"Kathleen and I loved every damn thing about each other”: an unhappy love story
There was an odd smell haunting the lobby, like left over lamb's fry or blood sausage, and a draught. A door slammed. Ah! – the butcher's shop backing the alley. I tugged the tweed hat a little lower down my forehead and scrawled my name and address across the hotel register.
“Kathleen,” I said, groping for the receptionist’s hand, which she yanked from my grasp. She tossed her near-black curls and fixed me with those brooding eyes.
“Guests, Jack. In case you hadn’t noticed.” I hadn’t. “The key,” she said, sliding it across the desk so fast it landed on the floor.
I made for the stairs, pausing on the landing to look back at my wife. Kathleen was stooped over a two-bar heater rubbing her fingers like crazy. Her backside looked round and inviting in that blue-flecked wool skirt pulled taut. I lifted my fingers to whistle, but thought better of it. She was cold enough already.
Fifteen years we've been married Kathleen and me. Fifteen years for crying out loud. Fifteen years of sharing a bed and she acts like she can’t stand the sight of me. It was a gag, that’s all; thought she’d look up on hearing my voice and against her better judgment, tilt back her head, toss those curls and laugh. I’d smile, reach for her hand and tell her I missed her like mad. Tell her we would work something out.
What the hell was I going to do now? I wondered, as I turned the key to room 108. I loosened my tie walked over to the lopsided mirror and shoved my face at the glass. Needed a shave already. God – my hair! It looked like I’d shoved a fork in a light socket; no wonder they call me Rooster. Kathleen used to stroke my ginger mop, saying she thought it lovely, and that it gave me character. Character. I ask you? Still, I got used to it over time, like my nickname, or a wart.
I plopped down on the narrow bed and surveyed the modest room with its pyjama-striped walls and the once-yellow candlewick bedspread.
“Mary said Robert was having one of his spells. They are getting worse, Jack,” Kathleen had stressed, after coming off the phone three weeks ago. “He’s going to Dunedin for an extended break, and I’ve told Mary I’ll go down and help her out.” A breakdown more like it: as if I didn't have a clue how her brother was. As if I didn’t know the family’s euphemisms for every damned thing, like our ears were too tender for the truth. As if we were the kids they couldn’t have.
“What if I don’t want you to?” I had asked, receiving that imperious look she could do so well.
Once, Kathleen and I couldn’t bear to be parted. Loved every damn thing about each other we did.
There was a scuffling outside my room. I tiptoed over, slowly turned the handle and pulled the door ajar to find – Kathleen, with an envelope in her hand. “I forgot to give you this,” she said.
“We are married,” I said. “No one’s going to think you’re a tart if you step inside.”
“I can’t. Mary and I are off to see Robert tonight.”
“What about the hotel?”
“I’ve explained in the note,” she said, handing over the envelope, before turning her stately back.
I plopped back on the bedspread and ripped the bloody thing open. We need to talk. Mary and I will be in Dunedin tomorrow. Kathy Jamieson, a cousin of Mary’s, is here to look after things until we get back. We should be home by five. My suggestion is, that we go somewhere for dinner. Kathleen.
No ‘love', no nothing. And she hadn’t said a thing about our kids who I’d farmed off to my mother.
It was uncanny the day Kathleen left Christchurch for Oamaru. She was on the train, her hand a glint against the glass, her face already a blur, when one of those déjà vu moments dropped in on me. I was in army uniform, days from deployment, removing the lemon squeezer and bowing low amongst the catcalling cluster of lookalikes on the windswept platform. And dark-haired Kathleen with her dimpled grin, waving, waving, like her hand would fall off, until the carriage lurched from view.
At least I came back, Kathleen, at least I came back. I did my job. Served my country. Plenty of my mates never made it. God, don’t get me started on the war.
Kathleen stopped teaching as soon as she became pregnant with Janice, and with each succeeding birth (there was James, Colin and Beverly), she gave more of her life away, especially the relaxed and enjoyable side of her nature. She was such a pretty one back then, a trainee teacher when I first spotted her, last seat in the carriage, feet on the wall, using her knee as a book tray. What a coup, that dropped pen, and my hand snatching it up, just like that. “Excuse me, madam,” I said, grinning like a clown at an A & P show. When she smiled and those little dimples pinged in each cheek – I was done for. Still am.
“Can’t you ever be serious, Jack?” she’d say when I told a cracker. Serious. She could have written a bible on Serious. She’d sure picked that up from her mother. That, and the 'Robert could have been a doctor or lawyer if it weren’t for the war’ expression they tossed at every opportunity.
“And what do you do, Jack?”, Mrs Broughton asked the first time Kathleen introduced me.
“I run a library service,” I said, trying the grin again. “I have my own van.”
“A travelling library?” she enquired, eyes widening into wonderful o’s. “With a kiwi painted on the side?”
“Yep, that's the one alright. Painted by yours truly.” Impressed Kathleen that did, and the books, she loves books something crazy. I smiled generously in Mrs Broughton’s direction, and turned my head to receive Kathleen’s acknowledgement of my largesse, but found her semaphoring madly to her mother from the lounge room doorway.
“I've made tea, if you'd like to come through to the dining room,” my sweetheart said, as the stocking-seamed legs of Mrs Broughton scissored ahead of me. And then Bobby boy strolled in, in his whites, straight from cricket practice. “Robert is a natural at most sports, and has a particularly fine tenor voice,” his mother relayed, while he chomped on sandwiches as cool as the cucumbers inside them.
*
In the morning, I was like a kid heading for exams as I slunk down the stairs. “Gidday,” I muttered to a grey-suited man scurrying past. Now he was hogging reception. But I could see Mary’s cousin was a bit of all right. Just stroll casually past, that's the ticket. Raise my hand, friendly like. I think I’ll take myself off to the gardens. Give me time to sharpen my brain and put the seduction plan into action. “Oof,” I muttered, forcing the doors that had stuck every winter since Robert and Mary took the place over. "Just shave the wood a sliver", I’d tell them, but you just can’t help some people.
The fog was a foot off the ground; the sky and town zipped together like a sheet of metal. Rubbish bins banged and rolled along the asphalt. At Eden Street intersection the milk trucks breasted through the fog. I watched their taillights, my breath sitting on the air, and gathered my wits plus my bearings. Perhaps I’d step it out a bit, enjoy the exercise while I could. Ah, the bakery’s lights were on. “Looks like a turn in the weather,” I said, smiling to the hair-netted girl behind the counter. She didn’t return the smile. But at least the sky had lightened by the time my Boston Bun was down the hatch. I unbuttoned my coat, shoved my scarf in a pocket and turned west of town. It was nice at the rise, really nice gazing out to the sea: the fog rolling back like the lid of a sardine tin, the sea all a-shimmer. I made it to the gardens and shared a green bench seat with a slope-shouldered mother and her kid – a skinny little thing with black gumboots sizes too big.
My kids are 13, 12, 10, and nine; all sturdy and gorgeous. Or was Beverly eight?
It was only 3:30 when I got back to the hotel, but I scooted up those stairs to room 108. Give me plenty of time for titivating.
After my shower, I relaxed on the bed in a green tartan gown, with Kathleen on my mind. For ages now, it felt like Kathleen was punishing me: when she wouldn't let herself have a laugh, and, derided my attempts to be amusing. And then there was the contempt. It started with tennis. I loved tennis, we both did early on, but once the kids came ... "Don't let me stop you going," she’d yell to the van’s receding bonnet. And I’d reverse onto the road, brakes screeching, and drive to the club feeling like crap. We shouldn’t have had kids. It killed our relationship; I’m convinced of that. But how did you stop them coming? Stop having sex? When the government was urging us to ‘rebuild the nation’, like we were concrete blocks or bits of 4”x2”, and handing out monetary incentives for each kid? Get a grip. She was worn out with it all, that’s the truth of it. And as for sex, that finished with the last birth.
*
I almost forgot the time. “Good evening, Madam,” I said, as I approached reception, keeping the smirk from my voice.
“Hullo, Jack. Guessed you might be early.”
“Yes, well, wouldn’t want to keep a pretty girl waiting.” I said, trying for the half-smile.
“It’s been a long day,” she said. To me, or the temp, I couldn’t tell. “You may as well go for dinner.” She continued, “Mary will be down shortly.”
Kathleen waited until the cousin had gone. “I’ll get my coat,” she said. I refrained from reaching out for her as we negotiated the stiff doors and stumbled out to the street. A brisk wind coming off the sea made me turn up my collar and return my hat to my head. Then, just half a step behind, on a near empty footpath, I followed my wife, recalling her thinking our hometown frigid. She was now taking a blue scarf from her purse and fastening it around her head. I watched the long ends flap behind her like a ship’s ensign. I so wanted to tug at that scarf, to unfurl the long soft curls with scarcely a hint of grey and rub my face in her perfume. She could have been a model she held herself so proud. A snooty look, a stranger might have said. But I told her, “You could have been a model, Kathleen”. We walked a block or so, steps almost in unison past kitchenware shops blinking dull greetings, until we came to a small cafeteria, horribly ablaze under fluorescent tubing.
“What about here,” she said. “Nothing fancy, but the food’s okay.” I glanced briefly at the chipped Formica tables, the two scarf-wrapped patrons and back to Kathleen. “As long as you’re happy,” I said, pushing open the door.
I sat opposite my wife, threading questions between mouthfuls of oxtail soup and buttered white bread. She looked up from her spoon with a look I found hard to interpret and dipped it back in the bowl again. Only after her bowl was empty did she speak to me.
“Jack.”
“Yes.” I said, leaning closer, trying to make her look at me.
“You aren’t going to like what I have to say.” And when she looked at me, I wished she hadn’t. I glanced around the hideous room. I dabbed my mouth with a napkin.
“I think you should go home,” she continued. “Leaving the children with your mother like that.”
“But I’ve only just arrived.” This wasn’t going well. “Kathleen, sweetheart …”
“I don’t want you here.”
“I’m sorry. I should have called. I can see that.”
The chair legs scraped the linoleum as Kathleen stood. “Let’s walk,” she said, “we can talk then.”
I dumped the money for the bill on a plate and ran out after Kathleen. “Please slow down,” I said, extending a hand to clasp her elbow.
“Sorry,” she said, yet her heels still hammered the pavement.
“I love you,” I said. And when we were between two street lamps where the light waned, I drew Kathleen to me and kissed her passionately.
“I wish you hadn’t done that, Jack,” she said, as she pulled away. “Because. Because I might not want this marriage any longer.”
“You have to Kathleen.” I said, my words a bleat in the bitter wind. We were almost at Eden Street; the hotel seconds away. A pain shot through my chest. I couldn’t catch my breath. All I could think was: I’m too young to die.
“Are you alright?” Kathleen asked.
“I feel really weird,” I said, rubbing the spot with my free hand. Did she just say "Christ"?
“Let’s get you inside,” she whispered as we approached the hotel’s rear entrance.
She laid me on the bed like I’d already reached the undertakers. “You better not be having me on, Jack McPhee,” Kathleen said.
“Scouts’ honour,” I replied, sipping on the water she’d handed me. “There’s some whiskey in the drawer if you don’t mind fetching it.”
“Shouldn’t I be fetching a doctor instead?”
I sat up then, shoving a pillow behind my back, and held the empty glass out while she poured a wee dram. “What about yourself?” I asked. “You always used to like one.” I watched her return with the other glass and I could feel the cord around my heart release.
And that’s how she ended up in bed with me.
“Jack,” Kathleen murmured, much later that night, her right arm draped softly across my back, her sweet-whiskey breath brushing my skin. I shifted onto my side and went to hold her She wrenched free, and sat up, reaching for the bra and slip she’d earlier flung to the end of the bed. “I’m sorry, Jack. Really, really, sorry. I shouldn’t have let this happen.”
Kathleen's face fell, ever so slightly, that you might think it a trick of the light, a quaver at the corner of her mouth. I could feel my own lips moving, and wanted desperately to sing her favourite song, which I sometimes did when things were lovey-dovey. She touched my face fleetingly before hauling up her stockings. I touched her arm. “Look, I have to get going,” she said, and shuffled across to the hard-backed chair. I switched on the bedside lamp.
“Don't get up, Jack. No sense the both of us freezing, now is there?” she said. I couldn’t find the answer for that one. I watched my wife pull on her blue wool dress and overcoat, pick up her shoes and tread lightly to the door. Her long pale fingers were reaching for the handle when she hesitated and turned, her face flushed like our babies used to be upon waking.
“Your mother told me you were coming, by the way. She’s very worried about everything.”
I leapt out of bed and yanked Kathleen away from the door. “What’s my mother been saying about me?”
Kathleen shoved the tartan gown at me. "It’s always about you, isn’t it, Jack?”
“What’s she been going on about then?”
“Us. The family.” Kathleen clutched at my arms. It hurt. “For crying out loud, Jack – did you really expect me to ignore your carrying-on again?”
“But I love you and the kids. You know that. It’s all …”
“What?” she said. I didn’t like her face all screwed up like that.
“I’ll change, Kathleen. People can, you know.”
“You said that last time. After, who was it? Irene, Sandra?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Really.” She snorted.
“I’m serious.”
“You, serious?” she said. “I’m going now.”
“I need you,” I said, grabbing at her sleeve. “Don’t you understand that? I’ll go talk to someone; the doctor, the parish priest. I’ll show you how serious I am.”
“Not this time, Jack.”
The door clicked shut and I dropped on the bed. Taken with permission of the author in her new short story collection Pocket Money & Other Stories by Vivienne Lingard (Artistry Publishing, $37), available in bookstores nationwide, and reviewed in the Otago Daily Times as "superb". Next week's short story is taken from the collection Return to Harikoa Bay by Owen Marshall (Vintage, $37), available in bookstores nationwide.
