WOUNDING Page 5

  She creates dark with the flick of a switch. They are still not home. Nine o’clock, two hours later than he said they’d be, an hour and a half later than bedtime. She sits in the dark. Still in the kitchen, listening to her own breathing. No key turning the lock of the front door. There are explanations, she is sure of that. Such as? Such as bad traffic; or staying later for supper; or perhaps he decided to stay over at his sister’s, having drunk too much. She lifts the phone. He would’ve called by now. She thinks about calling his sister. She puts the phone down. Unsure of what to ask. Unsure that she wanted an answer. She tips the omelette into the bin. The dark quiet is placid. She’s alone. Foetal. No bad news, yet. What would be bad news?

  A simple movement, an over-steer, or not looking back in the mirror. That could’ve happened. And then? Then the car swerving, his panic, righting the wheel, the children asleep in the back of the car, unaware. The deceptively straight lines of the road buckling around them. A car behind, maybe a large expensive car, travelling too fast, clipping the back of them. Sending them spinning, a pirouette all the more graceful for her children’s presence. Hitting another car, it smashing them in the side, that would cause the most damage. Her children being thrust against their restraining belts, fracturing ribs, cracking pelvises, smashing small internal organs. Bleeding. Glass everywhere. Metal penetrating soft tissues. The car they had all travelled in together many times completely transformed. The plastic dashboard crumpling on impact. And the smells; petrol, burning flesh, blood, churned soil. She moves to the sofa, sitting with two soft cushions either side of her, her feet tucked under her body. His head flopped on the wheel. His mouth gaping. The sounds: what would they hear? Screams, yes, and the impact, the excitement of metal refolding, bending, finding a new curve, glass scattering into little teeth. And being hit again, a second car. Blood like water. Plentiful. This one finishing the job. Dead. She exposed them to this. This finitude. By giving birth to them, allowing light and dark, breath, those collections of molecules that gathered together inside her. She produced this ending. She killed them. And now, finally, she thinks, she could love them and treasure them. Visit them all at the cemetery with flowers. She could be a good mother. They would be safe. She would be safe. She could make no more mistakes. From the beginning, she knew how it would be.

  Announced by headlights and the noise of the engine, the car pulls onto the drive. They’re back, safe. They are back. Cora stands, makes herself walk to the door, open it and look out.

  ‘There you are! I was expecting you all hours ago.” He walks in, Jessica asleep over his shoulder, Patrick being led stumbling, half-asleep.

  ‘Sorry Darling, the motorway was madness, at a standstill.’ He walks up the stairs. ‘I’ll just put them straight into bed.’

  ‘And your phone? You couldn’t call?’

  ‘Cora, I was driving. I’m sorry. We’re back now, all safe. I won’t be a minute.’

  She watches him go. The small children loose with sleep, alive, their blood pulses, gloating. Safe with their father. Real, right there, he holds them, carries them, their heat, their flesh, he walks up the stairs with his children. She stands, unreal, surplus, watching at the foot of the stairs, feeling nothing, which is everything. He performs his role with exacting quiet. He is the perfect husband and father. What a performance. Cora walks back into the kitchen and vomits into the sink.

  I never had any doubts about us. Never. Not even in the beginning. I knew you were the one I wanted to marry. Maybe it’s crazy, but I just knew that I wanted to be with you for the rest of my life. You were the woman I wanted to wake up with every day, go to bed with every night. I could imagine being the best person I could be with you. Not that my old mates understood. They were still drinking and shagging and playing rugby on Sundays, though none of them were particularly young. Do you remember that stupid joke Gerry told us when we announced our engagement?

  ‘How’d you make your girlfriend stop sucking your cock?

  You marry her.’

  Well, that about summed up their attitude. They’re no different even now they’re all married with kids. They still scan the room for totty, sizing up the women’s tits and up for a shag if they think they could get away with it. The last time I saw them that’s all they talked about: this bird and that bird, who was doing what and with whom, how to get away with it; hotel rooms at lunch time, conferences in the Far East, car parks that have dark but busy corners, slutty air stewardesses that make the red-eye more comfortable, web pages where married women advertise for discreet daytime sex, having a secret mobile phone just for your bit on the side. But not me. You’re all I need, all I want. You and the kids. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? For anyone. I’m a good man, Cora. I try to be.

  Friends fall away anyhow, you have less and less in common, forget to call, forget to invite them over, and vice versa – the invites stop coming. Things change, people move on. Especially once we got together; I saw less and less of my mates, not just because I was spending time with you, but because they didn’t ask me to go out so much. You never liked them anyway. It was a shame, but you make new friends, at least you should. I always thought we’d make lots of friends, once we were married, you know, other couples and then later, via the kids, from NCT classes, with all the babies born around the same time so you can share worries and babysitting duties. I left it all to you – my mother was always in charge of that stuff, socialising and organising dinner parties and sending the Christmas cards. I realise now it’s not fair to do that. To leave all the responsibility to you. Bit chauvinistic perhaps. But I imagined that we’d be those people who hosted great dinner parties, with good food and long boozy conversations, that the kids would have their little pals over and play in the garden and you would have a circle of friends who were mothers too. You’d have coffee mornings and the same group would meet on a Saturday night for dinner and us husbands would be there and we’d form a new group of friends, a group we’d get old with, go on group holidays with and have evenings out together.

  I used to have these images of us. Of what our lives would be like. Like I had a pictorial map of our future. I carried these images everywhere, about every aspect of our lives. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in having expectations. It’s good to know what you want, what you’re striving for. How else do you succeed in life?

  I wonder if you’d remember that furniture shop we used to look in and pretend we could afford to buy from. It smelt of vanilla and fresh coffee, with the scary shop assistant dressed head to toe in expensive black. We saved and saved and finally went to choose a dining table and all the way there, I thought about how the table we chose would be a huge part of our lives. That all that money spent on a solid oak eight-seater would be worth every penny for all the fun we’d share around it. That it would last and last and it would bear the weight of all our family suppers and Christmases and birthdays and dinner parties and drinks parties and games nights. That the table would see the kids grow up and leave then come back with their own kids. I imagined that we’d never need to replace it, that it would become a member of the family, almost. One of those familiar objects that reassure you, that remind you of your family’s constancy.

  You laugh at this stuff, I know. But I think like that. I have a vision of what our life should be and I do my best to live up to it. You say I’m a sucker, an advertising man’s dream. Maybe, maybe I am. But I want so much from our lives. I want money in the bank and friends and holidays and the kids to grow up happy and strong. I want us to have nice things and a nice home. I want our families to be happy. I want to gather all these things and experiences up and keep them close by. I want you, I want to fuck you on that dining table again, I want you to come on to me, to initiate sex. I want you to want me again. I want you to look at me and see me.

  You take a deep breath and then sigh as you exhale. You sleep deeply, you always have. Though sometimes you frown and I wonder what you
’re dreaming, who you’re angry with in your sleep. You seem more alive in your sleep, as if your dreams captivate you more than real life, than us, than me.

  A moth has spread itself out in a corner of the lampshade, forming a dusty V shape; the dull brown symmetry is reassuring. So ordinary, but I like that we aren’t alone in this room, I feel as if the moth connects us to the outside world. That’s like something you’d say. I catch myself doing that sometimes, talking like you, using your little phrases and peculiarities. Like I’m becoming you. Someone’s not quite turned a tap off. Drip, drip, drip, ticking away time. Like a machine supplementing the clock. I should get up and turn it off. Wake the kids and leave you to your sleep. But I can’t drag myself out of bed. I’m tired. I like lying here next to you. I want to stroke your body, touch you, lift your nightie over your thighs, look at your soft body, and pretend we are back where we used to be. That other place.

  We don’t have sex often enough. God, that seems harsh and crude. I don’t want to hurt you. But we don’t. I need to feel close to you. I need you, I need to be inside you, I need to know that we’re still together, and not just still married, still in the same house, but together. Really together. I miss the intimacy, I miss being wanted. I want to be touched, I want to be held, it’s not all about fucking, but what’s so wrong with that anyway. I’ve started taking longer showers and fantasising about you and me. Sometimes I think about you and another woman touching each other, kissing each other all over and I’m just watching. Standing there in the corner of our room watching you suck on her breasts as she touches your pussy. I want to watch you come as she licks you and I want to see her push herself into your mouth, rubbing herself on your lips, your tongue. Why do these fantasies feel like acts of disloyalty? But they do. I feel guilty for thinking these things. Terrible. But I need something. I’m not made of stone; I’ve done nothing wrong. You must feel it too, unless you’re finding it elsewhere. That’s what I’m afraid of, of course. You don’t need me. I’m not enough anymore. I can’t understand why though. I’ve done nothing wrong, Cora.

  I notice things now. Things I’d never have before. Like yesterday in a meeting with George and the other heads of departments. All sat around the conference table. Our notepads and pens in front of us next to our BlackBerries. My shirtsleeves rolled up. The secretary bringing us tea and coffee. Watching Mike from Sales give a presentation, his hair suddenly darker than usual, his grey magicked away overnight, he’s just got divorced, so, well… The reassuring click of the mouse as Mick switches the slides, the bottles of mineral water in the centre of the table, the glass wall looking out into the open-plan office, the collection of cubicles where my team sit, right outside my office. Just like any other midweek management meeting. Nothing out of the ordinary. The new Marketing manager, Amanda, was opposite me, taking notes. I’ve met her before, and she seems nice enough, nothing special, good at her job, has a nice voice. Wears a wedding ring, has photos of small children on her desk. Married, a mother. Nothing more. But yesterday during the meeting I noticed she’d left a smudge of pink lipstick on her coffee mug, she seemed embarrassed about it and I watched as she rubbed it off with her thumb as she spoke, smearing it further across the porcelain. And I got hard. That was all there was to it. And all there will ever be. But it happened. And now I’m a different man to the one I thought I was.

  He’s lying in bed, the small lamp on her side still on. His back towards her, head on the pillow, his ear vulnerable and translucent against his dark hair. Long ago, his mother would’ve gazed at him, mesmerised by his fragility. She’d loved him. Warm and damp in his cradle, merely human, not yet a man or even really a boy; she’d have leant over him, cooing her perfect love and attention. Now he was adult and dirtied and his mother was old and surely exhausted by all that loving. Beyond it. Degraded. Though the older woman still performed some version of love that was little more than possession and he loves back, easily, lightly, he loves his mother, the children, her.

  Cora undresses in the half-light. Avoiding the sight of her own body, she stares at her husband. At the smooth skin, his body unmarked by the addition of the children, except for the dark bags under his eyes. He snores, and turning onto his back, farts, still sleeping, ignorant of his humiliation. She can’t bear to look at him, so turns away. His unguarded self, tender and open to penetration, embarrasses her. He is an embarrassment. Revealed and vulnerable. She’s reminded of seeing a woman fall down, skidding on a dropped sandwich, her entire body mass perched on the twin pinnacles of her high heels. The poor woman, in a shopping centre, glamorous, lip-sticked, short-skirted, falling to her knees, and others there all shopping too, with bags hanging from push-chairs, overloaded, laughing at her behind their hands, and just one or two stepping forward to help. But Cora couldn’t look, she hurried by, her own cheeks flushed, disgusted by the ridiculous woman’s shame. Perhaps not looking is the greater kindness.

  Sliding into the bed, she moves slowly, carefully to avoid waking him. Gingerly lying back against her pillow. Her head heavy, the scalp itching. She hopes she’s not caught nits from the children again, small children with their inevitable little parasites. Threadworms; tapeworms; nits; fleas; scabies; ringworm: they’ve had them all. A car ambles by, probably loaded with teenagers, red-faced, horny, dangerous; the sound attacks the window like weather. Music, or something like, but with all the emphasis on the bass, heavy sounds, stricken, like a dead weight.

  He stirs next to her, turning over, his arm draping over her body. Smacking his lips like a hungry animal in a cartoon show. She closes her eyes, pretending sleep. No such luck, he puckers forward, a habit, lips extended like limbs, probing her cheek, testing the skin, analysing responses, moving closer to her mouth. Kissing her, pressing his lips against hers, still half-asleep, but rousing, she can feel his penis twitching against her leg. He hasn’t brushed his teeth; his tongue, when it finds hers, tastes like a rancid vegetable. She shifts, not quite shrugging him off but maybe suggesting in that small movement her lack of enthusiasm. He presses on, misinterpreting, or not even feeling her move.

  He keeps up the kissing, a tight pucker that resists; that defends the dark scramble of his head. It’s not the kind of kiss that she likes, but then she can’t remember ever receiving the kiss she might like. None of her lovers have kissed her well – there were John’s fast pecks tap tapping on her lips, David’s hollow sucking, several anonymous exchanges, smeared, in the dark – all hard work. All just in the mind. Really, if you think about it, it’s just a matter of taste, and that can be reconditioned. You can get used to anything. You should at least try. He moves on top of her, his legs between hers, a promise of space. Still kissing, the mouth, then the neck, now the breasts, firm, precise kisses. Clean kisses, kisses that stay inside the lines, obedient. Nothing sloppy or juicy about them. Neatly declared on the ledger of her body, no excess, no arrears, everything in order. He inserts himself inside her, first tongue, then penis, moving carefully. She should try harder, receive him graciously, relieved and happy to have him and the children safely home. He is gentle and eager to please. She should be pleased. She should work to please.

  Looking down through the gap between their bodies she catches sight of his skin, unmarked and firm, pressing her down and then relieving her, pressing and relieving, repeat, repeat, repeat. She sees her disaster of a body, pads of fat collapsing from her hips into the bed, her belly judders, unkempt, purple stretch-marks like a child’s scribble run up beyond her navel. She looks away, up at his face, his expression comic, hovering above her, a pale moon too close for comfort, his breath foul. She puts her arms around him. I must try, at least. His lips curl back over his teeth, his eyes close, a temporary blindness that permits later sight, he gapes, open-mouthed, head back, unabashed, like an imbecile. He is retarded by his pleasure. His arse cheeks clench, rigid, his whole body tensed, he comes, grunting, as she watches from the spectator’s box inside her body, wishing she could join in rathe
r than failing, always failing.

  Morning, and she leans against the kitchen counter, her hip pressing into the chill marble, unyielding – the bone of her hip, the marble, the hard floor. Her hands wrapped around her warm cup. She looks without seeing at the garden beyond the French doors, at the photos stuck on the fridge, the family calendar. She is waiting for the sounds that mean the start of the day. The grunt of her husband as he walks to the bathroom, the small rhythm of the children’s feet as they hurry down stairs, the rushing water of the shower, the quick slam of drawers as he chooses his socks, underwear, shirt, tie; his suits hang in his wardrobe. Sounds that should reassure – the machine of the family and its various components are working.

  A child sits at the table, her feet dangling from the chair, the frill on her nightgown cavorting against her shin. She is a quiet child. Cora watches the girl sit at the table before turning and filling a plastic bowl with cereal and milk, obscuring the pattern of fairies dancing on the bottom. She places the bowl on the table and hands the child a spoon, before lighting a cigarette and turning back towards the counter. She shouldn’t smoke. The child watches her. Everyone knows the rules. Mummy must not smoke. Usually she doesn’t, she hasn’t for months and months. But today she takes one of her emergency stash from behind the biscuit tin. Her head aches, her stomach lags, she couldn’t sleep. She hasn’t showered yet, and can still feel him sticky between her legs. His vibrant little swimmers, wasted, languishing in her knickers.

  Cora shouts up the stairs, ‘Patch! Are you dressed yet?’ There will be a mumbled response, she knows without going up the stairs that the child will be playing with his macho super heroes. Their plastic pectoral muscles as big as pubescent breasts, they’ll be flying through the air, saving the world, crash landing on his blue rug, splat, forever immortalised in petrochemical hues. ‘I’m coming up the stairs now.’ She steps, it takes no thought, this complicated manoeuvre, she takes a drag on the cigarette, and places the other hand on the rail. Pulling herself up. A foot on a stair, the knee bent and straightening, pushing up from the glutes, using the hamstrings, joints, muscles, tendons, the gristle of the body, all truth, it can’t be argued with. There is no other way. Placing the next foot, and so on. You know how to walk up stairs. How it goes. These actions that we master and never think of again, until tragically our brains are bashed in by an accident or a stroke or old age and then it becomes a miraculous skill to relearn or let go, along with swallowing, speaking, eating, breathing. Making a mockery of any idea of a self that continues, anything as immutable as a Soul.