The Question

by Jane Asher

  The bow had undone easily, and now she flipped back one side of the striped material and studied what lay beneath. It looked so innocent, so young. It had been many years since she had looked at it directly, and it made John seem suddenly like a little boy. She half expected him to reach down and cup it in one hand, and suck his thumb with the other while he went back to sleep. She thought of how many, many times this funny little thing had been inside her and made her cry out with pleasure, of how shy of it she had been for the first few months of their relationship, how terrifying it had seemed those first times it had stood to salute her in its desire. Now she saw it as an old friend, an old friend she had taken for granted for many years and whom she now saw afresh and appreciatively.

  No, none of that sentimental nonsense, she thought to herself, and suddenly reached out and grabbed it, holding the tip with two fingers and a thumb as she drew it up and away from its hairy surroundings, as if she were a nurse about to shave her patient. She wasn’t at all surprised that John didn’t wake. Somehow she had known he wouldn’t, and even as she made to put the knife to the pale pink flesh, she had no doubt he wouldn’t stir.

  But every time she made a cut, it healed over. As fast as she could begin to saw through the skin and muscle, it closed itself back into unmarked, untouched wholeness. She persevered, but after a few minutes it became clear that any attempt was doomed and that she might as well give up and go to sleep. She threw the knife across the room, where it found its own way through the door, down the stairs and back into the coat pocket, then she pulled the covers back over them both and closed her eyes.

  She opened them again and looked across at Carla, who had finished cleaning the sink and was collecting the vacuum cleaner from the cupboard. How long had she been daydreaming? Had it taken as long in reality as it had in her projected thoughts? She felt a mixture of relief and frustration at the lack of her fantasy’s consummation: it wasn’t the first time she had been through the scenario, and always something prevented the final carrying through of the terrible task. Each time she came back to reality she felt melancholy and unfulfilled, but more than a little aware that she was grateful to find that even her fantasies were to an extent censored by an instinctive humanity and curtailed by a moral fence that would allow her to go only so far before pulling her up short against the wire.

  She’d considered the other, more common, form of recrimination, of course; the other standard response to infidelity and jealousy: the cutting of the clothes. But that too she knew would bring her no satisfaction, even in her imagination. What pleasure could there be in destroying the suits that she herself had helped him to choose? What revenge in chopping off the sleeves of shirts that she had spent so many evenings ironing, or in recent years sent to the laundry, or packed carefully into suitcases? These were old friends; no way would they let her mutilate them. Her ordered domesticity was ranged against her: so far she couldn’t imagine any act of revenge that would assuage her bitter jealousy. Every violent physical outburst that she imagined brought no relief. She would just have to bide her time.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Hello, Susan, this is your aunt.’

  Good, good. So far. Very smooth. Not a wobble on the word aunt. Not too gushing and not too cool on the phrase as a whole. Keep going.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Your aunt. From—’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry – of course I know who you are. I didn’t think for a moment. Yes, how are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you, Susan. How are you?’

  ‘I’m doing nicely, thank you.’

  ‘I thought the least I could do since my very odd encounter with you the other evening would be to treat you to a meal. Would you like to come out here to the country? It would be lovely to see you and I could give you lunch.’

  ‘That’s very nice of you Mrs – em, Aunt – sorry, I don’t know what to call you!’

  ‘No,’ laughed Eleanor, a little more wryly than might have been expected in the circumstances, ‘of course you don’t. Eleanor. Call me Eleanor.’

  ‘Oh, right, yes. Thanks then, Aunt Eleanor, that would be very nice.’

  ‘What’s your diary like?’

  There was no reply, and Eleanor tried again, aware how stupidly she had put it. If the girl went to the job centre as Ba—as she had been told, then there wasn’t much question what her diary would be like, was there?

  ‘I mean, is there any particular—’

  ‘No, any day would be good.’

  ‘How about next Tuesday, then?’

  ‘Yes, that’s great. But are you sure you want—I think – I think I’d better check with my mother. I don’t really know if she’d want me to. I’m not quite sure – it’s always been a bit of a funny area. You have, I mean. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.’

  Eleanor felt intensely annoyed at the reference to the woman that she was finding it increasingly objectionable to have to think about. Over the last few days since their extraordinary meeting her disgust and dislike, even hatred, of the newly discovered rival had grown dramatically. The jealousy, bitterness and shock had congealed into a sticky phlegm of loathing for the other woman, sometimes threatening to choke Eleanor as she lay awake on her night-time vigils. She could only clear it by either pushing the thoughts of her so far away as to be once more part of something unreal and unbelievable, or by fantasising acts of wonderfully satisfying revenge. These had tended to override the scenarios involving direct retribution on her husband. For the moment, at least, the daydreams gave her more peace by eliminating the other woman and leaving John a lonely, crumbling, abandoned wreck, utterly aware of his folly and begging Eleanor to take him back. In these dreams he loved her again, passionately, physically and unquenchably, and she would slowly let herself be wooed back into his arms. So it was unbearably irritating to hear Barbara spoken of as a person not only alive and well, but also someone to be reckoned with and applied to for permission to let this girl come to lunch.

  ‘Yes, of course, Susan. I understand. I’m sure your mother won’t mind. Do tell her how much I’d like you to come. Oh, and tell her I’ve still a few things to sort out with her, will you? I’ll give her a ring sometime,’ she added, hoping that a hint of menace would be conveyed to the other woman in the relaying of the apparently innocent message.

  ‘OK, yes I will. Shall I phone you back, then, when I’ve spoken to her?’

  ‘All right, Susan. Yes, give me a ring back when you know. Tuesday, we’ll say then, shall we? And ring me back to confirm it’s all right. Oh, and it might be as well not to mention this to your father. I’m sure your mother will explain.’

  But before Tuesday there was the weekend to get through. As it approached Eleanor became increasingly nervous. She had managed to pick her way delicately through three phone calls from John, keeping her voice relatively calm and letting the strangeness of her dash to Andrew’s and the general coolness of her demeanour be explained by a simple change of mood. Moodiness had inevitably occurred during the long marriage, and had been variously attributed by John to time of the month, migraine, menopause or just plain female silliness. As she felt his exaggeratedly patient response to her over the phone, Eleanor for once thanked God for the normally irritating explanation of ‘woman’s trouble’, which helpfully covered all inexplicable behaviour.

  But a face-to-face meeting was a different thing altogether, and she began to dread the two days fast approaching when she would have to act, lie and cover up as she had never had to before. Her plans veered wildly between confronting him with everything she knew and having it out once and for all, or sticking to her original idea of waiting until she knew more from Susan of what had been going on before she tackled him. She knew the latter was the better route, but a tiny part of her still fantasised that the whole horrible situation was an illusion; that somehow, when challenged with her discovery he would immediately be able to convince her that none of it was true. The possibility, however remote and irratio
nal, of being able to return to normal, of being able to sleep without nightmares, was so seductive that she feared she might be tempted into blurting it all out, just to force him into a denial that she could somehow make herself believe.

  ‘Eleanor? Darling, it’s me.’

  She still marvelled that he sounded so normal; that the voice of an adulterous liar was indistinguishable from that of a loving, faithful husband. But then of course that’s what the voice had always been. It was only her awareness that had changed, not the man. She never had heard the voice of the loving husband – or not for at least twenty years, in any case. Funny that.

  ‘Hello, darling. How are you doing?’

  ‘Fine. I should be home about the usual time. I’m leaving at six.’

  Oh God, oh dear God, help me.

  ‘OK, good. I’ll get supper on for eightish, then shall I?’

  Feed him? Do I have to cook for him and feed him? Can I cook for him? Will my body go on physically working for him now he’s not who I thought he was? Now I’m living in a parallel universe?

  A quick picture of herself emptying a small green bottle with a skull and crossbones stamped on the side into a chicken casserole flashed into her mind and made her laugh out loud.

  ‘Yes, about eight should be fine. What are you laughing at?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just George throwing his chew around. Looks funny, that’s all.’

  Brilliant. You brilliant woman. Where the hell did that come from? Maybe the weekend’s not going to be so bad after all.

  But it was bad. It was terrible. As his car pulled into the drive, Eleanor moved back the pretty chintz curtains in the kitchen to look out of the window. The bright gaiety of the vivid pattern of sunflowers on the crisp white cotton made a mocking frame in the foreground as she watched him sadly. Was he thinking of her as he got out of the car and slammed the door? Does he long for the weekend to be over so he can go back to the flat, kiss his daughter and climb into bed with—NO!

  Perhaps it’s all my fault, she thought as she saw him lock the car and walk slowly towards the front door. I’ve been cold and unloving and he’s stuck by me while he could have gone off to – to her. They probably do it every night. Her big breasts squash down onto his chest, and she hugs him and kisses him and tells him how much she loves him. We just kiss on the cheek, and say things like ‘Hello, darling, how are you? How was your day?’ And then we don’t really want to know, anyway. Perhaps I’ll tell him I love him tonight; perhaps I’ll astonish him with my warmth and passion and he’ll discover me all over again.

  Eleanor let the curtain fall back over the window and turned into the room. She moved automatically over to the fridge and took out a cold bottle of tonic water and a lemon, then carried them over to the hardtop. She opened the drawer beneath and took out a knife, sighing a little at the confusing lurch of excitement the sight of the sharp blade gave her as she pulled a small chopping board over from the sink and began to slice the lemon. She watched the knife sawing into the yellow juiciness of the fruit and sensed an echo of some of her more unpleasant daydreams.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Anyway, it’s that wretched curved serrated one for grapefruit. God knows how it always manages to be the only one in the drawer. You can’t murder someone with a grapefruit knife.’

  Shaking away the image of a smile-shaped jagged cut in John’s throat, she walked over to the cupboard by the door and fetched two cut-glass tumblers, brought them back to the hardtop and popped a slice of lemon in each. She could hear the front door closing as she carried the glasses over to the fridge and balanced them in one arm as she opened the heavily suctioned freezer door and grappled for the ice cubes she had earlier decanted into a bowl. She dropped them into the glasses, swearing a little as one of the freezing cold cubes stuck briefly to the skin of her hand, then shouldered the freezer door shut, picked up the bottle of tonic from the side and walked towards the sitting room, trying hard to ignore the uncomfortable drumming of her heart against her ribs.

  ‘G and T?’ she asked as casually as she could manage as she moved through the doorway and into the room, aware of John’s large figure settling itself into the armchair by the fire, but avoiding looking at it too directly by concentrating intensely on the bottle and glasses.

  ‘Mmm? Yes, yes please, darling. Great. How are you?’

  His voice sounded different! She could swear it sounded different. It had to be guilt. Guilt and fear. There was a trembling shiftiness in it that she had never heard before. She took her courage in her cold, damp, glass-clutching hands and looked across at him, certain she would be confronted by a vision of anguished regret, but saw instead the thinning top of John’s head, bent over a newspaper. She waited, sure he would look up at her and throw himself on his knees to beg forgiveness, but as she stood there, clutching her half-prepared drinks, he carried on reading, seemingly utterly unaware of her immobile presence.

  She crossed over to the small table behind the sofa and put the glasses and bottle down on the polished surface, feeling recklessly wicked at not bothering to find coasters or a magazine to put them on, letting the watery condensation settle onto the wood and ooze out satisfyingly. She pictured three ring-marks forming on the perfect marquetry and found it oddly comforting.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she answered at last, noticing that her voice, too, sounded oddly different. Perhaps it was just the way she was hearing everything, she thought, perhaps she had a sort of distorting filter that had grown in her ear like a cancer caused by the trauma of the past week. If not, then why did he go on reading, instead of looking up at her in astonishment and asking what the hell the matter was? She must sound normal, after all – and no doubt he did, too. Don’t make a comment about anything, nor take anything at face value until you have some sort of corroborating evidence, she silently instructed herself. Your senses can no longer be trusted. Just like your husband.

  She poured a stiff measure of gin into each glass, topped them up with tonic and handed one to John before sitting opposite him on one end of the sofa. He took his automatically, not looking up from his paper or acknowledging her in any way, and she took the chance to look more closely at this new species she now found squatting in her happy home. The faithless, two-timing husband. Sitting, sipping his drink. Settling himself comfortably like a cuckoo recently hatched into a sparrow’s nest, spoiling and polluting it with the wrongness of its presence, but forcing the poor beleaguered sparrow into accepting and nurturing it.

  She was pleased to find that the sexual frenzy she had been experiencing every night appeared to be under control; the reality of his body in the chair opposite her was somehow far less magnetically attractive than it had appeared in her fantasies. She felt sure that – as long as she could keep her imagination in check – she would be able to stay as cool to him physically for the duration of the weekend as she would have been in normal circumstances. Her plan for declarations of love and displays of passion would have to wait until she was far more experienced in handling this double game.

  He looked up and saw her watching him. She took a quick drink and cleared her throat.

  ‘What?’ he said, a little irritably she thought, but then she pulled herself up as she remembered the unreliability of her own evidence.

  ‘What do you mean, what? I was just – I was just thinking you looked a bit tired, that’s all.’

  ‘I am. Bloody tired. Bloody awful week.’

  Oh poor dear, she thought. Poor old thing; all those meetings and discussions and architects’ plans and a mistress to make love to and a daughter to lie to – let alone the phone calls to the old bag in Surrey. It must be exhausting for you. Poor old thing.

  ‘Yes, I’ve had a bit of a rough week too.’ Oh I like it! she smiled to herself. I love the gentle irony, the wonderfully British understatement of it all. A bit rough! Ha! What a shame I’ve no one to share it with. You’d love that, John, you really would. You’d laugh at that one. You’d look
at me in admiration and have a good laugh. Old Eleanor’s got a sense of humour after all.

  ‘Oh really? That’s – em, that’s …’ But he had drifted off back into his paper again, crossing his legs and burrowing further into the squashy seat of the chair as he lifted the open pages high enough to be able to rest his elbows on the arms, blocking her view of his face completely.

  She took another gulp of her gin and stood up.

  ‘I’ll put a light under the veg. Fifteen minutes or so do you?’

  But he didn’t answer, and she raised her eyebrows and tipped her head on one side as she looked over at him, secure now in the knowledge that he was utterly unaware of her discovery. She turned and walked across the hall to the kitchen, feeling a little more in control of things again, and ready to tackle the evening ahead.

  The smell of roast chicken brought her up short. She could see the bird through the small glass panel in the front of the oven door, glistening and golden, surrounded by neatly shaped small roast potatoes. John’s favourite. Or was it? Had that been yet another lie? He probably loathed it. Too ordinary; unadventurous. Boring.

  She probably cooks marvellously inventive dishes: clever little veal escalopes with smart little reduced sauces; decorated raised pies filled with game. And she serves them dressed in a see-through nightie; or black lace underwear; or nothing. Naked. Do you want to keep your man interested? Serve him Sole Véronique and put on your best saucy basque and his favourite perfume. Turn down the lights and put on the music. Here we see Barbara, wearing a gorgeous black chiffon négligé and tucking into a beautifully presented coq au vin (oh nice one, Eleanor, she smiled to herself, good cheap joke, very suitable). See how invitingly Barbara leans forward and coyly looks under her lashes, meat juices dripping down her chin. See how—