Beneath the Skin Page 5

  Eyes like saucers, he thinks, to deflect his churning thoughts. The Tinderbox story. I have a wife with eyes like saucers. Who would have thought?

  He picks up a gilt-framed photograph from the desk and smiles. It’s of three generations of Proctors: Charlie, his father and his son Rupert, with only a nose in common. He remembers Charlie’s father well. Harold, Harry to his friends, so much like Charlie, fair and genial, old fashioned to a fault. He thinks fondly of Charlie’s mother, Valerie, a horsey woman both in hobby and looks who is still going strong. Always such a warm and welcoming family, eager to draw him into the fold of their love when his parents were absent.

  ‘What would I have done without you, eh?’ he says to the photograph.

  A memory strikes him, of being clutched to Valerie’s huge bosom. She was wearing a coat with a real fur collar and it made him sneeze. He’d been holding back the tears and the sneeze was such a relief.

  ‘I was only a boy,’ David mutters. The sneeze allowed him to cry.

  He wonders when he last looked at a photograph of his own parents. Indeed, does he still have any? Has he ever shown one to Antonia? He doubts it; she’s never asked. Their meeting at a night club and their simple yet heady marriage only months later at the registry office was like a natural start. They’ve never looked back to a life before then. It seems to suit them both.

  And yet he’d adored his parents. He can still vividly recall the frenzied beating he’d given Smith-Bates at boarding school when he’d taunted that his father shagged his mother from behind. David called him a bloody great liar, told him to shut his ugly face. His father was stern but kind. He was certain his dad would never do such a repugnant thing to his flame-haired flawless mother, but Smith-Bates refused to back down. So David struck out, fuelled by longing and need for his parents, who were in Singapore at that time. When he was forcefully peeled away from Smith-Bates, the master asked him to explain why he’d done it, but he couldn’t bear to repeat the profanity and so instead faced the consequences. Even as the lash was brought down on his small palms he was resolute. His pride at defending his mother’s honour had been worth it.

  ‘Live with honour. Die with pride,’ he remembers, looking at his grown-up palms and desperately wishing the adult could match those words.

  He glances at his watch and a thought occurs to him. He remembers Charlie’s chuckle when he opened the desk drawer to show David his stash. ‘There for times of trouble and strife, David!’

  Leaning down he pulls open the drawer on the bottom right. The Glenfiddich bottle is more than half full. ‘To trouble and strife! Cheers, Charlie,’ he declares to the photograph, settling back down in Charlie’s chair and taking his first liberal swig.

  The ringtone penetrates the evening silence and Antonia answers immediately from her bedside telephone.

  ‘Hello, Chinue, love. How are you keeping?’ Candy Farrell asks in her small voice.

  ‘It’s Antonia, remember? I’m fine. How are you, Mum?’

  ‘I was wondering if you were coming to visit. I haven’t seen you for so long …’

  ‘I was there on Sunday. I brought you some lovely flowers. And I’m coming again this Sunday, just as usual.’

  ‘Will Jimmy be coming?’

  Smoothing her hair, Antonia tenses, but keeps her voice even. ‘No, Mum. Dad’s dead. Remember?’

  ‘Are you sure, love? I thought I saw him.’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure, Mum. EastEnders will be on the telly soon. Why don’t you check the television page and I’ll see you on Sunday.’

  Antonia replaces the receiver carefully and gazes at the tree whose branch taps at the shuttered bedroom window, reminding her to stand and view the garden from upstairs, to appreciate its size and splendour and to remember just how lucky she is.

  ‘Human beings, we’re all different, either inside or out,’ her mother used to say. ‘But we’re all the Lord’s children. There’s good in everyone.’

  She used to be full of wise words, her mum, even when she was bowed and bruised. But now that same person telephones her two or three times a day, forgetting a conversation she’s had only moments earlier, sometimes completely oblivious of her daughter’s weekly visits and yet still seeing the man who had no good in him at all.

  She turns away from the window with a sigh, recovers her book from the pillow and continues to read.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Olivia is at the sink with her back turned as Mike enters the warm kitchen. He’s come home from work earlier than usual and feels ridiculously nervous. A few days of staccato conversation have passed since her rollicking and he’s been saying and doing nothing on the basis of least said soonest mended. It’s one of his mother’s many wise words, though she rarely practises what she preaches. But mid-afternoon at the office today, Judith tucked her blonde bob behind her ears and gave him one of her mind-reading looks. ‘Still a crap husband?’ she asked, handing over the post for signing.

  ‘Possibly,’ he replied. He couldn’t help but smile as he looked at her. She was trying to find a hip on which to place her hand, but she was huge, far larger than he remembered Olivia being when pregnant. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, you’ve worked late the last couple of days and I haven’t seen you come back from lunch with a Thornton’s bag or with a huge bunch of M&S flowers, and you don’t seem the Interflora type of guy to me.’

  Mike felt himself flush.

  ‘Oh God, don’t tell me you resorted to flowers from Netto. That’s grounds for divorce!’

  He sat back and raked a hand through his hair. ‘To be honest, I’ve done nothing. Olivia hasn’t said anything and I thought it might make things worse.’

  So, Judith put him straight with her round, open, friendly face. She didn’t know what the problem was, but doing or saying nothing was not an option. ‘Venus and Mars and all that crap. It’s true, men and women don’t understand each other. But speaking on behalf of womankind, while chocolates and flowers don’t solve anything, they certainly help. From the way you look, my guess is that you need to clear the air. So go home early, surprise her, tell her that you love her.’

  So here he is. Olivia turns from the sink just as he reaches her. She looks worn and so very pale.

  ‘For you,’ he says, handing over a bunch of yellow roses with a wry smile. ‘Not very imaginative, I know. It’s just a token to say sorry.’ He kisses her cheek and can sense the stifled sniggers of his girls sitting at the wooden table behind him. ‘Can we talk later?’

  Olivia smiles faintly, nods and takes the flowers.

  ‘Aren’t you going to snog?’

  ‘Hannah!’

  ‘Well that’s what they do on the TV.’

  ‘I think you mean kiss, young lady,’ Olivia says. ‘I’ll put these in water.’

  As Olivia moves away, Mike looks at Rachel, his face a question, but she shrugs her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispers.

  ‘Well, these are for you two,’ he says, pulling out two chocolate bars from his pocket and hiding them behind his back. ‘Which hand? You go first, Hannah.’

  Hannah pulls at his right sleeve. ‘That one.’ He brings out an empty hand. Hannah starts to cry. ‘That’s mean, Daddy. It’s not fair if Rachel gets two!’

  Confectionery distribution woes salved, Mike sits down, pushes away the empty plates and studies his girls as they eat their treats. They’re so different in looks and build and in chocolate-bar-eating technique, he thinks with a smile. No black dog today; he feels a sudden lightness, a sense of expectation, almost like optimism. I’m lucky, very lucky, he thinks. I must remember this more often.

  ‘So, how was school?’ he asks Hannah. ‘Do you still fancy Dylan whatshisname?’

  ‘I do not!’

  ‘Yes, she does!’

  ‘How do you know? You’re not at St Theresa’s any more. You go to Loreto where they all snog and smoke!’

  ‘Well, I don’t, you idiot.’

  Olivia is back in the
room. ‘Don’t call her an idiot, Rachel.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair, Mum. She just—’

  ‘Life’s not always fair, Rachel,’ Olivia replies, sitting down at the table.

  Mike feels a shiver and for a few moments they’re all silent, but then he takes Olivia’s hand and looks at her closed face. He still feels strangely buoyant. He squeezes gently. ‘My darling wife … I would say you look a bit tired, but something tells me that wouldn’t be a good thing to say.’

  Olivia smiles, seeming to relent, just a little.

  ‘However, since I’m home early, instead of going for a run, I can be your personal slave for the rest of the day. Feet up, cup of tea, dinner to follow. Your wish will be my command. What do you say?’

  ‘And don’t forget the snogging!’ Hannah adds helpfully before bursting into giggles.

  ‘My mother always called it stew. Very working class, I expect. You’re looking old, Charles,’ Helen says over the beef and kidney casserole in their Edwardian Cheshire home. ‘Or is it my eyes? Turning fifty didn’t bother me a jot, but I had twenty-twenty vision until then,’ she adds, pouring Charlie another glass of claret. She’s pulled the bottle out of the cellar so she knows it’s a good year. She feels that perhaps he will take her news better if he’s drunk a glass or two of the mellow, as he describes it.

  ‘I suppose five years younger classes me as your toy boy, but sadly I’ve always looked old,’ Charlie replies easily, wiping his plate with a crust of white bread. ‘Perhaps you never noticed. Did you think you’d married a matinee star?’

  Helen smiles. Neither has any delusions about their appearances and they often banter easily on the subject, ruminating at length about Rupert’s unexpected good looks. ‘He must have skipped a generation or two,’ Charlie invariably comments. ‘Or perhaps he’s the butcher’s son. He was a good-looking fella before he fell off the roof. Poor old chap, better not to survive than get old really. Like Rod Hull.’

  ‘Oh yes, the chap from the Marathon Man. I like him.’

  ‘Ah, film stars. Laurence Olivier? The mad Nazi dentist?’

  ‘No. The Graduate. Little fellow with a nose, but something about him. One of those method actors.’

  ‘Robert De Niro?’

  ‘Charles, you are silly at times. What would I do with Robert De Niro?’

  ‘You have your talents …’

  ‘Which I save just for you! Birthdays and Christmas.’

  They both laugh. ‘Wouldn’t mind another spoonful of the stew if you’d do the honours. Does Barbara still make these casseroles in that plug-in device?’

  ‘I think she does. But don’t ask me how it all works. I just eat what she leaves. We must never lose her, Charles. Clean house, dinner, home-made bread. As if by magic.’

  ‘Agreed. But she must be eighty, at least. Now she is old!’

  Helen studies Charles’s face as he wipes his chin with the napkin Barbara has laundered and laid. ‘No, you’re right. Old was the wrong word. Tired or drawn would be a more accurate description. More so than usual. Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. In fact I’m delighted to be tired and drawn rather than old. It makes me feel like a boy!’

  Charlie tucks into his second helping of Barbara’s casserole, hoping Helen will change the subject. At times during their marriage, he’s tried to deflect her long-winded inquisitions, but generally to no avail. Her tendency to see only the black and white in life means she can detect a lie or indeed a deflection a mile off. It’s better to keep a low profile and eat up. He likes eating dinner with Helen, it’s a wonderful combination of the three things he loves best in the world: food, wine and his wife.

  A bloody diabetic, he ruminates inwardly as he savours the warmth of the wine on his throat. How preposterous. These women doctors don’t know a thing.

  Charlie’s usual doctor, Simpson, is away, or so he was told by the fearsome receptionist when he visited the surgery that afternoon for his test results. One of the junior associates sat looking a little too comfortable in Simpson’s seat, gazing at a computer screen. She looked so very young, like barbers and builders and general office staff.

  He furtively glances again at Helen across the worn mahogany table. In either law or medicine, mistakes are easy to make when looking at other people’s cases, computer or not. There’s no point making a fuss until he speaks to Simpson. He’ll worry about it then if he has to. For now his stomach is speaking. A touch of something sweet, it says, and then perhaps a small glass of golden dessert wine to finish.

  ‘Now, what about pud?’ he asks, lifting his spoon.

  ‘I’m going to New York City in January, Charles,’ Helen says bluntly. ‘To New York University. I’ve been selected by Ted Edwards to teach and do some research on a secondment and I’m thrilled.’

  ‘That’s nice. Shall we move on to—’

  ‘I’ll be there for a year, Charles,’ Helen interrupts firmly.

  He puts down his spoon. ‘Good God, Helen,’ he replies. ‘That’s preposterous.’ Charles Proctor doesn’t need to be told anything twice.

  The girls are in bed, Mike and Olivia are alone in the bay-windowed lounge and they have no more excuses. Mike takes a deep breath and looks at his wife on the sofa opposite. ‘I’m sorry, Olivia. I realise I’ve …’ he nearly uses the football analogy again, but he doesn’t think Olivia will be amused. ‘Well, I’ve had my mind on other things, I suppose. I didn’t realise it until now. But I can see that I’ve neglected you and the girls and I’m sorry. I’ll stop.’

  Olivia examines her neatly trimmed nails. She speaks quietly and he has to lean towards her to hear. ‘I need to know why, Mike. I don’t want to know, but I need to know.’ She’s silent for a moment, and then she lifts her head to look him in the eye. She looks unbearably sad, her face pale, tears about to spill from her eyes. ‘Please be honest with me.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Are you having or have you had an affair?’

  Mike almost flinches. It’s the last thing he expects to hear. ‘What the … no! Where on earth have you got that idea from?’ he says, almost laughing with relief at the absurdity of her suggestion.

  ‘Be honest, Mike.’

  ‘I am! Absolutely.’

  Mike prays the sincerity is showing on his face, and is rewarded when the relief almost visibly flows from Olivia’s body. Limp and shaking, she bows her head, burying it in her hands.

  For a moment he sits back in the armchair and watches, a surge of panic stopping him from reaching out to her. She’s been so tense and unhappy, now she’s so relieved at his reply. They live together, they sleep in the same bed. How has he missed all of this?

  Olivia lifts her head, but still averts her eyes. ‘I thought you’d stopped loving me,’ she says quietly, the tears rolling down her ashen face. ‘You seemed so disinterested, so remote. Then I thought of how Judith has thrown herself at you for all these years and it all made sense.’

  ‘Jude’s just friendly,’ he replies with surprise. ‘You know that. She’s friendly with everyone, you included.’ He feels mildly irked at the idea; it seems so silly. ‘Besides, she’s having a baby in two months.’

  He sees Olivia’s face harden and the penny drops. ‘You didn’t think …?’ He can feel the heat rise, angry now, offended and alarmed that Olivia can even imagine such a thing.

  ‘A devoted secretary who’s always fancied you, pregnant with a man she won’t name, you away with the fairies, what was I supposed to think?’ Olivia’s words cut through him like knives.

  Much later, after Mike has been on a long run in the dark and drizzle, the black dog running alongside him on the wet pavements of Chorlton, the irritation he feels at Olivia’s logic starts to recede. The idea of anyone he knows, let alone he or Olivia, having an affair is ridiculous. He knows some men occasionally have a quick shag if the opportunity presents itself, to satisfy a small desire, like the need to scratch an itch, but not the planning, the lies, the awful betrayal of a full-blown relationshi
p. But his head has now cleared, and in fairness to Olivia, he understands he has been distant, something he didn’t fully realise until a twelve-year-old told him straight.

  Life still isn’t all right, but there’s some sense of relief that Olivia’s strange behaviour has been explained. And when she steps naked into the shower beside him, his anger is replaced by an urgent desire to have her, to mark her, to show her he loves her, there in the shower, rough and fast, the water expunging her tears.

  ‘I love you, Olivia,’ he roars as he climaxes. ‘I love you and only you. Do you hear me?’

  Olivia nods and smiles, but as he wraps her in a towel and holds her in his arms, he thinks she looks sad.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sami leans back in his chair and puts his feet on the office desk. For a moment he studies the shine on his shoes. They cost him a hundred and fifty quid, but they’re worth every penny. ‘Because quality really does count,’ he mutters before going back to reading Luxury Auto magazine. He thumbs through the glossy pages, but he isn’t really looking at it as he usually does, pawing over each photograph and article before comparing performance. He’s too distracted for that, his mind swamped with thoughts of his afternoon meeting out of the office.

  His eye catches the heading ‘Size Has Clout’ and he smiles for a moment before a mild but nagging anxiety sets in. ‘Oh, piss off,’ he says out loud. It’s an unwelcome emotion, one which hasn’t really bothered him since the day he discovered he was attractive. An overheard conversation between his eldest sister and her new friend from university when he was fourteen. ‘Ramona, your little brother. His face – he’s stunning!’ he’d heard. He’d rushed to the bathroom and locked himself in, dared his eyes to the mirror expecting to see a fat boy, but had been astounded to find that the girl was right. His chubby cheeks had grown thin, his face was bony and chiselled. It was a turning point for Samuel Richards. Samuel became Sami. He stood tall and put anxiety behind him. But now it prods at him from a distance and he isn’t entirely sure what it means.