Yellow Room

by Shelan Rodger

  So she cannot do it to him now. She tries bleakly to work out in her mind how they got here. The argument seemed to come out of nowhere. She tries to reconstruct their words in her mind to make sense of them, to give her some kind of clue of how to behave now.

  ‘Hey, get off. That’s my toast!’ They had been having a leisurely Sunday breakfast, reading the papers, when he had reached across and snatched a piece of toast from her plate. Her reaction was simple reflex.

  ‘My God, look at you!’ His reaction seemed out of proportion.

  ‘What? You took my last piece of toast.’ She knew she sounded a bit like a spoilt child, but it was true, he had taken her toast.

  ‘Mine, mine, mine!’ He was imitating the seagulls in Finding Nemo, but there was no humour in his face, just a look of vague disgust.

  And then it spiralled.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’

  ‘Me! Oh, it’s always me isn’t it, never you. Poor Chala. She’s always the victim, isn’t she? Always the one who’s been misunderstood and punished all her life.’

  Chala hated him then. She felt bullied. He was sticking the knife in exactly where he knew it would hurt. Why? Where did his anger come from?

  ‘Why are you so angry with me? What have I done? You were the one who took the toast.’ She meant it reasonably, not sulkily. She simply wanted to explain herself, find out why he’d reacted so sharply.

  ‘Get a fucking life, will you!’

  He has picked up his paper now, cutting her out. Her eyes blur and part of her wishes that she could simply disappear.

  Like Philip did.

  * * *

  Chala was sitting on a train to London. Paul was still asleep and she had left the house with a bitter taste from the night before, forcing herself not to wake him and ask if they were OK. Now, in the warm fug of the train on a bright, chilly, early summer morning, she sifted through memories of arguments they’d had before, as if to reassure herself that there was nothing wrong or different now. Even before her trip to Australia and everything that had followed, their occasional arguments had been vehement, but had always subsided. Like the one with the toast. They had sought refuge as far away from each other as possible and when they had come together again later in the day, he had been especially nice – no mention of the morning’s anger.

  At some level, in the quiet that followed these arguments, Chala understood that his flashes of anger were something he could not control. Perhaps there were moments when the weight of his childhood was simply too much. Or the toll of living with her simply too high. She could hardly blame him for that.

  Denise was waiting for her at Victoria station. Chala saw her first, noticed the tight frown on her forehead as she searched faces over the barrier, but the frown disappeared when she saw Chala, and her smile was warm and disarming. They touched hands awkwardly and Denise turned quickly, saying, ‘Let’s get out of here. There’s a place we can go for a coffee just round the corner.’

  Chala stole the opportunity to look at her as she ordered cappuccinos and sticky oat slices from the waiter. She was dressed in pale green linen trousers with a loose white shirt and a stone pendant necklace with matching earrings. Chala registered inwardly that she had made an effort, cared what Chala thought of her. In her late fifties, she was still attractive. Chala thought of Paul’s mirror painting and realised that she must have been stunning in her youth, even more so than the photos gave away. What had brought her and Philip together? They seemed such an unlikely couple. She realised how little she knew about this woman and her relationship with Philip. She felt hollow.

  ‘So, how are you coping?’ Denise broke into the silence that had settled since the waiter’s departure. Chala pursed her lips. What right had she to ask a question like that? She looked down at the table and said nothing, wondering why she had come.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive, it’s ju… a little hard to know where to start. But I’m so pleased you decided to come,’ she rushed on and Chala felt a shot of empathy. ‘I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t, but to me it’s a gi… a sad gift after so many years.’ There was a faraway look in her eyes, and Chala thought: she loved him, she did love him after all.

  ‘Why don’t we start with you? I mean, wi…’ Chala looked for the right words in her head. ‘Aft…’ She faltered, but Denise understood.

  ‘Well, I moved in with a girlfriend in London and temped for a while until I found my feet, and then I decided I needed to do something completely different. I wanted to train as something tangible, learn a skill that meant something – something I could offer other people.’

  So, there was guilt, thought Chala, wishing she could stop judging her. And yet she felt a flood of empathy again. I know exactly what you mean, she wanted to cry out.

  ‘So, I trained as a speech therapist,’ continued Denise. ‘It was hard. I had to do an M.Sc., but I loved it.’

  ‘You’re lucky to find something you love professionally. I still don’t know what I want to do.’ Chala was surprised at her own revelation. There was something so straightforward and comfortable about the way Denise talked, but, she reminded herself, they had chosen safe ground. She wondered what the letter from Philip had said, how Denise had reacted after so many years. Would she be so open and comfortable talking about that? Chala realised Denise was talking again.

  ‘Well, what do you do at the moment?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m in limbo. I resigned from my old job.’

  ‘And what was your old job?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t really …’ And she gave a potted summary of what she’d done and the company she’d worked for and the words echoed a faraway conversation on a plane to Australia, the last time she’d tried to explain her work to a stranger. But this time she found herself adding tentatively, ‘I would also like to do something valuable. I mean something that would make a difference, like you do.’

  Denise looked thoughtful, remaining silent.

  ‘So, when did you know? I mean what made you realise that speech therapy was your thing?’ However effortless Denise made it seem, Chala shied away from the exposure of talking at length about herself. All her life, she had always turned conversations with strangers around.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know straight away. It took time – a long time, actually. And there was no lightning bolt,’ Denise laughed. ‘I just came to understand slowly that my work was the most fulfilling part of my life.’

  Chala looked down, embarrassed, but there was no self-pity in Denise’s voice, just a very gentle sadness. She longed to ask how Denise had been able to leave Philip.

  ‘One day, maybe I will be able to talk to you about why I left.’

  Chala blushed fiercely. ‘Oh no, it’s OK. It’s none of my business,’ she floundered.

  ‘Oh, but it is in a way, of course it is. I never stopped missing him, you know. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, but we just couldn’t cope together any more.’

  Because of me, Chala thought, because of what I had done.

  ‘And it wasn’t just the accident either. It had started before that.’

  Chala felt tears pricking her eyes and bit them back, hating herself for her weakness, hating herself for coming here. The ‘accident’ – so this was a piece of vocabulary that had stuck. In their family dictionary, Chala thought sourly, grasping for something to stop the tears, ‘accident’ was a word used to describe the unintentional murder of a baby by her four-year-old sister. ‘Accident’ was also a word used to describe either the death or suicide of an uncle thirty years later.

  ‘Do you think he committed suicide?’ Chala’s words came out softly, unexpectedly.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ There was something sharp in Denise’s tone for the first time.

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t believe it was an accident.’

  Denise put her hand lightly on Chala’s arm across the table, as if to steady her. ‘Chala, I loved Philip’ – it was the first time that
his name had been spoken out loud – ‘but he was a very weak man in many ways. I don’t think he would have been able to commit suicide even if he had wanted to.’

  Chala found her words strangely comforting. She had not offered platitudes about him loving Chala too much to do a thing like that or it not being her fault. She simply thought he didn’t have it in him. That did more to calm her than any of the police reports had done, but the effort of talking about this openly was too much for her.

  ‘… so, you just sort of drifted apart? Did you argue much?’ Last night with Paul was still on her mind.

  ‘No, it wasn’t really that we argued. Philip hated confrontation—’

  ‘I know. I think he gave that to me, too.’

  ‘Yes, I can sense that. There’s quite a lot of him in you, I think.’ Her words trailed off slightly. ‘The best parts of h…’

  ‘Philip used to say I reminded him of his sister.’ She couldn’t believe how easy Denise made it to talk about herself.

  ‘Well, if I were you I’d take that as a compliment. I liked her.’

  It was strange to imagine that Denise had known her mother, a woman who existed for Chala only in stories. She wanted to bring the conversation back to the present.

  ‘Can I ask you something? Do you think if a couple have awful arguments it means they are incompatible?’

  Denise looked at her for a moment, hesitating. ‘Not necessarily—’

  ‘Now you sound like Philip!’ Chala was amazed to hear herself laughing. She realised that since his death she hadn’t really been able to talk about Philip in a positive way. Even her private thoughts about him had been so loaded, tormented by the question of whether he had committed suicide. It was comforting to simply remember him, without digging too deep, and suddenly she didn’t want to draw Denise on the letter and the reasons she had left.

  ‘Is this about you and Paul? It’s hardly surprising if the situation has taken its toll.’

  Chala found herself tentatively opening up to Denise about her fears. She longed suddenly to tell her about Bruce, but this would be too much of a betrayal, would only add to the harm she had already done.

  ‘You know, I went to Kenya once with Philip. He took me to Lake Chala. It was beautiful but there was something creepy about it. I swam in the lake and I almost panicked, but the thought and sight of Philip sitting at the top of the crater kept me calm and I swam through my fear and just kept going until I got to the shore again. Philip was a father to me. But isn’t that the way a woman should feel about her husband? Shouldn’t the thought of him keep you safe in the same way? I’m just not sure that I feel like that about Paul.’

  To Chala’s surprise Denise laughed. ‘Now you really do sound like your mother – a true romantic at heart! Well, I don’t think you need to feel like that about your partner. In fact, I think it might be a little bit unhealthy if you did feel like that about a partner. I never felt like that about Philip.’

  ‘But you didn’t last together.’ The words left a sour taste in her mouth. She hadn’t meant to be cruel. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.’

  ‘No, it’s a fair point.’ She hesitated, and Chala felt uncomfortable, wanting to switch off the spotlight she had inadvertently shone on the past again, but the next thing Denise said was as surprising as her laughter. ‘Why don’t you go back there?’

  ‘Where? You mean Lake Chala?’

  ‘Not to the lake, necessarily, but to Kenya. You said you’re in a state of limbo at the moment, you want to do something worthwhile, and Kenya obviously holds an emotional significance for you. Why don’t you go there for a bit, find something to do, some voluntary work or something, and just take some time out, a little bit of distance from everything that’s happened? It might do you good.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work. I even suggested something like that to Paul. Not Africa, I’m not sure why I didn’t think of Africa, but I saw an ad for VSO in India and suggested we go for it. We’ve got enough money, and Paul could still have done his art, so I thought it might have been inspirational for him, too.’

  ‘And, what did he say?’ Denise asked carefully.

  ‘He just got angry.’

  ‘You know something?’

  ‘What?’ said Chala, unable to read the measured look on Denise’s face.

  ‘I didn’t mean with Paul. I meant on your own.’

  ‘But—’ Chala started, unsure of herself.

  ‘It might do you good, you know. It might do you both good.’

  And so the idea was born.

  CHAPTER 15

  A young German tourist lost her life last Friday in an incident on the border between Kenya and Tanzania.

  Her family had stopped for a picnic at an old lodge, beside a volcanic crater lake, near the twin peaks of Kilimanjaro in Tsavo National Park. Petra Schmidt, 16, and her two younger brothers went into the lake, which is said to be safe to swim in, and their parents watched in horror as a crocodile surfaced from nowhere and dragged the young woman underwater. The two boys escaped unharmed. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) searched the lake, but found only a severed arm.

  When the lodge was still open, it was common for tourists to swim here and locals have continued to do so. This is the first time that a crocodile has ever been sighted in the lake. The KWS believe that it may have reached the lake through an underwater channel from a nearby river.

  * * *

  Chala let go of the newspaper as if it might burn her. The article was tucked away in the back pages and it was the word ‘accident’ rather than ‘crocodile’ in the headline that had grabbed her attention. She had developed an almost macabre fixation with the notion of accidents in people’s lives, wondering what percentage of cases in emergency wards are the result of accidents. If a couple have a bitter argument and he breaks his arm as he smashes it down on a sideboard to underline a point, is that an accident? As soon as you start to look, there are accidents everywhere, literally waiting to happen. What could possibly be more arbitrary and unlucky than being killed by a crocodile in a lake that contained no crocodiles? She shuddered at the memory of that same water around her skin, at the irrational panic that had seized her. There was no doubt that it was the same lake – her lake, Lake Chala, now marred by death. She knew it was crazy, but she felt a twinge of guilt, as if she were somehow responsible. How would this poor girl’s mother feel if she were to tell her that she had swum in the same lake years ago and had been frightened too, but she hadn’t told anyone, because she thought she was just being silly?

  Chala got up and filled the kettle again to make more coffee. She was being ridiculous, she reprimanded herself, but a small voice chirped away inside her brain. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe you should keep away from Kenya, it said. Her birth mother and father had died on Mount Kenya during their honeymoon. Philip’s sister had hated to go back to a place she had loved. If a place held beautiful memories, it felt like tempting fate to go back; she preferred to keep them intact and alive in her imagination, and if a place held bad memories, then why stir them up?

  Paul walked into her Sunday morning then, dishevelled and cheerful.

  ‘God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. More bad news?’ He gestured at the papers, half smirking.

  Chala swung from one extreme to another when it came to news consumption. There would be weary phases of going out of her way to avoid contact with the news or avid phases when she couldn’t seem to get enough of it. Since Philip’s death, she had seemed unable to focus on anything, so Paul welcomed the sight of newspapers sprawled across the table. Chala didn’t mention the crocodile accident. They bantered over other items in the news and she carried on a silent dialogue with herself beyond the spoken words.

  ‘Paul,’ she broached finally. ‘You know I mentioned the idea of us going off and doing VSO or something?’

  Paul looked strained, but she continued. ‘Are you absolutely sure that isn’t something we can consider? I mean, it wouldn’t have to
be VSO. We could just do something for a couple of months or so, something,’ – she hesitated – ‘to break the pattern we’re creating—’

  ‘You’re creating. Don’t bring me into this.’

  She looked down at her lap.

  ‘I’ve already told you what I think, Chala. You need to get a sense of normality back and this is not helping.’

  She said nothing and his voice rose.

  ‘Fuck this, I’ve had enough, I can’t do this anymore!’

  She heard the door slam behind him.

  On an evening two days later, Chala sat in front of her computer screen, engrossed in a site about voluntary work in some of Kenya’s orphanages. A hand on her shoulder made her jump.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Listen, can we talk downstairs?’ She half-expected him to lash out, but he was quiet, almost sullen.

  Chala walked in front of him, biting her lip, wondering if she was really ready for the conversation they were about to have. ‘Hold on to what you’ve got,’ Philip had said at their wedding. She poured them both a glass of wine.

  ‘Paul, I don’t know whether you can understand this or whether it’s even reasonable of me to ask you to understand, but with everything that’s happened I think it might do us both good if we had a break from each other. I thought maybe if we could both go away and do something different together, that that would be enough, but you don’t want that. You want us to be able to move on without changing anything, but I’m not sure I can. Not here. Not like this. I want to do something, something that makes me feel good about who I am, something that will help me get beyond Philip’s dea…’ She looked at Paul, waiting for him to speak, but he was silent. ‘I know you think it’s all bullshit, but I can’t help it. I can’t help feeling that he committed suicide.’