hatred and frustration. I tried to contain her, but my defences were swiftly overwhelmed.
She wanted me to hit her, of course. That would prove her right, prove me to be the heartless bastard she said I was. What worried me was that it would prove it not just to her but to everyone. She could have her bruises examined and described and then produce photographs and medical witnesses in court to discomfort me. Those marital stigmata would transfigure Karen from promiscuous bitch into battered wife, while I would appear a sadistic adventurer who was not content with taking her money but had to beat her up as well. I would be lucky to get off with a suspended sentence, and I could certainly kiss goodbye to any hope of favourable settlement. And to Alison, needless to say.
I
‘Do you know what a vasectomy is, Karen?’
She kicked me viciously on the ankle. I gritted my teeth, wrenched her arm painfully and repeated my question.
‘Of course I bloody well know!’
‘Well here’s something else you should know. I’ve had one.’
It took a moment for this to sink in. Then her body went limp in my arms.
‘What you mean?’
‘I mean that I’m incapable of fatherhood. I’ve been surgically sterilized. Cut, snipped, gelded.’
Her eyes were wide open, but she was looking inward now, assessing the damage. Reports were still coming in, but already she could tell that it was very bad, a major disaster.
‘Then it was all lies.’
I said nothing. I’d made my point, and I wasn’t in the mood to chat. She turned away, mumbling the same phrase I’d heard earlier, but louder now, more urgently.
‘No love, no love, no love, no love, no love.’
Yes, well, it was all very sad. It would be nice if there was more love around. We thought we could make it happen, back in the sixties. We were wrong. Love’s gone the way of Father Christmas, the tooth fairy and the man in the moon. It’s for the kiddies, that stuff. We’ve grown up now. We don’t believe in love any more.
I left Karen to her maudlin reveries and went upstairs to lie down for a bit before she came back for the next round. It didn’t seem likely that either of us would get much sleep that night.
When I awoke the room was dark. Through the uncurtained window the upper branches of a tree outside the house were backlit by the streetlamp opposite. I was lying fully dressed on top of the covers. Karen’s side of the bed had not been disturbed at all. In addition to a totally irrelevant erection, I was suffering from a splitting headache and a nasty case of heartburn. The clock was in one of those positions — ten past two, in this case — where it seems to have only one hand.
I got up and went to the bathroom, where I took some paracetamol and Alka Seltzer. The upper landing was illuminated by the glow of the hallway light. Karen, I assumed, was drowning her sorrows in the dusk-to-dawn movies accessible via the satellite dish which Dennis had installed. She might even have fallen asleep in front of the set. It wouldn’t have been the first time. I leant over the banister and peered down the stairs.
For the past week, a magazine wrapped in a plastic cover had been resting on the third step from the bottom, a professional journal which Dennis had subscribed to and which kept arriving despite our attempts to convince the publisher’s computer that the intended recipient was beyond caring about such topics as ‘1992: The Implications for Your Clients’. Now, however, the glossy package was no longer on the step but lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway.
It was the very triviality of this fact which drew me downstairs to investigate. The displacement of the magazine seemed such a meaningless gesture that my curiosity was aroused. I was about half-way down the stairs — almost exactly where Dennis must have been standing the morning he almost caught us in bed together, in fact — when I spotted one of Karen’s shoes lying in the doorway to the living room. Even more interesting, her foot was still in it.
A few steps more and I could make out the rest of the body sprawled on the parquet flooring a few inches away from the hideous neo-Spanish cabinet which the Parsons had chosen to ‘add a bit of character’ to their hallway, an over-elaborate mock-antique affair with metal strengthenings at the corners, cast-iron handles with sharp edges and a massive key protruding from the cupboard doors. Dennis had remarked jocularly that someone would do themselves an injury on it sooner or later. At the time this had seemed just like one of those things you say.
I knelt down beside Karen and shook her about a bit. She looked pale, but not any more than was to be expected after the amount she had drunk. There was a nasty-looking bruise, all puffy and yellow, high up on her right temple, just below the hairline. It was clear what had happened. After a further bout of solitary boozing in the living room she had headed for the stairs, intent either on sleep or another confrontation with me. In her maudlin stupor she had failed to notice the plastic-wrapped magazine, which had performed the same function as the banana skin in the traditional joke. Karen had toppled backwards and fallen head-first against the Spanish chest, knocking herself out.
I felt a heavy sinking of the stomach, as when the washing machine backs up and floods the kitchen, or the car breaks down in a contraflow on the M25. It never occurred to me that her injuries might be serious. All I could think of was the fuss and bother involved, the fact that I wouldn’t be able to go straight back to bed. What a bore!
I grabbed her under the armpits and dragged her into the living room. An open bottle stood on the side-table next to a fallen tumbler and a puddle of spilt whisky. I dumped Karen on the sofa. She flopped sideways, totally limp. I slapped her face a few times. I called her name loudly. There was no response.
After a while I became aware of another sound in the room, a mechanical whine I had hitherto associated with the fridge or central heating. After a brief search I traced it to the telephone, which was lying underneath the sofa. Had Karen just knocked it over, or had she phoned someone? And if so, who? I was half-way through making some coffee when I remembered that every conversation on that line was being monitored on the tape-recorder I kept in the spare bedroom. I raced upstairs and rewound the tape to the beginning of the last call.
‘This is Oxford 46933. I’m afraid I can’t make it to the phone just now, but if you want to leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Please speak after the tone.’
‘Clive? Clive? You know who this is, Clive? It’s me, Clive. Me, Karen.’
A long silence.
‘Why d’you tell him, Clive? You shouldn’t’ve told him. Now he hates me.’
Silence.
‘I don’t want to stay here, Clive. I’m frightened. Please come and take me away.’
Silence.
‘Please, Clive! There’s no love here. No love. It’s cold and dark, and things could happen.’
Silence.
‘Just for a few days, darling. Until things have settled down again. I don’t want to stay here. I’m frightened.’
This was followed by a dull thump, then a groan, and finally a click as Clive’s answering machine broke the connection.
I sat there in a daze for some time, replaying the tape again and again. Each time it sounded worse.
Back in the living room, Karen lay where I had left her. She looked utterly lifeless. I couldn’t feel any pulse in her wrist, she didn’t seem to be breathing, her skin was cold. For the first time I began to worry that she might have injured herself seriously. I recalled an article in the local paper about a child who had fallen off his bike. He seemed perfectly all right at the time, but the next morning had complained of a persistent headache. A few hours later he was rushed into hospital in an irreversible coma and they’d unplugged his life support machine a few weeks later.
Under normal circumstances I would have called an ambulance, but these were not normal circumstances. The message on Clive’s answering machine constituted apparently damning evidence against me.
