‘Are you familiar with this town?’ Susan asked me, hinting slyly that I might be lost and our steady, smooth progress an aimless wandering.
‘Well enough by now,’ I said.
‘So you know where you’re going?’
‘Oh yes. Just keep driving.’
The streets petered out to a cindery track with water-filled potholes. The last of the houses here were abandoned, boarded-up, vandalised. She drove slowly, the Mercedes’ fat tyres crunching through cinders and broken glass, swaying portentously on its suspension, the headlights picking out the chain-link fence to our right, here and there sagging, in places torn down. She said breathlessly: ‘This leads nowhere. It’s a dead-end.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘You can stop.’
With the engine silent and the headlights switched off, she started to panic. The sheen of her jacket trembled.
‘Why here? There’s nothing here …’ And then with a note of vindictive triumph: ‘You’re trapped! They’ve got you cornered. Do you think you’ll get away? And you won’t use that stuff on me. You daren’t. They’ll put you away for life—’
‘Get out of the car.’
‘No.’
I took her gently by the throat and let her feel the point of the needle an inch below her left ear. Her throat worked inside my palm. I said, ‘Calm down and get out of the car. I don’t have the same faith in Wayne that you do. I think this stuff sends you crazy before it kills you. What do you think?’
‘You can’t expect me to walk in these shoes,’ she complained when we were standing on the cinder track. She shivered in the thin, expensive jacket. ‘Listen to me for a minute, just listen. Please.’
‘This is all a stupid mistake.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes! I – I don’t even know your name …’
‘Of course you know my name, darling. We were married for eight years before you ditched me and went off with Benson. And then you had me put away in the Oxtoby Clinic. Surely you remember that.’ I pushed her in front of me. ‘Through here.’
‘Where? I can’t see …’
‘The gap in the fence.’
‘No, please … why? What are you doing?’
‘Showing you the harbour by moonlight.’
Inside the fence the cinders gave out and the ground became sticky, sucking at our shoes. After a few steps she lost hers, the heels stuck in the mud. I grabbed her arm as she slithered in her stockinged feet.
There was a little moonlight breaking through the heavy clouds, barely enough, but just enough, to make shadows of the ships’ hulls with their broken superstructures and peeling funnels, leaning this way and that, ready to topple but held in terrific suspension.
We went on, sinking up to the ankles.
She started to gabble suddenly. ‘What was I supposed to do? You don’t remember what happened, do you? You had a breakdown. You tried to kill me. The brakes of the car, remember?’
‘I must have had a reason,’ I said.
‘I had to put you in the clinic. I had no choice. You were ill … Peter. I did the best I could for you.’
‘Funny,’ I said, supporting her, shoving her on, ‘and all the time I had this crazy idea that you were dead. I was certain of it.’ We were both panting now. ‘What made me think that?’
‘I don’t know. Oh Peter – ’
‘Sometimes, you know, I was convinced I’d killed you. I thought you’d gone off the road near where you used to meet Benson on the sly – when the two of you were having an affair. You must remember that. Your affair with Benson. Then other times I thought you’d committed suicide. I even thought you’d gone blind. Isn’t it stupid? The mind plays all sorts of tricks.’
‘That was your illness.’ She was panting hard, sucking in air like sobs. ‘Oh listen to me! Peter. Yes, I was seeing Neville – it’s true – and you found out. We weren’t happy together, you and me, don’t you remember? I wanted a divorce.’
‘No, sorry,’ I said, ‘that part’s gone. The shock treatment. Not far now.’
‘You broke down when I told you – you had a breakdown.’
‘Never mind, darling,’ I said, ‘not to worry. That’s all in the past now, gone and forgotten. Yesterday’s dishwater.’
She screamed suddenly, ‘Let go of me, you bastard! You’re not my husband! He’s dead!’
When I let go of her she skidded about, arms flailing, comically trying to run, and the harder she tried the deeper she sank. Up to her calves now, arms doing a wild backstroke, she flopped full-length and lay imprinted in the black radioactive mud.
I bunched the front of her silk-satin jacket in my fist and hauled her up. On her smooth blonde hair she looked to be wearing a black skull-cap. She clung to my arm.
‘Please don’t hurt me, Peter, I beg you.’
‘Come on.’
‘Don’t. You can’t.’
I started to laugh. ‘Who’s going to stop me?’
‘It was for your own good – ’
‘Was it really?’
‘Peter,’ she moaned, ‘you can’t do it. I’m Susan, your wife!’
I could feel her heart beating against my fist.
She went rapidly on, ‘I’ve done wrong, I know, I admit it. But you won’t hurt me, you can’t, because you still love me. I know you do.’
‘You think because I still love you that I won’t hurt you,’ I said. ‘Is that what you think?’
‘Peter, darling – ’ She leaned against me. Her hand caressed my neck. ‘It was him, not me. Benson made me do it.’
‘To have me put away?’
‘Yes, he forced me to do it. At the time you thought you’d killed me by tampering with the brakes of the car, and he said – Neville said, “Let him go on believing it. Don’t tell him or let him see you’re alive and he’ll think he really did do it.” That’s why you came here, I mean came back, looking for him … because you thought I was dead and Benson was to blame.’
‘I can’t get it straight in my mind,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it was Benson that killed you and other times it was me. You went blind before you died, did you know that? We lay side by side, in the darkness, and when I woke up you were gone. I just knew you were dead and somebody was to blame …’
‘I’m not dead, darling. And you’re not dead. The two of us are alive, here and now, together.’
She pulled my head down and I felt her lips, full and warm and soft, envelop mine. My senses started to slide. Again I had the strangest feeling – the same feeling as before, in the kitchen – of being a stranger in my own body. Was this really the woman I had married? Or the right woman and the wrong me? Her hot breath whispered against my cheek.
‘Take me back to the car, Peter. I love you.’
Her arms tightened around me. I picked her up and turned clumsily, dragging my feet out of the black mud. With my eyes closed I stumbled blindly on, this woman in my arms, back to the memory of another woman stumbling blindly towards death, and helped along the way.