Fifty-Minute Hour (5 page)

‘What's heaven?' Jonathan had asked, when they'd first taught him the Creed. She hadn't known the answer, had let James fill the void with clouds and angels. James's God was different – Anglican and friendlier, with a different set of (vaguer) rules and less stress on sin and hell – which made another problem in their marriage. The boys were at his own old schools (preparatory and public), instead of at the Catholic ones he'd promised. She missed her youngest son. Seven was too young to board, though she'd been packed off at that age herself, and James had gone still earlier, at the tender age of six; insisted it had done him only good. The house felt far too big without the boys. No cakes to ice, no knees to bathe, just one unrumpled bed to make, with no hidden cache of sweets or bears or toys. She stared down at the sheets. She'd changed them only yesterday, but they still looked not quite clean. Who knew what emissions seeped from their two bodies in the night – discharges or dribbles, perspiration, phlegm. It wasn't sex which fused you, just the passive sharing of a double bed: dead cells falling from James's scalp to hers, his loose coarse greying pubic hairs straying through the gap in his pyjamas, their breaths and bad smells mingled. Last weekend, they'd been away to Bristol, slept in single beds. She'd been cold all night, but clean.

She tucked in all the blankets, smoothed the counterpane, polished up the silver frame of their wedding photograph – James with hair, and smiling. She touched his curving mouth and the one eye that was showing. Her eyes were blue, as his were, but a different sort of blue – more summer sky than winter sea, though his had faded anyhow and now looked slightly dingy, as if a badly trained window-cleaner had left smears across the panes. She had changed far less than he had, could still claim a waist and cheekbones, and her fair hair was still natural, not Tru-Blonde from a bottle. She wasn't even lined. What James had called her convent-girl complexion had somehow stuck out thirteen years of marriage without withering or shrivelling.

She was frowning in the photograph, gripping her bouquet so tight it could have been a gun. Her period had started the morning of the wedding, a whole eight days too early. ‘Nerves,' the doctor shrugged, when she'd returned from honeymoon. She'd been terrified she'd leak – red patches on those yards of virgin white. She'd remained a virgin five whole days. James detested periods. If men were women, he'd exploded on day three, they'd have found a way to stop them, turn off that crimson tap.

‘Wilt thou take this man as …?' Her mother had complained that she'd mumbled all her answers, but she'd been too shy to shout. She wasn't keen on weddings. All that heat and noise and fluster, and the bubbles from the Moet skulking in her stomach throughout the honeymoon. And the service so alarming – talk of poverty and sickness and leaving Mother and Father and cleaving unto a large and loud-voiced stranger till death did them part. That meant no divorce. She had never lost her faith, never jibbed at the Church's line on the indissolubility of marriage; just wished God were a shade less large and strange Himself. She presumed He must be busy, like all men; had more important things to do than listen to her feeble prayers about abolishing all prep schools so that Jon could come back home, or persuading James to buy new (single) beds.

She switched on the radio, listened to the news. Everyone so busy once again: attending Disarmament Conventions, shooting Irish Protestants, winning by-elections, marching for Black Power. There was a riot in Peshawar. Where was Peshawar? East or West, theirs or ours? She went to fetch the atlas, looked it up. She had to make an effort to improve her general knowledge, mainly for the boys' sake. Oliver knew words she'd never heard of, words like byte or fianchetto, and Simon read the business news, at ten. She'd enrolled for a new evening class – not soufflés or choux pastry, but ‘Science and Society'. She was finding it a struggle, and no one laughed and chatted or borrowed flour and raisins, as they did in cookery.

She slipped into the spare room, the fourth and empty bedroom they'd been saving for their daughter, the one they'd never succeeded in conceiving. She drew the curtains, lit the candles at the little shrine she'd set up on the dressing table, turfed out a wilting aster from the votive vase of flowers. The flowers were not that special, just bits and pieces from the garden, a few dwarf gold chrysanthemums, the last full-bodied rose. It was the spiritual bouquet which really counted; that offering of penances and prayers she'd first learnt to make at her convent boarding school, and which had been presented to their Reverend Mother General on her annual summer feast-day – the equivalent of orchids, or rarest hothouse lilies. Her own bouquet was almost ready now, lacked just one final bloom, something which took courage, tested her devotion. She'd be presenting it on Friday, wanted it to please.

She removed her shoes, unbuttoned her blue blouse, unhooked her brassiere, let her breasts spill out. Her breasts were large and firm still, despite suckling three big babies (and even James, as well, once, since he'd been jealous of the first child and had insisted on his share). She reached across for the tallest lighted candle, then stretched out on the bed, held the candle poised across her chest. She tipped it at an angle, closed her eyes as the hot wax seared her flesh. She moved it lower, lower, so the flame was on her nipple, held it very steady, while she counted up to five. Excruciating. Wonderful. She must pray, must keep on praying, however fierce the pain. ‘I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord John-Paul Christ, the only begotten Scourge of God …'

There was a ringing at the doorbell, a crescendo from Horatio. She replaced the candle, buttoned back her blouse. The rough cotton fabric chafed across the burns. She jabbed at them deliberately, as she returned downstairs, opened the front door. Mrs Clarke from down the road, collecting for the RSPCA. She looked like her two beagles: long jowls, short legs, bright brown trusting eyes. Mary went to fetch her purse, unfurled a five-pound note. She was extremely fond of animals. It was James who was allergic to all household pets and pests, only tolerated Horatio because he'd been his mother's dog.

Mrs Clarke's tail was wagging, as she took her paper bone. ‘Thank you, dear. That's generous. Would you like our magazine? It's another 50p.'

Mary glanced down at the cover, ready to decline, shuddering at the photographs of tortured cats and dogs, some with severed ears, some with cigarette burns. She almost wept with pity, hated anything to suffer save herself. She peered closer at the pictures, taking in the details. They might give her new ideas: livid cigarette burns on a spaniel's legs and chest, even on its genitals. She hadn't thought of cigarettes, let alone of genitals. She could buy a packet right away when she left to clean the church – Chesterfields, of course.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I'll take one. Lovely weather, isn't it?'

Just one hundred and sixty minutes left. That's bearable, endurable, and at least I'm now alive. I first got dressed two hours ago, but I've changed my clothes completely several times. I'm still not happy with this stupid dreary dress, but it's so hard to know exactly what he likes – pastels or bright colours, trousers or tight skirts? I lard on several perfumes which I can't really afford, but keep for just the sessions, then use four deodorants – foot, vagina, underarm and mouth-spray. It would be unthinkable to smell, though perhaps he wouldn't notice in his haze of Chesterfields. I apply my lash-extender, then tie a white crêpe bandage round my leg. It's a bigger one than last time, since he didn't notice that. I started with just Band Aids, but even when I stuck them on each and every finger, plus huge ones on both knees, he still never thought to ask me how I'd come to hurt myself. I suspect I'm wasting bandage and that even if I tourniqueted all four of my limbs and added splints and slings he wouldn't say ‘I'm sorry' or ‘What happened?' I went once with laryngitis, and still not a word of sympathy for all my croaks and grunts. He simply said that a lost voice was a common hysterical symptom and I was probably trying to suppress some forbidden line of thought, or frightened of expressing hostility or rage.

I never miss my sessions, even if I'm ill. I've limped there from the hospital after x-rays of the bowel (which required two days' fasting followed by two enemas and left me feeling as if I'd lost my whole insides) and when I'd promised the radiologist I'd go straight home and rest. I've gone with various viruses and once with gastric 'flu; quite like the thought that I'm infecting him with germs, so that at least we'll have bacteria in common. I keep praying I'll get chicken pox, or measles, so we can share our spots, itch and scratch together.

I needn't really leave for a good hour or even more, but I leave in any case. I always go by foot now, although it's several miles of slogging through some pretty grotty streets, but at least I'm not held up by traffic jams or busmen's strikes or trouble on the tube. I was twenty minutes late once because a toddler fell onto the line at the Elephant and Castle and all the trains were halted, but John-Paul still suggested that maybe I was late on purpose to prove I didn't need him, which was what he called a reaction-formation against extreme dependent-attachment need.

I slam the door as I remember, step out into drizzle. Even walking has its disadvantages, especially in the rain – splashes on my dress from passing motorists; my hair in limp black rats'-tails. Just my luck. It was sunny earlier on. I even heard a man say ‘Lovely morning'.

My nerves begin to build before I've walked a hundred yards. They always do, and worst of all on Mondays. Weekends are so hazardous. John-Paul might have died or disappeared. For all I know, he may have dangerous hobbies – hang-gliding, ballooning, motorcycle racing. Even as I fret towards his rooms, he could be in intensive care, or chilling in a mortuary. I stop a moment, fight a wave of nausea. If he died, I'd have to die as well. Life would be impossible without him, like trying to survive without oxygen, or water. I struggle on, imagining our deaths. There must be
some
way of ensuring we could be buried close together, in the same cemetery or churchyard. Or if I collapsed near his mortuary, I might be shunted to the shelf-space next to his.

I'm so involved with corpses, I splash right through a puddle which I didn't even see, ruin my white shoes. Those shoes are almost new. I found them in the Cancer Shop, two sizes too small, but they make my feet look slimmer, so all the pain's worthwhile. I expect his wife has tiny feet – if he has a wife at all. The thought is so upsetting, I murder her immediately, then annul the marriage on the grounds of non-consummation. Which leaves him free for me – or all those ghastly Marys with their prissy size three feet. I've murdered a good million wives since I started with John-Paul, though I suspect he isn't married, so the crimes are pretty pointless. I know he wears a ring, but that doesn't mean a thing. It's probably for protection. I had a doctor-client just a month or so ago, who although a lifelong bachelor, said he always wore a ring to save him from his patients' wiles and wooing, and had even borrowed a family photograph to set up on his desk.

I dispose of the dead body, then stop at the big sweet-shop on the corner of Beech Road. If there were ever any beeches here, they've long since been cut down, or used to make the
Sun
. I've tried all the different sweet-shops and this one is the best, sells expensive Belgian chocolates and fondants packed in velvet. I've bought him both of those,
and
the handmade chocolate truffles and the mint and Drambuie creams. He says I give him presents as a way to get attention, buy myself more love, or as ‘bribes' to twist his arm, make myself more special than his empty-handed patients. A gift is never just a simple selfless offering, a way of giving pleasure, or just giving for its own sake – or not in John-Paul's book. Yet he always snaps them up, I notice, never hands them back. I've already bought him biscuits, when I did my shop on Saturday, but they don't seem quite enough. Nothing ever seems enough, especially not his love. If I could make him really love me, I wouldn't need another thing on earth – not food, not work, not sleep, not legs or arms. I'd be content to be a stump. So long as he kept telling me I was the most special and exquisite stump he'd ever met or dreamed of.

I examine all the chocolates, trying to work out which he'd like, finally choose Ferrero Rocher, mainly for their name and the exotic golden wrappings which swathe each nut-rich cluster. Those he won't resist. He's never given
me
a thing, not even good advice. Advice is almost a dirty word for analytic therapists. You could tell them you had planned to kill your boss, or had a date with Jack the Ripper, and they wouldn't try to stop you, or suggest you took some Valium and put yourself to bed, but just sit there droning on about your sadomasochistic trends and their probable connection with your suppressive controlling mother.

Sometimes I imagine him giving me mink wraps, or diamond rings, or Porsches. I'm afraid I'm not original when it comes to thinking of presents. I suppose there's nothing much I want really, except John-Paul to myself.

I'm relieved to leave the sweet-shop, continue down the street. I was beginning to feel queasy surrounded by rich chocolates, jars and jars of sweets. I haven't eaten anything all morning, rarely do the days I see John-Paul. There's too much fear and longing in my stomach to leave room for eggs or toast. Though the whole damn rest of London appears to be indulging, judging by the smells – curries and fried onions, Kentucky Fried, kebabs. Someone's jabbed me with their cornet and smeared ice cream down my sleeve, and I've trodden on the belly of a discarded ketchupped bap. Walking in London requires very special skills. You could probably do a course in it – how to dodge umbrellas, or lighted cigarettes, how to glare at lovers who insist on holding hands, how not to fall down manholes, or waste small change on homeless drunks with placards. Five years ago, the homeless slumped on benches and left the world in peace.