Exhausted from a fit of coughing, he sits hunched over in the bed. She lays her hand between his shoulder blades. The skin is clammy, the pores a field of tiny gasping flowers. When she touches her lips there, the taste is salt. On his right shoulder there’s a tattoo, the Chinese character for wisdom he says, but he could have told her anything. How would she know? Years have blurred the design and now it could be a fading bruise, a mesh of broken capillaries, a leak of blood beneath the skin.
‘Coming to bed, then?’ His tone is tetchy. He strains further forward to peel away from her palm. He reaches for and struggles into his pyjama jacket, shrugging off her attempts to help. He suffers from sweats and chills, and now he’s chilly; she can see the pimpling of his skin.
‘In a tick,’ she says.
He settles back against the pillows, reaches for his book and reading glasses.
‘Can I get you anything?’ she asks.
He clears his throat, gives her a professorial look from over the specs, and finds his page. He sits motionless in the attitude of one about to read, waiting for her to leave.
In the bathroom she brushes her teeth and unwinds a length of floss. The mirror above the basin is stippled with bits from between his teeth and hers. Disgusting really, if you look at it. The trick is to look through it, which she does as she distorts her face to fossick between her teeth. She sluices her mouth with mouthwash and treats the mirror to an ivory grimace.
Bed then. The cold tap needs fixing, even when you screw it tight it trickles; she should call a plumber. A washer is all it needs. That trickling. Her bare feet contract on the lino as it tickles free a memory. That comically awful room in where was it? Somewhere hot and dissolute. Naples? Venice? You had to go down a flight of dirty stairs to get to the lavatory or shower, but in the bedroom, only inches from the bed, there was a bidet with a trickling tap.
They’d had to avoid each other’s eyes as they were shown the room. It was funny, of course, but oddly disturbing. At least it had disturbed Rose.
‘It makes sex seem like something dirty,’ she said, when the stout, whiskery landlady had left them alone.
‘It is something dirty,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that the point?’
This was before they were married, before Gina, before the gaps between her teeth or the rubbery folds around her waist.
She’d pulled her dress over her head and stood in her sandals and knickers watching him wriggle out of his jeans. That flat, darkly furred stomach, the tautness of it, always made her catch her breath. His skin was dark against hers, hot against hers, and the sex was dirty there in the stuffy little room. Dirty, but beautiful too.
It was where Gina had been started, though of course they didn’t know that till some weeks later. And it was definitely Venice, glittering Venice with its stench of drains.
Afterwards she made him shut his eyes while she squatted, hot feet on the cool marble and squirted a jet of water onto her swollen flesh. As she dabbed herself dry, she noticed that his eyes weren’t quite shut, that he was watching through his lashes.
‘I told you not to look!’ she said.
‘I love to watch when you don’t know.’
She stepped into her knickers and his eyes followed them up her legs.
‘Don’t stare.’
She turned away to put on her dress. She’d bought the dress especially for this holiday – pale blue cotton, halter-necked to show her shoulders off. That her shoulders were the loveliest part of her was her own and private opinion – especially when lightly tanned. She’d have liked to make herself look nice- to primp a bit – in private. It made her self-conscious that he was sprawled there, quite relaxed in his nakedness, hands behind his head, watching her every move. She brushed her hair hard and pulled it back – a little too tightly – in a rubber band.
‘Let’s go for a beer,’ he said and yawned and stretched luxuriously. ‘God, I love holidays.’
They walked in silence to a pavement café and he ordered beer and she a cup of tea. All the shaded spots had gone and they had to sit in the full glare of the sun. He was wearing a white shirt and looked darkly devastating. She saw a woman gawping at him from another table and felt both annoyed and proud. The skin on the back of her neck began to tighten in the sun and she let down her hair to cover it. The tea was disappointing, a bag floating in warm water. She had only chosen it to make some sort of obscure point, and she eyed his coolly beaded glass of lager enviously.
‘So, what’s up then?’ he asked, in a tone of exaggerated patience.
‘You promised not to look,’ she said.
‘You’re not still sulking over that! Christ! You should be glad I want to look.’
‘How do you like being stared at?’ She dropped a greenish sliver of lemon into her cup.
‘Doesn’t bother me.’
‘Even if I watched you doing something private?’
‘You can watch me do anything you like.’
‘Anything?’
He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, leant back and extended his crossed legs. It was like a challenge.
‘Have a shit?’ she whispered pathetically.
He hooted. ‘If you want.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you want?’
‘Of course not!’ Blushing, she gulped her tea.
They sat in silence and she watched him watch other women flaunt past, until he said: ‘Remind me Rose, What are we arguing about?’
‘Nothing.’ Aware of the eyes of the other woman on him, she leaned forward to touch his knee and he smiled, believing himself forgiven. No not forgiven, in his opinion there was nothing to forgive, but believing she’d got over her silly tizz.
Now she switches on the shower, undoes her dressing gown. She notices mould on the shower-curtain; you can get a spray for that. It gets harder to lift her leg over the side of the bath but she does it and stands under the warm, irregular sprinkle of water. Get a power-shower, Gina says. Gina picks holes when she comes home now – get a this, get a that – and brings rubber gloves with her. However did they spawn such a clean-freak child, and out of that lovely dirtiness?
Although it’s bed time, she lets her hair get wet. She lathers her body with gardenia soap, enjoying the fragrance, the slickness of her skin. One day she’ll cut her toe-nails, but not tonight. Tonight they are too far away.
‘Watch you do anything?’ she challenged later, after a bottle of wine.
‘Anything.’
His eyes were so dark then, with such a spark. Dark light you’d say if that wasn’t nonsense. That holiday they were at it all the time, but she never used the bidet in the room again, preferring to wrap herself in his musky shirt and go downstairs to wash in private. He didn’t care. He would even kneel and pee in the bidet, only a couple of feet from her head. And later, as he slept, she’d lie and listen to the trickle of the leaky tap, like something silver running through the night.
Can’t go to bed with dripping hair, she’ll soak the pillow and wake up a fright. She turbans her hair in a towel, puts on her dressing gown and pours a little brandy, just a teeny one. Brandy on a Tuesday night. Decadent; whatever would Gina say? She swigs it down. Tastes vile along alongside the mint of mouthwash – but it’s cheering. Is it Tuesday after all?
The gas-fire lights with a gasp of surprise – this time of night! She kneels before it, teasing out the tangles, allowing the orange glow to warm and dry her hair. The bones in her knees press uncomfortably against the rug, an old stained thing that still smells of the last dog – and he died years ago. She sighs. Get a new one – rug not dog. Sometimes Gina has a point. There are teak shelves running up either side of the fireplace and on each a dusty treasure that has been there years: souvenirs, framed photographs, and at the bottom, something she’d forgotten, a pebble painted to look like a snail. Rose fishes it out and weighs it in her hand. Gina painted this for Eric for Fathers’ Day, when she was 7 or 8 and he used it as a paperweight. Rose smiles at the clever way it’s painted, very precise and almost life-like – very Gina. And then she puts the pebble back.
He never hid the evidence. When she found the note it was folded under this paperweight. She was in his study, dusting maybe, or just poking around, and had lifted the paperweight to admire it – not seeing the note at first.
And then the paper, smart blue Basildon Bond, caught her eye.
Idly, she picked it up and read.
You fool. Dear fool. How can something that’s so wrong feel so right? Here’s your other cuff-link. Do be careful! Before too long… Pxxx
She read it twice. There was only one thing it could possibly mean. And he’d put it under Gina’s paperweight. That was the worst thing, seemed, ridiculously, the worst thing in that first moment of knowing. And because she couldn’t bear the note to touch Gina’s work of art, she left it unfolded and un-weighed down, which he might have noticed. But if he did, he never said.
It was around this time that he started doing ‘over-time’ and what a cliché. She felt almost sorry for him when he came back with his excuses, hardly excuses at all, excuses so lame they needed zimmer frames to help them through the door.
‘You’re late,’ she remarked one night, looking up from the news.
‘Am I?’
‘Work?’
‘Sort of, got held up with a … thing.’ He looked ruffled, stubbly, tired. By then he’d started wearing specs and the light reflecting in them hid the beauty of his eyes, his hair was growing thin, his stomach soft, but someone fancied him. She was quite impressed by that. Not just impressed but terrified; not just terrified but riveted.
Someone beginning with P: Pauline? Penelope? Patricia? She didn’t know anyone beginning with P who was the least bit likely. When she did the laundry she examined his clothes for traces. He was having sex with P, she could tell this from the curious wrong tang of his underwear. Once she found a curly auburn hair caught in the weave of a sock. Often she would catch the edge of perfume – a heavy sophisticated musk or crushed orchid smell – certainly nothing like her own fresh and simple eau de rose.
And then, one day, quite by accident, she saw him – saw them. On a Saturday morning, after a furtively taken phone call, he claimed he had to go into the office to sort out some emergency, but would be home by six at the latest. They had people coming for dinner and he promised to be there to set the table, open the wine; all the difficult stuff, she’d muttered.
She saw him enter the Goat and Thistle. At least, she thought so, not absolutely certain at first. She’d caught a sloping shoulder, a jacket the right shade of green, but the glimpse had been too quick for her to be sure.
What had taken her to town that day? Hair, was it her hair? It must have been her hair. She walked past the pub and turned the corner – yes, it must have been her hair; the salon was down that cobbled street. But there was time before her appointment and she had turned back, passed the pub once more. The door swung open on her third perambulation belching beery air and smoke. She could do with using the Ladies, she thought, and why not have a snack there? It was lunchtime, after all. Going into a pub alone was not something she had ever done, but there was no law against it.
The interior was gloomy and dominated by the flashing neon of games machines – Kerang – Lucky Strike – Gold Rush. The bar was L-shaped with booths of seats and tables and stools along the bar. She wore a breezy preoccupied expression; if she ran into him she was ready to express surprise. If he turned out to be alone, she’d join him; if he were not alone, as he was likely not to be – what then? She gulped in a breath and went to the bar.
‘Yup?’ the youngster behind it said. He was chewing gum and she winced at the squelch of it.
‘Small shandy,’ she said, picked up the curling laminated menu, and chose at random. ‘And a cheese and onion roll.’
‘Right,’ he said, and snapped his gum. ‘Sit down I’ll bring it over.’
The leatherette seats in the empty booth looked sticky. She peered round the corner to where the dartboard and lavatory entrances were. More empty tables there – she took a step and then she saw the back of Eric’s head. He was facing away from her, in one of the booths. Opposite was P or at least Rose assumed it was P. Her heart did a frantic stutter and she turned, looked at the door. Should she flee? Why had she ordered cheese and onion when it was bound to repeat on her all day? She could do with a brandy rather than a shandy. What was she doing? What on earth did she think she was doing?
She forced in a breath. It was all right. Unless he turned, he would not see her. And P did not know her. She looked terrifying. Her hair was auburn, thick, upswept, and her lips darkly glossed. Of course she was younger, maybe fifteen years Rose’s junior, but in sophistication she seemed older, intimidatingly, maturely female. You couldn’t say she was beautiful and certainly not pretty, but she was all woman,
attractive, sexy woman. And she was actual.
She was leaning across the table towards Eric, talking intently. She had lines between her brows, arched brows, professionally plucked or waxed. Her skin had a proper made-up finish. She looked tended. Someone who took care of herself. Rose turned to leave. Nothing lost. She hadn’t even paid -but here came the youth with the roll on a tray, thick shards of onion protruding from white pap.
‘Here?’ he said, indicating a seat at a table.
‘No here.’ Rose pointed to one of the booths, from where she’d be less obtrusive but could continue to watch. She took a step towards the booth – that dark red, sticky seating – and she had to clutch the edge of the table, made unsteady suddenly by the thought of biting into all that onion. ‘I don’t feel …’
Alarmed, the youth banged down the tray, looked for help towards the bar where there was nobody to help. He took her arm steered her to the seat. ‘You all right?’ he said.
‘Just a …’ she murmured.
‘Can I get you anything else?’ he said. ‘An aspirin p’raps?’
He was a sweet boy, she saw. She forced her lips into a smile. ‘It’s all right,’ she mumbled, ‘thank you, I’ll be all right in a minute.’
She sat and watched the bubbles crawl up the sides of her glass. One of the machines blurted out a fanfare followed by the chunter of coins. She turned to watch an elderly man shovel them into his jacket pockets; he did it in a feral surreptitious way and immediately started feeding them in again. He had hairs like stuffing coming out of his nose and the machine made his flesh flash red, yellow, green. This was the sort of pub Eric would refer to as ‘hole in the wall’; not the sort of place they went to together, on holiday say, not the sort of place any of their acquaintances would be likely to frequent; he would think himself quite safe.
P got up and Rose put her head down, catching only a pair of pointed boots with sharpish little heels that clacked as she walked past. Rose flexed her toes in her own scuffed loafers. Eric hadn’t moved. Once P had passed, Rose leant out to have a better look. She was wearing a short jacket and skirt suit – and her hips were disproportionately wide, thighs solid under a nylon sheen. Something to get hold of, would be Eric’s opinion, she could almost hear him say it. Rose was a slight, small bosomed person, with bitten nails and straggly eyebrows. What a contrast he was having.
She picked the onion out of her roll and took a bite of bread and cheese, which tasted strongly of margarine. The food wadded itself against the roof of her mouth and she had to swallow hard to send it down. She took a sip of shandy; and stood to go. As she passed the bar, P turned and Rose caught the expression in her eyes, all flirty bright and bold – and fixed on Eric.
The air outside had a new bite to it, and the daylight, after the dim interior, seemed shimmery and reckless. She was late for her appointment but didn’t apologise. She had her hair cut shorter than ever before, and sipped strong sweet coffee to try to stop the trembling of her hands.
At the dinner party that night she drank too much, laughed too loudly and burned the boeuf en croute. Their friends left early, looking quite alarmed. And when they’d gone, she took a rather startled Eric to bed. It was interesting to see his body, to feel him in action, as a stranger would. As P did. What did she see in him? What did they do together? How did Rose compare?
Afterwards, they sat up in bed, each with their book. His, the biography of a Labour politician, hers a novel.
‘Thought I saw you today,’ she remarked, idly turning an unread page.
‘Unlikely,’ he said, without looking up.
‘In town – I was in for my hair.’
‘It’s nice,’ he said. ‘Takes years off.’
‘You think so? What if I dyed it red?’
He frowned and went on reading.
She nursed the affair as if it was her child. After Gina there had been miscarriages and a full-term stillbirth, a boy, dark-haired, firm browed and terribly, utterly still. A boy that Eric wouldn’t have mentioned, a boy that had left an empty twitchy sensation in Rose’s arms for all those years.
She tried not to become obsessed with the affair, but it was a hobby of a sort, an interest. It was a project. She wanted it to run its course and then to end. Like a dog let off the lead to roam in the park, Eric was allowed this adventure, providing, like a dog, he came home when it was over.
Rose made it easy for him. She never quizzed him about his lateness, or why he’d suddenly become indispensible in the office on Saturdays. She never asked him why he smelled wrong. She’d take his clothes from the washing hamper and bury her nose there trying to give a name to the smell – it wasn’t frankly sexual, more mucky sweet – digestive biscuit and hamster cage was the nearest she could get – and always a trace of that heavy perfume. She found theatre tickets in his wallet once; she found the receipt for a lavish cookery book. That hurt. Rose was a damn fine cook, Eric liked to say and she hated to think herself rivalled in that area; it seemed more of a betrayal for him to enjoy another woman’s food than to sleep with her. And he can rarely actually have slept with her. Maybe a ten-minute post-coital doze, but never the journey of a full night.
Not until Brighton anyway. Every year for the past decade he’d taken Rose along to the annual conference – many of his colleagues took their wives or husbands. There were dinners in the evening and over the years she’d made friends with other spouses, during they day they’d shop and lunch and swim together. And after the conference, when all the others had gone, Rose and Eric got into the habit of staying on for a day or two, just lazing, making love in the afternoons, spending time together, romantic time. A dirty weekend he called it, though it was never the weekend. But it would usually be dirty enough in its way, for her anyway, if not, maybe, for him.
And then that year – the year of P – he said, casually over dinner, ‘I thought you might give the conference a miss this year. There’s been cut-backs and I know the others aren’t going – Matt’s wife; Peter’s wife. It’s a pared down affair, a shame but there you are.’
She can remember looking down at her pale blue dinner plate, the slice of quiche half eaten, the innocent new potatoes, the tomatoes in their peppered oil, the pooling green of that oil soaking into the pastry as she waited for her expression to obey her.
‘I might come anyway,’ she said when she was able to raise her eyes. ‘We can still have our time.’ She took a mouthful of the quiche but her throat had closed up and it clumped damp and inert on her tongue as he continued, with smooth confidence:
‘Let’s wait till the end of the month shall we? Have a proper holiday instead?’
She hadn’t answered and he’d taken that as yes. Rose had checked that it was the same hotel, and by phoning Peter’s wife had ascertained that his lie was just that, an utter lie. There were no cut-backs, other spouses would be there. Other spouses and P, of course.
When he returned from the conference she washed his clothes and didn’t ask him how it went. But she did begin to check his diary. On Wednesday, after the list of meetings, there was scrawled a ‘P’. And on Wednesday Eric came home late and weary. In bed Rose sniffed his shoulder and caught the scent of unfamiliar soap. The following Monday, he had jotted ‘P’ again. By 5.30 Rose was waiting outside the office. She wore a raincoat, far too large, borrowed from a neighbour and had tied a headscarf over her hair. It wasn’t much of a disguise and of course, had Eric bothered to look he’d have recognised her. If he did, she was ready to say she was just passing, and what about a drink? But stopping him wasn’t her purpose.
She waited in a doorway across the road from his office exit. It was a blowy day and rubbish tangled round her feet. The wind was nasty, sharp edged, the sort that can blow tears from your eyes. He came out at 6.30, head down, preoccupied, and hurried away. She followed him to a small hotel; of course it would be a hotel. Just before 7, P arrived, the wind messing her hair, her fur collar pulled tight around her throat. P stepped into the revolving door and so, one revolution behind her, did Rose.
The lobby was bright with mirrors and pale furniture and on the reception desk a bowl of green apples gleamed as if polished. P went to the reception desk and Rose went too. She stood beside P and saw, with a frisson of alarm, that her wedding finger was empty. Her nails were dangerous curves of vermillion and Rose scrunched her own bitten nails into her palms.
‘I’m meeting Mr Thomas,’ P said. Rose winced. He could at least have used a pseudonym.
A smooth faced girl looked in the register. ‘Room 12, lift to your left,’ she said.
‘Do you have a brochure?’ Rose said, standing, perhaps, a bit too close. ‘I’m thinking of staying.’
‘Excuse me,’ P said and stepped round her.
‘Do I know you?’ Rose asked her.
P’s eyes were hazel, her lashes clumpy black; her front teeth were square and lipstick smudged, the smell of fur and perfume coming off her was almost sickening. She looked less polished, not as perfect this close to, nor as intimidatingly poised. ‘I do not think so,’ she said. She had an accent of some kind; Spanish was it? ‘Please excuse me.’ She went towards the lift and Rose hastened to the stairs. It was not her plan but she couldn’t help herself.
‘Madam?’ the girl called after her. ‘Your brochure?’
The stairs were carpeted in a migraine inducing pattern; abstract prints hung up the walls. Rose reached the first floor as the lift wheezed open and P stepped out and turned towards Room 12. Rose watched. She watched the swing of P’s hips inside her coat, she watched her pause outside the door, take out a lipstick, wind it up, press it to her lips and blot them with a tissue. She watched her lick a finger and slick each eyebrow. She watched her pat her hair before she knocked. She watched the door open and swallow the woman. And then she stood and watched the door, for twenty minutes or so. It was a perfectly ordinary door with a brass number 12 and a spyhole like a fish’s eye, but only for looking out of. If she could have peered in, would she? She caught a movement and jumped at the pallid blur of her own reflection, in the glass over an abstract nightmare in black and red.
After a time she took the lift down; the interior smelled she thought, faintly of that furry musk, a crushed and vaguely meaty smell.
‘Watch me do anything,’ he’d said.
Hair dry enough now, she brushes it, enjoying the painful snarl of tangles. She rubs in the rose body cream he’s bought her every year since their first Christmas. She unfolds a fresh nightie enjoying the smooth, ironed cotton falling over her skin. Eyes might dim and hearing fade, sense of taste become less acute but the sense of touch, that doesn’t go.
Her bare soles pick up grit from the landing carpet. Tomorrow she’ll get out the vacuum, have a proper go at it. How hard to stay clean for even a moment in this world.
Eric’s asleep, his mouth hanging open, trailing drool. She eases the book from his hand, picks up the postcard he uses as a bookmark. It’s a view of Venice, sent by Gina many years ago.
Dear Mum and Dad, I know how you love the city, and so do I. Though it’s a bit smelly isn’t it? Went all down the Grand Canal in a Gondola. Love you, Gina.
Rose puts it in the book and closes it. Gently she removes Eric’s specs, putting them on top of the book ready for him to reach for in the morning.
She bends down to look more closely at his face, bleached to a weird radiance by his special daylight lamp. You can see the ghost of the sexy man – sexy man she managed to keep despite it all. After he’d dropped P there’d been no one much; no one serious, and he’d been flattened, quieter, tireder. But he’d been there.
She examines the line of the nose, the shape of lips, thin now, liverish and wet. Behind them the teeth are grey. No one would want to kiss those lips now, no other woman. The breath that struggles out between them has a smell she does not want to recognise. The whole room has taken on that smell.
She goes to the window and draws back the curtain to allow in the freshness of a summer night. Light from the room slants down onto the daisy-spattered lawn: all those tiny pursed up petals glowing.
Watch me do anything, he said. He hasn’t many weeks to go, the doctor tells her. And she will be here, watching.