Malarky (6 page)

I lift the salt and hand it towards him. To tempt the undertaking: Do you need a bit of salt mebbe? Resistance. No words. Just a wave of the auld hand and a slight shake up around the eyebrows that say go way woman. They're dismissing the salt. No, no salt.

And onto our second reliable sequence, he'll dribble out a report of what did or did not take place beyond: who had cows to be moved or the trouble he was havin' with a hose, what small repair was out of the question essential, or neither of us could carry on for a stampede of cattle would be in on top of the two of us. His voice scampers up with emphasis and insistence, like he's instructing sailors on a boat about to sink. I can't let
it go any
longer,
the fence is
down, the cows will be in the road, the dogs will get in at the sheep with it all down and what use will they be then? and then he mounts to the the daily conclusion yes He must head out again. Sure it's never ending, so it is.

—It's never ending, I repeat for him.

—I don't think people have a clue how hard farmers work.

—They. Do. Not. Three separate words I give him. Why was he telling me this? Disturbing. As if I'm not here. He's here, I'm not. He's out in the fields, I'm not here in the house. I'm gone from his daily activities. Am I gone?

Every dinner concludes with him heading out again. It was one of those nights that he headed out to the fields that I lost him, so I carry on down to the gate to be certain he is where he said he'd be.

Today, though, at the table, he's still not speaking.

Our Woman was worried. There hadn't been enough movement. Too little mass, she needed objects on the
table, if there was to be any hope of him shuffling them around.

If he doesn't want the salt, I must interest him in something else on the table. There's to be movement on this table this evening or so help me God I'll be forced to examine the reasons why. And I know when I start examining I'll discover all the things I hate to hear. He had his hands up and down another and his mind was away. All day I've been looking at that table and visualizing the objects with the exactitude of a cricket fan before I placed them where they sit now on the tablecloth. It was deliberate, tactical, within arms length, at eye-catching corners. Why, why isn't he taking them? He must be at something again. He must be up to his tricks. Back up Red the Twit.

Over to the fridge
–
I've never liked the handle of it, too thin and chipped
–
where I remove two bottles of sauce, return, plonk them on the table, uncap the one. Will he have a drop of sauce on his potatoes?

I've employed too much economy in my force, overwhelmed the table, for he knocks the vinegar over, curses as it sneaks into a puddle
–
bottles must be placed uncapped you see, ensuring the path of least resistance. There's the worry he'll rise soon when he must be seated, for if he's up, the sequence of talk will be broke and so I strike some of the objects. Milk, milk for the tea, milk in a jug, he'd be comforted by the jug. The blue stripy jug. He'd pick it up. Surely to God he'll pick up the jug.

No.

Not today.

Today he's utterly indifferent. Rejects the milk and cracks his fork on the plate, displacing knife to tablecloth. I maneuver it off. He lifts the bottle and begins reading it. Might do, will it
do, it isn't primary movement, it's accidental, secondary, but it's something.

—Isn't this queer stuff? I've never understood the point of it at all.

—Will you have bread? How about a bit of bread? I have to get off the questions, they're upsetting my sequence. A slide, breadbin open, slice to table before he can refuse. Plated and I'm happy. He accepts it, tugs the plate a touch, he's going for the knife. Glory, glory be.

—Give it here to me 'til I wipe it with a warm cloth, it'll slice the butter easier.

Unity between knife and butter; I didn't want him to refuse either. Deflect him to the jam.

It's on the round table for the table is round, our only table is round, why have we a round table when a square one could accommodate more variety of bottles, but distant it is, that jar by the wall.

—Jam?

The jam, hand to jar, unlidded as swift, assumed a sudden position by his elbow before he could answer. Jam, I think, take it, take the fecker.

—Yes, yes um.

Absentmindedly, he's on the jam, upon the bread and folds it into his mouth and chomps and – yes! – the arms and hands push the jars and bottles about.

—I'll come with you, I say.

It's over to me.

The third squeeze of our sequence where I have the possibility to deliver news about what someone said today in the kitchen, either a visitor, or heard on Radio Mid West, but I foul up. Instead of introducing snippets from the locality, which would keep him at the table and aide the precious movements I've waited all day on, I move straight to being useful. These moments
–
moments I'm only assured of once a
day, for lunch is rarely taken at the table, either on the lap or down the field – have been given the shove.

—You could stand at the gate; but you wouldn't want to get your feet cold, Himself offers.

He's obsessed with the temperature of my feet. Sometimes in bed he'll ask are they cold, and if I say they are, away he'll go, down to the bathroom and pull a towel to put over them. He never inquires of the rest of me, only the feet, the feet. When I die, he'll keep my feet on a bookshelf or at the top of the cupboard.

There will be no standing at the gate, not at all. I'll be down lifting and moving and shifting and he knows it. If he's honest, it's poorly built for farming he is, and it's me who's the sturdier of the two of us. I could grab the mallet from him and bang a stake before he'd have the words to ask.

I've heard him remark to other fellas that on his oath she's stronger than him or any
two fellas.
He once confided his fear to me that he'd get injured, become useless, and I'd be done with him.

Today I hear the words of a guilty man, a guilty-thinking man, who within his carryon has never warmed nor warned to the realization that I am capable of the same tricks as him.

You worry too much about Jimmy, he tells me. Sometimes I catch him examining the back or side of my head, no doubt he's wondering whether my thoughts might enter the same register as his. But I've no need to examine the side of his head, it's all available to me on the table, each day in the manner he does or does not pull the cup, lift or lower the bottles, and the way he eats his dinner. I can tell everything about him from such simple movements. And the fool never grasps it.

12 hours, her eyes streamed uncontrollable, she sniffed into the dim light, the rain, the knock at the door – those eyes
continued to stream, resisted it all, her tears did not desist at interruption nor embarrassment. Real tears, solid silver ones.

She stared at the sink, yellow glare on the porcelain. She wasn't sure how long she'd been there, but when she moved to the window it had turned dark. He had not come home. What a profound waste of sniffling.

Appetite gone. She could not imagine food. In her head, she tried to see a plate of potatoes and a piece of chicken, but nothing. She tried to swallow a cracker but it scraped the back of her throat and she had to spit it out.

How long could this last? Hours, hours and hours with no desire to eat, and her legs fizzy from the lack of food and her body showing every kind of sign, yet again her head would not let her eat. She would never feel hungry again. Her appetite amputated out of her brain.

Soup, sips of soup and that was it. Watery, dreadful, powdered, tomato from a clumpy packet was all she could swallow. Yet she must make his dinner.

She gave herself 3 days. Then it, all this, must end.

She lay and thought. She thought and lay. And thought some more and this was what she thought about. She thought about the fact she did not know what she was supposed to do. She'd not been trained for this. She thought about the fact she lay in a bed while her husband had lain in another bed. She thought that she could lay with the thought her life had come to this, yet this was exactly what she'd imagined it might be during those years of waiting. Her very worst picture, that, of people who live together rolling along, rolling through the century and no matter how they try or don't try, wake up decades later to the realization they'd been quietly making each other miserable. And she was surprised at how unsurprised she was.

She was miserable, but quietly accepting. She was miserable, quiet, but accepting.

Should she wail and call out? Should she go in and fight for a droopy-eyed man? A man no woman in her right mind should want. Yet there was always a woman to run to: How was that? And now what was expected of her? She understood what was required to clean her house, to clothe her children; she did not understand the version of life that had presented itself yesterday in the B&B. She didn't recognize the hat, nor face, nor fingers on it. She hadn't been trained for this. She'd been trained for marriage and funeral and baptism and weeding and shifting and turning, but not wondering. This wondering was new for her. The wondering of why she didn't understand how to wonder. She did wonder but she was not officially certain how to do the wondering. Should she wonder passively, quietly, while stuffing a chicken in the quiet enclaves of herself? Or should she wonder loudly, spewing and cajoling him for information and revelation and try to trap his fingers in a door until he'd tell her all of it? All of it was what she wanted, in all its awful sordidness, and to be awful it would need to be sordid, but she knew he'd never give her anything but the hint of it and this was what sickened her.

For a while, hard and fast tasks kept her mind occupied, angry but occupied. She brushed the floor, nearly lifting the tiles. She scrubbed the grooves between each tile fiercely 'til she saw her finger bleed at the cuticle and she let the blood go into the grooves of the tile. Now he'd find the stain of his actions underneath his feet.