The Liar’s Chair

by Rebecca Whitney

  Walls of windows face a manicured garden of topiary shrubs in zinc planters, where an unused swimming pool simmers blue in the night-time air. The separate kitchen not only relieves me of the pressure of performing to guests while I’m cooking, but it’s also one of the only spaces apart from the bathrooms where I’m private and no one can peer in from outside, especially at night when the house is illuminated like a neon box.

  I light a cigarette and stand at the worktop for a moment trying to remember what I’ve come in for. Scratching comes from the boot room where the dogs are kept when we have guests. The animals are muzzled to stop them barking. On the worktop is the notebook we use for our household expenses along with a couple of the pens which live in the kitchen drawer with the book. In the study there’s a stack of identical ledgers: new ones to fill in when this one is full, plus a shelf of already-finished books lined up in chronological order. David and I have been keeping a record of our personal expenditure since we were at uni; it helped us streamline as much money as possible into the business while allowing ourselves the indulgences we thought we deserved. Even though we don’t have to scrimp any more, we continue the practice out of routine. It’s a reassuring nod towards order. The book is open and only the first couple of pages have been filled out in this relatively new book. I flick through the recent entries, the outgoings a diary of the past few days. The wine for this evening came from our cellar and was delivered two weeks ago: £600. That same day I remember I’d been trying to contact Will but his phone was switched off. Another entry from later that week is the dog groomer who came a day before the accident: £80. If only it were possible to rewind time and tamper with these seemingly innocuous events – arrive home late for the wine delivery, forget to walk the dogs so they were too jumpy for the groomer, change the meeting with Will to a different night – then the man on the road could still be alive. His dead face slides across my vision. I shake my head and focus on the book to try and rid myself of the image.

  Next on the page there’s a break, and the date jumps forward to the food delivery for this evening’s meal which cost £189. My new dresses ordered by David: £800. He bought two sizes. We’ll send back the one that doesn’t fit. I’m wearing the smaller one and I’ve used some pins round the waist. David’s usually pretty accurate but I’ve lost some weight.

  Smash against my windscreen.

  There’s burning and I turn to see smoke seeping from the edges of the oven door. The pork belly should be crisp on top but it’s gone too far. Clearly I’ve miscalculated. As I open the oven, a food smog stings my eyes and I fumble in blindness, taking out the meat and turning on the extractor fan, hoping to remove this clue to my ineptitude. The meat rests on the worktop as I wipe away the tears. Smoke gulps through the open window into the cold dark of our garden. With a knife I cut the burnt fat from the meat, removing as much black as possible.

  Thick dark liquid spreads on the tarmac.

  A sauce from the butcher’s was going to be a side, but I slosh the liquid over the surface of the meat to disguise the fatty mess, and arrange new potatoes round the edge of the serving dish. The potatoes have split and their powdery innards puff through cracks in their skins – they don’t look like the picture in the recipe book. From another pan I drain dark-green broccoli water, and a vegetable sludge clings to the sides. One of David’s expectations is that I cook for these occasions, exhibiting prowess and flair so he can bask in the glory of having chosen such a skilled and multi-faceted wife. In the past I’ve played the part willingly, researching meal plans and making a timetable for the various recipes, but this particular culinary disaster may finally close the door on that duty.

  Jane’s voice comes through from the other room. Her clipped nasal pitch cuts across the whirr of the extractor fan. ‘Not much of an earner, the stables. More pocket money really. Alex likes me to keep busy.’

  ‘I haven’t been riding for years,’ David says – I don’t recall him ever riding. ‘I’d love to come and take advantage of your stables sometime. Do you have a horse big enough for a man of my build?’ His voice is more of a drone, his words less perceptible above the kitchen noise, but I can tell he’s upped his accent to public school, falling in line as he does with whomever he’s talking to, mirroring them with subconscious messages of approval and reassurance. Jane titters. I imagine David’s winked at her.

  My cigarette, balanced on the edge of the hob, burns a streak of brown on the shiny metal. I lift it and notice dirt under my nails.

  Fingers not hooves.

  My thoughts flip. To the time I saw the homeless man in the village shop, some months before the accident. The shopkeeper kept her eyes on him as she beeped my items past the scanner with blind precision. ‘No, put that one back, love,’ she shouted across to him, stern but wary as if talking to a teenager with a knife in their pocket. I turned to watch as the man pulled down a pile of cut-price DVDs and I wondered if he even owned a machine to play them. Perhaps a palatial mansion hidden in the countryside with his body fluids collected in jars. The shopkeeper and I exchanged a private smile. She tutted, leant across the counter to me and whispered, ‘Came out of a children’s home and went straight into prison.’ Her husband was refilling the cigarette shelves behind her. He twisted round and joined in the gossip. ‘No he didn’t, he was a concert pianist back in the day. Got his hands broken over a gambling debt. Probably deserved it.’ I paid and stood to one side to sort my bags. The man came up to the counter with a tin of dog food and a sliced white loaf held in a hand so filthy that the mechanism of his fingers had cut white creases around his knuckles and palm. Mixed in with the dirt were blue and red stains, like ink.

  I drag what’s left of the cigarette dry, blowing the smoke cloud in the direction of the kitchen window.

  ‘You died in here or something?’ David’s head pokes round the kitchen door. I flick the cigarette into the inch of green water covering the bottom of the sink. The butt hisses and floats above the black hole of the waste disposal. ‘You’ve got panda eyes, Rachel. Better check the mirror before you come back in.’

  He returns to the table and I hear the glasses chink, followed by the brittle shot of Jane’s laugh. The glass of white wine I brought in from the table has several half-moons of red lipstick round the edge, and the liquid’s warmed, but I swig it down anyway with two painkillers. I’m on the highest over-the-counter dose for the pain that crawls up and down my spine but has no single source or intensity. I must have pulled something when I dragged the man through the woods, and the damage persists even though I’d have thought it would have eased by now. I’ve made and cancelled two doctor’s appointments, worried I might cry if she gives me that look and asks me if everything’s OK at home. For now the sensation is a reminder, and it takes me back to the woods, safe in the hollow quiet of the trees. I wish I could return and keep watch over the man, be in his company. I wonder if anyone would care if they knew he was dead.

  I repair my make-up and take the food through to the table, sitting down next to Alex. Opposite me is Jane. David is at a diagonal. The food smells better than it looks and their disappointed faces glow in the candlelight.

  ‘Isn’t this lovely,’ Jane says. She wears a peach-coloured dress the near exact match of her skin tone. Aside from the little flush which runs up her neck and into her cheeks, the junction between skin and fabric is confused. Where the material stops above her bust, a nude chiffon continues across her chest and down her arms so that her Dalmatian pattern of moles appear to be woven into the fabric. The dress is the kind a mother would buy a teenage daughter who’s going to her first party or a prom – a daughter who’s not too racy but is testing her toe in the waters of femininity. And failing.

  ‘You have worked hard, Rachel,’ Jane says. ‘Tell me, which butcher do you use? I’ve been buying my meat directly from the farm shop outside the village, but quite honestly, I’m not sure it’s all that good. The last time we entertained, the beef was almost green. I mean, I l
ike my meat hung a good long time, but it was just over the edge, don’t you think, darling?’ She looks at her husband, who opens his mouth to reply. ‘Anyway,’ she continues, ‘I won’t bother you for the telephone number now. Our next dinner party is for ten and I always get the caterers in if it’s over six.’

  David carves the meat and puts it on the plates. Earth mixed with old piss. I pass round the vegetables and take a big drink from the fresh glass of wine I’ve poured myself. The near-frozen liquid chills my throat and the sensation is the only real thing in the room. David looks down at me from his standing position as I top up my glass. I hold his gaze and lift the wine to my lips. He’s sober, he’s chosen to stay that way, as I used to do on these occasions before the accident; this is a business meeting, not a casual dinner with friends.

  While they’ve been waiting, David has kept the guests’ glasses well filled. They attack the food. Jane pushes the meat and vegetables around her plate with small excited prods of her cutlery, making little piles and collecting each of them on the back of her fork then posting the nugget into her neat mouth. Alex eats his vegetables first, saving the meat till last, which he hurls in big slabs into his mouth, talking all the while to David about cases lost and cases won. I’m curious as to how this act of eating together has become such a cultural highlight; all I can think of is the food mixing in their mouths and being squeezed towards their stomachs. Eating is function not fun, it’s always been that way, and I prefer to eat in private, only taking the edge off my hunger, if I can be bothered to eat at all. David, as usual, clears his meal with invisible ease. He stares over at my plate, still loaded with food, and my knife and fork stacked to one side. When he was dishing up, he put more on to my plate than anyone else’s.

  ‘Come on, Rachel, eat up,’ he says in a loud voice, ‘the food is delicious.’ Then he looks to Alex with another wink. ‘Who’ll look after me if you waste away?’

  Jane and Alex watch as I pick up my cutlery and saw through the large slice of burnt pork fat that David chose specially for me. I put the piece in my mouth, chew, then add a small branch of broccoli.

  ‘I know exactly what it’s like when you’ve cooked,’ Jane says. ‘By the time it comes to eating, you’ve completely lost your appetite.’

  David smiles at me and refills our guests’ wine glasses. Jane puts her hand over hers to signal she’s had enough, but too late and the wine splashes her fingers. She giggles, looking up at David with big-girl eyes. She’s not his type but I admire his ability to make her feel vital while at the same time keeping Alex firmly in his court. There’s no competition between the men – if anything, David’s flirtation with Jane is a compliment to Alex on his choice of wife – and the men exchange smiles and winks. Or perhaps there’s some kind of readying of Jane, a nod from David to Alex, a telepathic collaboration between two men who understand how to get their needs met, that she’ll be easy later. With the food on my plate reorganized and my napkin flung over one half, it looks like I’ve eaten more than I have, and I hold an unlit cigarette between my fingers and wait for the others to finish. No one smokes any more, but it’s my house and I won’t stand outside in the cold. And anyway, I’ll pay for my bad behaviour later.

  Jane wipes the corners of her mouth on her napkin and I spark up. Alex rhythmically chews his last piece of meat with a shut mouth. He puts his cutlery to one side of the plate, then turns his whole body to me, head tilted back as if he’s looking through bifocals. One arm is slung over the back of the chair. He swallows the last of his food.

  ‘I used to smoke, you know, before I met Jane,’ he says, adjusting his position in the chair to sit taller. Areas of pink scalp show underneath his dark hair, spattered with grey, as if someone has run a paintbrush across his thinning pate. ‘I was on twenty a day. Jane has asthma, so I gave up. It can upset her for days afterwards.’ He looks at Jane, who’s examining the light fitting, then back at me. ‘They’re bringing in a ban in all public spaces. Good thing too.’

  I take another drag and blow the smoke in the opposite direction, away from the table.

  ‘Yes, well, Rachel’s only recently started this up,’ David says, looking at me with a hard glare. ‘Seems approaching forty is a licence to all sorts of bad habits.’ The reference to my age is a bold snub in such high company – gentlemen don’t openly dismiss their wives – but the slight works as David follows through with a smile to Alex and the men share a chuckle, although I’m not sure either of them know exactly what it is they’re laughing at.

  ‘Oh, what will you get Rachel for her birthday?’ Jane asks David, popping sparrow coughs into the petite hollow of her fist. ‘I suppose it’ll be a big surprise.’

  ‘I let Rachel choose her own gifts these days,’ he says. He used to buy me fussy jewellery – pieces that would suit his mother – then sulk in silence when they were never worn. ‘Open chequebook, you know,’ he continues. ‘I mean, what do you get the woman who has it all?’ David looks back at me. ‘Why don’t you open a window or something?’

  David pronounces the ‘th’ in ‘something’ as an ‘f’; a tiny lapse in his disguise. Alex winces visibly at the ‘somefing’ and Jane’s back straightens, her breasts push out, and for a flicker of a second she becomes assured, caustic, her social armour falling away. The guests hold a look between themselves but give nothing away. In this parade of class and etiquette around the dinner table, I could fall over drunk, smash glasses, serve up terrible food, and Alex and Jane would forgive all that over David’s vocal faux pas.

  ‘That’s a beautiful new Aston Martin you have,’ David says to Alex, racing into his repertoire of flattery to cover the mistake. ‘I’ve had the Jag for a couple of years but I’m thinking of an upgrade. Would you recommend it?’

  Alex coughs into his napkin before answering. ‘Yes, it’s splendid. Runs very smoothly. Even Jane can handle it on the corners.’

  Jane tries to laugh, but the noise comes out like a chicken’s cluck. David follows on quickly in his best posh accent: ‘Can I get you anything else before we clear the plates?’

  I swagger to the window, sensing Alex’s eyes on me, and pull the last out of the cigarette before flicking it in a Catherine wheel of sparks into the garden. If the grass and trees outside were as dry as they were in the summer, a blazing fire could start and engulf the lot of us. I return to the table. Jane pulls her shawl round her shoulders, and David tries to refill the glasses, but both the guests insist they’ve had enough. David serves the two of us water. ‘Why don’t you get the dessert, darling?’ he says.

  The wine mixed with all the pills I’ve taken has gone to my head, and I cash in on David’s unexpected vulnerability. Before the accident I never would have goaded him like this. What will it be later, what punishment fits this particular crime?

  ‘Oh, I need another drink first,’ I say. ‘I’ve got some catching up to do.’

  I swing my legs round to face Alex and cross one limb over the other. The slit in my skirt falls apart to show the top of my thigh, stopping a couple of centimetres short of my knickers. Alex leans back, louche in his chair with his legs wide and the napkin in his lap. He keeps his eyes on the top-most V in my skirt for a second too long before he closes his legs and glides them back under the table. As he does so he lifts the napkin to dust his lips, and exposes the line of his erect penis in his trousers. His groin is hidden from the others, but I can’t tell whether he’s meant me to see, though there’s a small smile on his face. I spin round to David who’s watching me with a wooden glare. My stomach bubbles. Would it be too soon to go to the bathroom and bring up the food?

  Jane scans the pictures in the room with pigeon darts of her head.

  ‘Pudding?’ Her voice has raised a degree. ‘I’m not sure I could fit in another thing. That was absolutely delicious, Rachel.’ She folds her napkin into a small rectangle and places it next to her plate, giving it a little pat, as if I would want to use it again. ‘We have an early start in the morning,’ she says.
‘The horses don’t care if you’ve had a late night, and we planned to go for a ride before breakfast tomorrow. Didn’t we, darling?’ She stares at her husband, who takes a moment to jerk into action.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s right,’ he replies, ‘we did.’

  I tip my water into David’s glass and top mine up with wine.

  ‘No, we insist,’ David says. ‘It’s no trouble, is it, Rachel?’ He clasps his hands on the table in front of him and bends his torso across his knuckles to address Alex. Jane flashes panic at her husband but he’s snared now. ‘You haven’t finished telling me about your new business venture.’

  I recognize the tone in David’s voice: his restlessness to win, to find new arenas in which to compete and succeed. Our production company has become formulaic in its success and David needs a new challenge. As if we don’t already have enough. Perhaps if there was more between us as a couple, David’s need to look outward would be less. But then again, I doubt it.

  ‘Where’s the land you’re developing?’ he says, fixing his eyes on to Alex – there’s no chance now that our guests will be allowed to leave without rewarding David’s attention. ‘How far into the planning process are you? I might be interested in coming on board. I’ve got a fair bit sloshing round the accounts, and I’d rather it made a real profit than the paltry interest the bank pays.’ He loosens one hand from his grip on the table and leans across to me, stroking my arm which lies on the tablecloth. ‘Go and get the dessert for our guests, please, darling.’ He lifts my hand and kisses it, looking long and slow into my eyes; a threat that only I can read.

  The kitchen’s hard halogen light smarts my eyes and magnifies the mess of dishes and saucepans covering the worktops – I’ll leave them for the cleaner in the morning. From the fridge I take a pear tart and remove it from its packaging, then pour cream into a jug, holding the pot high so the strand of cream glugs and ripples into the pool at the bottom. I tip it between the two containers a couple of times.