2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (13 page)

It’s almost poetic.

There’s no doubt, now.

Nicole is not a three-night stand.

I don’t like to go on about it, but it feels as though my heart is about to break.

W
hy do I do things like this?

I’ve just parked the car in the hospital car park and, with my arm round her back, I have walked the shivering wreck into Casualty. A nurse takes one look at her and tells me she’s not bad enough for in here. I reply that I think Nicole’s wrist may be broken. Even if it is, she coldly informs us, it’s not bad enough for in here.

I want to tell the cow I think she has a damaged liver and a ruptured spleen, and has swallowed a gobful of weedkiller out of a milkshake carton but I know what she’d say. Not bad enough for in here.

So I coax my new friend down a series of corridors to the outpatient department, reassuring her we’re not good enough for Casualty, which brings the hint of a smile to her bruised lips.

Luckily the secretary can fit her in, although she might be in for a long wait. We take a seat on a plastic chair row in a waiting room with other casualties who look to me as if they’ve had a lot worse happen to them than a damaged liver and a ruptured spleen, and poisoned insides from a gobful of weedkiller.

There’s broken ankles, legs, collarbones and wrists, burns, bruising, bandages and moanings, and an air of utter defeat about the place. And a wailing wall of children from one family who look as though they’ve been collectively food-poisoned.

Misery is hard to stare in the face, so after two minutes, I’m giddy already. I stand up and tell Nicole that I’m going in search of a coffee machine. I locate one at the end of a maze of corridors. I press the number four programme – white with double sugar – and a straight line of dark-grey liquid spurts down into the cup. At a guess, this is going to taste like something in the liquid-detergent line.

Still, it could hardly make me feel worse.

Carrying two cupfuls, I manage to get slightly lost on the return. But since I have left a continuous trail of coffee blobs on the floor – like Gretel without Hansel or bread – I don’t have too much difficulty retracing my steps to the coffee machine, from where I take an alternative route.

I rejoin her a minute later. “This is all I could get.”

“It’s okay,” she replies. “I like coffee.”

“I meant, I lost most of it on the way.”

But she is a profusing mess of gratitude.

We sit here in silent communion, sipping microchip Nescafe from our white plastic cups. I wonder if she’s thinking what I’m thinking? Like, what the hell I am doing here?

The whole thing is so droll it’s not funny. She and my husband are in love. It’s almost hilarious. I should be finishing the job Harry began. I should be battering her to death with my fists.

Maybe then they’d admit her to Casualty.

She opens her swollen gob: “It’s really good of you to be staying here with me like this.”

“Not at all. I enjoy seeing people suffer.”

She laughs at this, a sudden spontaneous yelp, which makes her groan and crouch forward, and grab her midriff. I have discovered a weapon of pain infliction: humour.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the world,” I add.

While my buddy is groaning and chortling with the agony of laughter and generally getting a whole lot of shit off her chest plus a few fierce looks from some of the injured people in this band-aid purgatory, I raise my eyes to the tubular lighting. Wait till I tell Sylvana.

“Why did this have to happen?” she moans.

She starts rocking gently to and fro, head inclined downwards.

“Why
did
it happen?” I inquire suddenly.

She can’t look at me. “You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do. Is it to do with the guy who gave you the earrings?”

Pause.

“Maybe…”

I can understand her point: who wants to admit their adultery to a person like me who gives the impression of being a decent and responsible member of civilized society? Answer: no one with any self-respect. That’s principle for you: only ever admit your mortal failings to the equivalent of a scruffy hooligan.

“It’s okay, Nicole, I won’t judge you.” (From me, a simply amazing piece of reassurance.)

“Harry found out,” she mumbles, lowering her head. “That’s the man I’ve been living with.”

“Found out what?”

“You’re going to think I’m awful…” She lowers her eyes.

“Try me.”

“I’ve been seeing a married man.”

“
Heyl
We have a marriage wrecker. Congratulations!”

“I feel awful about it.”

“Quite.”

“Are you married, Julianne?”

“No – I mean, yes.”

Hell, Julie, get a grip. Your wedding ring.

“I love my husband,” says I. “He’s irresistible. Do you find him irresistible?”

“Who?”

“The husband.”

“Yes, I do.” She nods helplessly.

“How long have you known him?”

“Since January. He came into the travel agency where I work, to book a holiday in Amsterdam for himself and his…”

“His wife?”

She nods. “His wife – technically.”

“Oh, I see: technically.”

“He returned the following day to see me. He didn’t even mention Amsterdam.”

I remember that weekend in Amsterdam. I remember that peculiar dreamy mood that fell over Ronan that weekend. Was I born naive and trusting? I really believed it was because we were having a lovely romantic weekend together – walking the canal cobblestones, boating and dining on the
Grachten
, strolling the Rijksmuseum, venerating the memorial of Anne Frank’s house, nauseating at the thumb crushers and person sawers in the Torture Museum, sipping Tia Maria in Maxim’s late-night piano bar and smoking dope in the tearooms.

I really believed that these things made him happy not just because he found them enjoyable in themselves, but because the two of us were enjoying them together. Now I understand his dreaminess: in fact, he spent the whole weekend fantasizing about this woman presently slurping acid coffee beside me.

“Then he rang me up and he just asked me out. I probably shouldn’t have accepted.”

“Then why did you?”

She exhales deeply. “I don’t know. Harry was good to me, but I was going through a bad time when I met him. I don’t love him any more. It was a mistake moving in with him. Ronan is different.”

The way she says ‘Ronan’, it’s like she’s imbuing him with this mystical hue.

“How is he so different?”

“He just is,” she says simply.

Romance: that’s what it does to the brain. A couple of weeks in Ronan’s company, believe me, and he turns into a fantasy-free zone.

“Explain.”

“He’s a great communicator,” she says, almost nostalgically.

“You’re joking!”

She eyes me, baffled.

“What man can communicate?” I say airily.

“He loves me,” she replies, turning away. “That’s all that matters.”

I’m sitting here, nodding away to myself. He loves himself. The poor woman. If she only knew.

“He loves your body, Nicole. Don’t look at me like that. You do have a gorgeous body, you know.”

She shakes her head.

“With us it’s not just
sex
.”

The way she pronounces the word, it’s like sex is something subterranean and dirty. It’s as if what goes on between her and Ronan transcends the commonality of carnal greed. It’s as if stripping naked in my kitchen and sleeping with my husband in my bed has something indefinably noble about it.

“So what is it – if it’s not just sex? Spiritual communion?”

“I just know he loves me.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me.”

This makes me immediately suspicious. “Did you ask him?”

“I didn’t have to.”

“What if he thought you were asking him and he said it to avoid complications?”

“Look, you’ve been really kind bringing me here like this.”

“Where were you when he told you?” I press.

“Why all the questions?” she moans.

“I’m just trying to find out if he’s deceiving you too…I mean, as well as his wife.”

Sighs. “He told me again yesterday.”

Pause.

“Where were you when he told you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Nicole, all I’m asking you is: were you wearing any clothes when he told you he loved you?”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe about it. Were you in bed with him when he told you, or were you not?”

All is still.

“Yes,” she eventually admits in a very weak voice. “We were in bed together, but it was wonderful.”

I sit back. “Doesn’t count.”

“Of course it counts.”

I have offended her.

“It’s his cock speaking, Nicole. And you ought to know that cocks are great liars: they will say anything to get their way.”

“But we’d finished making love. I remember because he switched on his clock radio and this song came on and that’s when he told me he loved me.”

I put on this horrified expression. “Did you say
his
clock radio?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean to say, Nicole, that you were actually making love to him in their marital bed?”

“She was away.”

“And that makes it right?”

She’s pouting. “He insisted I should stay,” she says in the spoilt manner of a young girl.

“Yes, but in another woman’s bed? God, Nicole, what
are
you? You must feel really bad, breaking up a marriage like this.”

She starts crying. Oh, help me, Jesus.

Some minutes pass.

The crying is beginning to peter out. I glance over at her.

Her expression has turned into this vast, wet sulk. “She’s a cow,” she declares.

“Of course.”

“She doesn’t deserve him.”

“Aha.”

“She’s demanding.”

Demanding?

“Did he say why?” I wonder.

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do. I do want to know!”

“She just sounds a bit unbalanced, that’s all.”

“Unbalanced?”

“Oh…” she raises her eyes to heaven like she knows all there is to know about his wife and based on that she’s not too impressed “…she’s always pestering him about something or other.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know.” She waves her hand vaguely.

“
What?
”

“She nags him.”

I see. So I nag him. Anything else?

“I suppose she’s possessive too, is she?”

“Yes. She tries to stop him going out. I don’t know, she crushes him. She’s the jealous type.”

That’s a horrible lie! I have never tried to prevent Ronan going out. And anyway, even if I have – we’re married, aren’t we? It’s not about jealousy: it’s about responsibility and making a relationship work. Now the bastard’s making out I’m the Grand Inquisitor and his little side munch is buying the story wholesale.

“He said all that?”

She nods. “I know you probably think I’m terrible to be giving out about her like this, because I’m not exactly in the right, I suppose…”

“Bloody hell.”

“…so I’ll stop bitching.”

“Bitch, for God’s sake. Bitch away.”

“It’s not right.”

“I can take it.”

But she’s clammed up. Her decision not to bitch straight to my face annoys me intensely. I want to grab her and knock her head against the hospital floor like a stubborn coconut, until she gives me a precise analysis of all the ways in which I constitute a bitch.

This isn’t healthy.

I stand up. I don’t think I can hold back the vomit much longer.

“I’d better go,” I mumble, moving away.

She calls after me. She tells me, guilty-looking, that I’m really kind. She adds that she finds me refreshingly frank. She thanks me for everything. She scribbles her phone number on a piece of paper and holds it out for me, smiling weakly, head tilted, hair falling down untidily over her shoulder. As she gazes at me I am unexpectedly struck by how beautiful are the eyelids and eyelashes of her good, open right eye.

Her expression, however, is one of profound sadness.

I fully accept that she may be going through hell. That she is human and that she has the capacity to feel all the painful emotions a human being can feel. But there are limits: my intestines simply can’t take it any longer.

I grab the note from her and rush off round the corner and into the ladies where there’s a queue, so rather than be civil and wait my turn and splurge it all out over the floor in front of everybody, I simply walk to one side and, nice and casual, I vomit into the sink.

I
feel such a moron.

I’m standing in the flowerbed just outside Sylvana’s ground-floor apartment, having squashed underfoot possibly a heather plant and definitely a hydrangea. I’m peering in through the living-room window at the blue mermaid painting and the wine-tinted couch. The room is empty.

But through the semi-open fly window you can hear this sizzling noise and smell what’s being sizzled: rashers and sausages. Sylvana is in her kitchen, cooking.

I slide my back down along the wall, until my bum rests against the damp, fertilized muck. Now I sit among the flowers, equally squashed. A human thing such as me is way harder to unsquash than a plant, so the vegetation will just have to put up with it.

The damp feels like it’s rising into me, sticking to me, percolating, spreading. But as I’m stewing here in my own juice I can’t think what I care about any more.

I need to talk to Sylvana, to tell her that she was right about Ronan all along and that things are way more serious than I realized. But I can’t bring myself to ring her doorbell to let her know I am here – I feel that foolish. I’m afraid that if I go in there, a miserable suffering circus, she will simply say (in not so many words), “I told you so.”

And yet I’ll have to tell her some time. She will wriggle it out of me eventually, just like she wriggled Cherbury Court out of me. She should have been a dentist like Ronan; she’d have been great with a pair of pliers.

So I take the mobile from my damp pocket and input her number. I can hear its shrill noise through the window just above my head. A few seconds later, I hear footsteps passing through the hard floor of her front room. Then they stop.