by Laura Powell
There is no bathroom so she uses the glass front of the chocolate vending machine as a mirror and runs her fingers through her hair, before re-pinning her chignon. She dabs her wrist with a spot of perfume too, but it feels like a betrayal to Jerry so she tries to rub it off.
She walks back to the building slowly. The door is locked. There is a silver intercom with one button. She presses it before she has time to change her mind.
‘Dr Braintree?’ says a snappy voice through the speaker.
‘No, Mary Sugden,’ she replies, confused.
‘Sorry, visiting hours are over. Medical professionals only.’
Mary checks her watch.
‘But it’s only three o’clock.’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘No… But I just need ten minutes.’
‘Our residents are with their doctors on Wednesday afternoons. Come back tomorrow morning after nine.’
‘But it’s important.’
‘Management is very strict on it.’
Mary flops onto the steps defeated, just as her mobile phone begins to vibrate. She fishes it out of her pocket. Jerry’s name flashes on the screen. Two rings, three rings, she still doesn’t answer. How can she talk to him as his wife when she is here? She presses the reject button, a cruel word, and tries to ignore the spear of guilt.
She sits on the cold steps for hours, until the streetlamp switches on and until the wooden sign on the driveway is only just readable if she squints. It says, Eugenie Heights is a privately owned nursing home offering luxury residential care for older people living with dementia-related conditions.
One hour passes. Mary’s fingers are bloody. She has picked them to bits with nerves. She perches on the edge of the bed, her coat still buttoned to her chin, and she looks out through the porthole window on the fourth storey of the guest house. Lightning stabs the terraces and cars hiss along the wet road. Her phone buzzes again, it is Jerry’s seventh call. She rejects this one too.
In the bathroom, she rinses the blood off her hands and unwraps a small toothbrush from its plastic packet. She brushes her teeth hard. Her mobile phone vibrates again. She pauses, looks at it, then slips on her shoes and makes her way out of the bedroom, leaving the phone behind.
The dining room in the basement of the guest house is empty. A striplight hums overhead. Pink napkins and pink paper menus cover the tables. The dinner courses are fixed. Prawn cocktail. Chicken à l’orange. Jam roly poly. Mary sits at the corner table and waits for a waitress, wondering whether this is the sort of food she will be served at the hospital; whether they will feed her at all. No one comes to take her order so she walks up to the reception desk and asks for a glass of wine. They are out of red and white, but there is enough rosé for a small glass. Mary swallows it fast. Still no one comes to take her order. She isn’t hungry anyway.
It was never like this on holidays with Jerry. They never ate in hotels, as he always wrote a list of recommended restaurants. He wrote daytime itineraries too and lined up interesting attractions for them to visit. He knew she needed structure, even though it didn’t come easily to her.
Sometimes they fell behind schedule because she took so long doing things; not that she spent hours applying lipstick or mascara, just an inordinate amount of time drifting between rooms, picking up a skirt here, a bottle of moisturiser there and setting them down elsewhere as if her brain had frozen. Jerry never complained. He just seemed afraid to ask why she was that way.
Their honeymoon to the Isle of Man; Jerry always said that was a good holiday – one of their best. Mary picks over the exact days of it in her mind. Actually, it wasn’t good. She recalls an argument about her clerical job and how he had suggested that she slow down to get ready.
‘Get ready for what?’ she had shrieked.
It was the first time she had raised her voice around him and she had felt her neck veins jut out like spines on rhubarb. He had looked at her baffled, yet she knew exactly what he was going to say next, just as she knew what her answer would be. That conversation had been scripted in her head years earlier, between her and whichever man took her on.
‘To have a baby of course,’ he had said.
‘Never.’
She had said it once and firm and, so she wouldn’t have to look at his face, she had taken out her gold tube of lipstick and drawn on her lips. She waited for him to hate her or hit her, that would have been easier, but he only picked up his itinerary.
‘The Manx Woollen Mill,’ he had said. ‘Shall we go before it shuts?’
He unlocked their rental car and drove steadily to the wool loom. She watched a woman with thin fingers pick over the threads, weaving them into one another. Something about it had made her want to cry. But it was soothing too. She would have liked to have stayed there with the wool loom woman and the plaited threads, but Jerry had checked his watch and said the restaurant reservation wouldn’t wait for them.
Over dinner, he drank blood red wine from a carafe and she watched him over a candle flame. Her heart should have swelled when she looked at him but if it did, she didn’t feel it. He finished supper quickly, drank his wine dregs in one and left an inordinately large tip, then they tripped back to the guest house along the promenade, their feet in step and his arm draped around her shoulder, the way newlyweds should walk. But his arm was too heavy; it pressed down on her, though she didn’t like to say so. You should be grateful for a good man like him, she reminded herself.
He had laid out her nightdress, the long cream one with the belted waist that his mother had bought her for the honeymoon. She pulled off the tag and changed into it behind an open wardrobe door because it still didn’t feel right to show herself to him. She lay down cautiously. He lay over her and she observed, once again, that he had a pleasant face, good symmetrical features and a genuine smile. Then she turned back to look at the long shadows on the ceiling while his fingers worked into the knot of her belt and undid each of the silly pearl buttons. He kissed her lips and she could tell he was trying to be gentle, but it was still like a sheet of sandpaper rubbing across her face.
His chest pressed on hers: his heart hammered as though it were ready to leap out, while hers stayed measured and dull.
‘I love you,’ he might have said in his usual way.
She can’t remember exactly, because at that second, her inner self seemed to leave her body, float to the ceiling and watch it all from above. When she looked down at the couple on the bed, she saw a living man and a still waxwork of a woman with dead eyes. The only thing that showed she was alive was the faint pink of her lips.
The man exhaled loudly, flushed crimson and rolled off her again, while the waxwork lay still, her arms straight as though someone had put her on a board and starched her, then ironed her flat.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he had whispered.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve nothing to apologise for,’ he had said and he kissed her cheek. ‘I can’t believe my luck when I look at you and realise you’re mine… Sometimes I wonder when my luck’ll run out.’
Jerry worked his way back into his chequered pyjamas and switched off the lamp. When he was asleep, Mary pulled the nightdress around her and slipped into the doorless bathroom.
She tried to be quiet but the whoosh of the tap, the brush of toilet paper and the rustle as she folded it were all dangerously loud. She propped one leg on the toilet seat and used a pink flannel to scrub herself clean.
She rinsed the flannel and wiped again, faster, more desperate. She stepped into the bath, scooped tap water in her cupped hands and threw it upwards between her legs. She wiped again with a flannel, then toilet paper. The paper was hard and rough as she cleaned away every last bit. Only then did she turn and catch Jerry’s half-open eye.
That was the first time she had heard him cry but she pretended she hadn’t. She dried herself and crept back to bed without a word. His back faced her but his whole body trembled and the mattress shook with h
is silent, swallowed sobs.
When she woke the next morning, he had written another list. He drove them to a farm, to a jam shop, and they walked along the promenade in the cold, eating vanilla ice cream. Jerry had smiled and wrapped his arm gently around her waist.
‘Where next, Mrs Sugden?’
She had laughed a little at that.
Mary ambles out of the dining room and back up to the bedroom. She is nervous, she realises with surprise. This is the first time in decades that she will sleep without Jerry beside her. She is overwhelmed with the heat of the room and she opens the top button of her blouse. It makes no difference so she unbuttons them all and unfastens her bra. She catches sight of herself in the wardrobe mirror; milky-torsoed with a dimpled stomach and tiny breasts that sag. She pushes closed the wardrobe door, disgusted.
Thirteen hours until nine. The phone rings again. She ignores it and roots through the bedroom cupboards instead. There is a packet of toothpicks in one, two sheets of notepaper in a drawer and a Gideons Bible in the one above it; she bangs it shut. She should answer the phone, this isn’t fair on Jerry. She must at least tell him that she is safe. She takes a deep breath and reaches to pick it up but the buzzing stops.
She tries to call back but her phone has run out of credit so she uses the hotel room landline instead. He knows it is her, even before she speaks.
‘Hello? Mary? Can you hear me?’
She swallows.
‘Hello.’
‘Are you all right?’
She presses the phone harder to her ear.
‘I’m fine. I just had to – I’m fine.’
‘You had to what? What’s going on?’
‘I’ll be back soon.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I – I’m not far.’
‘What happened? I was so worried.’
She opens her mouth but nothing comes out. The phone is slippery in her hand.
‘I’ve called a dozen times. I thought—’
‘I just didn’t hear it ring,’ she cuts in.
‘We’re all worried about you.’
They have spoken about her then; all thought what a bad wife, bad mother, bad grandmother she is, but all too goodhearted to admit it aloud. She knows, though. They all know.
‘Please come home. No, tell me where you are and I’ll bring you home.’
She hopes he won’t cry. She couldn’t stand that.
‘I only called back to say I’m fine and I’m sorry, but that I… I need a few days to collect my thoughts.’
‘About what? What thoughts? We can talk about it now, whatever it is.’ There is a long pause. ‘Please Mary!’
He sounds shrill. She resents shrill Jerry. Shrill Jerry fills her with guilt. It means that she is hurting him or being unkind, when he never is. Shrill Jerry is why she conceded and had Cath; her gift to him and her penance, no matter how dearly she loves Cath now.
‘I’ll see you soon. I’ll explain then.’
‘Explain what? What am I supposed to do until then?’
‘There’s a shepherd’s pie in the freezer. The bottom shelf.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that. I mean– Don’t hang up.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll see you soon.’
‘Are you with someone?’
She pauses. She can hear the click of plastic at the end of the line. He will be standing in the hall, twisting the curly telephone cord around his thumb until the blood stops and his skin whitens, the way he does when he is upset or frustrated, usually with a call centre worker.
‘It’s a man isn’t it? Are you with a man?’
She pictures Jerry’s face. He will be in pain. She knows pain. She could make it better. I’m just visiting an old acquaintance. I met him when I was a girl – No, there would be too much to explain.
‘Yes,’ she squeaks. ‘I’m here to see a man.’
There is another long pause.
‘Who’s John?’ says Jerry eventually, a tremor in his voice. ‘Are you with him?’
The phone is hot, so hot it could burn a hole through her hand. How do you know about John, she wants to scream. Instead she puts down the receiver and unplugs it at the wall. Mary turns off her mobile phone too. She throws it onto the bed, surprised at her own force. She pushes back her hair and tips up her head to the ceiling that is puckered with mildew. She must have said his name in her sleep, how else could Jerry know about him? She kicks the base of the bed and stubs her toe. She didn’t want this; Jerry was never supposed to be hurt.
She lies diagonally across the bed. It seems lavish so she straightens out and presses her hands over her eyes but she can still see blue lights and swirling stars. Her hands are heavy, as though someone else is pushing down on them. She rests them by her sides and keeps her eyes closed.
Soon she is lost in the underwater chasm between sleep and consciousness. Photographs swim in and out of her head: Jerry with oiled hair and a sharp white side parting. Nigel Forbes’s mugshot. Jerry hunched over his typewriter wearing his tortoiseshell glasses, while she wheels a trolley of papers past his desk. Jerry removing the glasses and smiling shyly at her across the office, then slipping a note onto her trolley with one word. ‘Lunch?’
Jerry again, this time standing over her hospital bed. He wears a blue paper gown and stares at her splayed legs and feet tied in high stirrups. His face is twisted, as though a big hand has taken it and crumpled it into a ball, while she screams and a nurse ushers him out of the room to a waiting area with the other fathers-to-be. He had pleaded to stay and told her afterwards that he had been able to feel her labour pains, as if she had clawed his hand every time Cath’s head tried to push out, though they were a whole corridor apart. She had told him not to be so ridiculous. He hadn’t a clue of pain.
‘A beautiful firstborn,’ the nurse had said.
‘It’s not my firstborn,’ mumbled Mary, still heady from the gas and air.
No one responded. Maybe Jerry hadn’t heard. His face was buried in Cath’s tiny cheek.
Mary wipes her eyes and opens them. She is awake now. Only she isn’t in bed. She is sitting on the closed toilet lid. She is peeing. Urine seeps between her buttocks, drizzles down her legs and patters onto the mat.
She tries to stop midstream but she can’t, so she stands and wrenches up the toilet lid. By the time she is sitting on the toilet seat, she has finished peeing. The toilet seat and mat are soaked and her leg is drenched. She rolls off her sodden trousers and underpants, and steps straight into the shower. Then she remembers that she hasn’t any spare clothes for tomorrow.
Mary drags her trousers into the shower with her and rubs the entire contents of a small bottle of green shower gel into them. It takes thirty minutes to dry them with a hairdryer. The linen is stiff as cardboard when she has finished. She flops onto the edge of the bed and sighs. Still only ten o’clock.
The pavement is washed with early morning sun when Mary walks back to Eugenie Heights. Her trousers, still stiff with shower gel, rub against her. She arrives sooner than she expected, still twenty minutes too early, but she pushes the buzzer anyway. No one answers. She presses it again and the door clicks open.
‘Hello?’ she says into the intercom.
No one replies and she steps tentatively inside. The nurse’s booth beside the front door is empty. There is a bell on the desk. She should ring it but who would she say she is? Mary takes in the carpet, the console table with a crystal vase and a dish of polished artificial fruit. The staircase is lined with framed portraits of old aristocrats, politicians and a long-dead Prime Minister.
That moment an alarm pierces the stillness. Mary isn’t sure whether to move: if they all evacuate, he might turn down the stairs and see her standing there, her mouth agape like an old John Dory. What would he think of her? She shouldn’t care what he thinks, she reminds herself. This is just about the truth.
Three nurses wearing plastic aprons steam into the hall. They talk hurriedly as they pass Mary, seeming not
to notice her, and they turn off into another room. There is no smell of burning and the fire alarm stops as abruptly as it began. The only sound is the disappearing click of the nurses’ shoes.
She should come back in twenty minutes but her feet don’t listen. She finds herself flitting along the empty corridor, running her hand along a dado rail, peering into a bedroom with bright white bed sheets pulled taut. She could be invisible. If another nurse appears, Mary is sure she would walk straight through her.
She ghosts her way up the stairs, past the marble busts that Jerry wouldn’t notice were he here. Jerry prefers modern things. Poor Jerry, irritating Jerry, but loving Jerry. How disloyal of her to think of him in this way and when she is here.
Her feet are silent on the stair carpet as she drifts upwards, past the first floor, second floor, third floor. She climbs to the top storey and watches over the banister as the tulips in the entrance hall shrink to tiny yellow spots. On the top floor is a short corridor with oriental urns along the carpet and, either side, two closed doors. At the far end of the corridor, a third door is ajar. Mary can’t make out what’s inside, only a rectangular slit of room that dazzles with light.
She steps closer to the door. Next to it is a small brass plaque engraved with a name. She reads it and gasps.
Turn back.
No, knock.
You can’t go in.
You need the truth.
You shouldn’t be here at all.
It really is him.
She steps forward, forward, another step forward until she is an arm’s length from the door. She is about to grasp the handle when it flings open.
‘Oh,’ says a nurse. ‘Are you looking for someone?’
Mary nods. It takes her a moment to find her voice.
‘I’ve found him,’ she says quietly.
‘Who are you looking for?’
‘Mr—’
Mary clears her throat and corrects herself; she is no longer a schoolgirl. She concentrates on keeping her voice steady and not letting it leap up a note as it touches his name – his actual name. The nurse checks the small silver clock clipped to her pocket.
