A Mother

Sandra left her two small children and her husband Ronan behind and moved to Dubai with Miles, a divorced but childless financial consultant she met through her cross-fit group. One evening, when they had been in Dubai about three months, she returned home early and found Miles in bed with Amani, the Eritrean maid. She flew into a rage, crashed a frying pan through Miles’ thirty-two inch wall-mounted LCD TV, furiously packed a small case of essentials and went straight to the airport. She arrived in London twenty-four hours later tired, stiff, and wanting a shower.

In the airport bathroom she cleaned her armpits with her facial cleansing wipes, brushed her hair, and freshened up her make-up. She then went by taxi to the pre-school where her children, Arthur and Harriett, were enrolled. But the round-faced woman who ran the pre-school would not let her see her children. She wouldn’t even let her pass the threshold of the door but left her outside in the cold like some sad-case alcoholic father. Sandra knew it wasn’t worth arguing about. She walked with what she hoped was purpose away from the foul, round-faced woman. Not until she had turned out of the driveway did she allow her shoulders to sag and her gait to drop into the slow cadence of defeat.

In a booth in the corner of a pub not far from the home she abandoned she sat and waited over a slow glass of white wine. The pub was quiet at this time of day. But for the regular drunks whose deep prole voices cackled in the silence of the place Sandra might even have fallen asleep. She might have even in spite of them, had one of them not approached her.

‘Ah ewe dwinking ah-lone, dah-linn? His face was salmon-pink and his narrow eyes and shark-fin nose made him look like an exotic bird.

‘Just waiting for my husband to arrive, thank you,’ she said. A pause here, as exotic-prole bird weighed her with his marble sized eyes.

‘I don’t see a wing on that fingah,’ he said. Sandra gritted her teeth.

‘I don’t wear one. Now would you please just fuck off.?’

‘Suit yourself, dah-linn, you know where I am if ewe want me.

Sandra heard the harsh guffaw of the other drunks when he crossed the floor of the pub. She thought to herself how typical it was. Even after all these years she was still a magnet for the worst kind of misogynist. Even Miles. But she didn’t want to think about Miles.

She read the news on her phone to pass the time. She read every story on the front page of the Telegraph. She read about opaque election donations, trade deals, climate change summits, about the FA cup and celebrity divorces. She read the Op-Ed’s on convicted paedophiles, exit from the EU and war in the middle-east. By the time she had finished she looked at the time and knew Ronan would be arriving home soon with her children. She drained the last of her wine and slipped out unnoticed by the parrot and the other drunks.

In the dark of evening she walked into her old housing estate.

The first thing she noticed was the absence of the car in the driveway and the darkness of the house. No one home.

She made her way to the front door and fumbled in her bag for her keys. On the few occasions the guilt had caught up with her in Dubai she comforted herself by the presence of these keys in her bag. It could not be genuine so long as the keys were there. She had not done a really terrible thing. The keys were proof. She always intended to return. She just needed a break. Another mother she met at the day-care centre took breaks all the time. She went mountain climbing and away on retreats. She did it so often her children could hardly see her, but for the few times she showed up to collect them, mouth full of tales of her most recent adventure and her eyes full of a gloating satisfaction that she wasn’t like the other mothers, that she was better than them, somehow, for maintaining her independence. Sandra told herself she had just taken all of her due breaks in one big block. Like taking all of your annual leave in one giant holiday at the end. It didn’t matter about Miles. She knew plenty of other women — plenty- who had affairs, some of them longer and more serious than their own marriages. She wasn’t worse than them. Some wives she knew would sleep with anybody just to save themselves from the boredom. Really, what she had done was not so bad.

When she tried her keys in the lock she discovered they did not work. Immediately she rang the doorbell. The bing-bing resonated from within the house. Silence. She rang it again and again the bing-bing resonated and faded to silence. She shivered in the cold for a moment or two. How stupid of her to come without her winter coat.

Back in the pub it didn’t take long for the bird-faced man to find her again.

‘Come back to me, then?’ he sneered. Noxious gas of lager whiff settled like a fog in Sandra’s nostrils.

‘Oh good lord,’ said Sandra.

‘No need for that Dah-linn. You can just call me Jerry,’ He smiled his crooked teeth at her.

‘Do you want to fuck me, Jerry?’

‘Err…What?’

‘I said, do you want to fuck me, Jerry?’

‘Well I…’

‘I mean, I’m assuming that’s why you’ve come all the way over here, twice, calling me ‘darling’ and turning on the mega-charm?’ Jerry’s narrow-placed eyes clouded in confusion.

‘I just, you know, wanted to see if you wanted a drink,’ he said. Sandra marked the sudden de-cocknification of his speech.

‘Right. Just an innocent drink, yes? No but come now, Jerry, be a bit braver. Don’t you want to bend me over this table and shove that thing,’ — she pointed with her head at his crotch –‘deep inside my arsehole?’ Jerry looked like half of him wanted to run away and hide under a table, and the other half of him wanted to stay and see where this was going. ‘Jerry, if I asked you to fuck me right here at this table, in front of everyone, you’d be offended, right? You just want a quiet drink and a chat, isn’t that it?’

The salmon-pink of Jerry’s face turned the colour of red wine. His brows narrowed, the space between his eyeballs shortened, he glared at her. After what seemed like an age he said: ‘You posh tarts really are all gaggin’ for it,’ and then, with defiance in his voice: ‘I’ll give it to you good and proper.’

‘Oh, goody,’ Sandra forced her eyes to widen at him. ‘Why don’t you take it out right here, in front of everyone?’

‘Not ‘ere. Come in the toilet wiv me.’

‘Now Jerry, posh tarts don’t do it in the toilet. Take it out right here for me.’ For a moment Jerry looked at her again like he was in two minds before the confusion cleared and the real possibility of sex awoke the primordial hunter instinct. He placed his half full pint of yellow lager on the table. He fumbled with his fly before he produced his cock.

Immediately, and as loudly and high pitched as she could, Sandra shrieked with laughter.

‘You call that a penis?’

The confusion returned in the marble eyes. When Sandra’s words registered with the rest of the pub a chorus of bawling laughter erupted. Jerry hurriedly put his penis away. The confusion passed into the anger of Lenny the giant from Of Mice and Men.

‘You bloody tart,’ he roared.

‘Come on Jerry,’ said a voice by the bar. ‘It ain’t ‘er fault. You just ‘aven’t got what it takes.’

‘Ronnie, you shut your facking trap,’ Jerry said. He turned and lobbed his half-empty pint glass toward the bar where it shattered in the face of an old man in a peaked cap. The old man bawled and clutched his hands to his face. Jerry lunged toward the drinkers at the bar. A small but fit looking bald man — possibly Ronnie — met Jerry in the middle of the pub floor. With a knock-on-melon sound Jerry’s overhand right connected with the bald head. The bald man crouched into the punch and hammered Jerry’s sides with a flurry of body blows. Jerry doubled over. Hs hands dropped to his side. The little bald man hit his face one-two-three-fourtimes. For a second it looked as if Jerry’s slow bulk was about to fall to the bald man’s active little body when Jerry, bent over, drove the crown of his head straight to the bald man’s face. A jet of blood spilled from his nose. Jerry stood again to his full height. To Sandra he resembled Baloo the Bear. He held the collar of the bald man with one hand and pneumatically drove the other into his faceone-two-three-four-five-six times. The skin above the bald man’s left eyebrow opened in a red ribbon. The flesh around his cheekbone had already swelled. Jerry pulled his fist back, loading up for a final blow when, with a loud crack, a glass exploded on his forehead. Jerry let go the bald man’s collar. He staggered sideways, his hands covering his face. The old man, the bawler in the peaked cap hit by Jerry’s own glass, followed him, shouting through the trickles of blood flowing from his forehead to his lips.

‘You ‘orrible cunt,’ he bawled. ‘What did I ever do to you? Ay?’ Jerry staggered away from the man, tripping over a table and taking it with him to the carpeted floor. The bawler kicked Jerry bout the head, all the while bawling ‘You ‘orrible cunt! You ‘orrible,‘orrible bastard!’ When the bartender and the other drinkers tried to drag him off Jerry’s prone body, Sandra left.

She could see her breath in the air. By the time she came to her house she was stiff with the cold and couldn’t feel her toes. Seeing the lights on in the house — her house — and the old Fiat in the driveway made her spine tingle. She knew what she would do, yes, she would ring the bell and he would answer and she would smile brightly but hold her shoulders small like this and he would stand in the doorway looking at her. His eye would go all moist like they did the first time he held Harriett. He might stop himself, because of pride, and scowl and want to punish her and not let her in. Then the children, sensing her presence, would rush down the stairs and past his legs and jump into her arms. Then he’d have to let her in. He would look doubtful, there in the doorway, but she’d give him a look, a sort of confident, expansive look which said ‘we have much to discuss, darling.’ Just that and only that.

She rang the bell. It resonated within. After a few seconds the faint patter of feet sounded inside the house. The door cracked open and with it the heat of inside and the soupy smell of home brushed Sandra’s face.

Ronan, wearing slippers, stood before her.

‘The Montessori told me,’ he said. ‘The children aren’t here. I’m not taking you back. Fight me in the courts if you like. I’m closing the door now.’

Jerry sat on a stool at the bar with a tea-cloth pressed against his forehead. Sandra took a seat three stools down from him.

‘A glass of white,’ she said to the barman.

‘Come back to survey the damage?’ Jerry said to her.

‘No. I needed a drink. I am sorry for what happened. Is your face OK?’

‘Be alright by the morning,’ he said.

‘I feel frightfully bad. Buy you a drink? Bartender, a lager please.’

‘Cheers,’ said Jerry.

‘Where did you go then, after the fight?’

‘To see about some accommodation for the night. But it didn’t work out. Karma, maybe, for what happened to you.’

‘Yeah well if you expect me to invite you to spend the noight at moine to make up for it, you can forget it. You’re trouble.’

‘I wasn’t trying to get you to spend the night with me,’ Sandra said.

‘My eye. You was and you know it. Where else would you stay? Your accommodation didn’t work out. So here’s the part where I take pity in you and tell you to stay at mine. Or

maybe you thought it wouldn’t be so easy. Maybe you’d have to flirt a little bit more. If that failed, I expect you planned to play up the helpless card. Appeal to my pity.’

‘You despicable man. I planned no such thing.’

‘Yes you did. You might not have planned it the way you might plan a ‘oliday, but you planned it all the same. You’ve had practice. You’re the type, you see, the type who needs to act a certain way. Been doing it all your life, I imagine.

For the first time in years Sandra did not know what to say.

Jerry’s flat, happily, was on the other side of the high-street to Sandra’s home. She would not exactly say that she grew to love him over the following weeks, though she found something attractive in him. Jerry worked with his hands. His forearms were thick and workman like and his back was broad. His face, hardly handsome, was strong and unquestioningly masculine. He was attractive to her in the way she had guiltily found attractive some of the men who beeped at her in their cars as she walked on summer days as a teenager.

She cooked for him, and cleaned, and came on Sundays to the pub with him. She fucked him almost nightly for the sake of a roof over her head, her food, and spending money. This was all for the best. Her parents, her former friends, had all sided with Ronan. Her own mother, always willing to criticize, refused to even speak to her. Her father suffered from vascular dementia and was of no use. After exactly four weeks back she had not laid eyes on her children. Truth be told, she had not really tried.

By the time she next saw Ronan she had pushed her children so far back in her mind their memory elicited no more guilt than an infinitely postponed lunch with an old friend. She had managed by then to convince Jerry to drink and smoke less, and to start his own landscaping business which he worked at on Saturdays. She saw Ronan in Sainsbury’s on a Wednesday evening. The place crawled with commuters doing the quick shop between work and home. She turned into an aisle and there he was, back bent, reaching for a jar of tikka masala sauce. She stopped in the middle aisle as the sounds of the other shoppers faded into white noise and the beating of her own heart. A hand tapped her on the shoulder and a voice said ‘excuse me’ and the spell broke. She moved out of the way so someone could pass her and Ronan’s coniferous green eyes met hers. She marched out of the aisle. She got out of the shop and halfway to the corner when she heard her name.

‘What?’ she said when she turned.

‘You’ve been here this whole time?’

‘I’ve been…what do you want?’

‘How have you been here all along?’

Sandra noticed changes in his appearance. His face was fuller than she remembered, with the paper-white skin less hollow around the cheeks and fuller under the chin.

‘What do you want?’ she said. You wouldn’t let me see them. I mean, what? Do I need to try a set number of times before you say yes?’

‘But why stay? If you don’t want to see them all that much, why stay in the area?’

‘I can stay where I like.’

‘You can. So why live here?’

‘I’ve met someone. He just happens to live here.’

‘Who?’

‘You wouldn’t know him.’

‘No? He must be some lout then.’

‘He has his own business.’

‘Own a corner-shop does he? Or does he walk dogs for a living?’

‘He’s an entrepreneur.’

‘Oh, I see. So how long have you been with Sir Alan for? He must really treat you like shit fir you to have moved in with him so quickly. He…did you just go from my doorstep to his bed?’

‘I’m leaving now,’ Sandra turned and walked toward the corner.

‘I know why you came back, you know,’ he said as he followed her. ‘He called the house asking for you.’ Sandra turned. His paper-white, fleshy face broke in a broad grin. ‘Oh he only wanted to know where he could send your things to.’ Sandra turned again and walked quicker. ‘We had a nice little chat. He told me the whole story. The Maid. None of it surprised me. You’re still choosing complete bastards. He was surprised you weren’t back with your family. I actually laughed. I really did. He must not have got to know you so well.’

‘Just fuck off, will you,’ Sandra roared at him. ‘Stop torturing me.’ Miles’ cold hand clamped on to her wrist.

‘This is the truth, Sandra; you’re a terrifically fucked up human. I know if I followed you to where you’re staying and told whoever you’re living with the truth he’d kick you out in a heartbeat. I don’t want you anywhere near my children, polluting them. Go find another sap someplace else to live with.’ She managed to break away and half ran, half trotted away from him.

By the time she reached Jerry’s door she had stopped crying. In the dark of the doorway she wiped her eyes. Not until she stepped inside the black dark hallway did she realise she had forgotten the oil.

Warm yellow kitchen light throbbed through the frosted glass at the other end of the corridor. Jerry’s shoes squeaked on the linoleum floor beyond. She did not move. She even stilled her breathing. Maybe if she did this he would not hear her. She might snatch a few seconds then, to herself.

The linoleum squeaks stopped.

‘That you, Sandra-love?’ his voice called from beyond the door. When the door opened she beamed at him hoping he would not notice the slight puff under her eyes.

‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘I just did.’

‘Got the oil?’

‘I…no. I forgot. I mean I didn’t forget. But I left my purse here. I’ll just grab it from upstairs and go.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Jerry. ‘We can just grill it. Come on, I’m hungry.

Sandra lay wide awake, her back to Jerry, facing the floral patterns of the curtains illuminated by the streetlamp outside. She lay completely awake until morning and roused herself in the inky light of dawn. The difference between this and every other morning was that she grilled and boiled, instead of exclusively fried, Jerry’s breakfast. After Jerry walked out the door for work she climbed the stairs to bed. She remained there the rest of the day. Jerry returned at seven. He sat on the edge of her bed and caressed her forehead. Then he ordered a takeaway, took the hint that she did not want to be bothered, and went downstairs to watch television loudly. By the time he left for work the next morning she had been in bed for twenty-four continuous hours. Through the floral curtains morning grew in to day and faded again into night. Jerry came home, sat on the edge of her bed, caressed her forehead and suggested she go to see a doctor. Then he ordered a takeaway and went downstairs to watch television. By the time he left for work the following morning, about the 48th continuous hour, she felt guilty enough to begin to think of getting herself out of bed. She had detected something harsh in Jerry, something that suggested she might get out of bed or not, but by the time he came home getting out of bed might no longer be her biggest problem. So she rose and found her legs shaking and noticed, frankly, that she stank of bed and bitter night-sweat. She hobbled down the hallway to the bathroom, pissed, and went downstairs where she discovered Jerry had not even bothered to replenish the cupboard. She squeezed the remains of an overripe lemon into some hot water, boiled two eggs and toasted a stale bread-heel.

It was no good staying in this part of London. The truth about her would, one way or another, make its way to Jerry. Had she been a man, she knew, it would be tolerated. But as a woman she would not escape condemnation. She had broken some sort of commandment, she knew, and would be punished. Jerry, a man sheepish to his class, would kick her out without a second thought. Like most of the true bastards she’d met in her life he hid his bastard-ness from himself by feigning concern for old women, children, and small animals.

When she greeted him at the door that evening she noted the happiness radiating from his red bird-face. It seemed he had half expected to find her still in bed. She put on heels and convinced him to take her out for dinner.

He grinned like an idiot all throughout dinner. At home that night she fucked him like she was on a mission to wear him out, which she did by eleven-thirty. In the morning she woke with the dawn, made him his fry, and slapped him on the arse as he walked out the door. She readied herself, walked to the ATM and withdrew the maximum of £2000 with Jerry’s debit card. She made her way, in the calm of mid-morning, to the train station, and then on to the unknown.