Martina Devlin - Three Wise Men

She vacillates between a rational need to understand and an irrational urge to bludgeon someone, preferably her husband but the other woman will do very nicely too. If women are all meant to be sisters, why do some of them allow themselves to become susceptible to married men? Sibling rivalry obviously, female emancipation means empowerment, so that when you envy another’s toys you snatch them off her. No room for maidenly modesty here. Eimear contemplates her unknown challenger: it would make her smash and grab easier if she dumped Jack and she doesn’t propose to do anything so convenient for her machinations.

But she does intend making him suffer for a while. Her strategy is that tried and tested formula, the silent treatment, coupled with separate meals and even more separate beds.

He’s lucky they’re still sleeping under the same roof.

A memory intrudes on Eimear’s punishment scheme, lurching into her thought processes and tickling a reluctant laugh; Kate always called Tia Marias ‘Tina Maries’ because she overheard two old dears order that once. The giggle turns into a snuffle and then a sob.

Eimear drags herself back from the brink and stands up, sending her chair clattering. She recaps the bottle so forcefully she loses a fingernail; it’s drinking in the morning that’s making her feel weepy, not this wobble in her relationship with Jack.

But she’s going to chart it back on course now and that means showing him the error of his ways. He relishes his home comforts, let’s see how he likes it when they’re unavailable to him.

‘This is a war of attrition,’ Eimear advises the Baileys bottle in the instant before catapulting it into the kitchen bin. ‘Whoops, forgot to recycle. Ah, so what, the world has stopped turning – doesn’t matter if the environment is banjaxed.’

She slumps back at the kitchen table, cradling her cheek with the heel of her hand. It’s peculiar, she reflects, how few men have any stomach for the kind of skirmishing that women excel at. Recriminations he can handle, tears he can handle, but silence and sulking and ignoring him? He’s actually accused her of mental cruelty.

Their conversation went like this:

Jack: ‘What sort of a day did you have?’

Eimear: Silence.

Jack: ‘I said what sort of a day did you have, Eimear?’

Eimear: Silence.

Jack: ‘Is it a crime to make conversation now?’

Eimear: Silence.

Jack: ‘Answer me, is it a fecking crime to make conversation now?’

Eimear: ‘Do you have to repeat everything twice but with expletives for good measure?’

Jack: ‘At least you’re talking to me.’

Eimear: Silence.

Jack: ‘Come on, Eimear, do you want blood? A pound of flesh? I’ve said I’m sorry, I’ve tried to make it up to you, you can’t bear a grudge forever. Tell me you forgive me and I’ll never look at another woman again, so help me God. I’ll give my lectures in blinkers, I’ll cross the street if I see a skirt approaching, I’ll stop kissing my mother if that’s what it takes.’

Eimear: Silence.

Jack: ‘You’re a cold piece and no mistake. This is cruelty, deliberate and premeditated. At least what I did was in the heat of the moment. You’re a hard-hearted witch and you’re savouring every minute of this. I bet you’re delighted you caught me out, it reinforces that innate sense of superiority you have.’

(She leaves the room.)

He’s right, Eimear admits now, curled foetus-like on the bed. She is gratified at having Jack in the wrong in a ditch and herself sitting pretty on the moral high ground. Except she loves this man, desperately, although he’s cheated on her and will again given half a chance.

‘He doesn’t even need half a chance, quarter would do him,’ she snivels. ‘He’s one of those libidinous men for whom one woman is never enough, there’s another conquest around the corner and she’s always more exciting than whoever’s waiting at home.’

Eimear prepares to abandon herself to the luxury of tears, but realises within seconds that her turquoise silk tunic is in danger of being dripped on and sniffs to a halt. Instead she decides to go and talk to Gloria, she’s always to be relied on for tea and sympathy.

She throws on a coat, lifts her favourite umbrella, painted with cats and dogs plummeting from the sky, and is soon striding along Herbert Park towards Ranelagh. Eimear realises she should have phoned first but she can’t bear the idea of the bell pealing out, unanswered, in Gloria’s redbrick terrace – at least walking there is using up some of the nervous energy agitating within her.

‘Of course I knew he was a flirt when I married him, it’s something he can’t help,’ she tells Gloria while they’re waiting for the kettle to boil.

Eimear intended to restrain herself until they were sitting down with a teapot in front of them but she can’t hold her tongue.

‘Put him in a room with a waxwork of a woman and he’ll still try to chat her up. Mostly he isn’t even conscious of it. I never found it threatening in the early days – I used to treat it as a lark, you marry a character and how can you complain when he behaves like one, but I don’t feel so tolerant any more.’

‘Maybe you’ve been too patient,’ suggests Gloria guardedly, elbows on the kitchen worktop, green eyes clouded with concern as she watches her friend.

‘Exactly!’ Eimear sounds over-excited. ‘It’s time to make a stand, lay down some ground rules I should have made sure he was clear on from the start. I’m facing facts now. I listed them at the back of that Medieval Women at Work diary you bought me for Christmas, Glo. Shall I run through my checklist?’

‘You brought it with you?’

‘No, I know it off by heart.’ Eimear paces as she reels it off:

‘Fact one: There’s no woman Jack wouldn’t shag, apart from you and Kate. He’d never have the nerve to approach you two because you’d give him his marching orders and fill me in on his manoeuvres. Dear God, why am I thinking in military metaphors? Maybe I’m watching too much M*A*S*H , you see what marital discord visits upon a woman.’

‘Eimear, come and sit down, the kitchen isn’t big enough for prowling. I’ll wet the tea and then we can discuss it calmly. Would you like some camomile? It’s calming.’

Eimear ignores her, up and down the galley kitchen she parades, wheeling sharply left by the broom cupboard and back to the marble wall-clock above the door.

‘So you and Kate are out of the loop – a twenty-six-year friendship matters to women, thank heavens for some constants. But every woman apart from you is a potential threat. Fact two: Jack loses interest in an easy victory – it’s the thrill of the chase as far as the bedroom door that he enjoys, what happens on the mattress is neither here nor there to him. So whoever he’s seeing shouldn’t feel too confident: the relationship has a built-in self-destruct factor. As soon as she said yes to him he was hunting for the parachute string. Fact three: Jack has to be punished for humiliating me. I’m doing that now by treating him like a flatmate who’s reneged on his share of the rent money one month too many. By being civilised but remote – actually withdrawal of affection isn’t very civilised but it’s only temporary. And it achieves results.’

Gloria touches her elbow and guides her unobtrusively to the breakfast bar, pushing her gently on to a stool. Eimear doesn’t pause as she counts off her list on the fingers of one hand, an over-wound clockwork toy.

‘Fact four: I can’t keep up this war of attrition forever because it’s damaging the marriage. Not as much as he harmed it with his runaway willy but enough to dent the bodywork. And it’s misery to keep it going, he hates it but I detest it too – you automatically open your mouth to say, “You’ll never guess what happened to me today –” and it’s an effort to clamp it shut again. Fact five: I have to make him think he’s won me over against my better judgement, that I’ve caved in to his blandishments. Jack believes in the myth of his charm, he probably can’t understand how I’ve held out so long against him.’