The Question

by Jane Asher

  ‘I know who you are,’ the woman said at last, the hint of North London accent more obvious now in the stillness of the room. ‘I suppose I always knew this would happen one day.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Eleanor. ‘And you’re her mother, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I’m Barbara.’

  Eleanor felt surprisingly calm. In control. She looked around the room, automatically and professionally assessing what she saw, unable to help herself mentally rearranging the furniture, changing the fabric of the curtains and removing the gathered frills on the pelmets and the bottoms of the armchairs.

  ‘Do they see each other here?’ she went on, the tone of her own voice sounding to her ears as normal as if she were passing the time of day with a social acquaintance, rather than confronting the mother of her husband’s mistress. No, not mistress – the word gave her too much dignity; it trembled with echoes of the beautiful courtesans of the past; of spoilt, Armani-clad, pouting lovers of the present. Whore. That was nearer to it. Whore. Eleanor surprised herself with the succession of degrading labels that sprang now one after another into her mind, screaming to be heard: her husband’s whore; bitch; tart; harlot; trollop.

  The woman hesitated for a split second, and Eleanor thought she saw again a flash of anxious uncertainty as she looked down at the floor.

  ‘Well, yes. Of course. Of course they do.’

  Eleanor couldn’t help herself. The recently acquired composure that had held her body and voice in check since entering the room deserted her in a wave of furious revulsion. Of course? Of course they do? How dare this woman sit before her so calmly? How dare she look her in the eye and answer her the way she did? What kind of disgusting morals could allow her to parade her whore-bitch-daughter to John’s caressing, fondling fingers and then discuss it with his wife as if nothing was wrong? Her anger erupted in a sudden, violent rise from the sofa and a tirade of abuse spewed out at the startled face looking up at her.

  ‘What do you mean, of course? How can you? How can you sit there and talk to me – how can you face me? What kind of woman are you? Don’t you have any—haven’t you any—for Christ’s sake, how dare you? For God’s sake – how dare you? I don’t understand you, I can’t understand you – you’re disgusting, you disgust me, you all disgust me!’

  The woman looked white and frightened, and rose slowly from the chair as if semi-paralysed by the ferocious anger of Eleanor’s attack, her eyes like a rabbit’s hypnotised in a car’s headlights, her body backing slowly from the heat of the assault as Eleanor went on.

  ‘How long? How long? Just tell me that. Do you watch them? Do you watch your daughter while my husband screws her? Do you?’

  The woman gasped and held a hand to her face as if Eleanor had hit her. She finally managed to speak, in a voice filled with what appeared to be a genuine sense of shock, confusion and sheer horror.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, ‘What are you saying? Don’t – don’t say such things. You don’t know what you’re saying. They couldn’t—’

  ‘Don’t cover it up – it’s too late now. I’ve found you. I know. I know what they do. How can you, as her mother – how can you let it happen? How can you?’

  Eleanor made a sudden move towards the woman, filled with a terrible urge to hurt her, to make her hurt as much as she did, to tear the agony out of herself and force it onto this terrified creature in front of her. Even as she raised her hand to – what? hit her? pinch her? slap her? – some deeply ingrained moral sense rebelled against the physical violence she had so abhorred all her life, and she felt her own arm blocking the fury of her instinctive revenge and become heavy and slow as it resisted the force of her anger. The momentum that her arm already carried sent it flailing towards the other’s chest, where it landed in a clumsy, painful shove into the flesh of her upper breast, pushing her victim backwards as she gave a yelp of distress.

  ‘Oh my God!’ the startled woman cried, clutching at her breast with her hand, trembling as she backed away from her attacker. ‘Oh my God! You must go now, please, go, just get out – please.’

  Eleanor herself was backing off now, shocked by her own violence, filled with a confusing mix of horror at her own savagery and hatred for the pathetic woman in front of her.

  ‘Yes,’ she panted, out of breath from the eruption of violence and from the battle with herself to contain it, ‘yes I’m going. I can’t talk to you now. But I will. Don’t think I’m one of those wives who are going to take this. Don’t think I’m going to make it easy for you, or for your whore of a daughter.’

  She was moving towards the door now, but stopped again to turn and look at the woman with terrifying hatred and anger in her face.

  ‘And don’t tell him I’ve been here. Don’t tell him anything. I’ll make things very unpleasant for you if you do. Just remember that.’

  She backed away, still trembling in little waves of aftershock from the horror and humiliation of the encounter, keeping her head still turned to face the frightened, watery eyes behind the glasses watching her as she left the room. As she opened the front door she heard a movement behind her, and looked back to see the woman standing at the open door of the sitting room, still holding her breast with one hand.

  ‘I need to think,’ said Eleanor, sounding horribly feeble and conciliatory to her own ears. ‘You may have to leave here. I don’t know what arrangements you’ve – you may have to leave, that’s all. And Ruth. I won’t make it easy for either of you. You or your daughter.’

  She closed the door behind her and began to make her way down towards the ground floor. Just as she reached the last step, she heard the door open again on the landing up the single flight of stairs behind her. A voice, still sounding frightened but given more confidence now by the relative safety of the distance between the two of them, called down to her with an urgency fuelled by genuine bewilderment and confusion.

  ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand. What has Ruth to do with it? My daughter’s name isn’t Ruth. What do you mean?’

  Chapter Five

  Eleanor kept going down the stairs. The emotional and physical turmoil of the encounter had left her shocked and bruised, and she couldn’t at first make any sense of what the woman had said to her. Not only the meaning or implications of it, but even the words themselves wouldn’t form any kind of pattern in her head; they seemed to float about in their own mysterious limbo, creating strange sounds and echoes but not transmitting any clear signal. It wasn’t until she was crossing the street outside, jumping automatically out of the way of a car coming down Nottingham Place, headlights full on and flashing irritatingly into her eyes for a moment as it passed, that she began to appreciate what had been said. She needed to be still to concentrate, so took a moment to open the car door and get in before going over the words that were beginning to arrange themselves into a comprehensible order in her mind.

  ‘My daughter’s name isn’t Ruth.’

  Yes, that was the crucial phrase. That was the bit that didn’t fit, that made nonsense of the understanding she had felt sure she had of the whole situation. How could it be? The woman had admitted she was the girl’s mother, there had been no doubt, no hesitation about that. Did Ruth have another name? Was that just for the office: an assumed name to cover some horrible original one? Did her mother know her as Charlene, or Kylie, or Tracy? Or call her Freckles, or Ginger, or Bimbo, or Bitch or Slag or—Hold on, hold on. Calm down. Keep thinking clearly for a moment.

  But even as she tried these names against the picture she conjured up of the chic red-haired girl, she knew she was on the wrong track. They didn’t fit her any more than did the accent, clothes and general aura of the woman who was her mother. Or wasn’t her mother. And, in any case, Eleanor had heard the woman call out to her. She had heard her call ‘Ruth’ down the stairs at her. It just didn’t make sense.

  She sighed and buried her head in her hands to think. She knew she would have to go back, would have to talk to that wretched wo
man again, but at the moment she just couldn’t bear it. She sat in the shadowy quietness of the car, the only noise that of the occasional passing car and the hum of traffic from the busier streets nearby, and despaired.

  John Hamilton rose from his desk, stretched his shoulders backwards and grunted with the effort and relief of it. He shook his head a little, feeling his jowls shake and a loose lock of greying hair flop forward over his cheek, then reached for the finely striped grey jacket that hung over the back of his chair. It was unlike him to have taken it off in the first place, but this late in the evening and at a time such as this, when the office was almost empty, he indulged himself in the small luxury of sitting in his shirtsleeves while, tonight, he’d checked through the initial draft of next year’s budget. He was about to pick up his briefcase, when he remembered that he hadn’t yet made his usual call to Eleanor, and he glanced at his watch as he went to pick up the phone.

  Eight fifteen. Later than usual, but not too late to ring her. Anything after ten, and he would hesitate, never sure if she might be taking the chance to have an early night while he was away in London and when she didn’t have an evening meal to prepare. He perched on the edge of the desk and listened to the sound of the phone ringing. One, two, three – up to six double rings, then he heard the familiar click of the machine switching on, and Eleanor’s brisk tones announcing the fact that she wasn’t in and to please leave a message.

  ‘Good, good, good,’ he muttered to himself as he waited for the long beep. He wasn’t in the mood for a chat, and the fact that she was obviously out at one of her local dos meant he could get away with a message instead. He hadn’t a clue where she was, but knew he could leave a message ambiguous enough to cover the possibility that he ought to know.

  ‘Hi, darling. Only me. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to ring earlier, but it’s budget time and I’ve only just finished. I had no idea how late it was till I stopped. See you tomorrow night, darling. Hope all’s going well with you. Thought I’d ring now in case I didn’t speak to you later. Poor me! Back to my bachelor pad, now, and the delights of baked beans. I might give you a ring when I’m there, but if not I’ll speak to you tomorrow. Lots of love.’

  He was proficient at leaving messages; never sure why so many people stuttered and hesitated when confronted with the silence of the waiting tape. He was very happy to talk into the anonymous quietness; relaxed in the knowledge that he would not be interrupted, that he could put across what he wanted to say in his own time and without the distractions of any interjections or observations before he had finished. His messages to the office staff that he would dictate into a pocket recorder while driving to and from Surrey, or at home in the evenings, were legendary. Firm, detailed and leaving out nothing, they were delivered with greater clarity and confidence than when he spoke to the staff in the flesh, when there was always a tiny element of something approaching shiftiness in his behaviour: a certain reluctance to look the other person in the eye for more than a few seconds, after which he would glance away, or down to a paper on his desk, or at an imaginary speck on his sleeve.

  He smoothed the flopping strand of hair back over his head with his palm, picked up his case and left the room, satisfied that he had dealt with everything that needed to be done, and that he could look forward to an evening of relaxation and comfort, and maybe a little enjoyable – no, he would think about that later, when he had eaten.

  As he rounded the corner into Nottingham Place, a green Range Rover pulled out from a space about opposite the flat and accelerated away. He manoeuvred the BMW into the space smoothly, took out his case from the front seat and walked over the road, setting the car alarm and locking the doors with a satisfying click as he pressed the small pad set into the key. He kept hold of his silver keyring but let the car key swing round on it as he searched quickly through the other keys with one hand to find the one he wanted.

  Eleanor sped up Nottingham Place, anxious now for only one thing: to get back home and lie in a hot bath. She had sat for another twenty minutes in the car, half waiting for John to arrive, half terrified that he would, but she suddenly felt she couldn’t bear to wait any longer, and that the only hope of restoring any feeling of sanity was to get back to familiar surroundings and wash away the horror of the day in a scaldingly hot scrub in the safety of her home. Now that she was on her way she felt better, and she switched on the radio to try to stop her mind starting again its relentless trawl over the evening’s events.

  John took the lift to the third floor and let himself into the flat. He flung his case onto the cream sofa and sat down next to it, reaching across to the telephone on the small glass-topped table next to him, picking up the receiver with one hand and dialling with the other.

  ‘Hi. Me. I’m home … What’s the matter? … OK, yes … Are you sure? You sound—… Good.… Well then, late fish and chips d’you think? … OK, no hurry … they’re open till eleven … I’m going to have a bath … Pour me a drink in about half an hour or so … ’Bye.’

  He lay his head back on the sofa for a moment and closed his eyes, then suddenly rose and took off his jacket as he walked out of the sitting room and down the hallway. He flung the jacket on the bed, then moved into the bathroom and leant down to turn on the taps, standing up as the steam hit his face and turning to confront himself in the mirror over the basin. He wiped away the condensation that was already beginning to gather on the glass, then turned his head from side to side as he examined himself, considering a shave but knowing even as he half-heartedly felt his chin with one hand that he probably wouldn’t bother. He picked up a comb from the shelf below the mirror, and swept it back through his hair, tutting a little in irritation at the way a long, loose strand would break free of the smooth shape and drop over one ear, or flop onto his forehead. He liked to keep his hair this long, he liked the way it swept right back across his head in silvery grey stripes and reached halfway down his neck, where it broke in the tiniest of neatly trimmed curls, but even with the small swipe of gel that he added to it to smooth it sleekly into place, the occasional lock would insist on escaping.

  After the bath he felt good. He went to pick up his shirt and boxer shorts from the tiled floor, but a twinge in the small of his back stopped him and he grunted and straightened again.

  ‘Oh, never mind, Mrs Whatsit can do it,’ he muttered to himself, and gently pushed them with one foot towards the white laundry basket in the corner. He hummed quietly as he walked into the bedroom, put on a clean short-sleeved sports shirt that he took from the neatly filled shelves of the fitted wardrobe and some beige slacks that were hanging from metal clips on one of the mahogany hangers. He pulled on a pair of maroon leather mules and took his wallet out of the pocket of his jacket, which he then flung back onto the bedcover.

  He went into the sitting room, picked up his keys and then walked out of the flat and made his way quickly down the stairs to the first floor. He glanced down at the silver keyring, picked out one of the several Banham keys that were hanging on it and pushed it into the lock of the first-floor flat door.

  He closed the door behind him and turned round. A young girl was standing at the other end of the hall, watching him.

  ‘Hi!’ John said. ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘OK.’

  As John put his keys into the pocket of his trousers and walked towards her, she turned away and moved into one of the rooms that led off the hallway.

  Eleanor reached the house at nine thirty and headed straight for the bathroom, where she turned on the taps and pulled off her clothes in a burst of furious, unhappy energy. She felt polluted, dirty and degraded, and as she pulled down her pants and unhooked her bra, she was tempted to throw them into the rubbish bin under the basin, but instead opened the linen basket and chucked them into the gingham-lined inside.

  The water was too hot even for her skin that had been toughened by years of scaldingly hot baths, so she added a little cold as she swished it about with her hand. She reached
out towards the little shelf inset in the tiles above the bath, and hovered for a moment between the choice of the two aromatherapy oils – one labelled for relaxation and the other for revival. So what if you need both? she thought to herself. She almost smiled as she considered mixing the two in a desperate attempt to bring her poor body into some sort of balance. The woman she had been a few days ago who had added a little oil to her bath in the morning to revive herself and a few drops of the other one to relax should she have taken an evening bath instead, was a creature from another planet. It would take more than oil to either restore or relax her now; the old body that had taken such a battering in the last few days could probably never be restored again – at least not to its previous state. Perhaps it could only function usefully and efficiently again if it could be transformed into something that was altogether less ambitious, like cutting up an old dress to make dusters, or chopping up a piece of furniture to make firewood.

  She chose the bottle for ‘revival’, feeling that relaxation was so utterly out of the question that it would be perverse even to attempt it, and after adding a few drops and mixing them in, climbed into the now bearably hot water and lay back. She was astonished to find herself closing her eyes and slipping into a semi-doze, smiling to herself at the apparent ineffectiveness of the oil, but was jarred awake by the sudden ringing of the telephone. She began to clench her stomach muscles in the effort to pull her body out of the comforting suction of the water, but frowned and let go again, allowing her head to rest back again onto the cool enamel of the bath. What the hell was the point in answering it? Nothing could bring her good news, she was sure of that. She knew there was a lot more misery and discovery to come but she just couldn’t face it at this moment. She wanted to stay disembodied and removed for a few more minutes before having to tackle anything else; and if – oh if – she could even get a few hours’ sleep before she was expected to take in any more she thought she just might be able to survive.