Rich Deceiver

by Gillian White

  ‘What do you want? Why did you tell me? Why couldn’t you have carried on with your sordid little affair on the side, why couldn’t you have just carried on screwing the bitch in secret without bringing me into it?’

  And this is the first time Ellie has imagined Malc in bed with his arms wrapped round somebody else. Somebody else knows what he feels like and somebody else knows what he says.

  ‘I had to tell you, Elle.’

  ‘Because you are leaving?’

  ‘Yes, because of that.’

  ‘So you would have kept me in the dark if it hadn’t got this far?’

  ‘I would have tried to spare you.’

  ‘Spare me?’ Ellie screams.

  ‘Please, Elle.’ His head is going into his hands again but she won’t let it, she jerks it up with shocking words. He can’t be allowed to escape like that.

  ‘What’s she like in bed then, Malc? Hot, is she? Juicy and eager? I expect she does things that I won’t do. I expect she gobbles you off… that’s the expression, isn’t it? Does she suck your cock for you… or perhaps you have this secret urge to go up women’s arses. Perhaps that’s what she does for you…’ Even as she rages comes the agonising awareness that spite and fury are such temporary shields.

  Malc holds out his hands like a preacher, but they are more like the solid buffers of a train. ‘Don’t make this worse, Elle, please. I beg you, don’t make this worse than it already is.’

  ‘Could it be worse? You say you know how I’m feeling now. I doubt that, Malc. I doubt that you’ll ever come even close to knowing how I am feeling just now. I think I knew. Maybe that’s just my pride protecting me, Jesus, I need something to protect me, but I think I knew you were off fucking somebody else.’

  ‘Does it matter whether you knew or not? Does that feel important?’

  ‘You fucking bastard. And why tonight? Why did you pick tonight to tell me? Did you plan it with her? Did you decide this between you and are you going to ring her up in a minute, one of those quiet phone calls you make from your “study” when the door is closed! I suppose they were all to her, weren’t they? All those late evening phone calls! Oh, what a pathetic, blind cow I am! Did you laugh at me, Malc? I must have been so fucking funny. Did you say to Gabriella, “Oh, don’t worry about Ellie, she can’t even get one clue in the Telegraph crossword, we’ve nothing to worry about from that quarter”.’ Ellie cannot stop now. She cannot even consider stopping because what will happen when she stops?

  ‘Elle, you know very well it could never have been like that.’

  ‘Do I? How do I know that? You tell me, Malc. How do I know?’

  ‘I have never been that sort of person… the kind of person to be deliberately cruel to anyone else.’

  ‘I never knew you, Malc. I never even knew the slightest thing about you.’

  ‘We did know each other once, Elle, but that was a long time ago.’

  ‘Before this raving bitch came along. Before you went sniffing between her legs.’

  Oh God, how these words are hurting her. They are vile, they are filthy in her mouth. She spews them out because she must, she vomits them into the horror. She cannot rid her tongue of the taste of them.

  Malc closes his eyes with pain so Ellie seizes on that. ‘Oh, it hurts you does it, to hear me slagging your filmy piece off in front of you? Noble, good-thinking Malcolm Freeman, towering high on his pinnacle of love, is that it? Looking down to the depths of the sewer which is his crappy old wife Ellie! God, you disgust me. God, you really, really revolt me. I shudder when I think of you together. That’s what I do, I shudder.’ And Ellie shudders.

  ‘I’m going to go now, Elle.’

  What does he mean—go? ‘But you haven’t had any tea!’

  Malc stands up. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘But where are you going? And at this time of night! Don’t go now, Malc. Stay for the night. Stay and let’s talk. We can’t leave it like this, don’t leave me like this. Don’t go out, Malc’

  Malc looks like a wounded soldier, brave, strong, but one of his legs is probably full of shot and he’s bleeding somewhere you can’t see.

  ‘I will come back and see you in the morning.’

  Ellie makes frantic gestures. She whines like a dog, ‘But I have made this pie!’

  ‘It will be easier for us to talk in the morning.’

  ‘And there’s episode four of White Gates on at nine twenty-five.’

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you any more than I have to in all this, Elle.’

  He can’t leave without his coat. Ellie rushes into the hall and grabs it, clutches it against her, refusing to give it up.

  Malc stands there staring at her for a moment, his car keys in his hand, his scarf, she notices, he never took off. So he’d never meant to stay.

  ‘I’m not going to give you your coat, Malc, because I think this is silly. I think you should stay. We have to talk. You can’t just leave me.’ Not like this. She screams in her heart. You can’t just leave me like this! You can’t just walk out and drive away and leave me with all this pain, and all empty, on my own.

  ‘I don’t think any amount of talking would get us anywhere tonight. You are too het up. We are both too upset.’

  ‘Don’t go, Malcolm.’

  ‘I will phone in the morning to see how you are and then I will come round if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Don’t go, Malcolm.’

  ‘About half-past nine. I will phone. On the dot, I promise you.’

  ‘And what will I do until then?’ He is halfway out of the door and the pie is burning.

  ‘Try and get some sleep, Elle. I want you to try and sleep.’

  ‘D’you think I should fill a bottle?’

  ‘Yes, fill a bottle, and take a book with you.’

  ‘I haven’t got a new book. I never went to the library this week.’

  ‘Well, a magazine then. Hell, Elle, there must be something in the house that you haven’t read.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep, Malc. I didn’t mean those things I said.’

  ‘I will phone at half-past nine. I promise.’

  ‘Don’t go, Malcolm.’

  He closes the door very quietly. Like a frightened man who’s got a stolen diamond hidden in his pocket.

  Ellie creeps after him and opens it. She begs into the screaming cold night on a little whisper. ‘Don’t go.’

  She watches the puffs of the jeep’s exhaust, like fleecy pieces of candy floss, sticky, sweet, gone before you can taste it.

  She lets the door close behind her and drops to the floor, cuddled up tight on the welcome mat and hugging her knees like a little child.

  She licks her knee, tasting herself. She digs in her teeth and makes a red mark. She rocks herself while she hugs his coat, ‘Oh don’t go, Malcolm. Don’t leave me all on my own. Mam, Mam, help me, kiss it better, Mam, kiss little Ellie better, Mam. Make it stop hurting… no, no, no, no, take it away make it stop God. Jesus tender shepherd hear me. I’ll be a good girl, God, and I’ll do anything You say only please take this away and make it stop.’

  22

  THERE HAS TO BE humiliation first. Nobody likes it. Nobody wants to know about it but it just has to happen, that’s all.

  In order to see it through it is quite important to remember that humiliation is something the victim allows to happen. In Ellie’s case she begs for it to happen, and when it comes it is awful.

  Never does Ellie Freeman want to endure another such night as this first one. She takes a barrel of biscuits to bed after downing her hitherto untouched sherry and Malc’s abandoned scotch. She carries the whisky bottle to bed with her as well as a hot water bottle, and there she lies, dizzy and wide-eyed, propped on her pillows with the bedside light on, and the curtains undrawn, and the bedroom feels as empty and huge as an aircraft hangar without doors.

  From that night onwards, throughout the rest of her whole life, the taste of scotch will become the taste
of anguish.

  Disbelief is the first line of defence, and that is a thought process requiring intense concentration for the super-bending of facts, the distortion of expressions and the turning round of conversations. He cannot have meant what he said. Malc is attracted to this evil woman because he is not strong enough to resist her. The last thing he really wants in the world is to go off with somebody else, to leave his home and his wife. And it won’t take too long before he comes to his senses.

  And that scenario requires an imaginative response from Ellie, because what will she say and how will she behave when he comes back, cap in hand, guilt-ridden and sorrowful?

  She will be quiet, understanding, dignified but hurt. Extremely hurt. But at this point in time she would take him back, most certainly.

  Unsophisticated and still very immature in a strange, little-boyish kind of way, Malc has misread this woman’s intentions towards him. Feeling uncommonly pleased with himself, no doubt, for attracting such an obvious creature, his response is, perhaps, an understandable one.

  She’s read about men of Malc’s age in magazines. They cannot be trusted. They are afraid of getting old, and of losing their appeal and their sexuality, their identity even, and they are striving to find themselves before it’s too late.

  And they often make fools of themselves in the process—hell—she peers at the centre spread in The Deesider which she has beside her in bed, in Malc’s place. He could be this girl’s father!

  Anyway, Malc loves her, for hadn’t she seen love in his eyes this evening, even as he was unfolding his tale of horror, even as he was, with every word he uttered, destroying her? Yes, she had seen love on his face and it was love that had caused him his torture. If Malc did not love her he wouldn’t have bothered to be gentle. He would not have put up with her fishwife reactions, he would have stormed out of the house earlier and he certainly would not have planned to ring her tomorrow.

  And Ellie knows Malc in a way that this unscrupulous, hard-faced creature never could and never will. Ellie knows where his strengths lie, and his weaknesses. If she is calm enough and cunning enough to fight this battle correctly she reassures herself that she has all the weapons.

  All the weapons except two… novelty and beauty, which Ellie thrusts aside.

  Malc, after all, is a creature of Ellie’s creation. Not in a million years would this malicious Gabriella de Courtney have looked at him twice just a year ago, in his overalls, with his hangdog expression and his going-to-nowhere eyes. But the other man is still there, forming the core of him, deep inside him, no matter how urgently he struts along or how effortlessly he conducts conversations or how charming he sounds on the phone. Oh yes, the old Malc is still there all right… the Malcolm who is unquestionably Ellie’s.

  And, if necessary, if she has to, she will call him back. Like a spirit.

  She has the power.

  Already there are silly little things which gnaw—she hasn’t locked the doors and she hasn’t turned the heating off—Malc’s last jobs of the day.

  Ellie slurps scotch from the bottle, wiping the trickle off her chin with the back of her hand like a hard woman. She reaches confusedly for a fag, her hand hits the biscuit barrel and she brings that into bed with her instead and cuddles it.

  She’s glad she hadn’t confessed to Malc that she’d gone to the gallery. Already she regrets her loss of dignity and that revelation would have made her feel worse. Unable to smoke, a whole week seedling under a million dark suspicions, Ellie could not endure remaining at home doing nothing with the minutes ticking so slowly by. She felt that if she paced the house any longer—with the magazine pictures the centrifugal force of her universe, the black hole—she would lose her mind. Her appointment at The Plaza Lifestyle Centre wasn’t until next week and she hadn’t got anything to do. Her hands were not steady enough for the patchwork and nor were her nerves.

  So she slapped the pages closed, stuffed them back under the mattress again, slammed the door and backed out the car. No sign of Maria, thank God. That snake-in-the-grass next door must have gone to work.

  She drove through all the old streets, moving slowly down Nelson Street and noticing, for the first time, the holes in the road. Dusty red brick, aerials and drainpipes, the rooftops made patterns against a darkening sky. She had no fear that she might be seen and recognised—not that it mattered—for during the day there was nobody home. Her heart lurched when she passed number nine and saw new curtains up in the front room window; someone had placed a cupboard thoughtlessly so that its plywood back showed through the net. Someone had gone and spoilt it.

  At that point in time she couldn’t quite understand what was making her so nervous—was it this slinky woman cuddled up so safely in Malc’s arms, or was it the stabbing jealousy of knowing that Robert Beasely was there making merry among them. Or fear… of loss, the lonely feeling of exclusion from something, being locked out without a key and nobody willing to let her in, or even to tell her the correct address.

  Elspeth Freeman was the only one not invited to the party which was going on with such hilarity behind that damn green door.

  Perhaps her fears would come into focus correctly if she could get a look at the woman in the pictures.

  Ellie parked down an old dock road where tramlines were still embedded in cobbles. They were still headed in the same direction, still knowing where they were going, only not understanding that there was no longer any point. Ellie felt like a stranger, yet on familiar ground. All the big warehouses round here had been knocked down, and in their place rose weird, wooden, multi-layered structures, some octagonal, held together with pieces of glass, with little square penthouses set on the tops. The cranes had gone, the containers had gone, the chains and the ropes and the hoists had gone.

  But they had left some of the bollards and painted them glossy black. Now they looked like something to do with No Parking, and there were little signposts bristling with information that pointed her towards the gallery. She followed them with great interest, meandering down dark passageways lit by Victorian lighting, and in dark overhangs were shop windows displaying artistic wares, pewter vases and what looked like pieces of driftwood. There were very empty-looking shop windows and deserted-looking shops. She peered inside one—it was mostly carpet.

  They had not been able to conceal the smell or the sound of the Mersey… they had not been able to pick it up, stuff it, label it and stick it at the back of the dockland museum.

  She had nearly smashed straight into the gallery doors. There was so much glass she got it mixed up with the space. She found herself walking like a blind person, her hand stretched out anxiously before her. And there were so many levels of paving, so many fountains and statues, that the whole effect was confusing.

  Sudden, total silence greeted her as the door swung closed behind her. She was a huge, childish painting, red and raw from the cold, a roughly-done intruder scribbled in sticky crayons. Ellie had never imagined the paintings would be so large. They dwarfed her, she felt like a crumb on the floor as she stared up at them, overawed, and you never saw the same sort of force coming out of real people as you did from these oil ones. And Ellie had never noticed that the sky or the sea were full of such colours. But they were, really, if you looked hard.

  Ellie walked from room to room, her feet echoing hollowly. Everywhere was fresh new wood, so bright it was almost dazzling. And all the roof was glass sky. There were people sprinkled about, standing back or reading catalogues but they were unimportant. She stopped rushing because you could not rush in here, you had to walk slowly and with respect and, this was the queerest sensation, you had to look up.

  So where, in all this, was Gabriella?

  Women in uniforms like long-distance coach hostesses sat reading on chairs in the corners of the rooms. In the foyer was a counter selling postcards and knick-knacks like tea towels and miniature jars of jam. Beyond that was a café and over the wood you could just smell the coffee. Ellie sensed that soon s
he would find a room which said Private.

  She did.

  She loitered, pretending to be waiting for someone by looking bored and checking her watch and tutting tiredly every so often. You could see the door from the café, so she went inside for a while and sat down, ordering nothing but easing off her shoes.

  And then Gabriella de Courtney came out with a man. Ellie wouldn’t have recognised her from the photographs but for the hair; there was so much of it. It wasn’t long, not hanging down, but sticking out wildly with bows here and there like an exhibition dog. And yet Ellie knew that every fuzzy strand was meant to be as it was, that every tweak and every tickle of it was just right.

  And it was fawn.

  And she was wearing just about the ugliest ‘suit’ that Ellie Freeman had ever seen. If you could buy suits at Woolworths, then Ellie would be quite certain that this one had come from there. It was a kind of mustard-coloured linen, and crumpled, and there were seams in Gabriella’s stockings. Gabriella was long, lean but busty with a multitude of scarves flung round her neck, and she had the most excited eyes that Ellie had ever seen.

  The man was but a shadow by her side. Gabriella saw him out expertly and then, with long determined strides, went back through the door marked Private.

  Well—and what had Ellie expected?

  Not this feeling of exhaustion, certainly. Ellie gained nothing from her visit to the gallery save for the loathing directed at herself for succumbing to the urge to go there, and an unexpected, deeper sinking of the heart. If Ellie was utterly frank with herself, and she was, she understood this second feeling and froze in her tracks. Ellie realised instantly that she did not know this bold woman, and that if she ever became her enemy she would not know where to attack.

  What the hell should she do? Ellie swigs at the whisky again, and searches her befuddled mind while she blunders through the bedclothes for a lost bit of biscuit. No, she’s glad she didn’t let on that she’d been there. That would have been a grave mistake.

  Gabriella de Courtney is no beauty… not in the way that Ellie sees beautiful. And yet…?