A Fanny Full of Soap

David sat in the driver’s seat staring straight ahead. I put the bags and boxes in the back as quietly as I could, afraid of his volcanic anger. Before I’d pulled the seat belt across, he was reversing into the drive. In the distance, Phyllida was throwing sticks for the labs, a pile of brown earth marking Stanley’s grave. She didn’t look round as we drove away.

The drive home was quiet and uneventful. The country dozed in front of old films behind windows filled with twinkling lights. David didn’t speak and I didn’t dare, despite my overstretched bladder.

He parked the car outside the house and ratcheted the handbrake. He did it on purpose, it was a sort of aggression towards me. He’d have much preferred to push me down a flight of stairs but, being a gentleman, he subverted these desires into car rage. I’d seen him rip windscreen wipers from their anchors. But only when faced with my irrational suspicions. And only from my car.

I’d tried St John’s Wort and acupuncture, but I still saw David as a magnet for women of a certain age and texture. Women whose bodies were plump and pale with round breasts neatly iced with pink nipples. Females who smelled of Yardley soap.

‘I’ll take you.’ I abased myself, it usually worked. ‘I’d like to, really. To make up for…well, you know.’

I could see from his face he wasn’t going to make this easy. When he was in this mood, nothing less than slaughtering a goat on the front lawn would do.

‘The words you’re looking for are neurotic and jealous, Eleanor. As well as unbelievably stupid.’

There’d recently been a woman who’d belted her sleeping husband with a cricket bat, fetched an eight-inch carving knife from the kitchen, run back upstairs, plunged it into his chest, locked the bedroom door and gone to Scunthorpe for the weekend. She pled self-defence and was acquitted. I wondered if…but no. I loved my husband and, after all, humiliation didn’t really hurt. It only felt as if it did.

‘I don’t mean to be, David. I’m sorry.’ No reaction. He really wanted the whole nine yards of penitential crawling. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

While he packed, I busied myself with the kitchen, admonishing it for getting untidy, tenderly soaping the cabinets, making friends with my neglected saucepans. There was one particular favourite that had a red rose sticker on it, the emblem of the manufacturer, but I liked it so I’d left it on the shiny aluminium. I always thought it looked like an England player with the national flower curved over its swollen chest. To punish myself I scrubbed the rose off. A bit of an empty gesture, as David didn’t see it and wouldn’t have understood if he had.

Looking back, over the rim of a well-filled glass, I have no idea who that woman was, but at the time, being a doormat at least conferred on me some use. I was standing on a chair dusting the light bulbs when David came into the kitchen.

‘Oh, just polishing the light bulb. It was a bit grubby, with us being away and all.’ I trailed off under his withering stare. I knew what he was going to say.

‘You are so anal, Eleanor. You really should get help. Don’t bother to get up in the morning, I’ll be off early, cab’s coming at four-thirty, flight’s at eight.’

‘I’ll get a mini-cab. Look, just go to bed. I’m going to stay up, do some work. Goodnight.’

The living room was dominated by his luggage, two soft-sided grips, his lap-top and a small bag containing money, passport, tickets. His sunglasses, camera and the binoculars I’d given him for Christmas were on the table, ready to be packed.

David, pouring himself a large scotch, shrugged. ‘When the job’s finished. Probably about three weeks, maybe four. Time for you to get your attitude sorted out.’

Funny, that: I didn’t think it would be. His mouth had taken on the look of a compressed chipolata. I was dismissed, to go to my bed and consider my position.

I was deep in a dream when the alarm, converted into the tones of an ice cream van by my subconscious, went off. The dream seemed so real, the feeling it left so deep. I had dreamed I was in love, a huge, operatic love, and what filled my whole chest with warm golden syrup was that I was sure I was loved in return. I desperately tried to stop the fading of the dream into the solid winter darkness. I closed my eyes again, tried to get back into the pictures that seemed so real, except…except I couldn’t see his face. I could feel his skin and his arms round me, I knew his hair was soft, I could feel his whole body, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t make his face appear. I knew it wasn’t David; this man was like a bear, while David was a whippet. All nerves and sinews.

There was a bang downstairs. The front door. I grabbed the clock, turned on the light: four-twenty. The cab was early. He’d gone.

I ran downstairs and out to the front gate. The red of the mini-cab’s brake lights glowed as it turned the corner. Never mind, I had the house to clean from top to bottom and I still had some tidying up to do in the garden.

The binoculars, camera and sunglasses were still on the table. I had an excuse to chase David, to make up before he went.

I threw on a jumper and trousers. Sadly, I wasn’t liberated enough by urgency to neglect bra and pants. I had once left off underwear, desiring the perfect denim-clad bottom, and caught my pubic hair in the zip, leaving a small but noticeable bald patch.

Maybe I should call the mini-cab firm, get them to radio the driver to say I’d meet David at Heathrow. No time. If I drove through the housing estate on the other side of the main road I could catch up with them.

I took the Mercedes and with screeching tyres roared up our quiet cul-de-sac. Collecting wing mirrors as I raced through the narrow streets, bouncing over speed humps, I tried to drive like an armed robber – but saw from the speedometer I was barely doing thirty. I even had my hands at ten-to-two on the steering wheel. I did take one corner a bit too fast and immediately braked when the binoculars fell off the passenger seat onto the floor.

Then I saw it: a Speedicabs Peugeot estate. I tentatively pushed down on the accelerator as we raced round the one-way system at Vauxhall. The car ahead lazily waltzed across the white lines; I stuck rigidly to the pattern of lane discipline that I’d learnt for my test fifteen years before.

The traffic lights on the north side of the bridge were changing. For the first time I didn’t look at the river, didn’t say hallo to London as I crossed its main artery. The cab went through the amber light, turning left onto the embankment. I sat at the red with not enough courage to drive on, despite the empty streets.

I reached for the mobile to call the cab firm, call David… Then I saw my phone quite clearly on the hall table and David’s beside it: no good up the Amazon. Up the Amazon, where the prophylactics prowl… The words of a song. What song? Where did my brain find that snippet?

Flash! I’d screeched satisfyingly away from the lights and passed a speed camera at sixty-five. My proudly held clean licence would now be that of a criminalist. But it would be worth it, worth three points or more to catch David and make up.

They were visible ahead again, so I eased off the accelerator. I knew it was the cab, as its rear was dented and it seemed to have been painted by a Bolivian dwarf, the bright rainforest colours fading to beige at waist height. I followed at a reasonable distance, having decided simply to drive into Heathrow behind them and jump out of the car with David’s forgotten belongings, at which he’d embrace me and cover me with grateful kisses.

I was smiling, giggling, anticipating our happiness and the warmth of our reconciliation when the signs for Heathrow first appeared. We drove past the first one. Not surprising, as it was for cargo. The following signs, the ones that made me smell holidays and suntan oil, prompted me to move into the inside lane. But the cab didn’t, it stayed in the centre lane moving at a steady eighty-five past the airport.

Maybe there was another way in, a mini-cab driver’s slip road all but hidden from public view? I didn’t worry. Why should I?

After another ten miles on the M4, I did begin to worry. No, I began to panic. I reached into the glove compartment for the chocolate. An avalanche of Maltesers, M&Ms, hazelnut whirls and organic slabs cascaded onto the floor. I leaned across, desperately grabbing for comfort, and swerved, almost joining some indifferent sheep in a small field. The chocolates were on the floor by the passenger door. With the binoculars. Could I reach the umbrella on the back seat? Hook a packet across with its handle? I wanted chocolate more than I wanted world peace.

I had an idea. Leaving my right foot on the accelerator I lifted my left foot up and over the handbrake, toe pointed like a greyhound’s nose. Cramp set in and I narrowly missed two hedgehogs and a blown out tyre.

I was howling in agony when the cab indicated left. With both eyes closed in pain, I’d missed the signpost and didn’t know where we were. We drove down endlessly quaint and rural roads punctuated with small supermarkets and petrol stations. I think I knew where we were going, but refused to recognise the landscape in the same way I’d refused to believe the depressing result of the pencil test. How well an HB can be held under the breast determines the amount of droop… I found I could accommodate an army boot.

Reality, like cow pats, was something I’d always tried to avoid but, looking round, I realised I was metaphorically standing in one the size of a mini-roundabout.

The cab stopped at the gates of a large ersatz stately home. I drew into a lay-by some way off, knowing what would come next. And it did.

A tidal wave of black labradors surged round the cab as David got out. He’d barely paid the fare that could have bought a new dishwasher, when Phyllida appeared like that plump goddess standing on a soap dish. Venus rising from the dogs. Her normally restrained pre-Raphaelite hair was loose, not only round her shoulders, but also now round David’s. Her tight English tongue seemed to have disappeared down his throat like an egg-laying alien.

He didn’t seem to mind. In fact he appeared intent on eating her face – his right hand kneading her bottom like dough. While the driver took the bags out of the boot, David pushed her back against the gatepost, seemingly with his groin, a part of his anatomy I’d never thought would apply enough pressure to crease linen. He finally pulled away from their kiss, like Dyno-Rod withdrawing from a recalcitrant drain. He and Phyllida grabbed his bags and positively skipped into the house.

I sat in the car for eleven hours and only moved then because I’d eaten all the chocolate. Even my bladder was in shock.

Watching the house until it was dark, I’d seen nothing but the milkman and a couple of field mice, but when the moon came out, illuminating the already beautiful scene and transforming it into fairyland, David and Phyllida walked out into the garden. They carried glasses of champagne. Both wore silk dressing-gowns.

Phyllida’s left leg was visible. Long in the thigh and short in the calf. A young oak of a leg.

This was my moment to confront them, but what could I say? My husband obviously preferred women he could climb up.

I unfolded myself from the car and limped over to the gate where I paused for a moment to allow the blood to find my feet. Then I marched determinedly to the front door, ready to reclaim my husband from this dreadful misunderstanding. Ready to forgive. I passed the living room window, not intending to look in. But I did.

It’s an odd thing watching your husband make love. Especially on a narrow chaise longue. The whole exercise looked like a precarious Victoria sandwich. The delicate, golden chaise, the creamy white filling of Phyllida’s flesh and the brown upper layer of my husband’s back and braced legs.

I suppose I’d never realised how rabbity he looked, with his bottom going up and down so fast it was almost a blur. It reminded me of a wildlife film I’d seen on the Discovery channel. He was approaching some sort of climax, because he arched up and was in danger of losing his purchase; luckily Phyllida’s rider’s thighs clamped him in place. I wondered if she, like her dogs, locked onto the male’s member.

His ecstasy revealed her upper body and I saw that though my breasts might accommodate an army boot hers could easily conceal a small battalion.

Exhausted, David collapsed on top of her and, like a vast amoeba, she enveloped him in her glistening pseudopodia.

I knew where the fault lay as I drove home. It was in me. Had I been a better wife, less jealous, David wouldn’t have felt it necessary to turn to Phyllida for comfort.

But, said the voice of reasonable feminism, you were right. He was unfaithful.

By the time I unlocked the front door, my mind was made up and calm. I took an unopened bottle of brandy upstairs and put it on the bedside table, moving quickly so as not to allow further thought. From the bathroom I brought bottles of aspirin, packets of ibuprofen, a dozen old sleeping pills and a bottle of cough mixture that shouldn’t be taken while operating heavy machinery.

I was ready for the ultimate sacrifice. The purest show of love. The final act of a woman for her man. I was about to kill myself so David could be happy. If I loved him truly, so my logic went, I wouldn’t want him to suffer. Suicide seemed the right thing. The generous thing. The one thing that would make him love me.

I prepared the paper, my best, with rose petals faintly pressed into the linen. An envelope lined with pale tissue. Then the pen. Mont Blanc, wide-nibbed, blue-inked:

My Darling David,

I have just seen you with Phyllida and although the sight hurt me deeply I can only imagine the pain I must have caused you to make you turn to her for comfort.

My darling, I forgive you. I hope you can forgive me and accept this gift of freedom I give you. I love you and will always love you. Now I shall watch over you forever. Be happy my love, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.

Your Eleanor

I folded the stiff paper and put it in the envelope. Licked it, stuck it down. Wrote his name on its faintly lined face. The romance of it made me cry. A tear blurred the final ‘d’. It was all perfect, utterly perfect.

Wearing my prettiest dress – a rather fussy high-necked affair, possibly Laura Ashley – I put on make-up and arranged myself on the bed. I opened the brandy, poured some into the poppy-painted, Lakeland mail-order glass on the bedside table, then realised I may not be found for several weeks.

The idea of becoming a distended bag of bodily fluids being removed by men in contamination suits didn’t fit into my image of a demi-sec Ophelia, so I wrote a note to KT saying I was dead and to come round quick before I started to go off.

It took me twenty minutes to find a first class stamp, but I thought second class might not arrive till after the weekend, by which time I might well be past my best, even with the central heating turned off. Thinking of that, I turned the boiler to zero, threw on an overcoat, and popped round to the post box.

On my return I rearranged myself on the bed, swallowed the pills and drank the brandy while crying maudlin tears, before passing out and passing on.

FOUR