The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

a hopeful smile as she stood up. Bruce neither looked at her nor spoke to her, deftly sidestepping as she moved forward to greet him, as if to avoid contamination with a person who had been defiled by arrest. Wendy began to wish she really was so sodden with drink as to be immune to Bruce or her surroundings. He was coldly polite to the desk sergeant who handed over the car keys, then stiffly thanked the constable who showed him where the car was parked. To Wendy he said nothing until they were clear of the car park and he had driven beyond the street lights and switched the headlamps to full beam. Only then, when even the sharpest-eared policeman could not possibly have heard him, did the outburst begin.

‘What the bloody hell were you playing at?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t really do anything at all. I just took a bend too fast …’ The words tumbled out.

‘You’ve been done for drunk driving, you silly bitch! That’s not nothing.’ He swerved sharply to avoid a parked car.

‘Now who’s driving dangerously?’

‘Don’t tell me about driving. What the hell do you know about driving? You never take the car anywhere except to do the shopping.’

‘Only because you never let me.’

‘Drunk driving! Bloody hell! Drunk driving! How many have you had? It’s fucking humiliating, Wendy. What will people say when it gets round? It’s bad enough when a man gets nicked, but a woman … People will wonder what on earth you were doing. You know what they’ll think? That you were out with some fancy man.’

‘That’s ridiculous. And I wasn’t. Please don’t use that language. You never say that word.’

‘That’s what people will think. You’ll have to appear in court. You realize that, don’t you? You’ll lose your licence. That’s going to be an embarrassment – and an inconvenience. I shall have to start taking you shopping and running the kids around. Then there’s things like the dinner dances, particularly at Christmas. We’ve always relied on you driving us back. I can’t sit drinking bloody Britvics all night.’

Why not? she wanted to say. I always had to.

‘It’s going to cost us a fortune in taxis. It’s all so ridiculous, Wendy. Whatever possessed you?’

She shrank back into the seat, saying nothing. He was right. How could she, who normally drank so little, who never got tipsy, let alone staggeringly drunk, explain to people that she couldn’t drive anymore because she had lost her licence? She would be condemned as some kind of secret alcoholic, a drunkard, a failure. A failed drunk in fact, as she hadn’t managed to escape detection.

‘I got a taxi to the police station.’ Bruce was steaming on. ‘I could have asked Alec Wilson or Jack Mitchell, but what the hell was I supposed to say to them? I’ve got to go and collect Wendy from the cop shop. An accident? Oh no, Alec, she’s been run in for drunk driving.’ He pounded remorselessly on and on until the car finally came to a halt in the courtyard and she was able to escape the car and rush headlong into the kitchen, where Tara was sitting at the table, a magazine spread in front of her. She looked up anxiously as they entered the room.

‘Are you all right, Mam?’ Tara asked uncertainly. ‘Do you need some coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I’m going to take a shower.’ Dear God, did Tara imagine that she needed to be sobered up, like a teenager returning from a party?

She headed straight upstairs, unable to face Tara and desperate to escape Bruce. In the bathroom she bolted the door, shed her clothes, then ran the shower for a long time, not stepping out of it until steam all but obscured the bathroom and she had freed herself from the sense of the police station. Wrapping herself in a thick, pink towel, she consigned every stitch of the clothing she had worn that evening to the linen basket, then crept across the half landing and up the remaining stairs to their bedroom, switching out lights as she went. Bruce had left the bedroom door an inch ajar and the soft glow of a bedside light came through the gap. When she entered, she saw that Bruce was lying with his back to the door. She guessed that he would still be angry. In the car he had railed against Joan for abetting such disgraceful behaviour, but mostly against Wendy herself. He was right, of course, but now she needed his understanding. It had been a foolish mistake, two glasses of sherry instead of one (or maybe three instead of two – what did it matter now?).

She let the towel drop to the floor and lifted the bedcovers high enough to admit herself, sliding the front of her naked body down his backside, then letting her hand caress his arm and glide over the slope of his belly.

‘Bruce?’

He shifted slightly, jolting the hand away. ‘Please put the light out. It’s late.’

The coldness in his tone froze her fingers.

‘You do still love me, don’t you, Bruce?’

‘Not particularly, at this moment, no.’

She withdrew her hand sharply and pivoted to switch off the light. It was intended to be a sharp, decisive move: a demonstration that she could be angry and spiteful too, but her fingers fumbled the switch and she had to turn over fully and clumsily to engage with it, which rather spoiled the effect.

They lay back to back, keeping their bodies uncomfortably taut to avoid anything that might be construed as an invitation to intimacy. After what seemed like an eternity, Wendy heard his breathing deepen and, with all pretence gone, she turned to snuggle her body against his in the darkness.

By an unfortunate coincidence of timing, Bruce’s parents were due to stay that weekend. Wendy invariably found these visits a trial, not least because Bruce’s mother, while never offering direct criticism, always managed to imply a fault of some kind in the housekeeping arrangements. Wendy was on tenterhooks