The Woman Next Door (20 page)

‘May I?’ Marion decided to ignore Hortensia’s protests.

Hortensia sighed. Marion went back into the hallway and returned with a white square of cotton fabric and a saucer with some liquid in it.

‘Now, Marion—’

‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.’

She removed the portrait and set it down, on the nearby desk, with more care than Hortensia thought necessary. To her horror, Marion spoke while she worked.

‘See, it’s a bit complicated. Because of the wallpaper you’ve used. One of yours? Anyway, so I guessed it started out as a grease stain,’ she began to get out of breath. ‘And then someone, Bassey perhaps, had a go at removing it, smudged the dye and maybe used bleach – reasonable choice, you know, but … Ah, you see … The wall’s at an angle by the way, did you realise? … There, just a … All done.’

‘I won’t even ask what was in the saucer.’

‘Don’t.’

‘I can’t understand why you care.’

Marion shrugged. ‘What should I do with this?’

The picture had been taken in a studio. The photographer had been stern, but then had suddenly become animated, saying, ‘Kiss her, you fool! Right there on the cheek’ and then he’d pushed down on the button.

‘Give it to Bassey. Ask him to throw it away.’

Slowly small pieces of information materialised. Her name was Valerie. She was British. She came to Nigeria every year, staying for a few weeks, and then returned to England. Exactly what she was doing there remained unclear to Hortensia. But in the weeks when Valerie was in Ibadan, a routine was established and Hortensia trailed them.

Once, on a Friday evening, she followed them down a road. They parked outside a motel and Hortensia returned to the house. Peter came back from his conference late on the Sunday evening.

Hortensia thought of them together. The motel was grimy. Peter was clearly avoiding the better hotels where he might run into someone from Unilever or some other multinational, someone from his circle.

One day, just after Peter announced another conference, Hortensia told him she would be doing some travelling, spending more time in Abeokuta with her potential business partner. It wasn’t a lie that she was going to go into business with a Mr Adebayo. They’d met at an art exhibition in a private home in Bodija, discovered their shared trade and made plans to meet again. They were not quite far enough into their plans to set up a shop, but none of their dealings required that she sleep away from home.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Abeokuta is close enough – why stay over?’

‘Well, I know so little of the culture, really. I want to spend some time. Mr Adebayo will take me around. Even just more knowledge of the art. I know so little – it embarrasses me.’

He nodded.

For an unknown reason Hortensia continued, maybe in an attempt to revive something. In the beginning they had talked and talked.

‘I mean, technically this is where Picasso stole from, isn’t it?’

Peter frowned; they’d argued about this before. About the word ‘stole’. Back then he’d said ‘exploited maybe, but maybe not even that’, and so on. They were neither of them experts on art history, European, African or any other. Their arguments had been fiery: that Africa was reduced to a ‘period’; that the works Picasso was inspired by had been looted by the French; that Africa was a fad – exotic and, of course, dark. Hortensia regurgitated all this, as if the material of past conversations could be incendiary, as if love were a bonfire.

Peter was frowning at her, as if he could see through her, see the lie. Hortensia got up and walked to him, looked into his eyes.

‘I’m really excited about opening this boutique. I feel we could do something new. I know you don’t think much of—’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Well, I just want to be able to do a great job at this.’

Peter nodded.

Hortensia figured they would fuck while she was away. Peter would bring the girl into their bed and they would have each other.

On the Friday evening, she waited for him to leave for his ‘conference’, then she packed and climbed into a rented truck. She drove aimlessly for two hours, then doubled back to the house. The problem of Fola the housekeeper had been solved when Hortensia let her off for the weekend. The problem of Sunday the gateman had been slightly more tricky. Although the neighbourhood was renowned for its safety, Unilever took no chances – they’d hired Sunday to keep an extra eye on things. Hortensia surmised that Sunday would only take instructions from Unilever or, at the very least, from Peter, whom he referred to as his Oga. Hortensia resolved this by calling Peter’s bluff. I’m away, you’re away; just let the old man sit with his family over the next couple of weekends – don’t you think? The house is fine; all these pretensions when actually we’re safer than we would be on any London street. Peter had smarted at her underhand critique of their new-found wealth and the status it afforded them in Ibadan. But he’d also agreed. Sunday was given the two weekends off.

Hortensia needed something. Something deeper than a kiss in the middle of a market, something raw. She wanted to have a clear picture of what real, absolute and unequivocal betrayal looked like.

She parked the truck some way along their street, but she could still see the gate, see who came and went. She waited. They did not come. She was dressed in the burkha; she ate two oranges, then eventually around 10 p.m. she drove to a nearby inn, where she’d rented a room. She did the same the next day and on Sunday. The weekend passed. Peter got back from his conference. Hortensia returned from Abeokuta.

‘How’s it going? This Mr Adebayo, will I meet him sometime?’

‘Perhaps. He’s very busy at the moment.’ This was true. ‘When we launch the boutique, we’ll have a great big party. Maybe, then.’

The second weekend Hortensia tried again. Once in disguise, she parked the truck some distance along their street and observed from her post. Peter’s car rounded the corner, paused at the gate as it swung open, entered. He had the woman in the car with him. Like a cat who traps its mouse, then ignores it, Hortensia drove to the inn and slept. On Saturday she returned before dawn. They stayed in all day. Occasionally Hortensia would stretch her legs around the block. Her scheme was helped by a nearby mosque and a large community of Muslims in the adjacent neighbourhoods. No one asked her any questions.

Hortensia waited till the clock struck 9 p.m., then she let herself in through the gate. Peter’s car was parked in the driveway. The lights were off in the front portion of the house. None of the garden lights were on. Switching on the lights was the kind of thing she or the housekeeper would do, but would never cross Peter’s mind. The house was a long rectangular bungalow. A succession of rooms, each more intimate than the last. A low hedge had been planted right along the external walls of the house, a thick necklace of a bush with broad, deep-magenta – almost brown – leaves. She bent low, trailed her fingers through the plant, walked down the length of the house. At their bedroom window she gathered up the skirts of the black gown and pushed her body through the hedge, parting the soft branches. There were no curtains here. She’d decided not to have curtains on account of the high walls, on account of the lovely garden. A touch of lace would suffice, she’d thought, and there it was now. White, finely holed and incandescent, which could mean only one thing. When she’d asked the mercer for lace without metallic threads he’d gone ahead and ignored her. How had she missed it? The realisation distracted Hortensia for a few seconds but then she heard Peter’s voice.

Although the room was lit, it was difficult to see anything clearly through the lace. It was more like watching shadows. Someone was lying on the bed. She could see his back, the rounded cheeks of his bottom. Peter naked, an unfamiliar state. His voice again. But she couldn’t see the woman. Maybe there was no woman. Maybe she’d invented the whole thing. But then she heard her voice. A figure walked into the room, said something, Peter laughed. He continued to laugh as she climbed on top of him, stretched out, flattened her breasts against his shoulder blades. Now it was her bottom Hortensia could see, her back. She said something again, he laughed again. Was that his laugh? Was that what it sounded like? They continued talking, his voice muffled by the bedding, her voice muffled by his skin. Hortensia needed to pee. Nothing more seemed necessary than to lift the abaya and squat. She did so, aiming, acquiescing to a little splatter on her Nikes. The release caused a sigh, but Hortensia was also thinking: what was the point? What was the use of marking her territory when it had already been usurped?

As she watched them it didn’t feel dirty. She felt righteous, she felt that she was conducting an important task that demanded rigour and integrity. Her job was to watch as closely as her situation permitted. She wanted to remember everything. She wanted to be able to recollect it, to be able to draw it, if such a time was ever called for. She wanted to see how Peter would hold the woman, how he would kiss her.

She stood almost through the night. All three rested very little. When light threatened to begin to show up in the skies, Hortensia crept away. Outside the compound, back inside the truck, she rubbed hard at her vagina until she thought it would catch alight. Then she lurched out from the truck door and threw up into the grass verge.

At the age of thirty-one Hortensia James started to hate. It took her some time, the way certain fads stutter before they really take off. She wrestled it for a while, resisted. She understood that hate was a kind of acid and she preferred not to burn. Also hate was unpopular and, back in those days anyway, she’d still wanted to be liked.

This longing slowly left her, though. She went from resenting just Peter, to the housekeeper, the driver, the market woman. People were slow, simple-minded; they all harboured ill intentions, seemed determined to be unhelpful, especially when their jobs required being of service. They didn’t answer questions properly, spoke as if they had been trained all their lives to frustrate whoever addressed them. Hortensia’s foul temper kept her mouth in a line, her brow knit, her teeth pressed together and her eyes cutting. She got good at chopping the legs off people, with no knife, with only words. She was always angry and while, initially, she noticed it (worried that it shouldn’t be there), it slowly became what was normal. She developed headaches. She tied a block of concrete to her ankle and let it drag her down. Hating, after all, was a drier form of drowning.

Hortensia looked at where their portrait had once hung, hiding that stain. It would forever confuse her, how love could turn such a corner. Because there had been something once, a real thing, precarious like only love can be, but tender and sweet.

Before they married and after they declared their love for each other, those were days of a restful joy. He was long, you see. Lying side by side, their feet interlocked, she could rub her cheek against his solar plexus. She could curl and tell him what his intestines were saying. He could move his index finger along the curve of her earlobe, back and forth.

He was soft, the way men were not allowed to be. They played a lot. Silly games. One was a game of finding things.

‘Let’s say I get lost,’ Peter would start. They’d be at the park, he’d have hidden a small bottle of beer in his inside jacket pocket. ‘You lose me and have to describe me to someone.’

‘Peter James. Large lumbering giant of a man. Thick fingers. Strong-looking. Competent.’

Peter would laugh. The idea was to throw in both insults and compliments. It was a game that meant you’d been looking, that you’d noticed things regular people had not. It was the kind of game you could tie your love up in, without putting your heart in too much danger. They both liked to play.

What of now – what if she played it now?

‘Sandy blond hair that went white with time. The grey hides the dandruff. He wears spectacles, which he keeps on his brow or dangling from his neck with a cord that I bought him. A green cord. His skin tans easily, he has bushy eyebrows and his face, that he kept clean-shaven as a young man, he let overgrow with beard in his last years. Hard and spiky, the hairs were, when I felt them on my cheek and chin. He’s wearing a simple white shirt and khaki shorts, he’s got sandals. He wears no jewellery, except his wedding band and a beaded bracelet I bought him after we became lovers. Peter is an avid red meat-eater, despite the doctor’s orders. He doesn’t know that I know he’s in cahoots with Bassey and he steals onto the verandah to eat a cut of steak every few weeks. One of his teeth, an incisor, is turning yellow. The inside of his mouth is such a light shade of pink, I’m always taken by surprise whenever I catch a glimpse of it.’

And he knew chemistry. Tr, she’d say, their bodies at right-angles, her head on his stomach.

‘No, doesn’t exist.’

‘Tg? Tl?’

‘Tl. Eighty-one. Thallium. A metal.

‘Sc.’

‘Twenty-one. Scandium.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No, true. Scandium. Used in lamps … amongst other things.’

‘Okay. Sa. No, no, Sg.’

‘Seaborgium.’

She raised her head, shot him a look.

‘Truly. Seaborgium. It’s number a hundred and six.’

Gordon Mama’s laugh reverberated through the house like thunder. Marion stood at the door of her room listening. She’d never heard anyone laugh that way. Ever. She put her hand on the knob, rested there, didn’t turn it. He was probably doing a routine check-up. Might he wish to see her, what with her bogus position as nursemaid? She turned the knob and stood in the doorway. The laughter had stopped. Marion walked down the stairs, petting the banister, remembering when she’d specified the walnut. And then all the trouble to get the grain running the way she felt it must, arguing with the carpenter, the whole thing.

‘Good morning, Marion,’ Bassey, whom nothing got past, greeted her at the bottom of the staircase.

‘Bassey,’ Marion said.

‘Breakfast?’

‘Yes, please. I noticed Dr Mama came in.’

‘He’s in the study.’ Bassey gestured with his hand, waving her on.