not the other way round.
The woman sat down opposite her in a small armchair, keeping well to the front of it and leaning slightly forward as if ready to jump up again at a second’s notice; wary of relaxing her guard in front of her visitor. They looked at each other for a few moments, and Eleanor was able to examine more clearly the straight, cropped grey hair, the long, unmade-up face behind the glasses, and the thick-waisted body. She was wearing a brightly coloured green blouse with short cape sleeves that revealed plump, mottled arms above reddened hands that were clasped firmly together on her lap, and her patterned skirt was stretched tightly across between her legs just below her knees.
‘I know who you are,’ the woman said at last, the hint of North London accent more obvious now in the stillness of the room. ‘I suppose I always knew this would happen one day.’
‘Yes,’ answered Eleanor. ‘And you’re her mother, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I’m Barbara.’
Eleanor felt surprisingly calm. In control. She looked around the room, automatically and professionally assessing what she saw, unable to help herself mentally rearranging the furniture, changing the fabric of the curtains and removing the gathered frills on the pelmets and the bottoms of the armchairs.
‘Do they see each other here?’ she went on, the tone of her own voice sounding to her ears as normal as if she were passing the time of day with a social acquaintance, rather than confronting the mother of her husband’s mistress. No, not mistress – the word gave her too much dignity; it trembled with echoes of the beautiful courtesans of the past; of spoilt, Armani-clad, pouting lovers of the present. Whore. That was nearer to it. Whore. Eleanor surprised herself with the succession of degrading labels that sprang now one after another into her mind, screaming to be heard: her husband’s whore; bitch; tart; harlot; trollop.
The woman hesitated for a split second, and Eleanor thought she saw again a flash of anxious uncertainty as she looked down at the floor.
‘Well, yes. Of course. Of course they do.’
Eleanor couldn’t help herself. The recently acquired composure that had held her body and voice in check since entering the room deserted her in a wave of furious revulsion. Of course? Of course they do? How dare this woman sit before her so calmly? How dare she look her in the eye and answer her the way she did? What kind of disgusting morals could allow her to parade her whore-bitch-daughter to John’s caressing, fondling fingers and then discuss it with his wife as if nothing was wrong? Her anger erupted in a sudden, violent rise from the sofa and a tirade of abuse spewed out at the startled face looking up at her.
‘What do you mean, of course? How can you? How can you sit there and talk to me – how can you face me? What kind of woman are you? Don’t you have any—haven’t you any—for Christ’s sake, how dare you? For God’s sake – how dare you? I don’t understand you, I can’t understand you – you’re disgusting, you disgust me, you all disgust me!’
The woman looked white and frightened, and rose slowly from the chair as if semi-paralysed by the ferocious anger of Eleanor’s attack, her eyes like a rabbit’s hypnotised in a car’s headlights, her body backing slowly from the heat of the assault as Eleanor went on.
‘How long? How long? Just tell me that. Do you watch them? Do you watch your daughter while my husband screws her? Do you?’
The woman gasped and held a hand to her face as if Eleanor had hit her. She finally managed to speak, in a voice filled with what appeared to be a genuine sense of shock, confusion and sheer horror.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, ‘What are you saying? Don’t – don’t say such things. You don’t know what you’re saying. They couldn’t—’
‘Don’t cover it up – it’s too late now. I’ve found you. I know. I know what they do. How can you, as her mother – how can you let it happen? How can you?’
Eleanor made a sudden move towards the woman, filled with a terrible urge to hurt her, to make her hurt as much as she did, to tear the agony out of herself and force it onto this terrified creature in front of her. Even as she raised her hand to – what? hit her? pinch her? slap her? – some deeply ingrained moral sense rebelled against the physical violence she had so abhorred all her life, and she felt her own arm blocking the fury of her instinctive revenge and become heavy and slow as it resisted the force of her anger. The momentum that her arm already carried sent it flailing towards the other’s chest, where it landed in a clumsy, painful shove into the flesh of her upper breast, pushing her victim backwards as she gave a yelp of distress.
‘Oh my God!’ the startled woman cried, clutching at her breast with her hand, trembling as she backed away from her attacker. ‘Oh my God! You must go now, please, go, just get out – please.’
Eleanor herself was backing off now, shocked by her own violence, filled with a confusing mix of horror at her own savagery and hatred for the pathetic woman in front of her.
‘Yes,’ she panted, out of breath from the eruption of violence and from the battle with herself to contain it, ‘yes I’m going. I can’t talk to you now. But I will. Don’t think I’m one of those wives who are going to take this. Don’t think I’m going to make it easy for you, or for your whore of a daughter.’
She was moving towards the door now, but stopped again to turn and look at the woman with terrifying hatred and anger in her face.
‘And don’t tell him I’ve been here. Don’t tell him anything. I’ll make things very unpleasant for you if you do. Just remember that.’
She backed away, still trembling in little waves of aftershock from the horror and humiliation of the encounter, keeping her head still turned to face the frightened, watery eyes behind the glasses watching her as she left the room. As she opened the front door she heard a movement behind her, and looked back to see the woman standing at the open door of the sitting room, still holding her breast with one hand.
‘I need to think,’ said Eleanor, sounding horribly feeble and conciliatory to her own ears. ‘You may have to leave here. I don’t know what arrangements you’ve – you may have to leave, that’s all. And Ruth. I won’t make it easy for either of you. You or your daughter.’
She closed the door behind her and began to make her way down towards the ground floor. Just as she reached the last step, she heard the door open again on the landing up the single flight of stairs behind her. A voice, still sounding frightened but given more confidence now by the relative safety of the distance between the two of them, called down to her with an urgency fuelled by genuine bewilderment and confusion.
‘What do you mean? I don’t understand. What has Ruth to do with it? My daughter’s name isn’t Ruth. What do you mean?’
Eleanor kept going down the stairs. The emotional and physical turmoil of the encounter had left her shocked and bruised, and she couldn’t at first make any sense of what the woman had said to her. Not only the meaning or implications of it, but even the words themselves wouldn’t form any kind of pattern in her head; they seemed to float about in their own mysterious limbo, creating strange sounds and echoes but not transmitting any clear signal. It wasn’t until she was crossing the street outside, jumping automatically out of the way of a car coming down Nottingham Place, headlights full on and flashing irritatingly
