Authors: Araminta Hall
‘We’ll get a nice flat, Silver and I, and you’ll have a beautiful pink bedroom and I’ll fill it with toys and dolls and you can stay whenever you want.’
‘Dolls,’ she squealed.
‘Whatever you want, angel. We’ll all be happier this way, I promise.’ But the words sounded hollow and tasted stale and a sickness rose in him that made him retch over the toilet until he was hot and trembling.
Dot woke them on the morning of her birthday as she did most mornings, her warm body between them from some indeterminable point in the night when she’d cried and Alice had left the room and reappeared with her. The day was bright and the sun poured over his wife and daughter, so that they looked unearthly. He’d made love to Alice the night before and the memory shamed him. He’d kissed those perfect lips, run his hands over her blemish-free flesh, held her tightly, moaned into her neck. And, worse than all of that, he’d meant it. As Dot tore at her presents he knew that his mind only had a few more hours left in it, that the route he was travelling only led one sure way and that was madness. He knew that better – or maybe worse – men than him could split themselves, but it was tearing at his soul. He decided to call Silver that night and say he was going to talk to Alice tomorrow and that they should leave on Monday. Silver had a job lined up at a pub in Cartertown and they could stay in a B and B until they got a flat sorted.
The day dragged him towards it. Everywhere he turned he felt as though he was at a ghastly fairground in a hall of mirrors showing him what could have been. Dot was amazing, bounding around in her delight like a puppy. He heard Clarice laugh; he marvelled at the plates of food Alice produced. Even the house felt warm and friendly as balloons brightened dark corners and music pierced the silence.
After lunch Tony took Dot into the garden and spun her round by holding her hands so that she shrieked with joy. They fell into the grass together and Tony noticed how the roses in the border were the same colour as her hair. Pieces of his daughter fell all around him, shredding his heart and mangling his brain. He lay on the lawn with Dot resting on his stomach and looked back at the tall house with its dark windows and magical turret and realised that he no longer knew right from wrong. He felt sure that the right thing to do would be to walk away from Silver and yet even the thought was impossible. He tried to imagine his future without her as he stroked his daughter’s hair and it felt as empty as death. He had maybe minutes to save himself. He now knew that if he stayed and witnessed his daughter become two he would never leave. Tony stared into the electric blue sky and understood what had eluded him for so long: he loved Dot more than anyone but in order to stay alive he had to take care of himself and Silver was as integral to his staying alive as oxygen.
Tony got up off the grass and took Dot back into the house. His head felt large and full, as if he’d had a skinful the night before and was still wobbly on his feet. The kitchen smelt like a bakery, like a place he’d have enjoyed growing up in. Alice was standing by the table, squeezing pink icing out of a white tube on to miniature cakes. She smiled, pushing her hair out of her eyes with the back on her hand, leaving a trace of pink on her forehead.
‘I’m just going to nip out and get some more balloons,’ Tony said.
Her expression changed at this. ‘But we’ve got loads.’
‘Oh well, I just thought we could do with some more.’
Alice glanced at the clock above the door. ‘The party starts in an hour.’
‘It’ll only take me five minutes.’
‘OK.’
He hesitated at his moment of freedom, unable to turn and take his exit. Instead he walked over to where his wife and daughter were standing. The next time he saw them everything would be different and they would no longer belong to each other. He picked Dot up, kissing her red cheeks. ‘You do know you’re an amazing mother, don’t you Alice,’ he said. She laughed nervously. ‘No, I mean, look at all this. Look at Dot. You’re incredible.’ It wasn’t enough, he wanted to say more but nothing formed in his mind.
She blushed. ‘Don’t be silly.’
Tony put Dot back down next to her mother and turned and left the kitchen. He pulled his jacket from the cupboard in the hall that Clarice insisted they use and shut the front door quietly behind him. He still didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but as he walked down the road and felt Clarice watching him from the sitting room windows he knew he wasn’t going back.
The only person who could save him now was Silver and Tony wished he had one of those phones he’d read about in some of the papers recently. Phones that posh businessmen kept in their briefcases and were able to use standing on street corners. The report he’d read said there were satellites in the sky which transmitted their conversations to each other, that one day we’d all have one in our own pockets which we could use to call people on the other side of the world. But he didn’t care about the rest of the world, only Silver. Tony walked to the Hare and Hounds and went straight in without stopping. Silver was pulling a pint for Charles Wheeler but when she saw Tony she stopped. He turned and left and she followed him.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked as they stood on the green with so many pairs of eyes watching them. ‘I thought it was Dot’s party.’
‘I can’t do it, Silver.’
She put her hand on his arm and it was the first time that day that his heart slowed to anything like a normal pace. ‘Calm down. You’re white as a sheet. What’s happened?’
‘We have to go now.’
‘Have you told Alice?’
He shook his head and tears spilt out of his eyes without warning. ‘I can’t do it any more, being there and thinking of you all the time. It’s wrong. And Dot – shit, Silver, what am I doing?’
‘We don’t have to. You can walk away from me now and there won’t be any hard feelings. I’ll go to Cartertown; you won’t ever have to see me again.’
‘But I love you.’
She was crying as well. ‘I love you too. But sometimes—’
‘No, I went through all that in my head this morning. It has to be you, Silver. It’s always been you.’
‘You’ve got to speak to Alice. You can’t just leave.’
‘I can’t go back and I can’t tell her now. Dot’s party is about to start.’
‘Then we can wait for tomorrow.’
‘No.’ Tony heard his own desperation, as pathetic as a drowned kitten. ‘Don’t make me go back there, I can’t.’
‘But Dot—’
‘She won’t even notice. I’ll call Alice tomorrow or next week. We’ll get a flat and Dot can come and stay.’ Tony grabbed on to Silver’s hands. They were cold.
‘Of course she’ll come and stay,’ she said, using the back of her hand to wipe the tears from his cheeks just as his mother had done when he was small.
If you say something enough it becomes true, doesn’t it? Tony shut his eyes and believed this with all his heart. Silver didn’t need any more convincing; Tony knew that she understood him better than anyone else when she turned and they walked away from the pub, back to her flat where they packed all her things, got into her rusty Renault 5 and drove out of the village. By that evening they were clinging to each other in a double bed in a dingy B and B in Cartertown, as Dot’s party finished and Alice went to bed, not thirty miles away, although they might as well have been in different universes.
Gerry had twenty minutes tops to make a decision about what to say to Sandra. What a prick! He replayed the drive home in his head and his stomach twitched with embarrassment so that he groaned like a dying man. He hadn’t planned it because what sort of fool would plan to make a pass at his wife’s best friend? Of course he’d noticed how absolutely gorgeous Alice was, you’d have to be a woofter not to, but he’d never considered anything happening between them. He’d never even wanted anything to happen between them, which was why what he’d done was so unfathomable, even to himself. Gerry liked to keep his dalliances totally separate from his life because that’s what they were. Stupid young girls, as he liked to think of them, with short skirts and red lips who made him feel better for a few hours and then disappeared from his life like a passing fog so that he could often pretend they had never existed. And he hadn’t even done anything like that for coming up to two years now anyway, not since Mavis had been born. He drew up outside his house and saw a light on in their bedroom. Mavis was still asleep so he allowed himself a cigarette as the car cooled down and the engine ticked over. He banged his hands hard on the steering wheel. He had to think fast because Alice might already be on the phone to Sandra, and the real, ugly truth of it all was that he couldn’t imagine his life without his wife, the woman he’d loved from the first time he’d knocked those books out of her arms outside the library in Kelsey.
Gerry got out of the car and flicked his cigarette into the bushes, zipping up his bomber jacket to keep out the cold. The air was prickling and he could feel in his nostrils that it would be icy by morning. He lifted Mavis out of the back seat and hurried her into the house. The atmosphere inside was calm and still and he could hear the murmur of the radio from their bedroom. Sandra had not received any bad news yet, that much was clear. He took his daughter up to her bedroom, easing her little limbs out of her clothes. Her cheeks were sticky and she should of course brush her teeth but there was no way he was going to wake her now. He left her vest and pants on and tucked her under the pink duvet, kissing the side of her head and smelling the sugar and excitement still lingering on her. Her bright hair glowed in the light trickling in from the landing and he felt a surge of ownership for Mavis, a sense that she belonged to him. A life without her and the baby in Sandra’s stomach would be worthless, he realised, perhaps two hours too late.
Gerry stayed by her bed for a minute, trying to organise his whirling thoughts. There was a chance that Alice might not mention it to Sandra but it was a slim chance and if he didn’t get in there first there wasn’t a hope in hell of her believing him. There’d only been one other time that he’d come this close to being caught, when a student had got a bit too interested and started sending him letters to his house, which he’d had to intercept on an almost daily basis for a few weeks. It was all so stupid anyway. He couldn’t understand why Sandra would care about these girls, who meant nothing to him. He wasn’t like that prick Tony who’d gone and fallen in love with Silver and had now run off; he had no intention of ever even liking them. What he did with those girls was no different to an evening spent in the Hare and Hounds with his mates on a Thursday. They were just a distraction, a way of passing the time, and they had absolutely no bearing on his feelings for Sandra.
She was a little prick tease, that Alice, anyway. Come on, no one was really that innocent unless they were stupid. Gerry replayed the afternoon on fast forward in his mind and knew he hadn’t been imagining it, those big eyes and Lady Di smiles and infectious giggles. Come on. She’d just got cold feet and then gone all hoity-toity and made him feel like a complete dickhead. Some women were like that; they wanted to know that you wanted them so they could feel better about themselves and then make you feel like a total bell end. Maybe she was a lesbian? Yes, maybe that’s why Tony had left?
By the time Gerry crossed the hall to his bedroom he felt much better about what he was about to do, much more in control of the situation. Sandra was in bed, sitting propped up by pillows, her stomach rounding out the sheets and her eyes closed.
‘Hi, love,’ he said. ‘You feeling any better?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been sick.’
‘D’you want anything? Cup of tea?’
‘Ooh, yeah, that’d be lovely.’ Gerry turned to go but she called him back. ‘Was it good? Did the girls enjoy themselves?’
‘It was fab. Mavis and Dot loved it. She’s flat out, I put her straight to bed.’
‘Did you make her do a wee?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘I’ll get you that tea.’
Gerry had another cigarette standing by the back door as he waited for the kettle to boil. The breakfast things were still in the sink and he reminded himself to come down and wash them before Sandra got up in the morning. Not that she’d care, but because he wanted to be nice to her. Sandra had told him that Alice and Clarice had a cleaner and the memory made him hate her even more.
He left his bomber jacket hanging over a chair in the kitchen and his trainers kicked off by the back door, and then carried the tea tray to the bedroom. He half lay on the edge of their bed and poured out the tea, which Sandra sipped at gratefully.
‘Try having a biscuit,’ he said, holding out the plate, ‘you probably need some sugar.’
Sandra took one but each bite looked as if it was causing her pain. ‘It must be a bug. D’you think it’ll harm the baby?’
‘No. But I’ll ring the doctors in the morning if you aren’t any better.’
‘I’ve been thinking today. We really need to decorate this room.’
Gerry looked around at the swirling brown carpet and sad floral wallpaper. ‘Guess we do.’
‘Don’t you remember we said we’d do it when we moved in, but that was four years ago now.’
‘Time flies.’
‘But seriously, Gerry, it’s awful. D’you think we could do it before the baby comes?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
They smiled at each other and Gerry knew he was losing the moment. In a few more rounds of the clock what he was about to say would sound ridiculous. ‘Listen, San, I’ve got something to tell you. I nearly didn’t, but I don’t want to keep it from you.’ She sat forward at this and she looked white and tired so that guilt trickled down his spine for a minute. ‘Something really odd happened after the circus.’
‘Odd?’
‘I think Alice made a pass at me.’
‘You what?’ Anxiety rippled through Sandra’s voice but Gerry kept hold of her eyes. He saw sweat break out above her top lip.
‘I had to pull the car over. I didn’t know what to do.’
Sandra put her cup on to the bedside table and he saw her hands were shaking. ‘What are you talking about? Tell me exactly what happened.’