Tread Softly (3 page)

‘You're here, my dear,' said Hugh, pulling out a chair for her. ‘And Robert opposite. Clarence, you're at this end. And, Ralph, if you'd like to sit next to Jean…'

Lorna watched her husband peer at his name, his eyebrows rising slightly – in disbelief? Amusement? (If she invested in silver name-holders would he join her for meals at the table at home?) She could see him twice – facing her in the flesh and the back of his head reflected in the mirror on the wall behind him. He looked tired tonight, and worn. Sometimes people mistook them for father and daughter, which was both embarrassing and hurtful. Not that there was any physical resemblance. Her eyes were dark; his faded blue. Her thick, straight hair was tawny-brown; his, once blond, was now grey and thinning. And, while he was tall and effortlessly lean, she was barely five foot two and could put on weight just looking at a chocolate bar.

Olive brought in garlic-bread. Its pungent smell made Lorna want to grab a hunk and sink her teeth into the moist, butter-oozing flesh. But she sat demurely, storing up a word-hoard for the meal to come. Enough of ‘lovely': it must be superb, delicious, exquisite from now on.

‘Superb,' she rehearsed, only to see her mocking reflection in the mirror, exaggerating her faults: childishly red cheeks that made her look as if she'd overdone the rouge; the tiny but maddening gap between her front teeth. Hugh had prominent teeth, like tombstones. ‘All the better to eat you with, my dear …' Did he and Olive still make love? What was he like in bed? A wolf? A pussycat?

Olive entered with a tray of soup-bowls (flower-patterned, of course). ‘It's vichyssoise,' she said, setting them out with a flourish.

Lorna rubbed her chilly arms. If there was one soup she loathed it was vichyssoise – a bland, insipid sludge that for some inexplicable reason was considered socially superior to a more robust kind like oxtail. Yet oxtail had a kick to it, was colourful and spicy and served vibrantly hot, not cold like congealing porridge.

‘Delicious!' she said, holding the first spoonful in her mouth like a particularly vile medicine. Eventually she forced it down, turning the instinctive shudder into a little start of delight. ‘You must let me have the recipe.'

‘Oh, it's simplicity itself. Just potatoes and cream, basically.'

Lorna toyed with her spoon. If only she could tip the stuff into Ralph's bowl. He was eating in his usual morose fashion, but that was no reflection on the soup. If Olive had served him truffled
foie gras
his expression wouldn't have lightened.

Lorna stared at the gobbet of cream swirled into the surface of the soup – white on white. White like bandages and hospitals. No, she mustn't think about the operation. Anaesthetics were the ultimate in Terror: sinking down, down, down to some nameless hideous void. Maybe still awake but paralysed, screaming silently in pain. No one able to hear. She glanced around at the deaf, oblivious faces – Olive's glistening crimsoned lips opening and shutting as she prattled on.

‘Yes, Brian's just been promoted. We're frightfully proud.'

White. White like bones. The surgeon hacking off great lumps of bone, slicing into tendons.

‘We're taking them out to celebrate next week. Daphne's worried about a babysitter, but …'

White. White like shrouds. Her parents had died instantly, according to Aunt Agnes, and went straight to heaven, hand in hand. Now she knew there wasn't a heaven. Food for worms, that's all.

‘Mind you, they could bring the baby with them if we went to that nice Italian place. Do you know it, Ralph? – Marco's, in Guildford?'

Through a fog she heard Ralph's voice, ponderous and slow. Nothing else was slow. Her heart was racing and there was an avalanche in her stomach, tilting and churning its contents. Her head throbbed and burned, droplets of perspiration trickled down her back, yet at the same time she was shivering. She was hot and cold, like the soup and the garlic-bread. She ought to be eating, but her throat felt constricted and her hands were trembling so much she couldn't hold the spoon. Why had no one noticed? Bill was laughing, for God's sake, and his wife filling the air with words words words words words.

‘I'm having trouble deciding what to pack for the cruise. Bill says I always take too much, but it's easier for men. They don't need evening dresses. Or leotards and tights.'

Lorna dabbed at her face with a napkin. Distraction – that was the key. The Panic Manual suggested offering to wash up, but there weren't any dirty plates yet and, anyway, Olive didn't seem the type to let guests help in the kitchen.

She pressed her hand against her chest to stop her heart from racing out of control. Vigorous exercise was also recommended – running on a treadmill, jumping up and down on the spot. Not possible in Olive's fancy dining-room, with an audience of nine.

‘The trouble with you lovely ladies is you're far too vain. It beats me why you need a dozen different outfits every day just to watch the waves.'

‘Oh, Bill, you are a tease! I bet you're just the same, aren't you, Lorna?'

Lorna caught sight of herself in the mirror. How could she look so normal when her mind and body were disintegrating? Reflection blurring, walls closing in, voices no longer issuing from people's mouths but darting round the room, spiteful little arrows piercing her skin, skewering her eyes.

‘Go on, Lorna, tell Bill you agree with me. I mean, if you're invited to sit on the captain's table you can't appear in any old thing, can you?'

With a despairing cry Lorna staggered to her feet and lurched towards the door. If she didn't escape she would die.

‘How
could
you, Lorna? In front of the Kirkwoods, of all people.'

‘I'm sorry,' she murmured, not daring to meet his eye. For once, he was facing her.

‘Being sorry's no help. We've obviously lost them as clients. And the others are bound to talk. It'll be all round Surrey that my wife's a nutcase.'

Lorna picked at a loose thread on her skirt. It wasn't just a matter of losing business: she had humiliated him in public, and that for Ralph was unbearable. ‘Olive … seemed to understand.'

‘Oh, she was humouring you, that's all.' He struck a succession of matches in an attempt to light his pipe. ‘What's wrong with these damn things?'

‘Ralph, you promised you wouldn't smoke any more.'

‘I
haven't
smoked. For eight days. And it's practically killed me, I'll have you know.'

‘You've done brilliantly, darling. Don't spoil it now. It's so bad for your lungs.'

‘After your performance tonight, my lungs are the last thing I'm concerned about.'

More
guilt. ‘But the doctor said –'

‘Don't change the subject, Lorna. We're talking about the Kirkwoods.'

‘Look, I … I'll write them a note in the morning, to explain.'

‘Explain? What on earth can you say?' At last he got the pipe alight and exhaled a belch of smoke.

He was right. No mere words could explain the Terrors. Liable to erupt at any time, they could flare from a spark into a blazing conflagration, leave her prey to fear of fear itself: fear of madness, physical collapse. Usually Ralph was sympathetic, but tonight she had pushed him to the limit.

‘You're not the only one with problems. Do you know how much we're in debt? I can't sleep at night, wondering how we'll manage.'

Each of them lying awake in their separate rooms. The moon with a contemptuous clock on its face, ticking out the hours. If only they could listen to its tick together, cuddle up, console each other. ‘Perhaps we ought to sell the house. Find somewhere smaller.'

‘That's no solution. Moving house takes time we haven't got, quite apart from the upheaval. Anyway, with the enormous mortgage on this place it wouldn't release much capital.'

‘Let's give up BUPA then.'

‘Before your operation? Don't be ridiculous. All these years we've been paying in, and this is the first claim we'll have made. Bugger!' he muttered, noticing that his pipe had gone out. He struck another match with such force that it snapped in two, then tossed both pipe and matchbox into the ashtray. ‘Besides, you'd wait for ever on the NHS.'

‘I don't mind.'

‘Well, I do. It's out of the question.'

Was he ashamed of her bunions too? Wanted a wife with straight feet and a placid disposition? Not that much to ask, perhaps. Olive and the rest of them probably managed to combine the two.

‘I'm going to bed. Goodnight.'

She listened to his angry footsteps slam up the stairs, followed by the slam of a door. Yet he was still there in the room, in the acrid, accusing smell of tobacco. Last week she had cleaned the whole house, removing the dull film from walls and paintwork; picked the sticky brown shreds out of every pocket of every jacket; cleared the tangle of bent pipe-cleaners, dead matches and broken pipe-stems from his desk and bedside drawers. Most men made do with three or four pipes. Ralph had twenty-seven.

But then Ralph wasn't most men. Which was why she'd married him. Her long-sought maverick.

She levered her feet from the crippling shoes. Even through her tights she could see how red the swellings were, and the pain was agonizing. If only she could wear her granny-shoes for parties, or, better still, the ones specially made by Surgical Appliances. But if she turned up in those great clumping things she would be written off as seriously disabled.

Which she supposed she
was
– on several counts. Just thinking of the débâcle this evening brought her out in a cold sweat again. Olive's friends were probably still discussing her: ‘What a ghastly, hysterical woman. A total headcase. How does her husband put up with it?'

How indeed? Being married to her had imposed restrictions on Ralph, and he'd had to cope in the bad times with a shaking, sobbing wreck of a wife. And he
had
coped, pretty well. He had seen her at rock bottom, yet continued to stand by her.

Wretchedly she slunk upstairs, a shoe in either hand, and tiptoed past his bedroom. Hers was smaller, a child's room. It seemed right that he should keep the master bedroom, the one he had shared with Naomi. Yet she hated sleeping alone. It wasn't just the physical contact she missed – the solid reassurance of another body touching hers – but that there was no one to share a chat or a joke. Long ago, when she and Tom were an item, they would spend whole days in bed together – making love, of course, but also laughing, talking, hatching plans for the future. That future hadn't happened. Tom, like most men, soon tired of panic attacks. And even stoical Ralph had finally suggested they sleep apart, after years of being woken by her nightmares – horrific dreams that made her scream and thresh about. Who could blame him? A less patient husband might have simply walked out.

She placed her shoes side by side in the wardrobe, then took off her dress and put it on a hanger. Tidiness was important when chaos threatened your life. She tried to imagine the wrench of moving house, of exchanging Mr Hughes for a cack-handed youth barely out of medical school.

‘Other people manage without four bedrooms and private health-insurance schemes.'

‘Yes, I know, Aunt Agnes.'

‘If you're in debt, then you'll have to economize.'

‘Yes, Aunt.'

‘And look at you now – mooning around feeling sorry for yourself when you're the one that's done the damage. If you can't sleep, then for goodness' sake get on with something useful.'

Obediently she retrieved the Panic Manual from under her pillow and reread the section headings:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
YOU WILL NOT DIE.
YOU CAN RECOVER.

I am not alone.

I will not die.

I can recover.

I am not alone I will not die I can recover.

In the manual, Panic was depicted as a fire-breathing monster with a long forked tail and horns – something between a devil and a dragon. She sat with the book on her knee, leafing through the well-thumbed pages now stained with sweat and tears.

‘Take control of your monster,' ran the instructions. ‘Even take it to bed with you. But be sure to show it who's boss.'

Her own Monster had a capital M and, although invisible to Ralph, was virtually a third person in the house.

Dutifully she turned back the covers. ‘In,' she ordered. ‘
Down!'

To her surprise it subsided, and she stretched out beside its scaly limbs. ‘I can recover,' she whispered, wishing she could share her bed with a rampant Mr Hughes rather than a temporarily quiescent Monster.

‘Lorna?'

‘Mm …?' She opened her eyes. Ralph was standing in the doorway, naked except for his underpants. Which meant he must be feeling randy. She only saw him naked when he decided (intermittently) that separate rooms had their limitations.

‘Fancy a …?' His voice tailed off. He never had the words for it. ‘Sex' was too bald, ‘cuddle' overly twee, ‘shag' downright crude and ‘sleeping with' factually inaccurate.

‘What, now? Today?' It was the morning of the operation, so her fear level was infinitely higher than her libido. Yet it would be unwise to refuse. Of late, Ralph's erections couldn't be relied upon, but now she could see a creditable bulge pushing out his underpants. Even years ago, in his forties, he had tended to look sheepish with a hard-on, as if it didn't quite belong to him and might do something wayward.

With an awkward laugh he took a step towards her. ‘You'll be out of action for a while, so I thought we might …'

‘Yes, of course. Let me just have a wash.'

‘No.'

She had learned to interpret even his monosyllables. ‘No' meant ‘Don't delay. I can't trust the thing not to lie down and die.' Ralph was a proud man and would rather embrace her unwashed body than risk the shame of failure. She shifted over towards the wall to make room for him in the narrow bed. He had washed, and smelt of soap – although not coal tar: that was Mr Hughes's soap, the one she imagined for him, as she imagined his underpants, his bedroom. Malcolm D. Hughes. Could it be D for David – one of her father's names? Or Daniel, perhaps. Or Derek … Would she ever know? A fortnight ago she had seen him at the hospital to go over the details of the three osteotomies and the procedure for her two subluxated toes. In an attempt to appear efficient, she had jotted down a few notes, then scrawled at the bottom, ‘I love you, Daddy.'