by Rosie Harris
‘Finished?’ she whispered as Tom called out to ask who it was when she went to answer it.
Bill nodded.
‘We have a visitor, look who’s here,’ Jenny said as she brought Bill into the sitting room.
‘Bill? Good grief, what are you doing here? Where’s Karen and the baby?’
‘Oh, they’re at home. I popped up on my own to see how you were,’ Bill said, grinning broadly as he shook hands with Tom.
‘Well, sit down and Jenny will make some tea; that is unless you’d sooner have a beer or a tot of whisky.’
‘No, no, tea will be fine. I’m driving so I won’t have anything stronger.’
‘A long way to come just for a cup of tea,’ Tom commented. ‘Did you have some other business in this area?’
‘Yes, I did as a matter of fact,’ Bill said as he sank into an armchair facing Tom. ‘I had a bit of tidying up to do.’
‘Oh?’ Tom looked mildly interested and waited for him to go on.
‘Yes, a flat that needed finishing off.’
‘Oh yes.’ For a moment Tom didn’t seem to understand what Bill was telling him. Then he frowned. ‘You don’t mean Jenny’s flat do you?’
‘The very same,’ Bill agreed as he took the cup of tea from Jenny and ladled two spoonfuls of sugar into it.
‘You knew about this?’ Tom pushed aside the tea that Jenny proffered to him and stared at her angrily.
‘Not until it was too late to do anything about it,’ she said mildly. ‘Isn’t it wonderful though to know that it is all finished and that the flat is all cleaned up.’
Tom didn’t answer, but his scowl deepened and Jenny tried to move on to other topics. She could see that he was angry and she wanted to divert his mind from what had happened. She began to make enquiries about the baby but Tom cut across her conversation almost as if she wasn’t there.
‘So Jenny asked you to come and do it and let you in and didn’t say a word about it to me,’ he said in an angry voice.
‘No, it had nothing to do with Jenny. It was Karen’s idea and when she put it to me I agreed with her wholeheartedly that it was the least we could do to help. I came up very early yesterday morning …’
‘Yesterday morning! You mean you’ve been here for almost two whole days and never once thought to come and ask me what my opinion was or what I had planned on doing in that flat.’
‘Well, it was obvious what you were planning to do,’ Bill said with a laugh.
‘Really?’
‘You were putting emulsion on the walls and ceiling and freshening up the paintwork. Not that it really needed doing because it was very clean.’
‘It needed doing,’ Tom said assertively.
‘I always think it’s a waste of time decorating before you sell because the new people always want to put their own stamp on the place and usually their ideas are different from yours.’
‘Probably your ideas about how it should be done are different to mine,’ Tom grumbled.
‘I think it was very kind of Bill to give up his weekend and do this for us,’ Jenny intervened, hoping to pour oil on troubled waters.
‘Well, you would, seeing as you asked him to come and kept the entire arrangement secret from me,’ Tom retorted.
‘No, Jenny didn’t ask me,’ Bill said firmly. ‘In fact when she found me in the flat working she was very surprised and wanted to come straight away and tell you but I persuaded her not to. I was hoping that it would be a pleasant surprise for you and that you would feel relieved because it wasn’t hanging over your head that it needed to be finished.’
Forty-Three
Tom’s bad mood continued. Long after Bill had left he sat in a sullen brooding silence, not even reading the newspaper or watching television.
‘If you are feeling annoyed and have something to say then say it,’ Jenny stated when she asked him if he wanted a cup of tea and he didn’t even answer her.
‘What does it matter what I think or what I feel about things since you completely ignore my wishes,’ he retorted. ‘You knew damn well that I wanted to finish that decorating myself and yet you cajole Bill to come and do it without even a word to me.’
‘I also knew that you couldn’t do it and that you were worried about it. As a matter of fact, it was exactly as Bill told you. I didn’t ask him to come and I was astonished when I found him in my flat and realized he’d been working there practically all day.’
‘A likely story,’ Tom said in a scathing voice. ‘Anyway, if it is true then why the hell didn’t you come straight back up and tell me that he was here and what he was planning on doing.’
‘Bill asked me not to do that. He wanted to finish the decorating and then tell you. He thought it would be a lovely surprise for you.’
‘It was a surprise all right! What does he know about decorating? I bet it’s one hell of a mess down there.’
‘No, he’s finished everything off beautifully. Why don’t you come and look for yourself?’
‘Not much point if it is all done,’ Tom said tetchily. ‘It’s too late now to make any changes. We’ll just have to hope that nobody notices how amateurish the painting is.’
Jenny bit her lip and said nothing. She could see that it was pointless arguing with Tom. He was obviously hurt and annoyed by what had happened even though she and Bill had intended it to be for the best.
It was almost a week before Tom finally agreed to go and look at the flat. They had been for a walk along the promenade and for the first time in days held a normal conversation.
As usual he had tired fairly quickly and they had sat down for a while in one of the shelters out of the hot sun.
There had been plenty of activity on the river to watch as well as children playing on the shore and paddling in the water. It was so hot that she helped Tom to remove his linen jacket and then offered to go down on to the shore, where there was an ice-cream van parked, and get them each a cone.
She had expected him to refuse but to her surprise he had seemed to be keen for her to do so.
When she returned with it he thanked her and seemed to be more relaxed than he had been since he came home from hospital. As they sat there enjoying the activity going on all around them, Tom talked about things in general and then finally about the flat.
‘We’ll go and check it over when we get back,’ he pronounced, ‘make sure it’s ready to go on the market.’
‘On the market?’ Jenny looked at him in a rather puzzled way.
‘That’s our next step, isn’t it, since my flat is preferable to yours because of the second bedroom.’
‘Well, that’s quite true but there’s no hurry to get rid of mine immediately, is there?’
‘No point in wasting money paying maintenance charges on both,’ he said decisively.
Tom was strongly in favour of putting Jenny’s flat on the market as soon as possible, but she was reluctant to do this. During the past week she had spent as much time as she could in it, usually when Tom was sleeping, and her fondness for it increased and she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to sell it.
She had liked it from the first moment she’d moved in there and now it seemed like a haven of peace after the unpleasant atmosphere in Tom’s flat. Furthermore, it contained all her own possessions, which she kept rearranging to make the most of the space and appearance of the flat.
However, to humour Tom, she agreed they should take a look on their return from their walk. He glanced round critically and Jenny waited for some adverse comment about Bill’s work but there was none. Instead he seemed to be summing up as many of the good aspects of the flat as possible. He commented on the lightness of the rooms, the view from the window and so on.
When they went back to his flat he immediately found a pen and paper and while she was making them a cup of tea he was busy concocting an advert to go into the local newspaper.
‘I think we should put this in the Liverpool Daily Post and some of the national newspapers such as th
e Observer or The Times and perhaps the Manchester Guardian,’ he told her as he passed it over to her so that she could read what he had written.
‘It’s fine but there’s no hurry to do anything at the moment is there,’ she murmured in a non-committal voice as she handed it back to him.
‘It’s about the only thing we can do at the moment since you refuse to go ahead with our wedding plans while I’m on crutches,’ he said brusquely.
‘That wasn’t quite what I said,’ she retorted quietly. ‘I do think it would be better to wait until you are able to walk without them though. It is only a matter of a couple more weeks now,’ she added in as bright a voice as she could manage.
‘How do you know that? My leg is still so damn painful that they may decide I need further surgery or something.’
Jenny said nothing. Indeed, her thoughts were not so much on Tom and the delay in fixing their forthcoming wedding date as on forfeiting her flat. She hadn’t dreamed that she would feel like this; it wasn’t possessiveness so much as realizing what a wonderful haven it was from the rest of the world and one she didn’t want to lose.
‘Let’s fix a price for the flat. I think we should ask the same as you paid for it or perhaps a bit more?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Jenny promised.
‘There’s nothing to think about,’ Tom said tetchily. ‘Let’s settle it now and then you can take the advert along to the newsagents in the morning when you go shopping. I’ll note down the newspapers we want it to go in and then if you ask the newsagent he will contact them all for you, so tell him you want three insertions in each of them. That should bring it to the attention of a good number of people and we’ll wait and see what happens.’
Jenny felt herself growing angry. It was her flat so surely it should be her decision about when they sold. After all, there was no hurry and once it was gone she would have nowhere to live even if she needed it. True, she was moving in with Tom, but his flat was in his name and he hadn’t said a word about making the ownership a joint one. Where would she stand if something happened to him or if they should decide to part company?
She wanted to talk this through with Tom but she was afraid that while he was in such an antagonistic frame of mind he wouldn’t be prepared to be reasonable. Come to that, she reflected, she wasn’t in the mood herself to discuss such a delicate subject.
Taking the sheet of paper from him she folded it over and placed it in her handbag.
‘We haven’t agreed on the price,’ he pointed out.
‘No, I’ll think about it and put a figure on it in the morning,’ she prevaricated.
All she wanted to do at the moment was to end this conversation so that she could give herself time to think and decide whether or not she actually wanted to sell her flat. There really was no hurry. They didn’t need the money.
‘It’s a very good time for us to sell,’ Tom went on as if determined to pursue the matter. ‘I can always be here to show prospective buyers around and talk over any points they raise; it won’t interfere with anything you might be doing like shopping or going to the hairdressers or anything else.’
Jenny didn’t answer. If she had to sell the flat then she’d prefer to deal with any potential buyers herself but she suspected the truth was she didn’t want to sell it.
She toyed with the idea of asking such a high price for the flat that no one would even consider coming to look at it. But that would only prolong things because as soon as Tom saw the advert in the paper he would argue that she was being ridiculous and telephone the newspapers and ask them to correct the asking price.
There must be some other way, she reasoned, and wondered if it would be better to rent it out as a furnished flat. If she did that on a fairly short-term lease then she would know that it was always there for her should she ever want to move back in.
It was an alternative, although she had to admit that she didn’t like the idea of other people, complete strangers, living in her flat and using all her equipment and even sleeping in her bed.
The only other ruse was to say she had put the adverts in the papers even though she’d not done so. Tom would find out eventually, of course, but it would give her time to decide what she really wanted to do.
Forty-Four
Tom was incensed when he discovered that the reason why the adverts had not appeared in any of the newspapers he’d selected was because Jenny hadn’t inserted them.
‘You defied me!’ he raged, his face red and angry.
He looked so menacing that Jenny felt a frisson of fear run through her. Then she made matters worse by shrugging her shoulders.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Tom asked, his eyes flashing angrily.
‘I’m not ready to sell, that’s what it means,’ she replied defiantly.
‘That’s too bad. I say that it is better that we sell while the market is buoyant. This is the best time of the year to sell; it’s when people are thinking of moving home. Leave it until August or later and people will put off making such decisions until next year.’
‘So, why can’t we leave it until then? I’m not in any hurry.’
‘We need to get our financial situation tidied up. I’ve had plenty of time to sit and think about these things over the last couple of weeks and I can see that there’ll be a lot of unnecessary expense incurred by hanging on to that flat.’
‘I’m the one meeting all the costs not you,’ Jenny pointed out.
‘You are at the moment but you won’t be when we are married,’ Tom argued.
‘Why do you say that? I’ll still have my own pension and money from investments,’ Jenny pointed out stubbornly.
‘Yes, and that’s another matter that needs dealing with. Everything should be in our joint names and we should have a joint bank account so that we know precisely how much money we have coming in and what we are spending.’
‘Are you proposing that we have a set amount for housekeeping and then perhaps you give me an allowance; some pocket money each week so that I can go to the hairdressers and buy some new stockings if I need them? If I want money for anything else, will I have to ask you for it?’ Jenny asked in a scathing tone.
Tom’s colour heightened. ‘That’s the way most married couples balance their budgets,’ he blustered.
‘That might have been the case in your parents’ day, or even in yours when you were married, but not now. No, I am happy to pay my fair share of everything we spend including all the running costs of the house and on our food, but I keep my own money and spend it how I see fit. If I want to buy something for Karen or baby Angela I don’t intend asking permission from you first to find out if I can do so.’
‘You’re being totally unreasonable and building this into a stupid argument,’ Tom said angrily. ‘I had no idea you could be so wilful. I should have guessed, of course, the moment I found out that you hadn’t placed those adverts in the newspapers like I told you to do.’
‘Is that so!’ Jenny’s voice was icy. ‘Until this moment I had no idea that you could be such a chauvinist. I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s not a wife you are looking for but a slave; someone to be at your beck and call and accept your judgement in everything. You are certainly not the man I thought you were.’
‘Is that so,’ he repeated, mimicking Jenny’s words. ‘I thought you were in love with me and would do whatever I wanted, yet ever since my accident, which was caused by doing something to please you, you have given me the cold shoulder completely. What happened to those cuddles and all that sweet talk about how much I meant to you during those nights in bed together?’
‘You are forgetting that at the moment you have one leg encased in plaster almost from hip to ankle.’
‘It might stop us making love but it doesn’t prevent you from sleeping in my bed and comforting me,’ he railed, his eyes flashing with anger.
‘Tom, it’s out of the question so let’s cool it until after we are married.’ She smiled and tried to kee
p her voice light. ‘It won’t be long now. As soon as you’ve had the plaster off we can set a new date.’
‘I’ve done that already,’ he told her with a sneer. ‘I got tired of you messing around and prevaricating first for one reason and then another. I like my life to be ordered so I phoned the register office and told them we were now ready to make a new date. They were most understanding. It’s all fixed for next Tuesday.’
‘Next Tuesday! That’s only four days away. Karen and Bill won’t be able to come because Bill can’t take any more time off work as they are in the middle of important exams.’
‘We can get married without them being there,’ he said brusquely.
‘I want them to be there though, they’re the only family we have.’
‘You can see them afterwards, we’ll go and spend a few days with them as soon as we are married if that is what you want.’
‘It’s all so rushed though. Who will we have as witnesses?’
‘That’s the last thing you need to worry about. The registrar said they’d find someone in the office. Hell’s bells, woman, stop making such a fuss about it. It’s only a piece of paper and if you weren’t so bothered about it all being legal I wouldn’t have taken the trouble to go through all this rigmarole at all,’ he said angrily.
As he spoke he reached out and grabbed her by the arm, twisting it so that a sharp pain ran from her elbow up into her shoulder.
‘Let go of my arm, Tom, you’re hurting me,’ she begged, tears in her eyes.
In response he frogmarched her through to the bedroom. ‘Get on the bed,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’ll soon show you if having my leg in plaster stops me from making love to you.’
His assault was both vicious and unfeeling. She sensed he was trying to establish his dominance over her and she didn’t like it. She lay passive, realizing that he was so much stronger than her that there was little point in fighting him.
