Footy

EMMA (26)

Love seeketh only Self to please

To bind another to its delight

Joys in another’s loss of ease

And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.

Emma hadn’t much enjoyed shopping or lunch with her mother. Patrice had been at her worst, peevish and snide, complaining about everything, and had then, in her classic Gallic way, made a scene with the waiter when the boeuf bourguignon hadn’t been to her liking.

“Maman!” Emma’s embarrassment and distress had finally gotten through to her mother, and the older woman had been subdued during the rest of lunch. Afterwards, she had kissed Emma on both cheeks, and said, her English more strongly accented than usual, “I’m sorry, darling. You will forgive an old woman her moods?”

Emma had kissed her back, and laughed, susceptible as ever to the charm. Old woman! Patrice was as chic and elegant as ever, and looked no more than forty. Admittedly, that was partly because of expensive hairdressers and dressmakers. But it was also because of her French obsession with quality rather than quantity in her food, with her habit of briskly walking a few kilometers every morning, her preference for conversation over guzzling at the dinner table. Her mother was Australian enough to wear the sort of gear Ozzies wore when she exercised, but most of the time she seemed quintessentially French. Emma herself had kept the elegance and savoir faire of her ancestry, while combining it with the unpretentious earthy realism of Australia.

She caught sight of herself in a shop window and stopped for a moment. A slim and elegant woman stared back at her, blond hair beautifully styled, blue eyes wide and clear, and a nose she was rather proud of. As she continued her walk to the car, she realized she was happy. This weekend she was going to again suggest to Will that they start a baby. She wasn’t getting any younger. And part of Patrice’s crankiness had been the old argument about when she was going to get her first grandchild. Emma was an only child. If she didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a grandchild for Patrice and Emile to spoil. And they weren’t getting any younger, either. Though neither of them said as much, Emma knew they wanted to be young enough to enjoy the grandchildren when they came.

She unlocked the door of the house, and went in. At first she didn’t detect anything wrong. But as her subconscious assembled clues, she suddenly knew that there was something seriously amiss. The first thing she became conscious of was the smell.

“Will! Will, are you at home, darling?” She went to the foot of the stairs, and called again, up to the bedroom. She listened to the silence for long moments, her heartbeat booming in her ears. Don’t be silly, she told herself, her entire being nevertheless rejecting the order. Perhaps, she thought, he’s in the garden.

It was then, as she went into the drawing-room, that she found the blister packs, the vomit, and the notes.

She saw Will’s note first. It was propped up against the mantelpiece, where it was clearly visible. Will hadn’t wanted her to miss it.

She felt sick and dizzy, horror-struck. She put her hand out to the back of the armchair to keep herself upright. Waves of red and black surged across her vision.

It took her several minutes before she could see well enough to read the note again. She experienced a compelling need to be doing something. She went through to the scullery and fetched a bucket of water and the bottle of Dettol and a roll of absorbent paper. She got down on her knees and started to clean up the vomit. As she scrubbed the carpet with warm water and the antiseptic, she was unreasonably irritated to feel something tickling her face, and it was with surprise that she realized she was crying. Long afterwards she would wonder that she had cleaned the carpet before she went to Will in the hospital. Yet it was only when she’d rinsed and put away the bucket and the cloths that she could sit down and start to think clearly.

She sat down on the sofa, and found Sean’s note. He’d placed it on the small Georgian display table that Will had bought for their first wedding anniversary. Unlike Will’s, his note wasn’t in an envelope.

Will had never mentioned anyone called Sean. Abruptly, it came to her that Will had no friends. He never talked about the men at his work, or mates from school or uni. She was dumbfounded. How could she never have noticed this before? She had friends. She was often out with her friends. Yet Will had no one. Oh, there were the usual couples. Dinner parties, the occasional visit to the theater or the cinema, their get-togethers marked by mutual insincerities and banal platitudes. She’d never wondered what Will had done in his spare time. Over the last few months, he’d been different. Happier, certainly, but also, when he was down, quieter and more melancholy. She’d asked herself why, but hadn’t pursued the notion. Now she bitterly regretted that. She tried and failed to smother the sourness and anger that bloomed at the thought that Will had probably met his man while she had been enjoying one of her nights out with her friends.

Briskly, she went and washed her face, did a quick repair to her make-up, and set off for the hospital. She had to retrieve something from this mess. Now that what had happened had penetrated, she couldn’t wait to see Will again. She suppressed all her questions and doubts and recriminations and drove, concentrating fiercely on the road and the traffic. Suddenly, it had become a matter of supreme importance that she see Will now, right now. She was almost weeping with frustration, with the compulsion to be doing something, to start fixing things. She was amazed that she had spent so long cleaning up. She understood only later her imperative urge to act, to do anything to silence her inner voices.

She couldn’t find parking at casualty. She had to drive round the back of the hospital where there was a vast underground car park. Oh God. Oh God. Oh Will. She couldn’t find a parking place. Every delay disturbed and irritated her more. She drove all round one level before having to search for the ramp that took her to the next floor down. Her anguish made her breath come in little short gasps. She felt as if she was drowning.

As she ran through the bleak hospital corridors, her shoes hitting the lino hard, her eyes seeing only the red stripe painted on the floor indicating the way to casualty, she was all at once shaking with anger. How could he? What did he mean, he’d fallen in love with a man? Was this Sean the lover? The fact that Will had never mentioned him now seemed sinister. Why had Sean come round to the house? Did they make love in their bed? Emma was repelled and angered at the idea. These thoughts darted round her head until she wanted to scream.

There was no one at reception in Emergency. She stood in a fever of impatience at desk. At last someone appeared. Will Beaumont? They didn’t know his name, but there was only one Will. She was directed to his cubicle in the intensive care ward. Will was in the bed farthest from the door. His eyes were closed. For a moment her heart stopped. Then she saw the steady electronic messages on the screens, and she was reassured. In a chair next to the bed, there was a man, fast asleep. He was loosely holding Will’s hand. For a moment, but for a moment only, she was touched by this evidence of affection. It could have been any sickbed scene between two close friends. Even heterosexual men might be inclined to get emotional if one of them has attempted suicide.

She inspected him. Her rival. What’s so special about him? she thought, unable to credit Will’s desires. His hair was dark brown, thick and curly. He was lean, without being fimbly and skinny. His shoulders were broad, and his chin pleasing. She hated him.

He opened his eyes. For a moment they were clouded with sleep. He inspected her face. With equal intensity, she scrutinized his. His eyes were a gorgeous amalgam of blue and grey. The expression in them was indecipherable.

“Hi,” he said, letting go of Will’s hand.

“Are you Sean?” she asked, wanting to hit him, to scream and pound her fists against his face, the wall, anywhere she could to relieve her feelings.

“Yes.”

“Are you his... lover?” She knew he was. The body language made it plain.

He hesitated before he replied. “Yes,” he said at last.

“Just go. You’ve done enough harm.”

“Me! I saved his fuckin’ life.” There was a long silence. At last, he said, softly, but defiantly, “I love him.”

Emma just shook her head impatiently. For her it wasn’t real. Of course, she had heard about gay men, and in theory, she, like most of her trendy middle-class friends, was in favor of gay rights. But it was like reading that a remote and backward tribe, as part of some obscure ritual, practised female circumcision or ate their dead relatives. These were stories told by queeny TV celebrities, with BBC accents. They simply weren’t real. And Will was so obviously straight. She remembered once finding a porn magazine in his underwear drawer. She had replaced the magazine, without mentioning it to Will, and had surprised him that night with unexpected variations in their love play. Face to face with the man her husband said he loved, she flat out refused to believe it.

“He’s not gay,” she said, complete conviction in her voice. There was a tense silence. “And anyway,” she added, “he’s my husband, and he loves me.” Yet her assurance failed her with the second phrase. The minute shifts in Sean’s face told her he’d perceived that. He stared at her. His face was hard with hostility, but there was grief and loss there too, and a species of compassion that unexpectedly drew her to him.

Nevertheless, Emma couldn’t conceive that two men could love each other in the same way and with the same depth as she and Will did. Why was he hurting? It was ridiculous. And anyway, what did it matter? Will was hers, not this personage’s.

“Go away!” she hissed. “And don’t come back!”

He looked at her, and his face hardened. What surprised and shocked her wasn’t the anger, which she’d expected, but the disgust and contempt. Sean stood up, and before she could stop him, leaned over the bed and kissed Will on the cheek. “Good-bye, love.” She wanted to smack Sean’s face for the painful contradictory emotions his tenderness awoke in her.

At the door, he turned. “I didn’t know.”

“What?”

“About you. About me. Everything.”

Emma stared at him, her face closed, waiting with unconcealed impatience for him to go. He shrugged, and turning on his heel, strode off. She waited until the sound of his footsteps had faded before she sat down in the chair that Sean had vacated, and took her husband’s hand in hers.

“I’m here, darling,” she said. The words seemed empty and flat and meaningless. There was no sign that Will had heard her. The machines continued to operate smoothly. The clammy paws of despair seized her heart and did not let go.

***

Sean strode out of the hospital seething. Arrogant, upper-class, selfish cow! But convention made him leave, made him yield the field to his rival. Marriage was the norm, accepted, right, societally sanctioned. Everything he’d ever experienced was perfectly clear about this, not just what was said, but also what was left unsaid, all the assumptions and axioms of the culture he lived in. It was Will’s relationship with him which was illicit and unnatural. He sat on his bike for a few minutes, trying to sort out his thoughts. He’d given way to Emma unthinkingly, which wasn’t his way at all. As he considered all that had happened, he had to concede that he was the outsider, in one sense. After all, Will had been married when he and Sean had first met, even though he hadn’t told Sean that he was. He remembered all the occasions that Will had seemed sad or depressed, and understood their cause. He wondered at the despair and grief that had made Will try to take his life. He recalled the feeling he’d had in Sydney, that Will was the person he wanted to spend his life with. Why couldn’t men get married? What stopped them? He loved Will, and Will loved him. Why shouldn’t they spend their lives together? He wanted to make it right for Will. He bitterly regretted his delay in going to see him. Why hadn’t he phoned? Why had he let his anger stop him doing what he now knew was right for both of them? If he had had compassion and understanding, Will would be all right, now, instead of lying in the intensive care ward, hooked up to soulless machines, perhaps dying, probably irreparably damaged.

As he sat on his bike, its familiar mass below him, doubt blossomed. Would it, he started to wonder, would it be worth it? He loved Will, he knew that, loved him with a strength and profundity that astonished him. But was he prepared to fight Emma for him? Was it right to fight Emma for him? Yet he’d seen Will’s eyes. Will loved him. He was certain of that. But, clearly, he loved Emma too, or he wouldn’t have done what he did. Maybe Will needed a woman in his life. Sean didn’t know. How could you tell?

He started the bike and turned it towards Jasper’s house. They would be able to advise him, to help. Hope grew strong in him. He would solve this. And, somehow, he and Will would be together. He didn’t allow himself to think about how or even whether this would hurt Emma. You couldn’t allow feelings of pity for your opponent stop you from doing what you felt was necessary to win. And anyway, she was a bitch, uninterested in Will’s happiness. He would make Will happy. He was sure of it.

***

Emma sat next to Will’s bed in the hideously uncomfortable plastic chair. Now that Sean had gone she felt a sudden onrush of doubt. What was she going to say to Will? Her eyes moved from one machine to the other, from the pale lifeless face of her husband to the clear plastic bag of saline, to the bare branches of the plane tree outside. She counted each drop as it fell from the bag into the tube attached to his arm. Worry, sorrow and anger warred with each other inside her. ‘How dare he?’ fought with ‘Poor darling – I’ll take care of him.’

Late that night, Will opened his eyes. For a moment he looked at her, confused, his brown eyes muddled. It took him a moment or two to recognise her, and it hurt, oh God, how it hurt, that when he did, despair made his face droop. He closed his eyelids, and turned his head away from her.

“How are you?” she asked. She felt the stupidity of the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.

He turned to look at her. He didn’t speak. He stared at her, unsmiling. She felt the smile on her own face freeze. Then she really did despair, for she recognized that something fundamental had changed, irreversibly and irretrievably. There won’t, she thought, be any children, ever, and absurdly, it was this that finally made her cry.

<<Chapter 25

© 2009 Nigel Puerasch. All rights reserved.
Romantic m2m novels and short stories