Their lips talk of misch.., p.25
Their Lips Talk of Mischief, page 25
On the Saturday night, Lou had taken her into their bedroom. In the corridor she turned her thin neck and looked back wildly at me and there was something far too needy about the speed she twisted round at. I saw Lou note it. She thought he was taking her in there because I had confessed everything in the pub, so she had to hide a certain flightiness when she came back up the corridor and tried to conceal it further on into the evening. We had no opportunity to whisper together, though sometimes we touched hands in the corridor and glared into each other’s faces.
They had an awful lot of sex that night.
On the Sunday morning, Aoife had gone with Lou to Mass and then to the Co-op whilst I remained at the flat taking care of Lily, holding her hands and letting her stand unsteadily in her romper suit, trying to get her to move towards me, grabbing her when the little legs suddenly folded beneath and she sat down.
By afternoon, with his packed suitcase laid out at the bottom of their bed, Lou’s send-off party began. A red cotton tablecloth – slightly stained – was draped on the dining table. Three places were set: knives and forks which did not match, some silver plated and engraved with Browns Hotel upon their handles. Glass tumblers which were once free gifts from BP garages, and two bottles of sparkling white wine.
Aoife cooked a whole roast chicken. I lifted it in and out the oven and basted, in case she burned her hand – which, she kept repeating, she could not afford to do because of the photo shoot on Tuesday. Lou had tolerated this and stood next to me, peeling potatoes and veg, entertaining her with projections of his future existence among the fields between Worcester and Stratford-upon-Avon. Spiritual cradle of Shakespeare and Lea and Perrins sauce.
‘How do you get there?’
‘God knows. Via Birmingham? I suppose Victoria bus station will handle it tomorrow.’
‘Birmingham. City of Transformation,’ Aoife said. She was in a great mood.
‘How come?’
‘M6 turns into the M1 near there.’
Lou and I laughed.
Aoife said, ‘Listen. Worcester’s not that close to Birmingham.’
When we sat at the dining table, lobster bisque soup was served. Baxter’s tinned variety. Lou stated, ‘Up there, I’ll be like a Roman governor at my desk, surrounded by pure savagery, longing to be recalled to Rome. Acton on the Tiber. Buon appetito.’
Aoife said, ‘This is the height of refinement, cause I notice Lou’s not going to serve the wine with the soup.’
‘Wine shouldn’t be drunk with soup. I’m sure of it.’
‘They’ll know in Stead’s Language School.’
Lily was up in her high chair with the little tray which swung down over her head. She didn’t want to eat but sat with us at the table and shoved her small, white stuffed rabbit around in circles, lifted it over her head, smiled and dropped it on her skull so it bounced and I kept having to kneel and retrieve it.
Slurping soup, Lou said, ‘So, Aoife. This photo-modelling lark. I think you should jack it in. I’m not joking. You’ll have Lil to look after while I’m away.’
‘It’ll only be a few hours each time. Douglas will look after her.’
‘Douglas isn’t here to be your au pair.’ He turned to me. ‘Is that not so, Cunningham?’
‘Well, ah.’
She looked at me. It was a cold, ironically betrayed look. ‘So you two’ve been talking about this? I’ll leave Lily with Flo, then. Or with Abby.’
‘We don’t think you need to do the modelling right just now.’ He quickly looked at me. ‘I mean, you’re not even making money. Haven’t earned a penny of late and you won’t make much at these stripteases.’
She put down her spoon. ‘They are not stripteases, Lou. And I could be making far more than you if this photographer, Ross, takes me on.’
‘Ross. Really, Eeef, don’t fall for that. He must have fucked more models than he has changed film. He just wants to get your clothes off and when he’s visually exhausted your body – like he soon will – he’ll see you as a worn-out piece of wasteland and he’ll move on to a new,’ – Lou leaned forward – ‘younger, seventeen-year-old to run his lenses over.’
Patient and firm, she replied, ‘Ross is married to Cally Pearson. She’s stunningly beautiful.’
I shifted my elbow.
Lou drove straight over that statement. ‘You are married too. And not only will he try to fuck you; when he succeeds, he’ll give you this Aids or an exotic pox. And all those little tossers will be laughing about us.’
Aoife turned, looked at me with pity and she held up her finger. ‘I took him to one party a year and a half ago, and he’s had a big chip on his shoulder ever since. I can’t believe I’m hearing this from a man about to lock himself up in a huge country house with teenaged Italian and French schoolgirls.’
Lou straightened and, though it sounded weak, actually said, ‘I’ll have you know I took this job on the understanding there was a Catholic church nearby. That I would have access to on a daily basis.’
‘Christ!’ Aoife shouted. ‘His new local is the confessional.’
‘It would do you no harm.’
‘I have to be a saint already to be married to you, Lou.’
Lily dropped her small rabbit. I slid off my chair and put it back up in front of her, on the folding table of her chair.
Lou leaned across the table towards Aoife. ‘This is an exact example of why you and I need to get properly married. For Lily’s sake.’
‘We are. Married.’
‘Proper married.’
‘What’s an example of that? I’m not obeying and honouring everything you say, Lou. Any more than you obey me.’
‘What was there ever for me to obey?’
‘Jesus, Lou. You got me pregnant too. It wasn’t all my own nasty work.’
‘That wasn’t my fault. If you weren’t this stuttering, novice nun when we met, you’d have mastered the rhythm method.’
‘Don’t be disgusting.’
Lou spat out a hard laugh and turned to me. ‘She thinks the rhythm method’s some type of sodomy, which I’m pleased to recall isn’t unknown to her – though she’s a saint.’
I moved my head quick and looked out the window at a crawling airliner, afar.
‘Know another fact, Cunningham? In these photos, you would notice, it’s not just her knickers she slowly peels off. Look at her hand in them. The wedding ring comes off as well, in case it spoils the feeling of possession for the men hamming off over them.’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake. You’re such a child sometimes. I’ve told you before. It’s standard that models take off their wedding rings. You do it on catwalk too. You have to wear jewellery. You see the girls backstage, putting fake tan on where their wedding rings normally are.’
‘What faithful lambs. There’s a nice image of her chosen profession, Cunningham.’
‘It’s not me in a photo, Lou. You’re always too strung up in your own ego. You think its me, but it’s not. I’m just a servant of the image.’
He sneered. ‘“Servant of the image.” Were you bending over at the time when you heard that one, love?’
‘You’re meant to know all about language and stuff. Think about what the word model actually means. You are a subject. It’s not me, I just represent something. A form.’
He turned back to her. ‘More like a whore. Then I got ill. You got pregnant and I nearly died, all in six months, and you’ve come out the other end with a beautiful, healthy daughter, yet resenting me for both those events. You think there is nothing to be grateful for and the best way to deal with motherhood is to rake out your perfect mons pubis for the first pornographer who comes along.’
More quietly she said, ‘I do fashion photography.’
‘You do nudie arty porn stuff.’
‘Once. You were quick enough to put that photo up in the bloody bedroom and to blow off about it to folk. It was embarrassing for me that night you went on and on about it to Rhys. And in front of my bloody parents too. Now you’ve right changed your tune.’
‘Take it fucking down, then,’ Lou shouted. ‘Now you’re a mother.’
‘You want to make a slave of me in that bloody church. I’m not going to confession.’
Lily dropped her rabbit again. I got out my seat, bent down to put the toy back up on her little table.
Lou turned down to me as I kneeled. ‘Stop that. Can’t you see the child’s taking advantage of you?’
I had still to rise from my knees, but I did and before I sat back down at the table, I dropped the rabbit on Lily’s high chair in front of her.
There was an odd pause. Lou suddenly banged the table with both fists and I jumped. Lily stopped looking around the room and stared at her daddy.
‘Did you fuck a photographer?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever fuck a photographer?’
‘It doesn’t happen like that, Lou. There’s no time for all that. You’re trying to make photos.’
‘You fucked that guy on the beach.’ He jammed his thumb in the direction of their bedroom.
Aoife looked at him. ‘You’re a woman-hating bully. You’re taking on the character of the father that you never knew: a bigoted Catholic bully, just like your gran told me he was.’
‘If trying to provoke me is the best way you have of debating matters, it’s a poor show. So did you? Do the beach guy? Like that ponce actor you went out with.’
Aoife looked down and shook her head with weariness. ‘Poor Llewellyn Smith. Obsessed about getting dumped with second-hand goods. You mock me being naive but at the same time you’re furious I wasn’t a virgin when we met. Now the soup’s gone cold.’
Her soup bowl was almost full. So was Lou’s. Only mine was guiltily empty, the spoon resting in a shallow pink puddle, the thick, treacle spoor of rocky sea-life rising to my nostrils. I felt a bit sick. Aoife stood and lifted her plate, then Lou stood also and lifted his own plate and mine.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Lou carefully placed both the plates back down on the tablecloth.
I was reminded of Lily, the way she concertinaed down when she failed to stand unsupported. Aoife slid up the wall behind her then came back down limp. Her pelvis hit the edge of the table and her whole upper body swung forward at great speed so the side of her face smashed the wooden table top and her hair shot up in a pale rush. The table tipped on its side and she rolled once on the floor, then the edge of that heavy table cracked down beside her – soup, glasses, plates and cutlery rolling around her.
Lily began to cry as her high chair rocked, the air striated with fear.
It happened so quick I’d had no time to move and my denim legs just stuck out before me, unveiled from beneath the toppled table, soup all over them. I could feel the lukewarm liquid seeping through to my thighs.
Lou moved towards Aoife but I was out of my seat and stood in front of him, waiting to be hit myself. I croaked in a weirdly reverential and frightened voice, ‘No, Lou. No,’ and I looked in his eye. The thing I sought in there was the same madness I saw amongst the luminous flecks of her blinking iris when Aoife had kissed me in the vague light of the dawn.
I was hardly there for Lou, I was just some resistant ectoplasm; he leaned first this way then that to get his arms around me, to reach at his fallen wife and hurt her more. I shifted to keep him away, glanced at the floor to get my footing and saw that my ugly shoe rested upon a stream of her golden hair.
I pushed him back and he recovered some shocked sense but he still had to unburden himself, so he crossed away, at a perverse angle from Aoife, raised his shoe flatly and brought it down with a definitive crunch upon the small coffee table in front of the couch – the one he’d padded the corners of to protect his child. The table splintered and imploded beneath him. He had to shake a wood shard free as it clung to his foot. Lily screamed louder in her high chair.
I thought Aoife was dead or unconscious, then she sat up and rose to her feet and I put my fingers out and took her elbow. Something was wrong in her face.
The golf clubs from the Langhams’ below began to bang on the floor by our feet, joining the unnerving din caused by Lily’s screams. Lou looked across the room at Aoife.
I could not believe my ears as she started to speak.
‘I deserve it, Lou; don’t feel bad. I deserve it. You don’t know how awful I am.’ Her voice seemed different. Aoife had to raise it across the howling of Lily and as she spoke she spat ends of red blood outward which stuck on her white teeth and settled like crimson leeches around her mouth.
‘Oh God,’ Lou said. ‘I’m so sorry. I completely lost it.’
Quietly, I commanded, ‘Go to the bedroom, Lou.’
‘Let me look at her.’ He moved toward us.
‘No.’ I turned on him for the first time, ready to physically fight. ‘Just fuck off to the bedroom a minute.’
Strangely, he obeyed me. I sat Aoife down on my dining chair. In the kitchen I opened the drawer with the two clean dish towels and soaked one under the cold tap. I filled the fabric with the ice cubes, dropping the emptied ice-cube tray to the lino, then I felt heat on my thighs. I turned and switched off the oven with the chicken still in it.
Aoife held the ice pack to her jaw while I stood over her with my hand limply round her shoulder. In cowardly shock I noted how I suddenly did not want to touch her and claim my part of this. I hoisted Lily out of her seat and rocked her in my arms until she stopped crying. Each time Aoife took the cloth away to show me, I saw that the jaw was more swollen until it was bloated out a full three inches. I started to panic. ‘Put on your coat. I’m taking you to the hospital.’
I picked up Lily and took her down to the bedroom. Lou was sitting on the end of the bed, prophetically, beside his packed suitcase. ‘I’m taking her to hospital. You must look after Lily, or I’ll need to take her with us. Then next thing fucking Social Services will be calling round here and Lily will be taken away. For fuck sake, man.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded without the least resistance and said, ‘Yes. Yes. That makes sense.’
‘Lou. Lou.’
‘What?’
‘Are you rational? Is Lily safe with you?’
Now he spoke with a candid admission, the voice full of horrified concern. ‘She might need an X-ray.’
‘Yes. She will.’
He waved his hand dismissively. ‘I’ll take care of Lily.’
I used both hands to swing the baby over to him and we looked at each other. I said, ‘I’ve switched the oven off. I have to change my jeans.’
‘Silence, Exile and Cunningham. Always calm in a crisis,’ he whispered, but more to himself than anything else.
I had changed out of the soup-soaked jeans. Aoife with her busted, swollen face walked up Bollo Lane beside me, ice pack held to her jaw and soaking the sleeve of her white overcoat into a grey blue. People coming out of Acton Town station stared at her – and at me – then they looked away immediately.
I said, ‘What are you going to tell them?’
‘Who?’
‘Hospital people. If they think there’s been an assault and hear there’s a child in the house they might call police or Social Services.’
‘Might they?’ she said naively. ‘I’m not blaming Lou. Next thing they’ll be taking Lily off me.’
‘Exactly. He hit you. It’s against the law. He might do it again.’
‘I deserved it.’
‘Stop saying that, Aoife. Nobody ever deserves that.’
‘I’m more upset about Tuesday. I can’t go to a photo shoot like this and he probably knew it. Look at me, for God’s sake.’
She’d taken the ice pack off her jaw to speak; with surprising harshness I said, ‘Keep the ice on it.’ Then I added, more caringly, ‘How’s it feel?’
‘My tooth seems loose. Might be my imagination.’ She poked her forefinger deep into her mouth. ‘It’s cut in there on the cheek as well.’
‘I think your jaw could be broken.’
She looked at me and nodded. ‘It’s really sore to talk. What will I tell them?’
‘I’ll stand by you whatever you decide.’
She stopped walking. ‘I don’t know what to do, Douglas. What should I do?’
It was my chance to win her for myself and I knew it. ‘He could have killed you. There were glasses on the table so your face could have come down on one and you’d be blinded or scarred for life.’
She said, ‘We shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.’
She had a lisp. Appallingly, I found it sexy. ‘He didn’t hit you because of what we’re doing. That’s the problem. He doesn’t even know a thing and he’s done this.’
‘So now does he deserve what we’re doing to him, then?’ She frowned at me the way I knew she would ask a question of her priest.
‘He’s probably going to kill us both when he finds out.’
She smiled, an eerie and crooked grin, her two top teeth invisible, like comic missing teeth; blood had stained them dark, as if by rich, red wine. ‘Are you scared?’
‘I’m worried about you. Look at your face.’
‘What will I tell them?’
I clenched my fists. ‘Say you were changing a light fitting and you fell off the chair right onto the table. But if Lou hits you ever again, I won’t lie.’
We entered through that same sliding door of Accident and Emergency as the night I’d first set eyes on Llewellyn. I pondered if I might be in some cyclical penance and here meet another family to enter their world and destroy it.
It was a Sunday afternoon, though, and the Sabbath held: there were very few other victims in A&E. That old Medusa was not guarding access behind the perspex but some younger woman, who listened to Aoife explaining that she had a photography session on Tuesday and needed advice about getting a swelling to go down after a small fall. Aoife was surprisingly calm and convincing.
‘I think that needs some looking at,’ the lady said with caution.
I was glanced at suspiciously. I was convinced the woman behind the perspex could smell lobster bisque off me and was trying to figure this into the equation. A doctor immediately appeared and Aoife was taken into that mysterious behind-the-scenes area which I had never quite graduated to. Until Lou found out about me and his wife, no doubt.
