“I’ll steal away in the dark like a common whore,” she breathed, running a long nail down his torso. Then she laughed. But her laughter was uneasy. It no longer felt appropriate to make light of their affair. It had been too long and her lover was restless for an answer. She watched the smoke of her cigarette mingle with the flamingo light of evening then disappear altogether, taking with it what little remained of their enchanted limbo. It was late, her husband would be home soon and wonder where she was.
“When will you steal away with me?” He asked, his poet’s eyes searching her features for her thoughts. After all they had been through she still resisted telling him the truth. She still tormented him with her evasiveness, unless, of course, she was too ashamed to admit the truth even to herself. Finally his impatience overcame his caution and he exclaimed in exasperation, “You don’t want to sacrifice your status and your wealth for the simple love of a man who can give you nothing more than love.” She stared at him in astonishment and for a moment he thought she would slip out of bed, dress and leave in fury like she had done once before when he had unintentionally caused her offence. But to his relief her expression softened. She no longer looked angry; she just looked sad.
“How can you think so little of me?” She replied, stubbing out her cigarette and sitting up on the edge of his iron bed. “You’re not the only love in my life. I have my children to think about too.”
“They’re almost grown-up, you said so yourself. They don’t need you like they used to.” Then he too sat up and pulled her into his arms. “For God’s sake, Stella, I love you.”
“And I love you, with every nerve in my body,” she exclaimed. “Don’t think that when I lie beside my husband at night that my thoughts aren’t with you, that every moment of my day I’m not calculating when and imagining how. Darling, be patient. I promise you I will leave him. When the time is right.”
She looked about the familiar attic where so many hours of love vibrated in the dull fabric of the curtains, in the plain wooden walls and in the endless piles of poetry and prose that lay unpublished in loose stacks on the desk beneath the skylight. Witnessed only by the pair of pigeons that surveyed the busy street below from the windowsill and the Vietnamese pig that softly grunted on the sofa, their illicit afternoons of pleasure were concealed from the world.
They had met two winters before in the bookshop downstairs. Nothing could have prepared her for the force of love, which like the blast of a volcano felled every obstacle in its path, reducing her reservations to ashes. Suddenly nothing else mattered but him. Her husband’s rage, her children’s sorrow, her mother’s disappointment and her own dignity - she would have sacrificed everything for a night of sweet indulgence in the arms of this stranger.
She talked with animation and yet she wasn’t aware of anything she said. She watched his lips move and suppressed the ardent desire to kiss him by pulling out a book and flicking through the pages absent-mindedly. But he had recognised her longing for it reflected his own. “I live above the shop,” he had said, “with a pig and a couple of pigeons for company, and I write unpublishable prose and poetry.” Then he had laughed and the lines that creased around his mouth and eyes had enchanted her so that she, too, had laughed. Then he had asked her out for a drink. She agreed and followed him into the street. But they had walked no more than twenty paces when he had turned to her and said, “This is ridiculous. What am I doing taking you to some sterile café when I really want to take you to my attic and introduce you to Gunter? If we buy some milk, I’ll make you tea myself.” She had laughed at his forwardness but she had accepted his offer without hesitation. Unhappiness makes one reckless and she had suffered enough unhappiness to be prepared to risk everything for a taste of joy.
His attic was cold and damp and the tea too strong for her liking, and yet she had found his simple abode pleasantly quaint and refreshingly understated. Gunter the pig had warmed to her immediately, rubbing his snout against her leg, begging to be scratched. Yet with the discretion of a true gentleman the animal had retreated to his sofa and closed his eyes at the first indication of intimacy. Stella had relished her first act of rebellion against her husband. She had committed adultery with the enthusiasm of the newly converted. With this stranger she could be anyone she wanted to be and, with zealous abandon, she made up for the years of insensitive lovemaking at the hands of her impassive husband.
But the initial fervour had cooled with time. At the beginning she had been prepared to run away with him, but he hadn’t been ready to take her. Later she had grown complacent for his love was absolute and unconditional. She had become accustomed to her duplicitous life and reaped the benefits of both. Then he had begged her to leave her husband.
Now she pulled away from her recollections and turned to face her lover, whose languid eyes she knew more intimately than her own, and recognised that she could never give him up. He had sustained her through her unhappiness and given her the will to go on. He made her laugh, her made her feel attractive. With her lover she wasn’t a wife or a mother just Stella. But without her husband she was nothing.
Her impulses told her to run away with him, to live simply in a hot place and exist on the rarefied air of their love. After all, money, titles and status were nothing without love. But her vanity clung onto the lifestyle to which she had become so attached it was only with the thought of relinquishing it that she realised how much she depended on it. She enjoyed the comfort of her large home, the convenience of staff, the pleasures of shopping in designer stores without even looking at the price tags. She took pride in the way she looked which all depended on regular visits to the beautician and the hairdresser. She was accustomed to travelling first class and to the luxury of her new Mercedes Benz. At the same time she adored the simple, poetic life of her attic world, which was an uplifting antidote to the other. But she couldn’t have both. He was forcing her to choose and she feared that if she hesitated for much longer she might lose him forever.
“Alright,” she conceded wearily. “I’ll go and see your witch, maybe she’ll advise me what to do.” He dropped his shoulders with relief.
“I knew you would.” He said happily and gathered her into his arms. “I want to sail away with you and live on a distant shore, make love to the sounds of the sea and the scents of exotic plants. I want to take you away from the pressures of the city, the cold indifference of your controlling husband and watch you blossom in freedom.”Disarmed by his smile her anxiety faded and she stretched out beneath the hypnotic sensation of his hands on her skin.
The next day she followed his directions and knocked on the door of Maggie Broom, the clairvoyant whose company he sometimes sought when he needed reassurance which no one else could give. According to him, Maggie had predicted their meeting two years before and she had predicted the baby that Stella had conceived and lost in the small attic above the bookshop. Now she arrived with a suspended heart, because she knew whichever the choice the half she left behind would torment her forever.
Maggie lay on a divan draped in purple robes surrounded by overfed ginger cats. Her long red hair was piled up onto the top of her head like a tidy nest for some unsuspecting bird, and her long red nails played with the beads that disappeared into the cushions of her bosom. The room was small and in dire need of repair with the overpowering smell of cat urine, which stuck in Stella’s throat and made her wretch. “I’ve been expecting you,” Maggie breathed in a deep voice, indicating with the wave of her hand that Stella sit in the armchair opposite.
“So you know why I’m here,” she replied, perching on the edge of the chair and glancing around in the hope of finding a window to open. There was none, just the dim light from a naked bulb that hung from the ceiling. Maggie smiled an incomplete grin that hung crooked on her sallow face and nodded slowly.
“I know why you’re here,” she replied in a tone of voice that suggested she could read her innermost thoughts.
“You know everything.” Stella chuckled in an attempt to conceal her resentment.
“No. I don’t know why it took you so long.”
“Because, with respect, I don’t believe in people like you,” Stella retorted, longing to add that if she really did know everything she’d get rid of the stench.
“That’s alright,” she laughed, “I have enough belief in myself for the two of us.”
“So how does this work?” Stella asked, hoping it would be quick. She was finding it hard to breath without wincing.
“Give me your hand,” she instructed simply.
“So, no cards or crystal balls?”
“I’m not a gypsy,” the fortune teller replied indignantly. “I can read your vibrations from here. I don’t need a crystal ball.” Stella obediently extended her hand. To her surprise Maggie’s hands were cold. She watched as the clairvoyant closed her eyes.
“An, I see your lover,” Maggie began. “He’s waiting above the bookshop for your return. He’s very anxious. His love for you is genuine.” Stella sighed impatiently. “But you don’t need me to tell you that. Now I can see your husband. My, what a handsome man he is, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Some think so,” Stella replied dryly. She had found him handsome once, before the tedious familiarity of his features had dulled her awareness. She looked about her and noticed the cats were all staring at her with menace. She had never much liked cats, but these were the most disagreeable looking creatures she had ever encountered.
“No, you’re disenchanted with him. As well you might be. He’s incapable of love because he received none as a child. He doesn’t know what it means. Poor man, he’s a prisoner, but why should you try to rescue him? You feel nothing for him now but loathing. Yes, I can feel the hatred in your energy as I speak of him. Take a deep breath, my dear, he can only hurt you if you let him.” Stella stopped gazing around the room and began to listen to the witch’s words with her full attention. “But you weren’t to know what a poor, emotionally crippled man he was when you married him. He was so glamorous and rich and as a young girl you thought that was all you needed. He dazzled you with material things to make up for the affection he could not give you. He was incapable of giving it. You believed his generosity to be an expression of his devotion not a gilded collar to control you with. But misery followed as it surely would. You began to dry up like a plant in a desert. It surprised you, but it shouldn’t have. Material things are worth nothing without love. You know that now, but it is only due to years of unhappiness that you have learnt that valuable lesson. When your children could no longer satisfy your need for love you found it in the arms of a hopeless writer - a poor, hopeless writer. How ironic life is! Can you sacrifice those material comforts for the simple love of a man who has nothing but a big, generous heart?” Maggie laughed with scorn. “You need your husband more than you know.” She added.
“Like a hole in the head.” Stella replied flippantly. But Maggie didn’t laugh. Her eyelids suddenly began to flutter about as if she had lost control of them and her lips trembled before sagging like two dry slugs. Stella watched transfixed as the witch’s face imploded like a burst balloon.
“I see a black Porsche,” she continued in a low voice, articulating her words with deliberation. Her large bosom heaved as her breaths became shallow and staggered. Stella straightened up, barely daring to breathe. Her husband’s car was a black Porsche. “I see death.” Maggie declared, then dropped Stella’s hand as if it had grown too hot to hold.
“Whose?” Stella whispered urgently. “Whose death do you see?” But Maggie opened her eyes and shook her head.
“I couldn’t see, but I saw a black Porsche and then death. I can tell you no more than that.” Stella sunk back into the armchair, not wanting the meeting to finish. In her curiosity to discover the identity of the corpse she had even ceased to be aware of the stench.
“How can you possibly see death without a face?” she asked in frustration.
“Sometimes death does not wish to be recognised,” Maggie replied darkly.
“Was it my husband?” Stella insisted without attempting to hide the hope in her voice.
“Does he drive a black Porsche?”
“Yes.”
“Then it must be your husband.” Maggie conceded, drawing a cat onto her lap and stroking it with a shaking hand. Death always managed to surprise her.
“Then I have the answer I came looking for, although it wasn’t the one I expected to hear,” Stella said brightly, getting up. “You see, Maggie,” she continued indiscreetly. “If my husband were to die I could keep my lover and my lifestyle.”
“You no longer have a choice to make,” Maggie nodded slowly. “How fortunate you are that your decision has been taken out of your hands.”
“I must go back to the attic and tell him,” she enthused, “then I will go home and wait.” Then she added as an after thought. “How soon can I expect it?”
“Imminently,” Maggie replied, still visibly shaken. “Imminently.”
Maggie watched as Stella left a fifty-pound note on the table and let herself out. The session was only worth twenty.
With a buoyant step Stella strode down the wet streets towards the bookshop where her lover waited for her, his pen poised above a blank sheet of paper, but in his agitated state he could find nothing to write. She knew she shouldn’t be glad that her husband was destined to die in a car crash. It was a gruesome way to die. But she couldn’t suppress the joy that rose in her spirit like bubbles and almost lifted her off the ground. She would hold onto her status and his money, mourn with the dignity of a loving wife, then in the fullness of time introduce her lover as the man who had rescued her from the depths of despair and taught her how to love again. It would be a romantic end to a tragic story and be sure to move everyone. She would have their sympathy and their support. She would play each part with the skill of a professional actor. With great relish she envisaged the funeral. She would wear a little black suit with black leather boots to show off her legs to their best advantage. She would wear little jewellery and barely any make-up, just enough to make her look pale and suitably grief stricken. She then worried about who would make the hat. Should it be large or small, with or without netting, what would be appropriate? Her husband would no longer control the money, she would. He would no longer tell her what to do and when to do it. She would be the master of her own destiny, and yes, she would allow her lover to make love to her on a distant shore, to the sound of the sea and the scents of exotic plants. She would blossom under his caresses but also with the power her new independence would give her. Finally, she’d have the best of both her worlds.
As her mind hung in a magical tomorrow she saw the orange glow of the skylight above the bookshop where her lover awaited her. She raised her eyes anticipating his delight, and stepped out into the road. She was too busy dreaming to look to her left and right. Suddenly she heard the screeching of breaks but she had no time to react. With a dull thud she felt the full force of the car hit her legs and throw her onto the bonnet where she crashed against the windscreen before rolling off onto the damp pavement where she lay inert, blinking in bewilderment at her own misfortune. She felt no pain, just the rapid draining away of her life as the blood trickled into the gutter.
Before she closed her eyes to the eternal blackness of death she saw a smug ginger cat leap onto the bonnet of the black Porsche then spring off the other side, disappearing altogether.
This was great!!