I kept thinking about the wrong things. About what I read in the launderette, about what was said at the charity meeting, about what I heard on the news, about Martha’s classes. I lie on my back when Adam makes love to me. Not because we haven’t tried more exciting things, but I’ve put on weight and I am getting older. I think if I lie flat out then gravity spreads things back on the bed rather better. I mean, I think I must look better being bored down on rather than coming at him from above. I don’t know if you would understand. It matters. It’s a buyer’s market. If Adam goes off me he could still find somebody else but what the hell would I do?
Cosmopolitan says it’s important to stay sexually active when you get to a certain age. Apparently regular sex stimulates the blood flow into the vaginal area thus reducing dryness. Who finds these things out? Anyway, the fact is the muscle contractions during orgasm promote the health of the vagina. You must have sex or get a sick vagina.
I didn’t want to be thinking about those things. I didn’t want to be thinking about anything. I wanted it to be different. Different like in a romance novel. I wanted harmony, to melt together, no one making any sacrifices or making them and not minding. Neither one of us having to disappear for the other. I wanted to be swept up in masterful arms, to be protected from the horrors of the world, to have Adam’s lips bring rapture. Martha says women have to hold out, not for orgasm but for ecstasy. Mostly I just hold out for us to finish. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a surprising amount of smut in my mind, yet whenever Adam suggested we have an ‘early night’, I couldn’t seem to be bothered. Oh, I know relationships go through stages and it can’t ever be as exciting as that first time up against the pickled eggs in the larder. It was like that then. Like riding your bicycle over cobblestones. Now I just lie there wishing we had a remote control for the telly so I could at least change channels while Adam builds up his ‘head of steam’ as he calls it. And then sometimes I do feel like it but I’ve only just changed the sheets and by the time I’ve decided that I can be bothered to wash them again, Adam’s got engrossed with his avocados or something and the moment’s gone. I shouldn’t be telling you these things. It’s just that I’ve got no one to talk to. I’m drowning in still waters. Susan Belcher’s a chiropodist now. I don’t really like feet. I always think of them as the frayed edges of the body. Actually I’m not overly keen on the body in general. Especially mine. I eat too much chocolate.
‘What do you do afterwards? After your.., intimacy?’ asks the shrink.
What did we do? ‘Nothing really. He’s a good man, Adam, but he doesn’t really… he puts his head on my shoulder and says, “Was it all right for you?” and I always think, How can you ask me that? I mean, weren’t you there?’
I don’t think any of this matters. Adam and I didn’t have sex after his injury and then he got arrested for molesting that woman, which was all a misunderstanding but it really did him in and…
I look at the shrink and wonder what he is getting from all this. We spend so much time together that my sewing is coming on a treat. He looks at me as if he knows I have something to add. So I do.
‘Why do you suppose it is that the initial on the lid of a tube of Smarties is never your own?’ I say, but he doesn’t answer.
Fact — you are statistically more likely to be bitten by a shark than you are to be arrested for impersonating a police officer at an airport.
I was cleaning the downstairs loo when Horace Hoddle came round unexpectedly. Adam was furious because there was an empty loo roll in the hall. He wrestled a bit with the security gate to let Horace in while I went to put coffee on. The two men were deep in conversation when I came back.
Adam was doing confident acting. ‘No problem, Horace.’
Horace smiled a thin-lipped affair at me. ‘Coffee. How delightful, but I don’t, thank you.’ He patted his trim stomach. ‘Got to watch the caffeine levels.’
I put the useless tray down on the table.
Adam was beaming. ‘Good news, darling, the golf club committee are doing a musical revue at the end of the year.’
Horace smiled. ‘Yes, indeed. It’s a charity event. We’re raising money partly for the hospice and also for new driving mats, which are desperately needed on the practice range. Adam has very kindly agreed to take part.’ Horace lowered his voice although there was no one else around. ‘I have high hopes for your husband, Mrs Marshall. I think he could well make captain.., at some point.., and I think it would do him a lot of good if the members saw what fun he can be. We all know he is hard working but we need to see the club leader in him. Fun, eh, Adam, that’s what we want.’
Horace stood up. With his black suit and pinched face he looked like the grim reaper at a coffee morning. Fun? It seemed unlikely. We all gave cheerful goodbyes and he departed, leaving Adam on a cloud.
‘Eve! Captain! I know we hoped but…’ His forehead creased, ‘Fun? What can I do that’s fun?’ I had several interesting suggestions but there wasn’t time for those.
‘You could sing or…’ I was going to add walk on water, both of which seemed equally remote as possibilities, but it was too late. Adam had seen the future and seized it.
‘Of course! Bassey! I don’t think it’s a secret in this town that there’s absolutely nothing I don’t know about Shirley Bassey. I can sing. I can be fun! This is fun — I, a councillor and a security adviser by day, will sing one of her songs at the musical revue!’
Going to the Top
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities …
(ROMANS 13.1)
As I waited to cross the road to J. C. Bergman’s Estate Agents, a huge green truck thundered past. Adam had helped to make the High Street into a one-way system to stop the big lorries clogging up the road. Now they didn’t clog the place at all. They just killed people on the way through. The truck had a massive advert painted on the side. What are you doing with your visit to planet Earth? it blared at me as I stood in my Etam raincoat. The correct answer apparently was sleeping well on a Drift ‘n’ Dream mattress. It didn’t seem enough somehow.
Mr Bergman was on the phone. Actually, he was on two phones at once, so I sat and waited. He had a brass plaque on his desk with his name engraved on it — J. C. Bergman. Funny initials for a Jewish person, I thought. Mr Bergman was very Jewish. He wore a little black circle on the back of his head, held on with hair grips. He was going bald and it was obviously becoming a daily problem to find a good location for the grips. I wondered what completely bald Jewish men did. Could you use Blu-Tack or maybe have a circle painted on? I knew what the skull cap was for.
‘It shows my constant devotion to God,’ he’d once told me. At least I think that was Mr Bergman. I might have remembered it from Fiddler on the Roof.
I didn’t know anyone in town who was Mr Bergman’s friend. I don’t think it was because he was Jewish, although I couldn’t think of anyone else in Edenford who went to synagogue. There isn’t one for a start. I wondered if he thought of himself as one of the ‘chosen people’. Funny of God to pick just one group like that. I mean, it was just an accident that he belonged. Maybe when Mr Bergman looked at me he didn’t think I was as good as him. This made me feel defensive. I could have been Jewish if my mother had been Jewish. How bizarre to judge somebody just because of whose legs they came out between. And it caused wars. All these artificial divisions in humanity. Countries spending money on getting ready for war instead of welfare and health. Tom had told me that, ‘Any religious system built upon the justification of social inequality on the basis of birth is an obstacle to civilisation and…’
I realised Mr Bergman was looking at me.
‘So, Mrs Marshall, you thinking of moving? Must be twenty years since I sold you your house. Still, a change is good. I think about it myself. I too dream of new horizons. I plan to move one day. Be with my family.’
I had been sitting thinking too much. ‘Israel?’ Mr Bergman looked confused. ‘Sorry?’
�
��You’re thinking of moving to Israel?’
‘Why?’
‘To… be with your people.’ ‘I come from Colchester.’
‘Right.’
We sat for a moment, silenced by my stupidity.
‘I came about the swimming baths. The old baths. Adam says they’re for sale.’
The estate agent leaped to life. ‘Indeed, indeed. Indeed, I have details. Great development potential, but not cheap, not cheap at all.’ Mr Bergman rummaged in a filing cabinet and brought out a small sheaf of papers. ‘Yes, yes. Not cheap.’
‘How not cheap?’
‘Half a million and the council has to approve the intended use. You’d need the council on your side.’
Half a million! How could we raise half a million? But at least I did have the council on my side. I’d had a councillor by my side for twenty-five years. It was the least Adam could do for me.
I stopped at the Crown for a quick sandwich and a tonic water. There was much laughter going on in the back room.
‘Having a party?’ I asked Jill, who runs the place.
She raised her eyebrows disapprovingly. ‘Sounds like it. It’s supposed to be a men’s meeting, but they’re certainly ordering more beer than most meetings.’
‘Men’s meeting?’
Jill nodded and pointed to a poster on the bar as she went off to serve coffee to some old women.
The Centurion Club
Men! Are you tired of being pushed
around by the modern world?
Come and meet your fellow sufferers
Tuesday lunchtimes at the Crown.
For details contact John Antrobus 889675
The door to the meeting room opened to allow a couple of men to get to the bar. The room was full of smoke and laughter. I could just hear one man calling out, ‘Hey, why did the pervert cross the road?’ and another answered, ‘Because he couldn’t get his dick out of the chicken.’ There was wild laughter and in the doorway I could just see Adam and William standing together.
I went to the charity shop with renewed determination and the particulars on the pool.
‘It’s a huge amount of money,’ they all exclaimed but we knew we could do it. Now the fund-raising had to start in earnest.
‘Don’t worry about the council,’ I said. ‘I’ll speak to Adam. They won’t give permission for anyone else to buy it if they know we’re trying to raise the money.’
‘Six toilets!’ Emma was impressed, but then she does have a tendency to bladder infections and worries about sanitary provisions.
‘The WI did very well a few years ago with a nude calendar,’ said Helen.
‘I thought it was in poor taste,’ sniffed Doris, who still smarted from being overlooked as Miss March.
‘We shall need masses of jumble,’ declared Mrs Hoddle. ‘And someone will have to take charge of the official paperwork. I suppose that will be me.’ She sighed bravely.
‘And blankets! They’ll need blankets.’ Emma darted off into a corner to click with brand new needles bought for the occasion.
There was some discussion about us having a sale to get people’s attention but in the end it was decided that might be a little odd for a charity shop. Things are quite cheap anyway. We knew we could do it. The refugees were as good as saved. They were as good as moved into the Edenford Swimming Baths.
I wanted to talk to Adam straight away to get his support but he was away. Adam had started doing occasional business trips for Stalwart Security. He always brought me something back. If he had been on a plane it was usually something from the in-flight magazine but sometimes it was things like a very nice basket of coconut bathroom stuff from the Body Shop and the receipt so I could take it back. And always some new device to safeguard the house. The prison people would have done better to have left me at home. There were days when I could hardly work out how to get to the garden.
His security campaign had really caught everyone’s attention. There were demands for better street lighting, curfews for teenagers, registered cabs for lone female passengers. The posters were everywhere.
Don’t let Eden Ford become a nightmare.
Vote Marshall. Sleep safe at night.
Safety First
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women…
(2 TIMOTHY 3.1-6)
A young policeman came to the door when Adam was away.
‘Mrs Marshall?’
‘Yes?’ I said through the security gate, which seemed to be on some kind of timer.
‘Constable Carter. Your husband asked me to come round when we had the details on the bus station mugging.’
‘Yes.’ I tried the gate again to no avail. ‘I’m afraid you can’t come in.’
He nodded sagely. ‘I quite understand.’ The constable flicked through a notebook. ‘It has been deduced that the perpetrator was one Dennis Harrison of Reading in Berkshire. It seems he was travelling through with his girlfriend when they had something of a domestic dispute.’
‘So it wasn’t a mugging?’
‘Not as such, no.’
‘And it wasn’t someone from Edenford?’
Carter looked at his notes again. ‘No. It was the Edenford bus depot but not an Edenford citizen, as such that would be correct.’
There was no mugging. Just some trouble with people passing through. It was nothing to do with Edenford. John came round to get some more leaflets for Adam’s campaign and I told him.
‘It was nothing to do with Edenford.’
John smiled at me and squeezed my hand. ‘Isn’t that marvellous, Eve?’
‘I suppose. I mean, at least Adam can stop frightening everyone.’
John shook his head. ‘I don’t think you understand the public service Adam is doing. He is protecting the people.’
‘But they don’t need protecting.’
‘No, Eve, they won’t need it if they are already on their guard. It doesn’t matter who mugged who. It happened in Edenford and we shall stop it happening again.’
I watched him tapping bundles of leaflets on the table as he arranged everything in neat piles. He had the most perfectly manicured nails I had ever seen on a man.
‘You’re running the men’s meetings, aren’t you?’
‘The Centurion Club. It’s nothing. I did it for William actually.’
‘William? My brother?’
‘Mmmm. It’s been tough on him, this sperm thing. He needs to know it’s okay.’
Adam came back from his business conference full of beans. I had really missed him when he was away. I mean, we had been married a long time and it wasn’t perfect, but I was used to having him there. A bit like a scrap of rough skin on your hand that sometimes you wished wasn’t there but you touched all the time anyway. I got Mother sorted and made a special dinner of steak and kidney pie — homemade, not bought or anything. I think he was pleased to see me.
‘What a great conference!’ he boomed as soon as he got out of the car. ‘Look what I got you!’ Adam handed me a bumper sticker. ‘I thought we could put it on the fridge.’ I looked at the bright red message.
Smiling wins more friends than frowning!
‘Isn’t that true, Eve, isn’t that just so true?’ He bounced in telling me how much value he had got from learning that Your attitude determines your altitude and Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.
He was so busy conceiving, believing and achieving that he never even asked what I’d been up to. Actually we had a lovely evening and there was even some hint that we might head upstairs for an ‘e
arly night’. It had been some time since Adam’s ‘injury’ and he hinted he might finally be ready for that ‘test run’, but then we got into a bit of an argument. The conference had spent some time planning a new ad for the Stalwart Security Home Alarm System and I’m afraid I didn’t like it at all. The front cover showed a dark, shadowy figure of a man with the words,
This man might be a mugger,
This man might be a burglar,
This man might be a rapist.
Then you opened it up and there was a picture of a smily face and the reassurance,
Or he could be the man from Stalwart Security
with your new home alarm.
Stalwart Security —
Keeping You Safe as Houses
Adam was thrilled. ‘Isn’t that great? I really think it says everything about the need for this kind of product.’
‘I hate it,’ I said quietly.
‘Don’t be silly, darling, you don’t hate it. It’s exactly right. We spent two days on that. You should have seen some of the brainstorming sessions. It’s perfect. Everyone said so. We’re going to do a leaflet drop to every house in Edenford.’
‘I don’t think that women should be frightened into buying something. You shouldn’t keep telling women that they can’t go out, that it isn’t safe.’
Adam didn’t understand and I didn’t know how to explain. Things were starting to change. There seemed to be a male thing happening and a female thing happening and somehow I was caught in the middle of it. I was and so was John.
Subterfuge
And when they rose early in the morning, and the sun shone upon the water, the Moabites saw the water opposite them as red as blood…
(2 KINGS 3.22)
After many sessions, my psychiatrist has finally voiced something close to an opinion. ‘I presume the deceased, John.
Flying Under Bridges Page 19
