walked quickly out of the bedroom and back onto the landing, hoping she had been wrong; silently screaming at whatever force was controlling this pivotal moment in her destiny to transform what she knew she was about to see lying on the couch in the dressing-room next door.
She had no realistic hope of changing the fact that the yellow snake would still be there, coiled, waiting, on the velvet surface, just as it had been when she saw it those few moments before, but she forced herself to believe that she just might be able to make it change into something less portentous; differently patterned; differently coloured: less deadly. From where she now stood she could see only one blue arm of the couch: the seat and the other end being hidden by the frame of the open dressing-room door. She leant her body the last few inches sideways needed to clear her view, tilting her head to peer reluctantly at what she didn’t want to see. As she moved, the unfocused white gloss moulding in the foreground of her vision slipped away to the side like a curtain pulled back from a sickening tableau.
It still lay there, just as she knew it must; the dark blue pattern along its length pulsing against the bright yellow background. As she stared at it, mesmerised by its unassuming yet deadly presence, she could feel the poison already seeping into her soul. She marvelled at the intricacies of her subconscious; only now in retrospect beginning to work out consciously what she had known instinctively in that first millisecond of awareness when she had passed the open door of the room that lifetime of a few short moments ago.
She stayed unmoving, fascinated, trawling through the evidence logically and calmly, still, in spite of the reptilian silk in front of her, harbouring a tiny seed of hope that something had been missed, that the inevitable conclusion could be changed or avoided. But the facts that forced themselves on her attention chafed at her relentlessly, like some horrific piece of logic leading inexorably to one answer:
I bought the new tie only last week.
The tie is lying here in front of me.
Ruth has been away on holiday for two weeks.
Ruth only arrived back on Friday evening.
Therefore, class,
John is not wearing the tie today.
Ruth hasn’t seen John for two weeks until this morning.
Therefore, again,
Ruth hasn’t seen John’s new tie.
But she has just told me she likes his new yellow tie.
Conclusion:
Someone is lying.
Discuss.
Eleanor’s immediate instinct was to rush back to the phone and get through to Ruth again; to demand an explanation and to scream her panic down the line. Then she thought better of it: that was too easy. Over the phone Ruth could bluff her way out of it; she wasn’t stupid. A physical confrontation was needed – a trip up to town and a storm into the office as in a scene from a film – the avenging wife crashing through into the heartland of her husband’s empire, denouncing, shaming. But picturing the faces of receptionists, secretaries, junior managers, turned towards her incredulously, young eyes agape, lips parted in expectation and enjoyment of the wonderfully embarrassing scene unfolding in front of them, made her quiver in disgust and humiliation. She forced herself to be still and breathe quietly for a few moments before slowly moving across the landing and towards the stairs.
Back in the kitchen she walked over to the kettle and plugged it in, only half aware now of the reflection of the whitened face that stared back at her. There could, of course, be a perfectly rational explanation for this, she told herself. She was getting it all entirely out of proportion. But then why did her whole body tell her something was so dreadfully wrong? Going over it again she tried to work out just what it was that was making her feel so threatened. If Ruth had been away till Friday night then there was no possibility of her having seen the new tie, that was incontrovertible. But perhaps there was another tie? She must have meant a different one. Was there another tie she could possibly have seen that might just have fitted the description of swirly things on yellow? That she could describe as ‘new’?
As the water in the kettle began to mutter and growl around the heat of the element, Eleanor struggled to remember what tie she had seen John wearing as he had left in the morning. She could see him coming out of the bathroom, his thick grey hair still wet, brushed neatly back as always. In her mind’s eye she watched him walk out of the bedroom, his tall figure slightly stooped in the white towelling dressing gown. They had been chatting about the week ahead of them, as they always did on a Monday morning, shouting to each other from bedroom to dressing room, Eleanor sitting at the dressing table carefully sponging beige foundation onto her moisturised face.
‘So I’ll stay up till Thursday, darling,’ John had called out to her, ‘probably. It depends how it goes. I might leave it till Friday, but I’ll see. Abbotts are nearing finishing the plans on Devon and I want to work through them before they’re finalised. And year-end reports are getting horribly close. Have we anything on?’
‘Not really, although I told Amanda we might drop in on them for a drink at some point, but the weekend’ll be fine. Is Devon going to have more ghastly whirly ceilings?’
There was a silence. Eleanor knew John found it particularly irritating when she criticised the inferior plaster finishes on the housing estates, but there was something about the depressing combed half-circles of thick white plaster applied quickly and cheaply to their ceilings that she found objectionable and dishonest and she could never resist saying so. To her eye, combined with the sprayed-on roughcast exteriors, the ceilings gave the houses the impression of shoddy goods covered quickly with an unattractive veneer of mock sophistication.
‘John?’
‘Yes. Probably. Well, of course, yes.’
She could hear the annoyance in his voice but went on, enjoying the predictability of the marital friction that she knew she was inflaming, puffing powder over her face as she talked. ‘I’d just love to see you live in a house like that, that’s all.’
John didn’t bother to reply, but continued dressing next door in silence. Eleanor could hear the slight squeak of hinges as he opened the old mahogany wardrobe, and the faint clink of metal as the hooks of the clothes hangers were pushed together as he sifted through his jackets.
The hinges squeaked again as the wardrobe was closed. Eleanor brushed brown shadow across her eyelid as she half listened to the rustle of cellophane as John took a shirt from its laundry wrappings, and then to the whip of cloth as he briskly shook it free of its folds. She was waiting for the moment when he would come back into the bedroom to proffer first one, then the other arm for her to do up his cuff links. Until she saw his face she felt unable to judge his mood, and unsure as to whether it was worth pursuing the ceiling conversation or whether the annoyance factor was too great to be overcome. Not that she felt particularly strongly about the poorly finished ceilings, but it had become an interesting and long-running challenge to get John to admit that he thought them as ugly and vulgar as she did. The unspoken words that were passed via the briefest of looks on both sides during such discussions were as revealing as those that were actually uttered. A quick glance from beneath John’s raised eyebrow silently asked Eleanor why she couldn’t appreciate that everything that she now enjoyed in the way of lifestyle was paid for by the very ceilings that she so abhorred. Eleanor’s returning smirk conveyed that she was, indeed, only too aware of just what it was that paid the bills but didn’t he realise that there existed men who could provide for their women to a standard as high –
