A Perfect Marriage Page 17

  I look at my watch. Half three. This will get rid of Anthony. This will remove him from my life. Like my toy boys, as Charlie said. She has been talking to Zoë behind my back. I am unable to commit to anyone. Just like Zoë. My life is out of control. I hesitate in the entrance hall, wondering whether to go upstairs or down.

  I decide to give Anthony a way out first and afterwards deal with Charlie. I run downstairs. Anthony is filling in time by unloading the dishwasher, piling all its contents on the bench as if he’s preparing for a garage sale.

  ‘She’s home,’ he says, his face expressionless. As if I didn’t know.

  ‘She’s overwrought. I’m going upstairs to talk to her in a minute.’

  ‘She’s had a shock,’ he says. But he does not mention his own.

  ‘Yes.’ There is so much to say that I feel there is nowhere to begin; the prospect of telling Anthony of what has happened fills me with dread, like the thought of beginning to cart away a mountain with a small hand trowel. Anyway I have to speak to Charlie first. I feel tired, drained. Anthony and I stand there in the kitchen like two strangers not knowing what to say to each other.

  ‘I’ll go home now,’ he says at last.

  And he leaves. He does not kiss me goodbye.

  Chapter 37

  NOW

  ‘Where’s Anthony?’ Charlie is sitting up in bed. The lamplight falls obliquely on her face so that it is half in shadow, and I see only an illuminated cheekbone, the line of her nose, and a bright and glittering eye that is staring at me intently.

  ‘He’s gone home.’ I perch on her desk chair.

  ‘What was he here for?’

  ‘He flew over to see me, believe it or not.’ I am having some trouble accepting it myself.

  ‘Did you know he was coming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you seeing him again before he goes?’

  ‘I don’t know, Charlie.’

  ‘He should’ve warned you he was coming.’

  ‘What difference would that have made?’

  ‘I would have been a bit more prepared.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Charlie.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s as well he’s found out,’ Charlie says.

  She is right of course. Anthony had to know at some time too. She begins to tear the tissue she is holding into narrow ribbons. ‘You led me to believe Dad was good and kind,’ she continues, concentrating ferociously on what she is doing with her hands. ‘Why all those lies?’

  ‘I never told you he was good and kind.’

  ‘You did by omission. It’s what you didn’t tell me. By not explaining what he was like you created a misleading picture of him.’ Charlie looks up at me. In her lap the methodically shredded tissue lies in tatters. ‘And it’s not just that he was violent. It’s also about how he died. I saw what happened in the old newspapers, Mum. Not long after Dad got out on bail, there it was on the third page of The Times: ZOË’S ATTACKER FOUND DEAD. So I thought, ah well, that’s when my dad had his massive heart attack, after all the stress. Then I read on. I was looking for details of his heart attack but there was nothing there. And why was that? Because he didn’t die of a heart attack. The coroner said he had a subdural haematoma and then he choked to death. Those were the words the newspaper reported: choked to death on his own vomit.’

  Sickened, I have to stop myself from bending my thumbnails back with my forefingers, a nervous reaction that I know irritates Charlie. Nausea and vomiting are symptoms of acute subdural haematoma, as are seizures and loss of consciousness.

  ‘Mum, what a horrible end. Think of it.’

  ‘Charlie,’ I say at last. ‘Don’t think I’ve never thought of it.’ After the coroner’s report, I’d thought of little else. Jeff lying on a floor somewhere. Lying there, dying. The haematoma causing intense pressure on his brain. His mind sliding into unconsciousness, his last thoughts slipping away.

  ‘But you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me. And bloody Zoë couldn’t either.’

  Zoë, bloody Zoë. Jeff’s way of death has been our shared secret, our bond over the years.

  ‘Everything always has to be perfect with you.’ Charlie begins to roll the shreds of tissue together into a ball between her two palms. ‘I never misbehave because I’m frightened you’ll fall to bits. You never misbehave because you’re frightened I’ll fall to bits. It’s all a bloody fabrication. I had a lousy dad! Why couldn’t you tell me about it?’

  ‘He wasn’t all lousy. Nothing’s ever black and white. He had some good points.’

  ‘Oh come on, Mum, admit it! Did you love him so much that you couldn’t see it? Or are you so frightened of making a mistake that you can’t admit that you ever did?’

  ‘No,’ I tell her firmly. ‘I’ve made lots of mistakes.’ At this point I realise something; something so obvious I wonder how it could have taken so long. Although marrying Jeff was a mistake ex post, it was not a mistake ex ante. It wasn’t my fault the marriage went sour; it was something that couldn’t have been predicted beforehand. I wasn’t to blame for his violence either; that was the way he was. I hadn’t picked badly because I couldn’t have known beforehand about this. So I didn’t deserve to be punished for my choice.

  Perhaps Helen has a point. I store this thought away to retrieve later and I look at my daughter’s tired and pallid face.

  ‘I think you couldn’t handle me knowing what a flawed man Dad was because it reflected badly on you,’ she is saying. ‘Because it showed that you’d chosen badly.’

  Her accusations line themselves up like landmines between us; cross this gap at your peril. I want to reach out to her but am afraid of further damage. She has a right to be angry; I should have told her earlier. In her shock she is shifting to me the weight of her anger, her anger at losing the simple certainties of childhood.

  ‘I’m so sorry about all this, Charlie,’ I say at last. My apology sounds lame but I have to continue. ‘I wanted to protect you. And I didn’t want to tell you the circumstances of his death. It was all so sordid. It would have been a hard burden for you to bear as a little kid.’

  ‘Would you have told me if I hadn’t found out?’

  ‘Yes. I was planning to.’

  ‘You should’ve explained. It’s like telling a child about being adopted. It’s something I needed to know.’

  ‘It’s not like being adopted. There’s no need for you to know everything that happened between your parents.’

  ‘This wasn’t everything.’

  ‘But which is worse, Charlie – knowing how he died or knowing that I concealed this from you?’ I look at Charlie’s slender hands engaged in pulling apart her shredded ball of tissue. She doesn’t reply; she is now tearing the strips of tissue into little squares of confetti.

  ‘I fell asleep at Zoë’s place,’ she says abruptly. ‘But I woke up suddenly with horrible images whirring through my head. At first I thought I was dreaming and then I realised what I’d thought was a dream was probably a memory dredged up from the past. Of you and Dad.’

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘You were sitting at the dining room table in Islington. You had your contact lens container in front of you, and you were looking at your fingertip.’ Charlie mimes the actions: she examines her extended forefinger, which she is holding up some twenty centimetres in front of her face.

  ‘Dad was standing next to you shouting,’ she continues. ‘You didn’t seem to be taking any notice of what he said. Then you got down on your hands and knees to look at the carpet. Dad got down with you, and you both crawled all over the floor. Neither of you noticed me standing in the doorway. I think I was supposed to be upstairs asleep.

  ‘Normally I would have thought that the sight of my parents crawling around the floor was comical. You looked like two farmyard animals grazing across a field. But I didn’t laugh. I knew there was something wrong. You inched around the table on your hands and knees, all the way back to where you’d started from.’

  �
�“It’s vanished,”’ you told my dad. ‘“How strange.”’

  Charlie’s face is intent. She is somewhere else, back in that memory, the one that I try to forget.

  ‘You smiled at my dad. But he didn’t smile back. He shouted at you again, very loudly. I can’t remember what he said, but it was clear he was very angry.’

  ‘I’d lost my contact lens, Charlie.’

  ‘I remember seeing Dad patting his hands across the tabletop, feeling every part of its surface. After that you got down on all fours again and carried on looking. But while you were on the floor, Dad suddenly turned and kicked you very hard in the stomach. Twice.’ Charlie pauses. She doesn’t look at me. ‘Is this true, Mum? Not just a faulty memory?’

  ‘Yes, Charlie. That’s what happened. More or less.’ I am beginning to feel faint. I grasp my knees and lean forward. Memory is my enemy; I want to move forwards not back.

  ‘After I saw Dad kick you, I turned tail and raced upstairs. I’d forgotten all about seeing this, Mum, until I woke up there on Zoë’s sofa a few hours ago. And you know what I thought? That I was a coward because I didn’t stay to defend you.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Charlie.’ I get out of the chair and sit on the edge of her bed. I hold her in my arms while she sobs like a small child. ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ I say; although I’m not at all sure that it is.

  ‘Memory’s a funny thing,’ Charlie continues when she’s dried her eyes. ‘I might have seen other things that I don’t recall. On the way home in the taxi I thought I might have made up that incident about the contact lens. That I might have, like, invented it after reading about Dad and Zoë.’

  ‘No, it was true.’

  ‘Did he hit you often, Mum?’

  ‘Often enough.’

  ‘I hope I’m not violent.’ Charlie’s voice is casual, as if this thought has just occurred to her.

  Taking her hand, I say, ‘You’re definitely not violent.’

  ‘What if it’s genetic?’

  ‘Charlie, I don’t believe that genes determine the way people act.’ I put my arms around her again. ‘Lots of non-genetic factors affect your behaviour. Genes might determine your susceptibility to certain influences, but they’re not going to make you violent or non-violent.’

  Charlie rests her head on my shoulder and I kiss her hair, soft and smooth and smelling faintly of shampoo.

  ‘Your father wasn’t genetically violent,’ I continue. ‘He was spoilt as a child because he was delicate, and he never learned to control his anti-social tendencies. Who knows, had he lived longer he might have learned eventually. That was his tragedy.’

  We sit in silence for a few minutes. The old clock in the dining room chimes the quarter hour. It’s four-fifteen and I suddenly feel drained, as if a plug has been pulled and my emotions have trickled away leaving behind a shell of a woman. But I can’t stop now. I take a deep breath and say, ‘There’s something else that I need to tell you, Charlie.’

  Chapter 38

  THEN

  Barely a week after Jeff’s assault of Zoë first hit the newspaper headlines, and a few days after Charlie and I escaped to Coverack, I returned to London again to collect some things I’d forgotten to pack in the rush to get away. There was a file of notes in particular that I needed in order to finish my thesis. Charlie stayed with my parents while I caught the train home; my visit was to last no more than two nights and Charlie seemed content to stay on at Coverack.

  My first evening back was wet and depressing, and colder than it should have been in summer. I sat at the kitchen table in front of my laptop, and struggled to collect my thoughts about the chapter I was writing. When the intercom outside the house rang, I was tempted to let it go but thought better of it. Though the bell was working the voice connection wasn’t – that was another thing to add to the list of repairs to give the landlord – and I ran down the stairs before the intercom could ring again. Mrs Gates from the ground floor flat had her television on relatively low but I could still hear every note of the theme music from EastEnders. I opened the door and was shocked to see Zoë standing there, dripping water onto the doormat. Conversation with Zoë wasn’t something I wanted my neighbour to overhear. It wasn’t that Mrs Gates was unfriendly, just nosy. Too nosy, she knew everything that was going on in our little street and more besides, and who knew what secrets Zoë might give away. She had no umbrella with her; her mackintosh was soaked through and water dripped from it into a puddle at her feet.

  ‘You’d better come in.’ I couldn’t bear to look at Zoë’s lovely face; it wasn’t that I begrudged her that beauty but more that the black bruise and the swollen ocular orbit and that line of stitches above the eyebrow were reminders of what I’d rather forget.

  Zoë followed me up the steep stairs to my flat. I took her dripping raincoat and hung it from the peg behind the front door. ‘Come into the kitchen,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the gas fire on; it will dry you out a bit.’

  I felt embarrassed for my ugly shabby flat, the walls baby-blue above the dado rail and the flock wallpaper below of a nasty green and orange paisley pattern that might have been here for decades, the carpet a speckled brown. But why should I mind what Zoë thought? Of course I realised right away that posing this question meant I did care, and rather too much, so I followed it up with an additional thought to myself: who the bloody hell cares?

  ‘It’s very light and bright,’ Zoë said once we were in the kitchen. And it was. It was made so by the rice paper light fitting with the hundred-watt bulb, and the planet lamp on the table, as well as by the clean white walls that I’d painted the week after Charlie and I moved in. I’d known right away that I couldn’t live and work in a room that was painted lime green. The landlord had agreed that I could do this as long as I paid for the paint myself. It took a lot of coats to conceal that lime green.

  Zoë added, ‘You’re working. I’m sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  When she nodded, I turned away and busied myself with the kettle and tea things, a kind of therapy for the agitation I felt at her presence. It was as if the very air molecules – the nitrogen and oxygen, not to mention carbon dioxide and methane – were knocking hard together and creating a kind of turbulence in my kitchen.

  She said, ‘The police have put a non-molestation order on Jeff.’

  Struggling to breathe, I stopped what I was doing.

  Zoë continued, ‘He’s not allowed to see me. He’s in a terrible rage. He called me not long ago, in spite of the order.’

  ‘I see.’ I began to feel queasy. ‘Did you phone the police?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I rang your parents. You gave me their landline number, remember? You wouldn’t give me your mobile number.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t tell him I was back in London.’

  ‘Of course not.

  ‘So why are you here? I suppose you wanted to see where Charlie and I live.’

  ‘That wasn’t it at all,’ she said, her tone dignified. ‘I don’t pry. I’ve come because I wished to return your scarf. You left it at my place the other day.’

  ‘Did I? I wondered where it was.’

  From her shoulder bag she retrieved a clear plastic bag containing the blue and green silk square that my mother had given me years ago and that I’d been upset to lose. When I took it from her, our hands touched. Hers were cold and wet. As I passed her the hand towel – it looked none-too-clean – I said, ‘Thanks for bringing it back.’

  She sat at the table. I pushed my laptop to one end and arranged my papers in a pile, each journal article arrayed like basket weave. Once she left I’d be easily able to restore the apparent disorder that I liked to work in, my materials and notes looking a total mess but placed so I could find them right away.

  There seemed to be nothing more to say once the kettle had boiled, and I wished her gone. We sat in front of our mugs of tea and
listened to the traffic go by and the drip-drip-drip of the kitchen tap whose washer needed replacing. It was almost a relief to hear a knock at my front door. It had to be my neighbour. You could only gain access to the flats by ringing the outside intercom and being let in. ‘It will be Mrs Gates from downstairs,’ I said at the same moment that Zoë said, ‘I should go home.’

  We both stood up. She followed me out of the kitchen. When I opened the door to my flat I was horrified to see Jeff on the landing. Even though he was standing a metre away I could detect the whisky on his breath, and his pupils were dilated. Swaying slightly, he said, his words running together, ‘I know you’ve got her here.’

  ‘Do you indeed? Well, you’re wrong. Charlie’s at Coverack.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, you idiot. I’m looking for Zoë. I saw her arrive.’

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘You left the downstairs door ajar.’

  I glanced down the stairwell. The front door was wide open and I could feel the cold draught blowing through. He hadn’t even bothered to push it to. Rain was driving in onto the tiles.

  ‘You should be more careful.’ He laughed in a mirthless sort of way. ‘But I’m glad you’re not.’

  It was the creaking of the floorboards behind me that gave Zoë’s whereabouts away, for she wouldn’t be visible from the landing outside the door to my flat. The door opened the wrong way: all that would be seen from the landing was the door to the bedroom and that was shut.

  ‘Let me in.’ Jeff’s words were slurred and his tone angry.

  I stood firm. He took a step closer, so close that I could see through the opening of his shirt the blond chest hair. It repulsed me. He raised his fist as if to strike me. It was fear or anger or both that made my heart begin to race like a wild creature in my throat, and adrenaline pump through my system, telling me to take flight. Yet there was nowhere for me to go. I couldn’t let him into my flat. I wouldn’t let him into my flat.