Blackwater

  ‘What happened?’ she demanded as she sat down in front of me. ‘You’ve been drinking,’ came before I could open my mouth. ‘Did you fall?’ I wondered if Denis had fed her the line, and I winced as my lips cracked. I hesitated just long enough to wonder what would happen if Michael was sent back to make the lesson stick. I didn’t have a plan then, I just hadn’t fully understood their world. It was too far away from mine.

  ‘Denis Tanter,’ I said softly, watching her reaction. She was in the middle of dabbing dried blood out of one of my nostrils and I watched her whole face tighten. Her eyes lost the warm care and tenderness she had been lavishing. Lost it all.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, and suddenly I was afraid that the coldness was for me, that she just didn’t care any more.

  ‘He had his man come round while you were out last night. You know, to give the husband a little lesson? While you were whoring with his boss. He was warning me off, Carol, making threats in our own house.’ I heard a tremble in my voice and shut up before the drink brought me to tears.

  She looked down at her hands and I could see they were shaking. I couldn’t find any sympathy for her.

  ‘That’s what you brought into this house, Carol. That’s what you did to me last night.’

  She’d gone very pale, I saw, as if I’d slapped her. She still held a damp tissue tinged with red. I saw her hand begin to move back to dab at my face and I did slap it away. I didn’t think I could bear it if she just went on like nothing had happened. I wanted it all out.

  She stood then and her tongue came out to touch the top of her upper lip. She does that when she’s really worked up, and I welcomed it. I stood as well to face her, and suddenly the desire for a fight went out of me. I couldn’t bear the argument, couldn’t stand the words being said again. It was just too much on top of the night I’d had. I’d said them all a thousand times and won the arguments over and over and over. I really didn’t actually need to say them aloud to her face. She knew them all.

  ‘Just fix it, Carol. I don’t care what happens any more. Just sort it out.’

  She nodded, her lips pressed tightly together so that all the blood and colour had gone out of them. I’d never seen her so shaken and, ridiculously, I found it cheering, so that I almost bounced up those stairs to bed. Before she had the shower running, I was asleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OF COURSE, SEEING ME sitting there with a bloody nose put Carol in a difficult position. The truth is a strange thing, in case you’ve never been forced to contemplate its twists and turns. It doesn’t matter how bad something is. If you don’t admit what’s going on, if you don’t say it aloud, it can be forgotten. It can be managed. It can be ignored. I remember the first time I heard someone joke about ‘the elephant in the room’. They meant something that everyone tried to ignore, but who could ignore an elephant? You can take it from me that after a while you hang your clothes on the trunk like he was part of the furniture. You can get used to anything, and as long as you don’t actually die, all pain goes. All pain goes. Think of that the next time you think you can’t stand it. Think of me. If you don’t ask about Bobby Penrith, it’s always an accident. Even if you know, you just don’t force the words out into the open.

  You’ll appreciate that Carol could hardly wake me up, throw her arms around me and announce that her affair with Denis Tanter was at an end. It was the thing we never mentioned any more, after all. The fact that she rested her head on my pillow was meant to be something I didn’t question.

  Perhaps because I could feel a tooth wobble when I woke, I just wasn’t in a good mood. It must have been twenty years since I last found myself wiggling a loose tooth with my tongue, and it didn’t improve my temper. She’d brought it into our kitchen. The old rules were useless until Denis Tanter was out of our lives.

  Like it or not, certain things had to be said, no matter how much I hated to do it. I washed myself carefully, looking at the bruises in the long bathroom mirror. I was not a sight to inspire confidence. Even though I felt angry, I looked afraid. Worst of all was the fact that she didn’t come back all through the afternoon.

  I started thinking she had confronted Denis and tempers had flared. My imagination went a little peculiar for a while. I rang her work because I had to ring someone and ask where she was, though I hated doing it. Every time, I could see their little sly grin on the other end. I was the husband who couldn’t find his wife. Have you ever noticed you can hear someone smile on a phone? If you say the same words twice, but smile the second time, you can hear the difference. When you’re asking where your wife is, you don’t want to hear that change. It starts the brain working fast enough to hurt.

  Carol had taken the afternoon off, and there was something in the girl’s tone that enjoyed the fact that I didn’t know. I had to work to keep my voice level and steady as I put the phone back in its cradle, gripping it hard enough to make my hand shake. As I put it down, it rang, making me jump.

  I could hear Carol breathing, fast and shallow.

  ‘I told Denis Tanter to leave us alone,’ she said, without even a hello. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘What about you, though?’ I replied, shoving the phone against my ear as if I could press her closer on the other end of the line.

  ‘I need a few days away, Davey. Work is all over me and I just need a break, a chance to take a breath.’

  ‘Where will you go?’ I asked, knowing she wouldn’t tell me. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Denis bloody Tanter had lost her and I was filled with a savage joy. I could hear the weariness in her voice. If she had been going to him, she would have had that brittle excitement that marked the beginning of all her affairs. To leave ‘us’ alone, she’d said. There were times when I did love her, no matter what else I felt. I pressed the phone so hard against the side of my head that it began to hurt.

  ‘I just need a few days away from here,’ she said. I waited for something more. I wondered if she had packed a bag. Perhaps if I’d taken the time to look through the bathroom cabinet I might have known the phone call was coming.

  ‘Don’t go far,’ I said gently. Sometimes I talked to her like you would to a nervous horse, but she didn’t seem to mind. I wanted to say that I loved her, to express the sudden warm feeling in my chest when I heard her voice. For once, I couldn’t say the words, easy as they are. She never did, and though I told myself it was there in every word and glance she threw me, it still mattered. I’d swallowed so much pride over the years that it washed back into my mouth and burned me. Perhaps I was full at last, and that was why it brimmed over every time I was made to taste a little more defeat, a little more shame. For a moment I hoped she wouldn’t come back. In a second of phone silence I saw my life going on without the pain and drama. Eventually, she would become a distant memory for someone I used to be. A problem for someone else. All pain goes, remember, even the memories you thought would kill you. Perhaps I would just get in my car and drive away before she came back and pretend to be a normal person for the rest of my life. I might even be happy and live some sort of eerie existence where I didn’t have a blood test every month in case she brought home some plague that would strip the flesh off me. It would be a strange sort of life without fear and without hate and without my obsession with her.

  I put the phone down without really listening to her say goodbye.

  It took about ten minutes of sitting on my own to realize I needed to get out as well. I didn’t want to be the one who stayed and waited for her to come back. I didn’t want to be on my own, and I certainly didn’t want to be there if Denis sent Michael round a second time. That was the thought that really got me moving. She had taken the only suitcase, but there was an old duffel bag in the cupboard over the immersion heater, so I stuffed a few things in that, adding a bar of soap and a half-full can of deodorant. I didn’t have the money to bother with a passport. I was thinking of taking a train west, perhaps to spend a few days in Cornwall. I found my good boots and sh
rugged myself into the coat, moving quickly and controlling a swelling sense of panic.

  I opened the door just as I became aware of a moving shadow behind the glass. I’d been thinking about her, and as the lock clicked I realized someone was standing there, looking in. They’d watched me pat pockets for keys and open the duffel over and over to shove some last item into the depths.

  They seem to move at a different speed, these people. If someone tries to push his way into a house in a film, the door is likely to slam in their face. Denis just walked in as if it was his own house, though his expression showed what he thought of the place. His shoulder knocked into me and then Michael came in behind, pressing his left hand against my chest and holding me against the wall without the slightest difficulty. I might have struggled if they’d given me a little warning, but it was just too quick and too casual.

  As Denis disappeared into the lounge, Michael shook his head almost apologetically. I came to life then in a rush of fear adrenalin, yanking at his fingers to break his grip. The little scrap of garden and freedom was so near I couldn’t bear to have the door close and be stuck inside with them. Michael pulled me back from the open doorway and shut it with his other arm, nodding to himself as he heard the click. The hall was darker with him blocking the light.

  ‘Where is she?’ Denis demanded, coming back from the kitchen. I didn’t reply. For a moment, the strangeness of having him in my house was just too much. I’d seen him last at a New Year’s Eve party with balloons and a Scotsman. I remembered his face, but to have him just stand there and talk like we knew each other was surreal.

  ‘I’ll call the police,’ I said.

  Denis raised his eyebrows in something approaching surprise.

  ‘Michael said you don’t scare easy,’ he said. ‘I can’t see it, myself.’ I glanced sideways at Michael, but his face was blank. No chat from him, or demands to be given whisky. In the great man’s presence he was solid business, a professional.

  I still said nothing, so Denis gestured for me to be brought along. I found myself being marched into my own kitchen once more. I had a sick feeling that they were going to kill me. For a moment I imagined Carol coming back in a few days, and I’m ashamed to say I took pleasure in the guilt she would feel.

  The whisky bottle was still where I had left it, and Denis poured himself a glass of it, taking a sip as he faced me. If I’d planned ahead, I realized I could have laced it with some poison, like in an Agatha Christie book. Honestly, though, where would I have got hold of a decent poison? He’d have tasted weedkiller, surely? The trouble with that sort of thing is that you end up in prison for life. No matter how things turned out, I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Michael snapped his fingers in front of my nose. ‘Pay attention and answer the question,’ he snapped.

  My mind had wandered again, preferring vagueness to the actual reality of waiting to be murdered.

  ‘I don’t know where she’s gone,’ I said. Some part of me had been listening and that was what Denis had asked. ‘She’s gone away,’ I added. I wanted to answer their questions. I wanted the conversation to go on and on, all day if they liked. I didn’t want to imagine what would happen when the talking stopped.

  ‘Tell me, David,’ Denis said, pulling up the other chair and sitting down. ‘Tell me why your wife can’t bear to think of leaving you?’

  I blinked at him, trying to look as if I was giving his question some serious thought. Only Carol would find me, and she might not be back for days.

  ‘I don’t know. She loves me,’ I replied. Denis was not a pleasant-looking man to stare at. His skin was flushed and his eyes were flat and cold. His freckles stood out on the pale, bony head, and for an instant I could only see them, like a web of dots on his face.

  ‘Are you cruel to her, David?’ he said to me suddenly, almost in a whisper. I could feel him tense as he watched me. He really wanted to know. Poor sod never understood her.

  ‘She’s the only thing I value in the world,’ I said, leaning closer to him. The truth of this was somehow clear, and Denis shifted uncomfortably. I wondered what his own meat and veg wife had been like. Did he have red-haired little kids with bony faces and hard laughter? Carol was a force of nature compared to his sort of home. I could almost sympathize with what he’d been through.

  ‘You should walk away from this mess,’ I told him as he stared. ‘She needs me, so I stay. Anything else, anyone else – they’re just strangers.’

  I could see he was struggling with some internal argument. He practically shook with irritation and he knocked back the glass of poison-free whisky without seeming to taste it. I heard the bottle clink on the glass as he refilled. I didn’t much like the prospect of him getting drunk in my kitchen.

  Denis turned round in his seat. ‘Are you wearing gloves, Michael?’ he asked.

  I glanced up to see that Michael was. Denis too had a pair, and I had a sudden sense of dropping from a great height. I don’t think I’ve ever heard something more frightening than that casual question. When Denis turned back to me, I had to hold my hands together on the table to stop them shaking.

  ‘I could make you vanish, David. No husband for her to come home to, understand? Perhaps there would be room then for a man who’s more than some weird little parasite. You don’t even work, do you, David? You just sit here and spend the money she makes for you. Does that make you feel like a man, David?’

  ‘She would never trust you if I disappeared,’ I said slowly. ‘She knows you sent Michael the first time. She’ll know it was you.’ I liked the way this was going and began to warm to the theme. ‘She’ll hate you if you even bruise me, Mr Tanter. You should have that clear in your head. I can’t see a happy ending here unless you just leave.’

  He sat back and seemed to ponder this for a while.

  ‘I see what you mean, Mike. He sits there as cool as you like with his arse out in the wind.’ I saw Michael smile behind Denis’s back. I wasn’t completely sure what the phrase meant either, by the way. If it meant vulnerable, that was about right.

  Denis stood up, and I felt a spike of sudden hope that he was going to take my advice. He nodded to me.

  ‘You are a sick little man, David. You’ve turned a wonderful woman into a twisted, fragile… I don’t know what she is. You might be right about killing you, or it might be the one thing she needs to really wash you off her skin, you know what I mean? Just seeing you sitting there looking so smug makes me angry, David. I think you have a hold over her, like those men who beat women and somehow they still come back. I don’t understand it. However, I’m not the sort to walk away from things I don’t understand, David. I am a stubborn man.’

  He said it like it was something he’d said a hundred times before, like he was proud of it. I could only stare blankly at him as he walked around Michael and stood at the other end of the kitchen. The room felt cramped with those two blocking the door.

  ‘I’ll stay to watch, Mike, if you don’t mind,’ Denis said.

  ‘How far do you want me to go?’ Michael asked, his eyes on mine.

  Denis thought for a moment.

  ‘I’ll want to have another crack at this when she comes back, so keep it all under his clothes, all right? Teach him something. Break a couple of fingers, but hide the rest.’

  I began to yell then, though I knew the neighbours would all be at work. There was no one to help me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I MANAGED TO GET myself to Brighton General hospital to have my hand splinted. I thought they’d ask me all sorts of difficult questions, but they simply made me wait for six hours just to be told that the X-rays showed two broken fingers. The first thing I’d said to the nurse on reception was, ‘I have two broken fingers,’ but I didn’t mind. They had given me painkillers, and I’ve always liked the building. It used to be a workhouse in Victorian times, and I like that sense of history. Anyway, it was warm inside and there was a machine to get cups of orange-coloured tea. After all
the trouble I’d had getting there, I made the most of it. Steering with one hand isn’t a problem, but changing gear and steering is a nightmare.

  I think if anyone had been nice to me I might have asked for help, or gone to the police, perhaps. The doctors were too busy to want more than a glance at someone with my kind of problems. Even the nurse who did the bandaging didn’t ask how it had happened. She was flustered and tired and she had a bright line of sweat where her hair met her forehead. I found my gaze focusing on it while she worked on me. It must be a strange thing to spend your day with people who have been really hurt. They say policemen think everyone is a criminal. I wonder if doctors think everyone is just a bag of skin and bones waiting to burst apart all over them. I saw some blood on the linoleum floor while I was there, though it was cleaned up so I stopped my mental letter to the local paper.

  I think it was then that I thought of writing to my brother. I was a bit woozy from the painkillers and I had a prescription for more. There was a small leak of acid into my mouth, but when I swallowed it back it stayed down, to my relief. I couldn’t go home and I couldn’t find my car keys. I knew I’d driven to the hospital, but the damn things had walked somewhere between the reception and the waiting room and the X-ray waiting room and the X-ray machine and the nurses’ station and all the other places they’d sent me. I couldn’t bear to get up and begin the search for them.

  ‘Excuse me, miss, have you seen a set of car keys? I was here just a minute ago’ – over and over. If they were lost, I would walk home, or call the RAC and pretend to be a young woman on her own so they’d come quickly. I was past caring about anything.

  At the pharmacy on the ground floor I exchanged the prescription for a bottle of pills and bought paper, stamps and envelopes from a little newsagent in the same patient-friendly grouping. Hospital is dull. I saw a bald cancer kid and wondered how they get through the days. Time moves really slowly in there.