A Good Wife

Draft as of 01/03/13 - latest will be on www.youwriteon.com. Always very grateful for feedback! Thanks, C.

Chapter 1

William Wolfson, aged almost thirty, was shagging a blonde in a pub garden. He tipped his head to the night sky, feeling the drizzle cool his face.

He looked down at the girl on the table below him, laid on her back as he stood, skirt bunched around her waist. Her hair – pretty hair, like a silk flag – was spilt on the bench, almost into the Stella Artois ash tray. Her eyelashes were fluttering in a parody of passion and her squeaks were becoming ever more high-pitched, as if she were in a film, and it was his cue to finish. He ignored her noises. He could feel that she was faking, acting in accordance to an imaginary camera.

So far, the girl had behaved as the star and director of her own live-stream reality show. Her seduction of him was to impress her friends, to satisfy some promise following the hours of tarting up and choosing this dress over that dress. Now she wanted that final tick on her Saturday-night-in-the-City sheet; pulled, shagged senseless on a pub bench.

He ran his hands along her thighs feeling her calves flex against his shoulders. He curled back from her, spitting on his thumb. He pushed beneath her skirt with one hand and held her hip with the other, keeping his rhythm steady, then using his thumb, inched up, now down. The girl stopped her plastic squeaks and William felt her belly tighten and her back lengthen. She was quiet now, concentrating on his magic fingers.

Her friend, the little round brunette, had chatted him up first, then this girl, with her long limbs and silky hair, had sidled up, poaching. William saw the brunette’s face drop, but he liked girls like the blonde. London was full of them. Predatory, brimful of guile, always looking for the next score.

The girl was silent now, every muscle tensed, her mouth round in disbelief, her back arching, her head tipped back. And then she was shuddering, inelegant, robbed of her poise and chance to boast.

William let himself come, quietly and without fanfare, feeling his orgasm right to his toes. The girl lay there in the sodium light, her body looking softer and more yielding than before. Her face was in shadow, but William could feel her eyes on him and he pulled himself free, disposing of his precaution behind a balding buddleia bush. Budleja: Scrophulariaceae. The girl pressed her legs together, suddenly demure. She sat up.

William reached out a hand, and gently knuckled the side of her cheek. Her face was wet.

‘Oh,’ he said, withdrawing his hand. ‘Are you crying?’

‘Fuck off,’ she said, angry as she swiped tears with the inside of her wrist.

She drew her knees up, her skirt over them. Girls had cried before, and been angry, as if he’d cheated somehow, taken something of theirs that they hadn’t known they could give.

‘Will I see you again?’ she said. ‘That was...I’ve never felt-’

‘Maybe. But I go South tomorrow. I shan’t be back for a while.’

‘I could visit,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a car.’

‘Maybe.’ William had zipped up now, and was aware he wanted a pee. And perhaps another pint. And a pie.

‘Come to mine?’ the girl was saying. ‘We could just, like, go. We don’t have to go in there,’ she jerked her head towards the pub. ‘My friends won’t care. I’ve got some vodka,’ her voice was more urgent. ‘And we could get chips. Please,’ her voice cracked a little. ‘Don’t go yet.’

William paused. His last tenner was in his wallet, and Dom’s flat was a half hour walk away. The girl looked younger now, less hard-boiled. She’d forgotten her reality-show camera.

She turned her head and her face was caught in the light, eyes needy. William looked at her. He had nothing more to give.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But another time.’

He smiled, meaning to be kind, but he was already turning, thinking of his pie, more urgent than his need for a pint. By the time he reached the gate of the pub garden, the girl was forgotten, faded into all the rest.

*

He peed on a bit of waste land, in the darkness across from the chippy. City air; frying fat, exhaust. The night was damp; it had rained for most of the day, and even though it was cool for July, there was a restlessness in the air, the sort that came from trapped heat.

William tipped his head back as he peed, looking up at the soft black sky. There were no stars, and he felt a visceral urge for space, for skies not veiled by streetlights and the exhalations of a million breaths. He aimed his pee higher, aiming at a rusting dock leaf. It made a satisfying spattering noise.

He finished and zipped up, stepping into the light of the Tottenham Road.

Four squaddies were reeling towards the chip shop, holding each other up. They weren’t in uniform but William recognised the glint of their tag chains above their flattened shirt collars, their otter-like weaving between each others’ arms.

His fingers automatically went to his own chest. He wanted to call out to them, slap their hands, be part of their drunken huddle, but instead he stepped back. Watched them from the shadow of a Polak grocer’s doorway.

They were in the chippy now, and the Greek girl behind the counter was shovelling their chips with her little scoop, and smiling as the boys spoke to her. She had dark, wide eyes and long teeth, like a pretty squirrel.

William didn’t move as the boys paid, and left, their chips already unwrapped before they were even out of the shop. William raised his hand to his chest again, but dropped it before he got half way, his body remembering itself, avoiding the aching reminder of an old pain.

He bought his pie, and took it to the wall surrounding the car park up from the chip shop. An older couple came out of the pub opposite, the white man had his arm around the black woman’s waist, he was bending to listen to what she was saying, then they both laughed. William watched them. He dug his plastic fork into his pie, eating quickly.

The couple went to stand under a street light, with the expectant air of people waiting for a cab. The lady was looking for something in her bag, and the man stood up straight, his hands in his pockets. She found what she was looking for, and said something. The man turned and wrapped her in his arms, they rocked together and laughed. William stared, struck by how well they fitted together, shoulders and legs and heads. A group of black youths stepped out of the shadows and William’s heart stalled. The man drew the woman close, looking away, and for a moment William heard a high-pitched whine, like a rocket, harbinger of destruction. But the youths kept walking, and were gone as suddenly as they’d appeared.

William realised he’d moved into the light, and he stepped back, sinking down onto the wall again. A silver taxi rolled up, and the man put his lady in, looking up and down the street as he did so, as if checking. Then they were gone too.

William stood. He started walking towards Dom’s flat, wondering if the others would be back yet, or if they’d gone to a club. He’d left them around nine, already on shots and trying to commandeer a karaoke machine.

‘Back in a bit,’ he’d said, and Dom had thrown him a salute, followed by two fingers. Dom knew not to push, not to say, ‘one more drink, mate, go on. It’s my stag for fucks’ sake.’ They’d been friends since school, and Dom had seen William’s life blown apart, rebuilt, blown apart.

William loved Dom, and up until now had never resented his friend’s easy, privileged life. But now Dom had Katie, and was getting married. Envy pinched his neck far harder than he imagined it would.

He glanced in the darkened shop windows as he walked, remembering living here that year with Seb, before he signed up. His reflection lengthened, widened, disappeared, reappeared, and he couldn’t imagine his brother beside him. They must have walked the streets like this, after a pint or whatever, but all he could remember of that time was the secret meetings in the back of shops. The leaflets stuffed in rucksacks, the knives and numchucks Seb kept beneath his bed.

Seb would’ve been married by now. He’d have grown out of all that National Front stuff, gone back to the country. Found a farm to work on, a cottage to raise his kids in.

William glanced in the darkened window of a Halal butcher, and tried to imagine the woman he’d choose for himself. The wife who might love him, the mother he would make of her.

He wondered for a moment if he’d just left her. Not the girl from the pub, but before her. Petra, the estate manager’s daughter from the last job. She’d wilted in his arms like a drying gerbera when he said he was leaving.

‘But where,’ she’d wailed. ‘Where can you go that I can’t come too?’

William had smoothed her hair back, looking at the clock. He had a long drive from Cumbria to London.

‘But I love you,’ snuffled Petra messily, into his shirt. William had patted her.

He’d driven off, in his big black truck, with his dog by his side. As he followed the estate road, he looked in satisfaction at the trees he’d worked on for six months. His father had taught him trees, and pollarding the planes had been his first civvie job . He didn’t look in his rear view mirror as he drove, didn’t think to raise a hand to the girl waving, and waving, in the distance.

Now, as he walked across town, back to Dom’s, he wondered how this love thing was, how it worked. How could Petra love him, for example? She knew nothing of him. She didn’t know he was claustrophobic. Didn’t know he could dance a waltz; name any tree in England. Didn’t know he could strip and reload a M240B blind-fold. Didn’t know he’d killed seven men.

William put his pie and chip wrappings in a bin, and kept walking, pushing Petra away. He looked at his boots as they hit the pavement. Heel-toe, heel-toe. His phone was vibrating in his pocket, but he ignored it. He thought about Horley, and the Bramshill Estate, where new trees waited and his father’s old boss. He hoped there was a pub.

By the time he reached Dominic’s basement flat in its narrow terrace, his mind was still, controlled; the memories of Seb and his dark world patted back down into the sand.

He paused to look in his truck parked on the street, and let the small black dog out to stretch his legs.

The dog sniffed around, and William rolled his last cigarette. But then he doubled over, the thoughts suddenly out of control, gushing, pounding. The young squaddies, the middle-aged couple and the pretty-squirrel face of the girl in the chipshop. They all mashed and swirled into Petra’s self-pitying tears, the nameless, shameless girl tonight and her desperate emptiness. William gasped, drowning, clinging to the side of his truck. They were in his nose, his ears, thick in his throat. Desperate, William fumbled with the door of his truck, yanked it open and dived for the glove box. His tags were there, glinting in the darkness, chinking and slithering as William snatched them up, held them in his fist to his chest, beneath his chin.

The panic began to recede; William could breathe. He slumped back on the driver’s seat, half in, half out of the truck, swallowing his heartbeat.

Fuck, he thought. Fuck. Give me back my life.

Chapter 2

‘- allow for the variables, maybe get Collins et al to -‘

Chessie could hear her husband’s voice, fading in and out through the open window. She could feel the tension seeping through the walls of Tom’s office, like gas, swirls of it gusting through the courtyard to reach her. She imagined him pacing, his phone jammed to his ear, over-sharpened pencil in his hand.

She reached for another tomato – hard as a marble, despite the colour – and placed it in her trug, next to the rest. She’d grown the plants from seed, and they’d done so badly this year, but she couldn’t bear to leave them, to waste all that nurturing .

She continued picking, uneasy, trying not to listen. Then Tom came out, his big shoulders bowed, his handsome face grey beneath the stubble and suntan.

‘Chessie! Francesca? There you are. Come here. Look, stop that for a minute will you?’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘The beams are too short.’

Tom’s steel beams, vital for his Olympic Promise building.

‘Oh God,’ she said.

‘God’s nothing to fucking do with it.’ Tom sat down heavily on the edge of the raised garden bed, rubbing his face. ‘And the insurance for the steel lost from the last boat. That’s going to take months.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘We?’ he said. The scorn in his voice stilled her fingers on the tomatoes. ‘I hardly think-’

‘What?’

‘Sorry?’

‘You said ‘I hardly think’, then stopped. What were you going to say?’

‘I don’t want a fight, Chess. I just don’t. Oh, look, I just find it difficult sometimes, to imagine that you’re somehow involved in all of this-’

‘I used to be,’

‘Yes, a long time ago. Before the children. Before all the bloody animals and your fucking garden.’

Chessie stared at him, and Tom stared back, both shocked.

‘Oh,’ she said, after a moment. Then she turned away, knowing she had point advantage for such a low blow.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it. I’m just...the committee have got my balls in a vice, and the Games are less than a year away. I need to go and get that steel.’

‘From China?’

‘Yes, from China. I’m hardly going to pop to B&Q, am I?’ He stood up as if catching himself, then gestured to pull her into his arms. Chessie held her trug in front of herself. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘I know the timing is-’

‘-awful,’

‘-but I don’t have any choice. And you’re not going to be alone, are you? Tally’s here.’

‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Four weeks? Five? End of Aug, I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ He moved away, hands on his hips, staring at the house he had built. Chessie watched him, but her compassion bank was empty, wrung out by the last few months.

He swung around. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I know it’s been hard for you. And all this business with secrets and rubbish. She was confused, darling, towards the end. She probably didn’t realise what she was saying.’

Chessie didn’t reply, didn’t trust herself to speak and not pelt her husband with pebbles of rage. Or tomatoes. Tom put his hands around hers, on the handle of the basket.

‘I’ve been talking to Camille,’ he said. ‘She’s very worried about you dealing with all of this-’

‘How did she know you were going to go away?’ asked Chessie, sharply. ‘You’ve only just decided.’

‘No, well. It was on the horizon. But anyway, the point is-’

‘The point is,’ she said, shaking her hands to dislodge his. He hung on. ‘The point is,’ she repeated, wrenching free. ‘That you appear to speak to my sister much more than you speak to me.’

‘God, Chess. Not this again. Cam just rang about Jamie-’

‘My sister, rang about my son,’

‘She thought you have enough on your plate! So do I!’

‘So what did she want?’

‘Just to let us know Jamie’s moving clubs. Apparently they want him at Sidari, so she thought she’d let us know everything was fine. And she said, suggested, that you might like to come out too. Just for a break.’

Chessie looked at Tom in horror. Her sister, older by three years, was a formidable business woman, operating bar and club franchises across the Mediterranean. She’d flown home for Jacinta’s funeral, but then had to go straight back to Corfu, taking Jamie with her.

‘Think about it,’ said Tom, as the phone began to ring again in the house. ‘We don’t like to think of you on your own.’

‘We’? thought Chessie. Utterly, bloody ‘we’? No. No way. She couldn’t think of anything worse than being trapped in Camille’s villa, high in the Corfu hills.

She could hear Tom on the phone, voice rising in frustration, and for a moment she did feel a flicker of pity. But it was only a flicker. It was hard to pity a man so suddenly driven by a need to mark the world with concrete, steel and trees trapped in boxes.

‘Become aware of his own mortality,’ Jacinta had said. This was before they knew she was dying, and Tom had called her a ‘twisted old stick’. Her mother had laughed, scornful, delighted with the reaction she’d provoked in her son-in-law.

Four years ago he’d turned forty-two, and his company won a contract to build a multi-purpose theatre just outside Barcelona. The theatre was a triumph, and the international acclaim fired Tom’s ambition. It also solved any financial worries, and suddenly they could sell their ramshackle old farmhouse, and build the dream house.

Chessie, caught up in school runs, Pony Club and day-to-day survival, hadn’t quite believed it would happen, until one day the old house was sold, and then they were in the cube.

‘The house of the future,’ Tom would say, waving guests through the atrium. But Chessie hated it. The automated lighting systems, the sinister electronic control boxes in every room (curtains, blinds, heat, sound – all of it could be individually controlled by room). She missed her Aga, the bedroom windows that rattled indignantly at winter winds. She missed wooden floor boards beneath her feet, sneaky cobwebs behind oak beams, the unaccountable smell of lavender in the hall to the scullery.

She didn’t belong here. Her dogs banished to a ‘utility room’ (Wellies in the garage, darling, you can’t call it a Boot Room without any boots.), her cats re-homed in the stables. Her big, yellow and red Mexican bowl of bits-and bobs (car keys, hair bobbles, paperclips, packets of seeds) banned from the kitchen table.

Chessie paused for a moment, listening to Tom gabbling hard-learned Mandarin. The house was arranged in a horseshoe around the courtyard – one wing for the children, one for her and Tom, and the middle bit for living in. She suddenly felt as if she were being pincered, the house morphed into a spiteful crab. ‘Not good enough!’ bellowed Tom in English.

Chessie put down her trug and fled.

.