Rachel Trezise - Sixteen Shades of Crazy

The couple ate their dinner in the living room, at either end of the sofa. Andy was watching a rugby match, knife-handle seized in his curled fingers, head tilted towards the television; a physical mannerism he’d inherited from his father. Moving images hypnotized him. Commentators spoke to him in a seductive language that left him deaf to live words. Occasionally he looked away, hurriedly piled a handful of chips into a slice of bread and quickly gnawed at the sandwich, the grease collecting in the crooks of his mouth. At the sound of the half-time whistle, he turned to look at Ellie.

‘Now that I’m home,’ he said, pausing to ensure he’d got her attention, ‘we should fix a date for the wedding.’ He folded a piece of bread in half and mopped the egg yolk up from his plate.

Ellie put her own plate on the floor, setting her cutlery at the rim. It was eighteen months since he’d first asked. She was on her way home from work, stepping off the train in Aberalaw station when she noticed something strange about the mountain behind their house. Initially she thought it was a flock of sheep that had accidentally arranged itself into some uncanny correlation. When she got to the square she started to decipher the words. ‘MARRY ME ELIZABET,’ it said, vast characters spelt out against the moss green bracken with hundreds of smooth grey pebbles. Andy was standing on the doorstep, a nervous twist in his grin. ‘What do you think?’ he said, voice quivering. ‘I nicked them from Merthyr Mawr in the old man’s tipper. Weren’t enough to do the last H.’ She agreed, immediately, emphatically, because, even if she hadn’t wanted to marry him, she thought she would grow into wanting it, the way she’d grown into her sister’s hand-me-down clothes. Two days later, embarrassed by the attention it was attracting, she asked him to go back to the mountain and take the stones down. He’d bought her a nine-carat gold diamond solitaire, the only diamond she’d ever owned, and she’d spent days scraping her knuckle against the bay window, trying to slice the pane. The ring was dull now, with time and glue from the factory. They didn’t get married because they didn’t have the money to pay for the wedding. They still didn’t have the money.

‘My aunty’ll do the cake,’ Andy said, stretching to retrieve her plate, scraping the chips she’d left into his own dish.

‘Why don’t we go abroad?’ Ellie said. ‘Tobago or Cancún.’ It was the only way she’d escape interference from Andy’s relatives. There was a quagmire of customs to observe, a trail of conventional nonsense that kept all of their family traditions intact. Andy being her first son, Gwynnie demanded a church wedding. Ellie was petrified of walking into St Illtyd’s only to find the groom’s side bursting with jubilant spectators, her own pews entirely empty. She didn’t want to marry his family; she wanted Andy all to herself. ‘That’s what people do now,’ she said. ‘The bride and groom go away on their own. It’s more meaningful, don’t you think?’

‘We can’t do that,’ Andy said. ‘My mother and father could never afford the flight.’ He popped a chip into his mouth and sidled closer to Ellie, sliding across the settee.

‘What about a winter wedding?’ she said. It was August now. She was buying time, hoping she could change his mind, or that he’d forget about it all over again. ‘February. We could serve hot toddies instead of Cava. I could wear diamantés instead of pearls, a Cossack instead of a veil.’

‘The fourteenth?’ Andy said.

‘Valentine’s Day.’ Ellie sniggered. ‘That’s just tacky.’

‘It’s romantic.’ He clambered on to her body, bunching her wrists together, holding them like a bouquet above her head. Ellie bucked and screamed, the sharp screech breaking into peals of laughter. ‘Get off me,’ she said.

Andy kissed her, his keen tongue pushing into her mouth. After a moment, she started to kiss back hungrily, looking for something that had been there two years ago when they’d met, that had been there six days ago when he’d come back from Glasgow; something that wasn’t there now. All she could taste was the rust that had worked its way between them, months of widening water. His saliva was cold. An abrupt fatigue seeped through Ellie’s body. Her lips froze, her own tongue slumping back into her throat. As Andy pulled away she glimpsed the scar on his neck, four centimetres above his collarbone, a sunken white-blue tear shredding through his wheat-coloured skin.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said, voice doleful, eyes flickering in the last of the sunlight from the window.

‘Nothing,’ Ellie said. ‘Nothing.’ She waved his concern away with a chop of her hand, instructing him to continue. He began to work on her button fly. ‘Stop,’ she said pushing him away. She’d had an idea. She wriggled out of her jeans and then her pink cotton knickers, kicking them across the room. She flipped on to her naked belly and rose up on all fours. ‘I’ve been waiting for this,’ she said. It’s what she always said. Sometimes he beat her to it, and asked the question, especially if he was just home from tour. ‘Have you been waiting for this?’ he’d say. ‘I bet you have.’

She could feel him behind her, on his knees, the heat coming from him. She pressed her face against the arm of the settee, breathing the musty odour from the throw-over deep into her lungs, scrutinizing it for an iota of smoke, petrol; something that smelled like that man whose name was Johnny.

He placed his hand on her hip, getting closer.

‘I’ve been aching for this,’ she said.

Rhiannon weaved through the tables in the restaurant, winking at people she recognized. ‘Hiiiyyyaaaa,’ she said, wriggling out of her jacket. She sat down next to Gwynnie.

Gwynnie was a big woman with a permanent expression of terror splashed across her face. Nothing in her life had been easy and she expected her cycle of misfortune to persist until the death. Her skin was mottled with anxiety, her bones arthritic with exertion, her mouth quick with over-zealous counsel. Her demeanour was comical, her head constantly bobbing about in a frantic convulsion, gigantic sweat patches under her arms. Ellie often caught herself laughing at Gwynnie when she wasn’t trying to be funny. ‘We can order now,’ she said, waving at Andy’s father. ‘Where’s the waitress, Collin?’

‘ Where’s the waitress, Collin? ’ Collin said, mimicking his wife’s panicked voice. ‘How the bloody hell should I know, Gwyneth?’

Eating at the Bell & Cabbage was a relatively new experience for the Hughes family. Gwynnie used to cook Sunday dinner in her own kitchen; pork with roast parsnips and fresh vegetables served in her best bone-china tureens. Collin hurtled from the bedroom to the dining table in one fell swoop, his naked stomach riding out on the chair around him. Afterwards, Gwynnie did the washing-up, the pots falling from the draining board with a clang and echoing into the living room, like smites aimed at the girls’ sloth. ‘Shit!’ she’d say, sharp as a blade. At Easter the girls had booked a table for six in the carvery, encouraged by Gwynnie’s resentful sideways glances whenever they talked about steak they’d eaten at the Bell, or salads at fast-food joints. ‘There’s nice,’ she’d say, ‘there’s lovely,’ as if it was lobster bisque at The Dorchester. Her idea of a day out was a ramble through the car-boot sales in North Cornelly, spending her paltry income on labour-saving junk – old bread-makers and sandwich-toasters, stuff most people saw fit for landfill. When the day came, Collin sat in his reclining armchair, his hands crossed over his belly, as if trying to protect it from anything that wasn’t home-cooked. He refused to leave the house. Rhiannon managed to coax Gwynnie into her car, but at the restaurant she sat in the corner weeping, fretting over Collin’s non-attendance, the waitress staring as she set the gravy boat on the doily.