Remember Why You Fear Me

by Robert Shearman

  So Bobby tottered to his feet. Then tottered to the kitchen, fetched a can of dog food. He tottered back to the dog, who all this time had gazed after his young master in utter adoration. Bobby scooped some of the food out of the tin with his fingers. He bent down towards his dog. And then, very carefully, he smeared it all over the dog’s face. He smeared it in good and hard, so that the jellied meat stuck there firm—some of it went into the mouth, and a little on to that hanging tongue, but the majority hung off the face and gave Sparky an impromptu beard.

  The Bobby sat down again, picked up his Xbox joystick. He squeezed the controls hard, and the remains of dog food oozed out from his fist.

  Alan watched, appalled. “What’s wrong with Bobby?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with Bobby,” said his wife. “Bobby’s got his dog back. Bobby’s happy, the dog’s happy, everybody’s happy.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Of course I’m happy. Come into the kitchen. I want to talk to you privately.” He followed her, and she smiled as she closed the door.

  “What is it?”

  “You should sit down.”

  He did.

  “I’m having an affair,” smiled Alice.

  Alan didn’t know what to say. “What?” And then, “Why?” And, “But you said you were happy . . .”

  “I am happy. I’m happy because I’m having an affair.”

  “Oh,” said Alan. He supposed he ought to have felt angry. Was that what she wanted? But he had no anger left. He’d used it all up, wasted it on loud music and garden rubbish.

  “Don’t look glum, Alan. I’m not glum. We’re going to sort this out. Let me explain how.”

  “Okay.” And Alan felt strangely reassured, actually; Alice always sorted everything out.

  She explained how she could keep everything she wanted. And how he could get the same thing in return. That way everything would carry on as normal. It’d just be a different normal. A better normal.

  He said, very quietly, “Can I have time to think?”

  She was very polite. “Of course you can, darling.” He’d been staring down at the kitchen table as she coolly told him what she wanted from him, how she saw their marriage surviving, what her conditions were. And now he looked up at her. She was staring at him closely, and there was still that smile, and her head was fixed to one side for the best angle, and he shuddered for the briefest moment. “Oh, Alan,” she said. “When we first met, I remember. Trying to work out whether we ought to have just been friends. I think, darling, that we lost our way. I think we could have been such good friends.”

  “And last night?”

  Alice turned her head to the other side, narrowed her eyes, frowned. “What about it?”

  That night Alan stayed on the sofa. He played on Bobby’s Xbox. He played as Tiger Woods. He beat the computer once.

  He went to work. The roads were filled with motorists who’d found love. Old Man Ellis called him in for another emergency meeting, and this time Ellis told him he was a disgrace, and threatened him with redundancy, and Ellis was a short ugly man and body odour clung to him like a limpet, but he’d found love, he’d found Mrs Ellis, he’d made it work, and Alan wanted to ask him what the secret was. Waiting on his desk when Alan came out was an unsigned note calling him ‘Wanker.’ The man who’d called him a wanker was probably in love too.

  He thought about calling Alice. He didn’t dare.

  He didn’t go straight home. He went to the pub. He sat on his own. He drank lager and ate crisps.

  By the time he reached the house, Alice was already in bed. He undressed in the dark, and climbed in beside her. She didn’t move, not a muscle. He couldn’t tell whether she were asleep or awake. Alive or dead. Human or. Or. He wanted to rub against her. In the moonlight her skin looked so smooth.

  There was still no sound from next door, and the silence, the desperate silence, began to hurt.

  “All right,” he said, out loud. “I’ll do what you want.”

  Alan hadn’t been on a date in years, and didn’t know how to dress. So Alice took him to the wardrobe and picked out a tie, a jacket, a shirt, shoes. She inspected the results critically. “You look good enough to eat.” Alice herself was immaculate, she’d never lost the knack, who’d have thought?

  “Maybe we don’t have to do this then,” said Alan. “If this is what you like.”

  She chewed her lip, just for a second, then laughed. “Come on,” she said, and plucked him by the sleeve, and took him downstairs.

  Bobby was playing golf with his new friend. “Hello, champ,” said Alan. “Hello, champs.” He thought the boy on the right was Bobby, because that was Tiger Woods.

  “Don’t wait up!” Alice told the two children gaily.

  They stood on the welcome mat. The mat read, “Nostra Casa” and “A Very Happy Family Lives Here!” and “Home Sweet Home Sweet Home Sweet Home Sweet Home.” Alan raised the knocker, but at his touch the door swung open.

  “We’re expected,” Alice assured him.

  The house was pretty. Everything was clean and ordered and there was the smell of recent polish—or was it something besides? On a shelf with the telephone directory Alan saw his padded envelope, still sealed. “DOG KILLER,” it said, and that accusation seemed so spiteful now. We’re all good neighbours, aren’t we, good friends. Next to it, he saw, there were other envelopes, similarly sized—”Cat Poisoner” read one. “Murderer” said another. Still more: “Child Abuser.” “Rapist.” “Killer.” “Rapist.” “Killer.”

  On a shelf beneath, a cup filled to the very brim with sugar.

  “But where are they?” said Alan.

  “They’ll be in the dining room,” said Alice. Her eyes were shining with excitement. “Let’s see what they’ve got for us!”

  They’d cooked pasta. Lasagne, fettuccini.

  Barbara had really made an effort. Alan had never seen her with her clothes on before, and she looked beautiful, she’d done a really good job. Barbara smiled, a little demurely Alan thought. “Doesn’t she look wonderful, Alan?” Alice cooed. “Good enough to eat!”

  Eric’s smile had no shyness to it, and he flashed it throughout the whole meal. He was wearing a suit. His tie was pure black. Alan thought it made his own striped one look wrong and silly. Eric looked so good he could have got away with a striped tie; even the Santa hat perched on the side of his head looked smart and chic.

  The small talk was very small, but Alice laughed a lot at it, and Alan had almost forgotten what her laughter sounded like. In the background, playing very subtly, was a selection of festive favourites. But there was nothing cheesy about them, they were performed by famous opera singers, and the orchestra was one of the Philharmonics.

  It was time for the dessert. “Allow me,” said Alice, “you two have worked so hard already,” and she fetched it from the brand new refrigerator. “Tiramisu!” she said. “It’s my favourite! Oh, how did you know?” And she sat down, kissed Eric gratefully upon the lips.

  “Tiramisu, yum yum,” said Alan.

  Alice scooped a fistful of tiramisu from the bowl. She looked straight at Alan. And her eyes never leaving his, she smeared it slowly over her face. She massaged it into her cheeks, her lips and chin—then rubbing lower, down on to the neck, thick cream and chocolate peeping over the top of her cleavage.

  Alan winced. Alice’s eyes flashed for a moment.

  “If you don’t like it,” she said, “why don’t you come over here and wipe it off me? Come on. Lick it off. Lick it off me, if you dare.”

  Eric grinned at that, Barbara smiled so demurely. Alan didn’t move.

  And Alice smiled such a polite smile from beneath her mask of soft dessert. “I think it’s time we left you two lovebirds alone.” And so saying, she got to her feet. She picked up Eric from the waist, she tucked him under her arm. And they left the room.

  Alan couldn’t be sure, but he thought as he left that Eric may have
winked at him.

  “Well,” said Alan. He looked at Barbara, who was still smiling, but was it really demure, was she perhaps just as embarrassed as he was? “Well,” said Alan. “What do we do now? Just the two of us.”

  He reached across the table, and took hold of Barbara’s hand. It felt like the skin of his dead dog.

  Alan said, “I hope we can be friends.”

  He closed his eyes. He concentrated hard. As if through thought alone he could make that hand warm to his touch, make it take hold of his in turn. As if, by wanting it enough, he could make Barbara love him.

  He heard the sound of bedsprings, of his wife shrill and noisy, her screams of pleasure as she reached orgasm. He kept his eyes squeezed tight, and tried to block out all the noise, all the noise there was in the world.

  THE

  BATHTUB

  Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley did not like her grandmother’s bathtub. Whenever she visited her grandmother, the bathtub was something she took great pains to avoid. She’d try very hard for the duration of that visit not to pee. And if she needed to pee, she’d tap with her feet really quickly to try to drive all the pee away. But sometimes she couldn’t help it, she really had to pee. And when she did, she wouldn’t look at the bathtub, she would walk straight to the toilet, eyes fixed forward. And after she’d peed she’d have to use the sink, and to do that she’d face the wall, press her feet up right against the skirting board, and she would shuffle around, and that way she’d be as far from the bathtub as could be.

  There was hair in her grandmother’s bathtub, coming out of the plughole. It looked like they were growing out. They were thick, like spiders’ legs, but spiders don’t have that many legs, so it was like lots of spiders had been mushed together. They were black. And that was wrong, because her grandmother didn’t even have black hair.

  Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley really liked her name, Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley. She liked it, because if you spelled out the first letters, S A R H, that was very nearly her first name back again. It was only missing a second A, and she could pretend that it was there. It made her feel secure. And when the kids at school spoke to her, or her mother, or her father (when he was there), when they called her Sarah, she would feel that, yes, she was doubly Sarah, she would think, I’m Sarah through and through.

  Sarah Anne Rachel Hadley’s mother was called Sophie Maureen Hadley, and that wasn’t any good, that didn’t spell anything.

  Sarah’s grandmother was called Eunice Pinnock. Sarah didn’t know if her grandmother had a middle name. She’d never asked.

  Sarah liked her grandmother well enough, but she would sometimes try and hug Sarah, and Sarah didn’t like that. Whenever Mummy told her they were going to visit her grandmother, Sarah would get sad, and she’d ask her Mummy to stop all the hugging from happening, and Mummy said she’d do her best, and she had told Granny, but Granny sometimes forgot. Granny was old, old people forget things. So if Granny hugged Sarah, Sarah would have to be a brave little girl and put up with it, and not cry, and not shout, and Mummy would reward Sarah with a treat.

  Her grandmother was always forgetting that Sarah was a special girl, and that her skin was very soft, and that hugging was very bad for soft skin because it would leave marks on it, or even worse, lots of grandmother’s skin might get left on Sarah’s skin, and then maybe it’d get sucked through the pores, and then grandmother would be inside Sarah. Sarah didn’t want that. Sarah wanted to be Sarah through and through.

  When her grandmother hugged Sarah, she’d smell of cigarettes and cinnamon. Sarah would sometimes see her grandmother smoking cigarettes, but she never saw her eat cinnamon. Sarah liked the smell of cinnamon, but not when it was on grandmother. And she didn’t like the smell of cigarettes at all.

  And another thing about the bathtub was the taps. The taps were too big. Something could be hiding inside the taps. Sarah would sometimes look at the taps. Because she didn’t want to, but she would sometimes look at the bathtub, she couldn’t help it, not for all her precautions, she would just stare at the bathtub, it was like an itch in her mind—she’d stare at those giant taps, those ogre taps, she’d wonder why they had to be so big.

  She didn’t like the pipes either, which were rusty, bits of rust would get in the water, it’d make the water dirty. She didn’t like the cracks in the side of the bath, they looked like dirt too, but they wouldn’t wash away. She didn’t like the colour of the bath. It was a green bath. Sarah liked green well enough. But it was the wrong colour for a bath.

  For that second A, S A R A H, Sarah would make up lots of names. Sometimes she would be Antonia. Sometimes she would be Adelaide, she’d read that in a book once, she thought that was pretty. Sometimes, when she felt bad, she’d be Anne. Sarah Anne Rachel Anne. She’d rattle it through her head, it sounded like a train on the tracks.

  Most days Sarah didn’t put much thought into which name she’d pick. She was a sensible girl, really. She thought choosing her new name might be silly.

  She sometimes wondered whether which name she chose affected anything. Whether she had better days as Antonia or Alexandra or Adelaide or Alice or Agnes or Anne. She’d thought about keeping a diary to see, it would be interesting. She hadn’t got around to it yet.

  She was trying out a brand new name the day that Mummy gave her the news, she was Amanda, and maybe that had been the problem.

  “Pack some toys,” Mummy said. “We’re going to Granny’s for a while.”

  Going to her grandmother’s made Sarah sad, mostly because of the hugging, but also because of the cigarettes and the cinnamon. But she liked the journey to Granny’s. She’d learned it by heart. They’d catch the 23 bus to the train station. Then they’d catch the train. Then they’d catch the 32 bus to grandmother’s house. Sarah liked the way that 23 was 32 backwards, and that 32 was 23 backwards, and the train bit could be sandwiched in the middle.

  She’d sometimes ask Mummy whether they could go to her grandmother’s house, but not actually bother seeing her grandmother, they could just turn right round when they got there and go home again, they could get off the 32 bus and get another 32 bus going in the opposite direction, then get the train, then get the 23 bus, and that would be good. And Mummy always said no.

  Sarah said, How long are we going for?

  Mummy said, “I don’t know, as long as it takes,” and that wasn’t an answer at all, but Mummy sounded cross, and Sarah didn’t like it when Mummy was cross. Sarah had only been trying to work out whether they’d be there so long that at some point she might need to go and pee, and Sarah grimly concluded they probably might be. She cried at that.

  She cried too when Mummy said they were going to get there by car, because that would miss out the only good bit. Sarah said, I want to go by bus, and train, and bus. Mummy said, “We’re going by car, we’ll be carrying too much luggage,” and Sarah didn’t like the sound of that.

  And another thing about the bathtub was that it made a noise, a sort of whispering noise.

  And another thing about the bathtub was that it smelled of cigarettes and cinnamon.

  The good news was that grandmother didn’t even try to hug her. Grandmother hugged Mummy, and Mummy held on to grandmother so long and so tight, and grandmother just forgot.

  Sarah went into the sitting room whilst Mummy and grandmother talked in the kitchen. Sarah sat down on the sofa. She counted the tiles on the ceiling, and there were fifty-three complete ones, and sixteen half ones, and three which were partially obscured by light fittings. The same as always.

  After a while, her grandmother came in to see her. She stood in the doorway. “Do you want to take your coat off, dear?” and Sarah said, No, and grandmother left.

  After a while, Mummy came in to see her too. “Take your coat off, Sarah,” she said. Sarah did, and Mummy took it, she left the room to hang the coat up somewhere, Sarah didn’t know where.

  Sarah began to fidget because it was Tuesday and Tuesday was bath night, and
they never visited grandmother on Tuesday because Sarah was too busy at home doing ordinary things and having her bath. But she didn’t want to fidget too much, she didn’t want Mummy to notice, because then Mummy might ask what was wrong, and Sarah was very bad at lying, and she’d have to tell her, and then Mummy might say she’d have to have her bath at her grandmother’s. And the idea of missing bath night distressed Sarah, but the idea of grandmother’s bathtub with its pipes and taps and spider legs distressed her more, she’d rather have the one distress over the other.

  And at seven o’clock sharp Mummy said, “Time for bed, little lady,” and Sarah thought she might have got away with it. She’d lie in bed all night and be covered in dirt and the dirt would be soiling the bed sheets but that would be okay. And her grandmother said, “Do you want to use the bathroom, dear?” and Mummy said, “I’d forgotten, it’s bath night!” and Sarah hated her grandmother so much.

  Mummy went upstairs to run the bath. Sarah thought she would stay downstairs, if she stayed downstairs as long as possible then maybe Mummy would forget who the bath was for, and at home Mummy never needed Sarah to be in the room whilst the bath was being run. But this time she said, “Come along, Sarah,” and Sarah had to follow her, and as she climbed up the stairs it seemed to her that her body was getting heavier and heavier and that she was walking through glue. Mummy didn’t seem to notice the dangers of the bathtub, she walked straight up to it without even taking a deep breath or anything, and she turned on the taps and the taps whistled and spat out water, spat it out in thick gobbets, then the water began to flow.

  Mummy said, “I’m sorry about this, darling, I know this is all very confusing. But you’ll understand one day, and I promise you, it’s for the best.” And Sarah was looking straight at her, and nodding, just so she wouldn’t have to look at the bathtub, and hear what the bathtub was whispering.

  Mummy turned off the taps. Steam rose out of the water. “You’re all set,” she said. It’s too hot, said Sarah. “It’s fine,” said Mummy. Sarah said, it’s too hot. Mummy said, “You want to wait until it cools down? Okay. Don’t be too long, I might need the bath myself! Here’s a towel.” And Sarah wanted to say, don’t go, don’t go, don’t leave me, don’t go—but she’d been having baths on her own now for years, and Mummy left.