Nightingale Point

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Chapter Ten ,Mary (#ulink_3bdfce84-e00f-5126-9f02-baff99967caa)

‘Mary, I didn’t know we were seeing each other today.’

Mary gives Harris a weak smile as she steps over the threshold and kicks her plimsolls onto either side of the stripy woven mat.

‘I’ve just got in.’ He closes the front door from the prying eyes of neighbours before kissing her. ‘I had a union meeting about next year’s exams. Can you believe it? On a Saturday? Went on and on.’ He walks quickly into the large room that makes up the living space of the bungalow and over to the hob, where he fiddles with the knobs and stops the hiss of gas.

‘I was trying out a new recipe – cannellini bean mash – but it doesn’t quite look edible.’ He laughs and wipes his hands on the tea towel that hangs over his shoulder. ‘Sorry, I’m rambling. Are you okay, Mary? I really wasn’t expecting you.’

‘Harris, I need to talk with you.’ She takes a deep breath but already feels her resolve waver. Something about the smell of lemons, Harris’s frequent failed attempts to cook, and his thin, perpetually tanned arms make her want to change her mind, to not end the affair, to divorce David, to marry Harris and to be with him always.

‘I can’t sleep,’ she says. ‘I keep thinking about what we are doing. How wrong it is.’

‘Oh, not this again.’ He turns away.

‘Yes, Harris. We need to stop. I am having nightmares. All week, these horrible dreams waking me up.’ She does not want to say anymore, for speaking her visions out loud somehow makes them more real.

‘You are stressed. Overworked again. I told you, stop taking on so many double shifts.’ Harris sits down next to her; the smell of tobacco on his skin ignites a craving for a cigarette. She takes the fob watch from her pocket and passes it from hand to hand.

‘Oh, your watch broke?’

‘I’ve had it twelve years.’ David had set the time eight hours ahead when he gave it to her. ‘Now you always know what time it is where I am,’ he said, but she immediately reset it to show her time.

‘Here, let me see if I can fix it.’ Harris takes the watch into his speckled hands.

‘No.’ She snatches it back. ‘David’s coming home.’

‘When?’

Mary shrugs. ‘He’s on standby for a flight. I’m not sure if he’s coming here directly or stopping by somewhere else. His brother is in Amsterdam – maybe he will go there first. What? Why are you laughing?’

‘Typical. So he’s going to show up anytime in the next few weeks and you will accommodate him?’

‘He’s my husband.’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t have to be,’ Harris says with a raised voice.

As he turns away the heaviness of what is not being said fills the room: the weight of the question she’s refused to answer, the unworn engagement ring studded with rubies as pink as the hibiscuses back home.

‘We need a break, Harris. Please.’ But she doesn’t act on it. Instead, she sits on the sofa and pulls one of the Indian elephant cushions onto her lap for comfort. ‘There is too much going on. I am stressed. My daughter is going back to work and I said I would help out with the kids.’

He groans. ‘She’s taking advantage. She only works two days a week.’

‘Yes, but she needs my help. I’m her mother.’

‘I know, but what’s this got to do with us? With what I asked you last week? Why can’t we talk about it, Mary?’

She taps the face of the fob watch with her short nails. ‘I need to call my work. I’m going to be late.’

It rings for a long time before being finally answered. ‘Hedley Ward, Nurses’ Station.’

‘Hello, it’s Mary Tuazon. I’m running late for shift.’

‘Okay, I’ll let the sister know.’

Mary recognizes the voice as one of the latest in a long line of lazy ward interns.

‘Tuazon? Hang on.’ Papers rustle, machines purr and a metal spoon clinks against something ceramic. ‘There’s a message here for you. Your husband called.’

‘My husband?’

Harris straightens his back, like a cat ready to pounce.

‘That’s what it says.’ The girl’s disinterest seeps through the line. ‘Says: In Hong Kong. Got direct flight to Heathrow.’ She pauses. ‘That’s all.’

‘You are sure? When did he leave this?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Well, is there a time on the message?’ Mary asks.

‘Look, I didn’t write this down, all right?’ She tuts. ‘It’s busy here.’

‘Okay, thank you.’ Mary puts down the phone and smiles at Harris. ‘Stupid girl got the message wrong. There’s no way he got a flight so fast.’

Harris appears to puff up his chest; his body, still frail, seems flooded with energy. ‘So he’s on his way? I feel as if this is it, Mary. You need to tell him. We can do it together.’ Harris uses a tone of voice Mary imagines he rolls out for his students with low self-esteem.

‘I’m not ready.’

‘You will never be ready. But you need to move on with your life.’

‘I took vows.’

The tea towel slaps against the coffee table as Harris walks off through the net curtains onto the patio.

Mary waits. How long it will take David to notice the spring in her step, the smell on her skin? She lies back on the sofa and tries to imagine the two alternate versions of her life: one where she goes back on her vows and becomes a shameful divorcée, and another where she continues to be David’s unhappy, waiting wife.

How can she make that decision?

Harris sits at the white wrought-iron table under the cherry blossom tree, which hangs over from the neighbour’s garden, his bare feet surrounded by a smattering of rotten pink petals. Mary stoops to rub a fleshy pink flower between her fingers and he scrapes the chair towards the edge of the wooden decking to bask fully in the sun he worships so much, while lighting his cigarette.

‘For olden time sake?’ she asks.

He hands her one and furiously flicks at the lighter as she takes the other seat. They both face out onto the messy garden, much of it claimed by the growth of wild flowers and overflowing planters. Mary watches two bees as they make double loops around the struggling zebra plants and moss roses he planted for her after she told him about her childhood garden. How could she even consider saying goodbye to Harris? To this secret life she has been building with him for the last year? She would miss him too much. They had spent the winter smoking on the patio among the dead plants, watching as the foxes brazenly entered to hunt around the composting bins Harris keeps at the bottom of the garden. She blushes as she thinks of all the times she has cheated on her husband with Harris. How self-conscious she was the first time, her body covered with fake tanning lotion, which stained her loose flesh a sickly yellow, making it look like the skin of the outdoor-reared chickens on the street markets back home. But after that first time, she never again felt the need to hide herself from him. Just last week as she lay in his bed, the windows open, the curtains billowing, she felt as she had all those years ago when she first met David. She was confident then too, but over the years she began to worry she was ageing faster than him, and that, as she took off her clothes, he was comparing her naked body to those of the girls he was picking up while on tour. Those floozies at the side of the stage.

Mary smokes slowly and waits for the threat of tears to pass before she speaks again.

‘He will not stay for long. He never does. A month, maybe. I will phone you when he leaves.’

‘So you have made your decision then? Another decision that does not include me?’ Petulantly, Harris uncrosses his legs and slides away from her, before crossing them again in the opposite direction.

She looks down at her uniform, at the fat white stitching in the wide hem below her knees.

‘You don’t have to choose him,’ he says.

‘I already did. He does not come home often; I owe him my time.’

‘You’ve already given him so many years, years in which you’ve waited and waited. And now you want to pretend that I don’t exist for a month.’ He shrugs. ‘So go ahead, imagine that I’m dead so you can get on with playing husband and wife.’

Why can’t he understand? It’s only a month. She pushes the nets aside as she storms through to the bathroom, where she rolls a large ball of tissue in her hand to help her get through the bus journey.

Harris waits by the front door.

‘Let me at least drive you to work.’ His eyes appear watery, but he does not look emotional, only annoyed, probably from having to go up against a man much lesser than himself, of competing against vows made in another time and anxieties that manifest themselves in the form of twitching elbows and bad dreams.

‘Okay.’

He slides his feet into his brown sandals and picks up the keys from the slim wooden side table. As they set off towards the hospital, Mary tries to distract herself from the silence between them. His car is messier than usual: mud-caked walking boots and some shrivelled orange peelings on the floor, a pile of his students’ workbooks on the backseat. He fusses with the tape player as the car slows at the traffic lights, pushing in the Simply Red album she bought him at Christmas. The first song is their song: ‘You Make Me Believe’. They look at each other and smile.