Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

In the fridge at his flat in Wilton Road, there is an apple, a carton of yoghurt, and two bottles of white wine, one of which is uncorked but still three-quarters full. He balances awkwardly on one leg and holds open the fridge door with his knee while he pours a glass. When he bought the fridge he failed to notice that the door was hinged on the left-hand side. The two Nigerian guys from the superstore had already finished installing it, and were lingering by the front door waiting for their tip, when he saw what the problem was. He asked them if they could help him out and change the door around, but they laughed and said, ‘it ain’t our job, mate’ and then insisted that they were in a hurry because Arsenal were playing at home. He had left his tools at Annabelle’s house so he had no choice but to make an excursion to the local hardware shop and buy a small screwdriver kit. When he returned he cleared a space and wrestled the fridge down and on to its back. To begin with he carefully followed the instructions in the manual, but after a while, feeling that he had got the hang of it, he stopped looking at the small booklet. Eventually he hoisted the fridge back upright, and although the door was now hinged to the right it didn’t stay when opened: slowly, but determinedly, the door began to swing back closed. However, he judged the operation to be something of a success and decided that later on, if it didn’t settle down, he could always look again at the manual and if necessary troubleshoot the problem.

But he has never re-read the manual, and occasionally when he goes to the fridge he has to practise what feels like a yoga position in order to return an item to a shelf. He sits on the sofa in the semi-gloom and sips at his wine. A car alarm begins to wail beneath his window, but he assumes that it has been triggered by the wind. The flat was unfurnished, so he had to buy everything at Ikea, although Annabelle did offer him one or two pieces from the house. He politely refused, for once he realised that Annabelle was not going to change her mind and take him back he decided that he would rather make a clean break. However, he did take the two poster-sized black and white photographs of Billie Holiday and Miles Davis, even though they had bought these items together. After a week living in a Travelodge out towards Heathrow, and attempting, and failing, to work out how to operate the toaster oven in the kitchenette section of his suite, he was relieved to be given a lead on a flat that was less than a mile from Annabelle and Laurie where he might finally establish some kind of domestic order. The lettings agency down the street from his office had called to let him know that a clean and tidy new conversion had just become available and, as long as he was willing to pay slightly above market rent, and three months’ key money in advance, he could move in at the weekend. When he telephoned Annabelle, she announced that she and Laurie would be visiting her mother on Saturday afternoon, so this would be a good time for him to come round and get his things. During the following few weeks he worried that she might question him about the two missing posters, but Annabelle never mentioned a thing. She would eventually redecorate their home, and he imagined that framed photographs of American jazz musicians would probably play no part in Annabelle’s design scheme. On their final night under the same roof, as he lay on the sofa and tried again to fathom what on earth had made him ‘confess’ to his only act of infidelity, he pictured Annabelle upstairs busily planning her Keith-free life. He lay awake for hours hoping that she would miss him, but he had no confidence that she would. In the morning, a resolutely silent Annabelle drove Laurie off to school in her hatchback, and then presumably continued on to her new job at the BBC. Meanwhile, he knotted his tie and took one final look around what had been his home before pulling shut the door behind him and heading off towards Hammersmith Grove and in the direction of the office and then, at the end of the day, on to a depressing Travelodge.

That was three years ago, and as he cradles the wine glass in his hand, and stares out through the uncurtained windows at the dark shadows of the trees that line his street, he thinks once more that he may have cheated on Annabelle for the flimsiest of reasons; perhaps he simply wanted to know what it felt like to be single again. Of course, most men in his position have the common sense just to have an affair and keep quiet about it, or arrange to go on a trip by themselves for a week or two. He knows this now because in the past couple of years he has felt moved to flip through the problem pages of GQ or Esquire , or whatever men’s magazine happens to be handy while he is killing time in the waiting room of his doctor or dentist. The magazines address the surprisingly common occurrence of male forty-something panic by insisting that the victim keep his big mouth shut and simply wait for the storm clouds to pass. However, the fact that he actually confessed suggests to him that a deeper malaise was being expressed by his single act of infidelity, and his confusion might well have benefited from some constructive discussion with his wife. But Annabelle’s unforgiving response would admit no conversation, and she immediately closed down any possibility of dialogue on the subject of how he felt or what had motivated him to sleep with his co-worker. His wife had been betrayed and clearly she was in no mood to compromise. Having ushered him out of their house, Annabelle not only secured a promotion and landed a production assistant’s job at BBC Television Centre, she began to repair her relationship with her mother and became a regular weekend visitor at her mother’s assisted-living home. Then, about a year ago, she announced to him that she was seeing a film editor named Bruce who was four years younger than her and who might, from time to time, be spending the night at the house. This being the case, she wanted her estranged husband to meet the man who might have some kind of a role in his son’s life, and she suggested that all three of them have dinner.

He remembers standing at his own front door, clutching a bottle of wine and feeling apprehensive about how the evening was going to unfold. Eventually a flustered Annabelle opened the door and ushered him through and into the kitchen where he could see three fish crisping in a skillet, their silver skins curling at the edges and the flesh browning quickly. Annabelle had waited until half-term, when she knew that Laurie would be away on a geography field trip in Swanage, before announcing that she would make supper for them all and keep things simple and informal. He looked closely at her as she grabbed the skillet from the stove and recoiled slightly as oil began to spatter up towards her face. He noticed that she seized the pan with her now empty ring hand and he felt a brief surge of resentment. Annabelle didn’t seem to be ageing, in fact if anything she appeared to be getting younger and he wasn’t sure how he felt about this. Bruce, however, looked decidedly older than forty-three, and as the man stuffed a handful of peanuts into his mouth he realised that his wife’s friend had a very unappealing habit of speaking with his mouth full. Bruce’s shirt was open at the collar and his sleeves were rolled up, and he noticed that the man had deliberately left a pile of papers and some DVDs scattered on the kitchen table. Bruce was marking his territory, and before either man had a chance to refill his glass he began to do the same thing conversationally. Annabelle’s friend leaned across the table and picked up one of the DVDs, announcing that he was editing a major documentary series about the three waves of immigration to Britain during the past decade. He confessed to Bruce that he didn’t know that there had been three waves, and Bruce seized the opening and began to explain. What felt like an age later, Bruce concluded his lecture with a flourish. ‘You see the asylum-seekers, and those migrants from the subcontinent who come here to marry their cousins, they have every right to be here no matter how hard some of us may find it to accept them. But this cheap Eastern European labour in the wake of EU expansion, well to Old Labour men like myself this just doesn’t seem fair.’ He listened to Bruce but said nothing, and then he glanced up at the clock as he tried to work out what time they might be eating. Annabelle rescued the situation by picking up the grater and handing it to the speechmaker. ‘Bruce, you’re on cheese duty. Come along, chop, chop.’ Not only did this intervention have the desired effect of sidetracking Bruce out of his conversational comfort zone, it also allowed the man the opportunity to demonstrate his inability to grate Parmesan cheese. However, what really caught his attention was the fact that Annabelle had obviously recently acquired a kind of singsong delivery to her speech, and as he listened to her he realised the degree to which his wife was slowly, despite her youthful looks, becoming her mother.