You’re both silent. Your foot stays pressed on his heart. It’s as if the two of you are waiting for something momentous to be said, but neither has the will, or the courage, to give it voice.
You’re both still, so quiet. You hear the traffic outside, a siren’s whine. And then, very softly, he chuckles: well then, I think I might try a Chinese girl next.
It’s stunning; that moment. You smile at his words, it’s an involuntary reflex, like when you hear that someone has died. So, a Chinese girl next, like a different chocolate from the chocolate box, perhaps? You shut your eyes: don’t say that, please, you think, please don’t be like any other man. Haven’t I taught you better than that? His words completely change what you know of him.
You remove your foot from his chest. Because, in that moment, a whole other possibility has been opened up.
That he’d planned it all along.
How to shuffle off his virginity.
The goal: to find, in a cafe, the quiet suburban housewife. Someone who wasn’t beautiful or arrogant or confident enough ever to make it difficult for his life, whom he’d never be afraid of, who, afterwards, could be easily wiped away. Who would never tell anyone. And never laugh. But it all deepened and he hadn’t expected that; his unassuming housewife was meant to be expendable, that was the plan from the start.
So he could move on to what he really wanted.
Gabriel starts to kiss you and you stop him, you push him from your neck, you tell him it’s too intimate, you don’t tell him it’ll hurt too much. So, someone sitting alone in a cafe who wasn’t too beautiful, because men are more comfortable with imperfection and weakness, it’s less threatening, of course. He cannot see your eyes, the prick of tears that you know will not stop if you let them begin, you don’t want to give him that.
As you step into the lift you hear him calling to you, wait, come back, I was only teasing you, but you don’t turn, the lift shuts, he’s thumping on the door, thumping for it to stop.
But you’re gone.
Falling down the building, down, down, your head to the carpet on the wall, your eyes slammed shut with the anaesthetisation of shock; everything slows, even your heart.
Lesson 122
girls as a rule should refuse to lend
The sadness, bone-bright, as you walk the scrappy, smelly, morning-after-fiesta streets.
He’ll be a beautiful lover. You were a good teacher, you always have been. And you learnt as much as you taught, and you’ll always have that. If you dare to return to it.
You’ll be jealous, ferociously, of any relationship he ever has. It’ll be better if you never find out.
You’ll never stop wanting him.
In your hotel room you lie on your back on the narrow, dippy bed. You’re not meant to lie like this so late in the pregnancy, it squeezes an artery, you’ve been warned by a midwife, but in the early hours of this morning you do not care, not this once, you need to indulge yourself. You stretch out your body and the baby wriggles and dances inside you, its hands and legs knead you like dough.
This trip wasn’t meant to hurt so much.
You curl on your side. You feel God wrap his arms round you and tell you sail on, sail on, set forth.
You catch the first flight to London.
Lesson 123
the heart grows both stronger and larger from the additional effort imposed upon it
Home.
You open the door to a strange euphoria. You throw off your clothes and scrub yourself clean and make the space entirely your own. Striding, finally, into the solitude. You feel as if part of your body has been ripped from you, as if flesh has been torn from flesh. But you feel powerful, too, for you’re free, after so long; the great burden of uncertainty, and guilt, has gone.
But then the anger comes.
At all the times in the past you’ve said I love you and felt stripped. All the times they never rang back. All the love affairs that evaporated, bleakly, into one-night stands. All the times they’ve drowned you out. Drained your energy. Your confidence. Stood you up. Walked out. Wanted a Chinese girl next.
The fury spits and sparks as you clean the kitchen cupboards and vacuum every nook. Martha pops in: it’s the nesting instinct turned feral, she laughs, backing off.
Oh no, it’s something else.
Lesson 124
baby clothes have to be prepared and various domestic arrangements must be made
You’re busy at the computer because you have to be now. The baby punches its fist up and you yelp at your desk. It feels like it’ll break through your skin, it’s stretched so thin. Before it felt so cosy-snug in there, as if nothing could get to it. Now at your desk you look down and there’s a lump protruding to the left of your navel, a little head; gently, you push it back.
Cole will be home in a day. The businesslike voice told you that.
You have to work. You have to find something else in your life. You’re at your desk because you don’t know what’s beyond the baby’s due date or when you’ll ever be at your desk again. You’re disciplined, energised, not scattered and tired and procrastinating like the old self. The words rush and tumble to get out. Work replaces pain, it pushes it out. You are calm and strong as you work, you feel lit. Being at your desk is an antidote, a balm, for it means having a voice, it means saying and doing exactly what you want.
There’s much, too, to prepare for the birth. You’ve heard the word layette for the first time in your life and apparently you must have one. You’re buying the big items now, the pushchair, Moses basket, bath, and you wash baby clothes in powder you never knew existed. And all the time you put your hand under your belly, slinging your child into stillness.
You’re astounded at the clearness and focus you’re entering this latter stage of pregnancy with. And the passion of loss that accompanies it, it’s sullen and erotic and wild, like nothing you’ve experienced before. The loss of Gabriel, of all that he represented.
You feel you’ve been hauled into another realm; you feel, finally, that you own your own life.
Your mother calls, asks how you are, she’s been calling a lot now. She wants to know when Cole’s coming back. You tell her in a day’s time; you don’t tell her you have no idea what to expect. You ask her if she wants to come and stay with you for a while, be around for the birth. No, she tells you. Oh, you respond, why? Because it’s such a special time for Cole and you, she tells you: the arrival of a first child is a magic, miraculous episode in any relationship, and a mother-in-law shouldn’t intrude on that.
You see, I know this, because I never had it. But I saw it around me a lot.
Oh ma. I’m so sorry.
Your heart cracks. For with motherhood almost upon you now, an understanding of something of your own mother’s life is, at last, being unlocked.
Lesson 125
all waste is sinful
Cole’s due back tonight. You have an urge to phone Theo, you’re not sure why, tonight of all nights. You hang up at the second ring, want to talk but don’t: her friendship was so demanding and with a baby you’ll have to be more rigorous with your time. And there are too many months of silence to be explained, too many questions to be asked. You know if you let her in just a chink she’ll be back in one great swamping rush. You won’t be able to do coffee any more at the drop of a hat, won’t be obeying when she commands pick up, pick up on your answering machine, won’t have time for the late-night hour-long chats; it’s all so exhausting, just the thought of her. And she’s trying for a baby and you don’t want to compete with her over motherhood: you can see that it’s a whole new arena of competition among women. You wouldn’t enjoy Theo comparing whose child sleeps the best, has more hair, smiles the most.
Don’t want her, in fact, in your child’s life in any way.
Music, your music, is turned up loud. You wrap yourself in your antique chinoiserie dressing gown that’s too flamboyant and fragile to wear but tonight you don’t care. You pour a glass of red wine. It’s your first
in so long and how smoothly it slips down.
The glittering alone.
A key in the door, just like the old days, when Cole would come in from work. The thud of bags set down in the hallway. He doesn’t come inside. It’s as if you both want to hear from the other first, to gauge the tone.
He stands very still in the doorway; your heart skips.
Did you sleep with him; it’s all he asks.
No.
The lie comes out easily: you look him straight in the eyes, the good actress, the good wife, you’ve prepared for this. The relationship will not survive the brutality of absolute honesty, you know that.
He walks across to you, his head on one side. You silly old boot, he says, you silly, silly old boot.
The relief.
Your smile, like an umbrella whipped inside out.
You can’t help yourself. And you cannot speak, because of the kindness in his voice, it’s breaking your heart.
Lesson 126
dust must be removed and not simply displaced
That night Cole holds you so tight, he presses you into the wall as if he’s clinging on to a lifebuoy in a vast ocean of the unknown. His body’s deeply familiar, there’s a volume of experience behind the holding. You think of that love running as deep and as strong as an underground river. What’s between Cole and you is so complex, changing, alive; the love ebbs and flows, it sprang from nothing, a barren place, and sometimes, at bleak moments, it seems to retreat to it.
But then it’s back. Fuller. Faster.
You turn and face your husband, you kiss him softly, enquiringly, on the lips and he smiles and nods absently in his sleep. The baby’s awake beneath your skin. You place Cole’s wide palm on your belly and the rumpling stills, as if the child’s listening to his skin, is remembering the touch.
That night the thump of Gabriel in the front of your head slips away, like a fish unhooked.
Cole stirs early, at first light. You’re already awake, on your back.
What really happened with Theo, you ask into the morning cleanness. Perhaps, now, he’ll speak, with this new cleanness between you. He does. It’s simple and stupid, he says. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you sooner. He turns to you. She could see we were in trouble, so she rang me up and offered to tell me the secrets of keeping a wife.
I see, you smile, you raise your eyebrows. And they are?
He plays with the silver chain round your neck, he’s always liked doing that. Oh, you know, he laughs, all that stuff about flowers once a week, and listening to what you want, and giving you lots of space.
Uh huh.
And oral sex, he chuckles, she was very big on that. She said you were hopeless at speaking out. He pauses, he speaks more carefully. We became mates. We’d just have a drink now and then, after work. I like her. That’s it.
He smiles, he looks you straight in the eyes. A rich silence. Your mouth is sapped dry. You hold your face in your hands, you laugh. So, your husband could never explain that he’d been taking lessons, from your best friend, on the art of holding a wife. And you’ve chosen to believe him. At last. Finally it’s clear: first comes the choice, then belief follows, led docile like a hound on a leash.
So what does Theo really want, you ask. I never figured that out.
Well, she’s desperate for a child, you know that. She’s been trying for eighteen months. IVF, everything, nothing’s worked.
Your heart reaches out to her; you must ring.
But you don’t.
Lesson 127
cruelty punishes itself, as it should do
Two days later, a letter. On thick, creamy paper, so inviting to the hand. Your fingers run as deft as a lizard over the thud of the type.
It’s me again. For the last time. Please don’t stop reading. Please just hear me out, and I promise then that I’ll never write again. I’ll never see you, if that is what you want. So, you are having a child. You are so very, very blessed. Cole as well as you. What a beautiful family you will make. My heart hurts whenever I think of the three of you, and your happiness. A child completes our lives, I think. It’s taken me a long time to see that, that a life without children is a life adrift.
Your hand rubs your stomach and rests on a gentle protrusion, your baby’s little rump, the midwife has told you that’s what it is.
So, it was me who wrote the letters. It didn’t seem so mad at the time. It was a way to reach you, the only way, and you were so hard to reach. It was a way to surprise you; in a good way I hoped. I imagined you reading them and thinking it could be any number of people: the guy you slept with when you were twenty-four and never saw again, but always wondered about, or the guy you never slept with, but always wanted. The one who’d be perfect for you, but you’d never done anything about. I wanted to enchant you in some way, I love doing things like that. You know that.
There’s another reason why I wrote the letters and this is the really hard bit to tell you. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you at all, I always put my foot in it but I feel that you need to know. I wanted Cole to find them. I wanted him to doubt you, because he never doubts you. You are such a good person. He has told me more than once that he’ll never leave you. You should know that. I’ve accepted it now. I’m in awe of his devotion to you, and the love you had.
As if a giant’s fist is squeezing your heart, as if it is twisting it, as if it is squeezing all the blood out.
I just wanted you to know that I am sorry, for so many things. You’ve been such a good friend to me and I don’t know why I feel I have the licence to be cruellest to those who are the kindest to me, and whom I love the most. I’m not a good person, in so many ways. Sometimes I do horribly selfish things, I can’t help myself. Is there anyone who doesn’t? You, perhaps, and look at what I’ve done to you. I can’t imagine you ever understanding what has happened. I just had to tell you this, and these crazy letters seemed the only way to get through to you. Cole tells me you ‘re still asking, you can’t let it go. He’ll never tell you. I don’t think it’s healthy that you don’t know. I’m sorry, and I love you. That’s all I wanted to say.
T
You surface to great gulps of air, you break into the air and the light.
After being submerged for so long, at such crushing depths.
You lie on your bed, on your side, for a very long time, for the whole day, until the light softens and stops. What is the purpose in sending this now? Is Theo conceding? Does she want you to concede? Does she sense, finally, the battle lost? Is she bowing out with grace, or beginning a more insidious campaign?
…the love you had…Cole told me you’re still asking…
She’s good, she’s good, she’s always won her fights.
The baby inside you shifts, as if it’s protesting at the churn of your blood. You know all the tales of revenge; the prawn heads sewn into curtain hems and the cutting up of a husband’s suits and the dialling of the recorded time in New Zealand and the phone left off the hook. Oh no, you’d want a more magnificent retribution than any of that, something that would haunt them for ever, that would stain them for the rest of their lives.
Then again, perhaps enduring will mean you’ve won the most.
She wants you to confront Cole, you sense that. To find out where he stands, to force it all into the light. You will not give her anything she wants. She’s never suspected you were capable of surprise, her letter has told you that.
Lesson 128
be proud that you are not in debt
Cole comes home around ten and you are still curled on the bed. You do not acknowledge him as he comes into the bedroom, do not turn your head, cannot speak, your heart is filled up.
He takes off his work shirt and tosses it, playfully, across to you. It lands on your head.
Hey, he says.
You say nothing. You remove the shirt.
He will not know what you know about him; now is not the time.
Perhaps it will never be the time.
&
nbsp; Lesson 129
the motherly instinct is strong in us
The midwife tells you the baby’s head is down and it’s ready to come out. You read in Vogue that a boy makes a mother appear more masculine because of all the new hormones flooding into her body, and yet you read that a girl steals her mother’s beauty. Can this be true? You cannot win. You’re tired. The hospital’s put you on an iron supplement to boost your energy and your stools are hard and as black as ink. You feel old, the baby’s sapping you, there are vice-like cramps in your legs during the night, thrush in spurts of ferocious itchiness and too many farts. You complain a lot. Cole laughs and tells you to relax or the baby will come out as brittle as a tin toy.
I can’t, you tell him, you have no idea.
He’s so even, so assured in these final weeks and you would have thought once it meant he wasn’t churning or smudged like yourself but uncomplicated, open, clean. Once.
Can you get any bigger?
The baby pushes and jabs with its fists and you can feel, sharply now, the wanting out. You’re trying to get as much writing done as you can, with the little time left that’s your own. Your fingers fly on the keyboard when Cole is out of the flat. The child still wriggles when you work, urging you on: sssh, you whisper, not long now. The overnight bag is packed. The baby’s in position, head down, with its spine obediently to the left, readying itself for out. You can sense it, soon, and are nesting like a she-wolf retreating to the hills.
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 19
