I’ll give you that. There again young girls are much more impressionable. She may not mind your receding hairline now, in the flush and excitement of your affair, you know, doing it in another woman’s bed and all that, but she might later. Don’t you agree Mother?”
David pulled hard on each of the garage door handles, knowing they’d be locked, just as he knew that all the keys would be hidden. He looked at the mound of plastic smouldering in the centre of the lawn he had tended to Bowling Green standard. He looked at his mother-in-law who appeared helpless and confused. “Tell her to tell me where the bloody keys are! Now! Do you hear, now! Your daughter is off her rocker! Mental! Stark staring mad!” He might have gained a little leeway from Edna had he not called her daughter ‘mental’, and therefore insulted the whole family. As it was, she stepped over the suitcases into the kitchen.
“ Is she really David?” She said. “I’d better put the kettle on then while I wait for the green van.” She busied herself making tea while her daughter paced the kitchen, and wondered whether to call for Beth’s brother Jack.
“In my bed, Mother! In my bed! Can you believe he would do that? He brought her into my house, into my ….”
Suddenly Beth jumped up. She could hear David talking to Norma and she knew what he would be asking for. She darted out just in time to hear the last of their conversation. It was just as she had guessed; David’s tools were locked in the garage and he was now asking Norma to lend him a hammer. “Don’t you dare, Norma, don’t lend him a thing.” Norma hid behind her back the hammer she was holding.
“I wasn’t going to …” Norma retreated back inside.
David was cursing himself now in complete despair. Then he decided to go for the softly, softly approach. “Look, Beth, let’s have a cup of tea and try to sort this out. If you could just calm down a little.” Beth pretended to go along with him. They sat facing each other at the kitchen table while Edna poured the tea. “Just tell me where the keys are”, said David. “Let her go and then we can talk. There’s no need for all this.”
“So you keep saying, David.”
At this moment their only child Mark sauntered into the kitchen. At the age of sixteen he was six foot tall. His face held an expression of mild interest. “Hi, Mum, Dad. Gran. What gives with the windows and the neighbours?” Beth did not give David a chance to answer his son.
“Go and look in the garage. Your Dad has brought a young lady home for tea. From the office I think, although I could be wrong. But I didn’t like her arriving uninvited, so I locked her in the garage.”
Mark went outside to see. His father placed his head into his hands. He lifted his head slowly and looked at Beth, his eyes full of tears and anger. “God I hate you Beth.” It hurt her to hear him say that. She knew now that she had really lost him. She didn’t care, she’d already lost him when he had first been unfaithful. Even before that, when he’d first contemplated it. This was the climax, but she was still thinking of the beginning, asking herself when it had all started going wrong and why. All this was irrelevant, it didn’t matter, and she wasn’t feeling anything, just acting out a part. Mark returned.
“Wow! Mega trouble, Dad.”
Beth didn’t like his flippant attitude and neither did his grandmother who said to him. “Go to one of your friend’s houses Mark. “Get yourself out of the way.” David piped up, his voice weak and shaky.
“Go and get me a hammer, Mark.”
“Where from?”
“Anywhere – just get one.”
Beth spoke now calmly. “Don’t Mark.” Mark was upset now, torn between his two parents. He appealed to his mother.
“Let her out, Mum, think of the neighbours.”
Beth got up wearily, went into the front room, put her hands down the side of the settee and pulled out two bunches of keys. She gave her own bunch to her mother and threw David’s bunch at him. David jumped up. Beth spoke sharply to him. “I’d rather my mother let her out, David. If you don’t mind, I’d like a word.” He sat back down and Edna went to move her daughter’s car and to free the woman. Beth’s anger was spent now – hurt and bewilderment were setting in. “I wouldn’t have locked her in the garage, David, but it was the way she knocked on the door and asked me to move my car. It was the way I had cleaned the bathroom and made up what I had always regarded as our bed. It was the way a neighbour, one I don’t particularly like or bother with, called me at work and told me what was going on. It was the way her car was hidden in the garage while yours was casually parked in the road as though you’d popped home for something you’d forgotten. You have humiliated me. I feel like a fool and I hate your guts for making me feel this way.” David jumped up.
“All right, you’ve had your say. All right.” His face crumpled and his voice trailed away to nothing and he repeated himself again. “All right.” As he walked out, he didn’t look at his son or his mother-in-law, and he didn’t look at his wife. Mark said.
“Will he come back do you think, Mum?”
Beth cried then. Now that he’d gone she could allow herself to cry properly. Already the flashbacks that would probably occur time and time again were beginning as she remembered the way he had pranced around the bedroom hiding his nakedness from her, his wife of twenty years. And now he was gone ….”
End.
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