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They stop for a breather by a large oak. A squirrel races up the trunk and looks at them quizzically from a high branch. ‘Look!’ Connie cries out. ‘It approves, Cliff, it’s laughing at us.’
‘Fucking vermin,’ Cliff snaps. ‘They should all be trapped and burnt. I’d get the gardener to do it – and watch.’
‘Oh.’ The charming side of her husband that no one but Connie ever sees.
They push on, the chair climbing slowly in its unwilling way. The earth is yielding to it too much, clogging up its wheels. The chair suddenly stops.
‘Blast this wretched thing.’
‘Let me push.’
‘No,’ Cliff says coldly. ‘I didn’t buy it for that.’
Connie tries, can’t help it.
‘Get the fuck off it.’
All the anger in him, from the other day, in his office, all the anger from the past twelve months. Without a word Connie tries to shove the contraption clear, to get him started again. It’s surprisingly hard. Cliff hits back at her with all his might, hits her away from his chair, away from his life. ‘You are pathetic, useless. You can’t even listen, can you, you fucking cunt?’
Connie is very, very calm. ‘I saw the gardener over there.’ Her voice is neutral, her face tight. ‘In the trees. The wild bit. Perhaps he can help.’
‘Well, go and fucking well get him.’
Cliff hits the wheels in frustration. At himself, his wife, his spectacle of a life. ‘If only I could get out and have a look at this fucking cunt of a thing myself.’
Connie strides off and shouts into the trees, ‘Hello? Mel? Can you come and help us, please?’ Not a trace of anything in her voice.
Obediently he comes, shovel loose in hand. Face blank, she business-like. ‘Do you know anything about wheelchairs?’
‘No.’
‘Could you just see if anything’s stuck in the wheels, or broken perhaps?’
Mel drops the shovel. Leans down on the ground. Connie catches a glimpse of his back where his T-shirt rides up, the stretch of golden skin. Her thighs clench.
‘Get your hands in there, come on, man, is there anything underneath, anything caught?’ Cliff’s voice utterly superior, admonishing, cold. ‘You’re not afraid of a bit of muck, are you?’
‘No, sir.’
Mel lies flat on his stomach, trying to work out the mechanism underneath, tinkering, poking, prodding. His hands, shorts, are soon streaked with grass stains and black. But he’s done something right. The motor coughs, splutters into life.
‘I’ll need some help.’
Mel looks directly at her, into her, grins a secret grin. Cliff doesn’t catch it. And before he can protest Connie is behind the chair, firm against Mel, they are pushing in tandem, muscle against muscle, sinew against sinew, locked together and complicit and triumphant. It’s hard work. The slope is punishing, the machine coughing and protesting.
‘Leave me alone!’ Cliff snaps. ‘I can do it now.’
Immediately they fall back and watch, shoulder to shoulder. Immediately the chair looks vulnerable, it veers off, starts to tip and Mel rushes up and catches it just in time. No thanks from Cliff, just an exasperated sigh as once again he struggles with the buttons and knobs; the alpha man from the alpha world, humiliated. Turning it on and off, trying to churn it forward with a sheer raging will that is impotent. ‘You’ll rip her insides out if you keep doing that,’ Mel remarks softly.
‘Oh, fuck off.’
The chair firms again and lurches off the grass, rumbles across the gravel.
‘You see, she’s doing it!’
Then he catches Mel’s face behind him. ‘Are you helping it? Are you?’
‘It won’t do it by itself, sir. It’s shot.’
‘Fuck off. I’ve just paid a hell of a lot of money for this.’
Without another word the gardener picks up his shovel and strides off. The chair stops immediately, there’s a sickening grate of knobs, nothing works.
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