The Betrayal (21 page)

T
he moon is
full and racing behind trees as I drive from Sea Aster.
I slow at the gates.
The turn onto Mallard Cove is sharp and dangerous.
Not that there’s likely to be anyone driving past at this time of night but good habits persist even in the midst of trauma.
Once onto the road I accelerate again.
The hedgerows whip against the car as it judders over the uneven surface.
Broadmeadow Estuary is a glaze of midnight blue and the heron stands stoic and alone at the water’s edge.
The road still bends but the surface is smoother, the view clearer.
I drive past lone bungalows, past housing estates, Seabury, Chalfont, slumbering suburbs.
Private lives sleeping behind closed blinds.
The railway bridge looms before me.
This arched space allows only one car to pass through at the same time.
I should slow down.
I must slow down… too late I realise that an oncoming car is about to enter the arch.

I’m driving too fast to brake and the oncoming car pulls sharply against the wall before the bridge entrance.
The driver blares a warning until I’m out of earshot.
I turn up New Street.
The restaurants are closing for the night, the pubs still doing business.
Traffic lights turn red when I reach The Diamond crossroads.
My hands tremble on the steering wheel as I wait for the green signal.

Headlights blink in my rear-view mirror.
I recognise the silvery sheen of Jake’s van, the sleek, hearse-like lines, the icy heat of its signage.
The thought of them planning it together adds to my fury.
I swear at the lights until they change then I veer left towards the coast.
The sea is rough tonight.
Slanting waves heave with froth and rush silently ashore.
Coast Road twists along the shore.
Accidents have occurred here in the past, cars plunging over the embankment onto the rocks below.
I press the brake when I reach another bend but my car swerves dangerously.

I must stop, must concentrate.
I pull into a deep curve where cars park during the day.
I switch off the headlights and rest my head on the steering wheel.
Jake has not yet reached the bend.
His survival instincts must be stronger than mine.
A minute passes before his headlights swamp the darkness and pass on.
I lower the window and allow the night air to cool my cheeks.
A plane flies overhead, followed by another, their lights winking towards the slow descent into Dublin airport.
There’s something hypnotic about watching the lights emerge from the dark horizon and fly across my line of vision.
Only an hour ago I was up there, planning what I would say to Jake, my head pounding as the time for confrontation drew nearer.

The overnight trip had been a non-stop series of business meetings, interspersed with my visit to Stuart and lunch with Ali.
No one seemed aware of my inner turmoil, the furious, imaginary conversations with Jake broiling in my mind.
Now, huddled in darkness, I want to throw a tantrum, fists and heels pummelling, as Sam used to do when he was small and Samantha, the calmer of the two, would work herself into the same frenzy in solidarity with her twin.

Shale, washed with waves, gleams in the moonlight.
That summer in Cowrie Cottage… no… I don’t want to go there… but they come like wraiths, those memories, black cloaks flapping.

Headlights approach from the opposite side of the road.
Before I can duck out of sight they dazzle and swerve in a U-turn.
I stare ahead and ignore Jake when he raps on the window.
He continues banging, the sound more frantic, louder.

‘Go away and leave me alone.’
I lower the window and shriek at him.
‘If you don’t I’ll ram your van onto the rocks below.’

‘For God’s sake, Nadine – ’

‘You don’t believe in God so shut up and leave me alone.’

‘I want to explain – ’

‘What’s there to explain?
Go back to her and finish what you were doing when I interrupted you.’

‘I intended on telling you about her.’

‘You had your opportunity.
Why couldn’t you have told me the truth?’

‘I knew you had a history with her – ’

‘A
history
?
Is that the new name for coping with a paranoid bully?’

‘See what I mean?’

The only thing you see is her
cunt
.
I want to scream the word at him, batter him with obscenities.

‘How long have you been together?’
I don’t want an answer yet I have to know.

‘Not long.’

‘That’s not an answer.
Tell me the truth.’

‘Let me into the car and we’ll talk.’

‘
No
.
I want the truth.
Were you seeing her when I found her business card?’

‘Not then.
Later.
After we moved into Sea Aster.’

‘How often has she been there?’

‘Tonight was the first time.
Honestly, Nadine, I never meant to hurt – ’

‘I don’t believe you.’
The thought of them together is unendurable.
‘Go away from me…
go
away.’
I fumble for the automatic window switch and he draws his hands back as the glass slides upwards.

When I start the engine he runs to the front of my car.
Our clashing headlights distort his features.
His lips move but the sound can’t reach me.
When he thumps the bonnet, demanding that I listen, I keep my hand on the horn and rev the engine.
I want to reduce him to pulp, to traces of DNA, nothing less.

I don’t notice the squad car until it pulls in behind me.
Doors open.
Two guards in uniform and hi-vis jackets approach.
One of the guards speaks to Jake.
The second one knocks sharply on my window.

‘Are you the owner of this vehicle?’
she asks.

My mouth is dry, my throat ticklish.
She waits impassively while I cough and try to gain some control over my breathing.

‘Yes, Guard.
It’s my car.’
Finally, I’m able to speak.

‘Were you the sole occupant tonight?’

‘Yes.’

I can’t stop staring at the wart on her chin.
A fine clump of hairs grow from its centre.
Has she never heard of electrolysis?
Doesn’t she care that potential criminals will
stare
?
I’ve a wild desire to laugh.
It’s safer than keening.
I avert my eyes from the offending wart and concentrate on her face.
She has a thin, straight mouth that suggests a low level of tolerance for demented drivers.
I display my driving licence and her torch forms an arc as it sweeps over the tax disc.
The registration plate is checked, as are the tyres and exhaust.
If she asks me to walk a straight line I’ll stagger and probably have to be breathalysed.

‘A car answering this description almost caused an accident under the back estuary bridge.’
She returns to the window.
‘We also had a report about a similar car driving in an erratic manner along Coast Road.’
She turns the pages of her notebook and squints at her handwriting.
‘And, just now, you blatantly disturbed the peace by blowing your horn after hours.’

‘I’m sorry, Guard.
I’d no idea I was breaking the speed limit.’

‘What
is
the speed limit through Malahide Village?’

‘Fifty kilometres, I think.’

‘You shouldn’t think.
You should know.’
She removes a breathalyser kit from the squad car and orders me to blow into it.

‘Zero.’
She sounds dubious as she checks the reading for the second time

Jake is receiving the same grilling from the other guard.
How ridiculous he looks in his boxer shorts.
His feet are bare.
I hope the pebbles cut his flesh to the bone.

The guard can’t find anything wrong with my car.
She delivers a lecture on dangerous driving that could not only end my life but those who are unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Like my mother, innocently driving home from the supermarket and finding herself face-to-face with that truck driver.
My tears blind me.
She removes a box of tissues from the squad car and hands it to me, waits until I blow my nose before continuing to lecture me.

‘You’ve disturbed the peace, broken the speed limit and driven dangerously through a bridge that only allows one-way traffic.
You’ll be hearing from us again, Nadine.’

How dare she call me by my first name?
I understand why Eleanor berated that young doctor for patronising her.
But what should this guard call me?
Mrs
Saunders?
No, never again will I use that name.

Jake is free to go, no charges pending, no breathalyser.
My hope that he drank at least a bottle of wine tonight and is put away for life is thwarted.
This is a domestic incident and the police are already losing interest.

‘You’re in an extremely distressed state.’
The guard’s voice softens a little.
‘I suggest you lock your car and allow your husband to drive you home.’

‘I have no home.’
I grind out the words.
‘It’s been violated.
I’d prefer to spend the night in handcuffs than go back there again.’

‘We can do that if you insist,’ she snaps.
I must have imagined the softening.
‘But an easier option would be to take a taxi to your intended destination.
Do not under any circumstances attempt to drive this vehicle tonight.’

I lock my car and hail an approaching taxi.
The driver, seeing the squad car, indicates and brakes.

‘Where to?’
he asks when I collapse into the back seat.

‘Stoneybatter.’
I close my eyes and shut out the tableau, Jake, the two guards, my abandoned car, the last wrecked vestiges of my marriage.

‘Were you driving over the limit?’
The driver meets my gaze in the rear-view mirror.
What must I look like, flushed, my hair wild, my face blotched from weeping?

‘I was driving over the limit of my tolerance,’ I reply.
‘Not to be recommended.’

Donal, my kind, quiet uncle, is the most uncurious man I know.
He doesn’t question why his niece should phone him late at night and request a spare bed.
He’s waiting for me when I arrive in Stoneybatter, the fare ready for the taxi driver, a pot of tea brewing.
He carries the tray into his small living room where two large porcelain dogs sit like sentinels on either side of the fireplace.
When I stop shivering and the tea has cooled in my hands, he suggests I try to sleep.

Donal is a train enthusiast and his spare bedroom is a model railway concourse.
He apologises for the lack of space as he leads me around the tracks and trains covering the floor.
This room enchanted me when I was a child.
I switch on the concourse and watch the trains chugging, hooting and whistling through junctions and level crossings.
Their frenetic activity hypnotises me into a childlike trance and, eventually, when their journey is complete, I fall asleep.

W
hat a scene that was
.
Worthy of their finest battles.
It was a long time since he had heard Nadine shriek like that.
Like she was riding into battle with a scream on her lips and the knowledge that the making up that followed would be memorable.
Not this time, though.
This time they knew there would be no reconciliation, no tumbled passion, no shocked, rueful apologies.
He even feared, at one stage, that she would carry out her threat and run him over.

A taxi was emerging from the gates of Sea Aster when he returned.
He pulled in sharply to let it pass.
A glimpse of blonde, her head held erect and away from him.

Her note was pinned to the wooden rim of the chervil mirror.

Jake – I don’t share.
You’ve known that from the beginning yet you lied to me about your wife.
You may be separated from her but you’re the most married man I know.
For that reason I’m ending our relationship.

Don’t contact me again.

What else had he expected?
Being with Karin Moylan was to play on thin ice, the chill and the thrill.

She had been holding the keys to his van when he ran back to the apartment to collect them and follow Nadine.
He heard the crunch of gravel under the tyres as she drove away.

‘Let her go,’ Karin said, her face blazing.
‘Your marriage is over… unless you’ve been lying to me from the start.’

‘Give them to me.’
He resisted the urge to lunge at her, wrench them from her grasp.

‘What will you do if you catch up with her?’
she demanded.
‘Do you honestly think she’s going to listen?
Give her time to cool down.
Then we’ll explain.’

‘
We
?’
He had hated her in that instant, the plump swell of her lip, her accusatory blue stare.
‘This is something I do by myself.’

She let the keys fall from her hand to the floor and walked away when he picked them up.

He parked the van and limped into the kitchen.
His footprints left blood on the tiles.
Gashed and grazed, his feet throbbed from the pebbles on Coast Road.
The water turned red when he soaked them in the bath.
He must have looked a sight in his bare feet and boxers.
Not that anyone was laughing.
He dried his feet and found bandages in the medicine cabinet.

The house stirred with night sounds, creaking floorboards, the gurgle of rusting pipes, and a flapping sound, as if a sail was snapping against its mast.
Nadine had mentioned that her bedroom shutter was loose and he had promised to fix it.
How long ago was that?
A month, at least.
When he could no longer stand the repetitive noise he walked around to her apartment.
The lights were still on, the front door unlocked.
He entered her bedroom and pushed up the window, reached towards the shutter and secured it against the wall.
The clasp was loose, as Nadine had said, and would only hold for a while before it slipped again.
Tomorrow he would fix it properly.
Her overnight bag was open, clothes spilling across the bed.
He picked up a paperback on the bedside locker.
Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates.

Revolutionary Road
was one of the last films they watched together.
The tedium of the suburbs and April Wheeler’s frantic efforts to escape it.
Nadine loved it.
He had been bored, just as April Wheeler had been bored by her tedious lifestyle.
Death was a great solver of insolvable problems.
Nadine could have been killed tonight.
His skin crawled with delayed shock as he thought about her reckless drive along the estuary.

He had a sudden urge to check drawers, open presses and rummage through her clothes.
Who was this woman who had turned his life upside down by demanding a perfect divorce?
He thought her knew her, understood her impulses, her moods.
She used to say they had formed into a hybrid.
She was wrong and he was adrift on that mistake.
He replaced the book on the bedside locker and left the room.

She did not return to Sea Aster until the following evening.
An hour after she entered her apartment she rang and said she wanted to talk.
They sat in her kitchen, no coffee, no wine – a formal meeting to decide their futures.

‘I don’t want to discuss what happened,’ she said.
‘Nor do I want excuses for the lies you’ve told me.
It’s in the past, like our marriage.
I’m going to Alaska with Stuart.
I made that decision when I realised the extent of your betrayal.
That’s why I called last night.
I wanted to tell you I was leaving Sea Aster.
You can contact me through email if you want to discuss the children.
Contact me through my solicitor Marion Norman should any legal issues arise about the company or our divorce.
I don’t know what my future holds right now.
My only certainty is that I’ll never forgive you for bringing her here.’

‘I never meant to hurt you – ’

‘Then don’t insult me with platitudes.’

‘Why won’t you give me a chance to explain?’

‘You’ll just lie, as you’ve been doing all along.’

‘Would you have understood if I told you?
I wanted to… many times.
You were her best friend once.
But you’ve never talked about her.
Why is that, Nadine?
What did she do to you that was so awful… or was it something you did to her?’

‘Why don’t you ask her next time she’s lying naked beside you?’

‘There won’t be a next time.
It’s over.’

‘So are we, Jake.’
Her bottom lip whitened as she tugged at it with her teeth.

‘Why do you hate her?’

‘I don’t hate her.
All I ever wanted to do was forget her.’

‘Why?’

She lifted her shoulders and released a shuddery breath.
‘She made my life hell.
But she wasn’t responsible for how I dealt with it.
That was something I did all by myself.’