, or a child with a toy bell in the courtyard beyond the curtained window. Pretending was easy. There were in those moments so many bells inside her that her head, the bright bedroom, and all of France were melodiously tintinnabulating.
With lulls, the ringing persisted. Nine o’clock, according to the Westclox Big Ben on the bedside table. Nineteen years old, the clock, eleven dollars’ worth, bought by Hector in Burlington the summer after the wedding, and dented now, chipped and wobbly, but never once a repair, not even a check-up or an inner dusting, and as reliable as Jean-Luc. He was rigid and listening in his exotic position, above her but askew, one limb here, another improbably there.
Mormons didn’t call at nine, did they? Nine in the morning? If it were a functionary to read the meter she would spit.
Could be a telegram. Could even be a telegram bringing good news, though she could not imagine what. Some people succeeded in not answering the door or the telephone but she had never understood how.
Could be Ishbael, the acutest pain in the universe, fifteen and contemptuous of her put-upon Mom, who did her best. But Ishbael with a broken leg perhaps, or sudden eczema, or debts. Could even be goddamn Hector.
Except Hector was in Hong Kong. No worry there. Hell, even if it had been Hector . . .
Mercy gave Jean-Luc a despairing don’t-blame-me-just-our-lousy-luck look, which already, with wet muscat eyes six inches away, he was giving her, and with better justification, the apartment not being his. Grunting expletives, he disentangled himself.
She put on the bathrobe given to her by Hector as an anniversary offering circa their paper wedding, or brass, or tinkling cymbal. Aeons ago anyway. The robe, almost as old as the Big Ben Westclox, and cherished, like a family dog, was sombrely tartan—the McCluskeys of Inverbrae—and durable, as was everything acquired by Hector, including his wife. Mercy wondered if ever in his life her husband had bought anything which had not been sensible and hard-wearing. She mopped her face with a tissue from the robe’s pocket, combed her fingers through her hair, and before leaving the bedroom turned off the light.
Once the living-room light was on, no chink was going to show under the bedroom door, but still. Life being booby-trapped with surprises, one learned to pay attention to the details. If Jean-Luc continued with his mutterings and throat-clearings, or chose to tramp out after her, okay, that was something else.
Barefoot across rugs, Mercy felt her way round the loom, which filled too much room space, and past the divan bed on which Ishbael occasionally passed a night, when she was able to bring herself to tolerate sleeping under the same roof as her Mom, and on which Angus, seventeen, had once entertained one of his school doxies under the impression that Mom in the bedroom was stone-deaf. Next, past the hopeless, mountainous, abandoned drum kit of Fergus, eighteen, which he refused to sell, and which his father refused to have up at the ale-house. She switched on the light.
She stooped, the spyhole in the door to the corridor having been positioned for French midgets. Through the spyhole she saw nothing. Not even the corridor.
Hector had insisted on the spyhole. He had never stayed in the apartment, had visited it only once, but a woman on her own—when she was on her own, he had added with that throw-away indifference which had throbbed with meaning; and he had organised and paid a spyhole carpenter. Probably this was the only spyhole in Mordan, unless the banks had some. Madame Belot in the apartment above had thought it was for ventilation. Always before now Mercy had seen something through it, if only the corridor.
She blinked, dabbed her eye with tissue, and peered again. An eye at the other end of the spyhole was drawing away. The withdrawing eye, together with a second eye, a nose, and other regular facial features, became when finally assembled a shaved, male face topped by a brown hat. Not Dracula, if appearances were a guide, but Jesus, who knew? He was retreating from the door with pursed lips and a jigging, shuffling gait.
Mercy was roughly familiar, as was every red-blooded girl, with the figures.
*Fifty per cent of all rapes took place in the victim’s home in daylight. (Okay, if she drew the curtains and opened the shutters it would be daylight.)
*Eighty-seven per cent of all rapists carri
ed a weapon or threatened their victim with violence or death.
*Ninety-eight per cent of all rapists planned their attacks after carefully selecting their victim. That was why women ought to practise assertiveness in public places, walking with head up, shoulders back.
*Forty per cent of all rapists were acquaintances, colleagues, or friends of friends of the victim.
*Rapists came from all socio-economic groups, professions, trades, backgrounds.
These, admittedly, were the figures for Los Angeles, Rape Capital of the World, not for Mordan (Pop. 14,000. Priory of Notre Dame, 13th century. Roman sarcophagus. Château de Mordan, 8 km.). All the same.
This one was not an acquaintance or colleague, though he might have been a friend of a friend, and he might have marked her down outside in the Rue du 17 Août or on the boulevard, because although six feet one inch tall, she certainly was not beefy and she did not walk with assertiveness in public places or anywhere else. On the contrary, when you were six feet one inch and fifteen and the school wits called you High Fidelity, you acquired habits of unassertiveness, whether walking or standing still, and habits clung, even though at forty you had learned not only to live with being tall but to pity the gnomes who peopled the rest of the globe, France especially. The man on the far side of the dilapidated stone corridor, wagging his head and wiggling his feet, was now fully frontal in burgundy slacks, tie, and unsuitable lightweight jacket.
The month might be merry May but the weather was not that warm. There had been frosts. Five miles north, Hector’s shebeen was high up, true, a mountain eyrie, but on Monday snow and burst pipes had visited it, or so she had been told by Jean-Luc, who read about such matters in the local paper. From a pocket of the man’s linen jacket jutted a plastic bag containing, judging from its rectangularity, books, or a box of candy. He was looking down at his suede feet, which he moved rhythmically, heeling and toeing.
A dancing rapist? A gas meter reader with verrucas? At least he was not Hector.
“’Ello? Mrs. McCluskey?”
He had seen her. He had seen something through the peephole. Or heard her. Though the door was solid enough and locked, Mercy thought of the Ovarian Yell, which she had never tried, but which was said to instil greater confidence than a squeal or shriek. The Ovarian Yell originated in the abdomen. She imagined a vigorous yodelling sound, like Tarzan, if properly done, which would bring out into the Rue du 17 Août the pâtissiers, charcutiers, grand’mères, and Alsatian dogs. She had once counted six Alsatians standing and hanging about in the street at the same time, one of them with only three legs.
What was important was to act positively in the first thirty seconds. The place to go for was not where you would have thought but the knee area because the knee joint bent one way only, so a kick from any direction could incapacitate.
The police on the other hand counselled against fighting back. Fighting back, they said, could be fatal.
“Who is it?” Mercy called.
“Police.”
Mercy watched through the peep-hole. His “Police” had not sounded very French, and wouldn’t a French policeman have said, “La police”? La or le. Not that she would have known. He looked as if he might be whistling, though she heard nothing, and he was repeating his soft-shoe shuffle, pistoning his arms and making fists as if rattling maracas, rehearsing for rumba night at the Coconut Grove.
Mercy called, “May I see your badge, please?”
“Badge?” He came to a stop. “No badges, ma’am. Won a medal once, now you mention it. Runner-up in the Scotland Yard Wellie-Throwing.” He was fishing in an inner pocket of his tourist jacket, bringing out a wallet. “Just joking. Got a nice snapshot. That do you?”
From the wallet he selected a blue card which he held up to the peep-hole. He drew the card back, advanced it, and drew it back again. Mercy made out the words “Metropolitan,” and “Pecker” or “Peck” something, but the rest was blurred print and a photograph, advancing and retreating.
“That’s me, the good-looking one,” the man called.
There was only one photograph, a passport face which might or might not have been the dancer in the corridor. Rapists did not whistle and jig like this, reasoned Mercy, and she opened the door. If she had misjudged, in the bedroom were reinforcements. She had only to scream.
Would her Jean-Luc, her legionnaire, her bright bilinguist, her Napoleon of the bedchamber, be a man of action out of bed as well as in? The visitor was raising his hat.
“Chief Inspector Peckover, ma’am. Sorry to trouble you—”
“What is it? Is everything all right?”
“Far as I know. If you mean your family, everything’s merveilleux. That the word? May I come in?”
He was in, closing the door, dropping his hat on the table beside the pile of recent unread issues of The New Yorker, Vermont Life, and Christian Science Monitor, and looking about him at the white walls hung with paintings, the leather sofa which had cost a ransom, the salvaged, restored fireplace with tongs and poker, the overpriced bits and pieces culled gradually, guiltily, from antiques shops.
“Nice,” he said.
“Screw ‘nice,’” Mercy believed she would have said had she said anything. With the drums and the impossible divan the room was not a work of art, but it was not far off.
“Routine inquiry, as we say fairly automatically,” the policeman said as he drew back the woven green curtains. “Shouldn’t take a minute. We say that too. I do anyway. If you find the preliminaries tedious, ’ow d’you suppose we feel?” He was opening the windows, then the shutters. “What a day! Look at that sky!” He had to lean out of the window and crane his neck to look at the sky. “Bonjour.”
The greeting was addressed to a gnarled woman in a black shawl who was passing the windows carrying in each hand a trussed, squawking chicken. She turned her head in alarm and scuttled on.
“Gawd, France! Marvellous!” the policeman said, folding back the shutters. He closed the windows. “Did I wake you?”
“I was having breakfast.” Mercy drew the lapels of her robe closer together, though he was not staring, he was not even looking at her, he was on his way again, and reaching the half-open door into the kitchen, peering in. “Thinking about it,” she said.
“Do I smell blueberry griddlecakes with maple syrup?”
Lemon-fresh Ajax, bleach, metal polish, thought Mercy, who yesterday in a fit of energy had scoured the kitchen, but had cooked nothing all week.
“I’m not hinting. I’ve had breakfast.” He had resumed his saunter. “What a breakfast! What a palace! I’m staying at your place, the château. Every way you turn, a new perfume. Attar of roses, lily of the valley. They had these bits of paper round the croissants, like you get on the lamb cutlets at the Dorchester, not that I’m a regular there. Breakfast music coming up through the carpet. The music’s perfumed too, I wouldn’t wonder. Still, no need to tell you, ma’am. D’you lend a hand there sometimes?”
“Off and on. Up front. I meet and greet in the restaurant when my husband’s away.”
“He’s away now. In Hong Kong, I gather, judging a chop suey competition.”
“We don’t meet and greet for breakfast.”
“So you live ’ere, do you?”
“Yes. Could you tell me—”
“And the children?”
“At the château. When they’re around.”
“They’re not around?”
“Ishbael’s still at school. She’ll sleep here tonight after the movie, or the disco, whatever she’s got on.”
“Nice. Handy. Gor, still, what an ’otel! Mind you, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I ’ad to ask for marmalade.” He was leaning forward, studying a framed photograph on the bureau: Fergus, Angus, and Ishbael in a paddling pool. He gave an approving nod, then wandered on. “Took a while getting them to understand. Took about seven of them. Not that they were French, I’m not saying that, not all of ’em. Spani
ards, are they? Bullfighters, I expect. Lithe little fellows. Took ’em another ten minutes to find it, the marmalade. Those titchy containers they brought, the ones you get on airplanes. It wasn’t marmalade either, it was mirabelles. ’Ave I said that right—mirabelles? Tasted of plums. Don’t you get many Brits up at the château?”
“Not many.”
“What’s this then?”
“A loom.”
“Right, yes. I meant this. Rug, is it? My word, all that detail! Gives you an insight into the Bayeux tapestry. Must be something to do with the climate, or the water. There’s culture in France, no question, whatever they say. Do it yourself?”
“It’s not finished.”
Had the moment been other, and the circumstances, Mercy might have explained that it was not a rug either. But like the Lady of Shalott he had left the loom, he had made three paces through the room, two anyway, and was approaching the bedroom door. When he reached the door he halted. He regarded the door handle, looked back towards the kitchen, and inhaled, as if comparing loom smells, Ajax, and a possibility of blueberry griddlecakes with the Château de Mordan’s air-fresheners. Mercy realised that she had stopped breathing. The policeman sauntered past the bedroom door.
Mercy, breathing, said, “I’m still working on it.”
“And this—fantastic!” He flicked a cymbal, tapped a footdrum with a suede toe, and dragged his fingertips across snares. With the vibrations still in the air, he opened his mouth and went to town, beating a two-handed, inexpert tattoo on a side-drum, and singing, “Ta-ta ti tum-ti TUM!” He smiled delightedly at Mercy. “You’re a drummer!”
“They’re my son’s.”
“Angus?”
“Fergus. What is it you want?” If Jean-Luc had needed to blow his nose, then, with the drums banging, had been the moment. Her mind alert for sounds from the bedroom, Mercy gestured towards a circular, wickerwork chair behind the policeman. “I mean, sit down, if you’ve time.”
A Free Range Wife Page 1
