Nikki Gemmell - The Bride Stripped Bare

I can’t wait to get out of here, it’s driving me crazy, the heat, and he says this in his special voice, your voice, but there’s a playfulness, a lightness, it’s a tone you haven’t heard for so long. All she wants to do is run off to the markets and have rides in those fucking carts, I can’t stand it, I get so bored, I just want to relax. He pauses. Diz, Diz, no, you can’t. He chuckles. Yeah, me too. I’ll see you soon, thank God.

air ventilation oxygen

You’re very still. You walk past Cole without looking at him. You walk through the french doors, to the veranda, and sit, very carefully, on the wicker chair.

Your thudding heart, your thudding heart.

You sit for a very long time, soundlessly, into the rich silence after the storm. At the end of it the sun feebles out and nothing has cooled down, nothing, it is as hot as it ever was.

My soul waiteth on thou more than they that watch for the morning,

I say more than they that watch for the morning.

Psalm 130

there ought to be no cesspool attached to the dwelling

The Monday after the return from Marrakech. A cafe in Soho, alone. An old London chophouse selling beans on toast and Tetley’s tea in stainless-steel pots, the menu padded and plastic covered. Reading the paper but not.

Like you are skinned.

I can’t explain it, he has said, reddening, every time. When you’ve asked him again and again. You’re overreacting, he has said. She’s a friend, our friend, we’d just have a drink now and then. And then he stops.

As if what he wants to say can never be said, as if it will never be prised out. But you will not let up.

Just a friend. Uh huh.

You sit back at his words, you fold your arms. At his explanations that are scattered bits of bone, that are never enough.

You haunt the cafe in Soho. Want to crawl away from the world, curl up; want to shrink from the summery lightness in the air, the flirty pink on the girls in the streets.

Within this God-tossed time he’s never stopped telling you he loves you but you’ve no desire to listen any more. For the relationship has been doused in a cold shower and you are chilled to the bone with the shock.

Just a friend. Uh huh.

You will not let up.

Now it’s a week since you’ve known; now two. Everything is changed and nothing is changed, you’re reading the paper but not. You prefer this cafe in Soho over the American coffee chains that seem of late to be everywhere, despite Cole’s certain horror at the choice. Before, you’d let his likes and dislikes shape the movement of your day, even when he wasn’t with you. But you’re disobedient often now, in little ways. For realisation of the affair has snapped upon you as fast as a rabbit trap, and you are exiled from your marriage and home and life.

The elderly man behind the till senses something of all this; he smiles warmly in greeting, now, and hands you your cup of tea without waiting to be asked.

We’d. just. have, a drink, now. and. then. All right?

I don’t believe you. I’m sorry, I can’t.

It’s the truth, I am so sick of telling you that.

I don’t believe you. I can’t.

Your hands hover, frozen, by your head. Your fingers are clawed, your knuckles are bone-white. You have turned into someone else. You do not recognise the voice.

Day after day you shelter in this cafe in London’s red light district. It’s a small indication of something that’s burst within you. You’re not sure why you’ve picked this place, you never go to cafes or restaurants by yourself, it’s too exposing. All you know is that the two people closest to you have gone from your heart, it’s flinched shut. And it’s only as you spread your newspaper and pour the milk into your tea that you feel the tin foil ball, tight within you, unfurling. No one would guess just by looking at you, the quiet, suburban housewife, that recently in a hotel room in Marrakech your entire future had been crushed by a single blow from a rifle butt.

And all that’s left is rawness, too deep for tears.

She’s a friend, just a friend, it’s all he can ever say and in this Soho cafe, the third week of your purgatory, your teacup is slammed down. So hard, the saucer cracks.

disease is the punishment of outraged nature

A month after your return from Marrakech. A stagnation sludges up. You’re not bored or angry but stopped; nothing engages, nothing interests, you’re at a loss over what to do next, with the next hour and with all the days of your life. Sleep is the short-term solution. London’s good for that. Its light is milky, filtered, unlike the light from your childhood that stole through the shutters in bold blocks in the morning, nudging you awake and pushing you out. The sky in London is like the water-bowed ceiling of an old house and you doze whole mornings away now and on waking there’s a panicky sickness in your gut. Then you walk the streets, seeing but not seeing, husked.

Selfridges lures you inside, its sleek promise. You haven’t been here for so long, you used to trawl it with Theo, she’d always have you trying on things you didn’t want. You browse the accessories counters. Buy six rings. Space them out on your fingers, blurring your marital status; your engagement and weddings rings are swamped and you smile as you stretch out your hand.

But then it’s back, his voice. It always comes back. The tone of it as he spoke to her on the phone. It’s not so much the thought of them physically together, it’s the intimacy in his voice. It wasn’t until you overheard it in the hotel room that you realised how long it’d been since you had heard it. And you missed it, violently so.

Your voice.

Your teeth are clenched as you walk to the tube and with effort you soften your jaw and rub at your brow, at a new wrinkle between your eyes. At the end of each night you knead it, your fingertips dipped in the chilly whiteness of Vitamin E cream. Beyond you, the flat ticks. The rooms are dark except for the bedroom. Cole’s away a lot now, working late; that’s his excuse. There’s no light in the hallway to welcome him home. At the end of each night, seated at the dressing table, your fingertips prop your forehead like scaffolding. For it’s the long, long nights that defeat you.

When you are blown out like a candle.

friends are too scarce to be got rid of on any terms if they be real friends

The buzzer, too loud, blares into your morning. You groan: you’re still in bed. The intercom’s broken, you’ll have to go down three flights of stairs and open the front door to find out who it is; in your old bathrobe, without your face.

Theo. Red lips and red shirt, the colour of blood. On her way to work.

You close the door. This is ridiculous, she says, come on, we need to talk. You lean your hands on the door with your arms outstretched. Can’t we just talk, she pleads. Her knocks become thumps, they vibrate through your palms. You straighten, walk up the stairs, do not look back; your fingers, trembling, at your mouth.

Theo’s betrayal is magnificent, astounding, incomprehensible. It’s her actions you can’t understand, not Cole’s. You always assumed she was the one person you’d have your whole life, not, perhaps, your mother or your husband. She’s a woman, she knows the rules. Men do not. You’re not interested in an excuse, nothing can put it right, for anything she says will be overwhelmed by the violence of the loyalty ruptured and your howling, pummelled heart.