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

he arrived, tired and disgruntled, Tara had already gone out for the evening and the salmon which Wendy had prepared for them was on the edge of dried up. Katie and Jamie picked up on the atmosphere and fractiously competed for their parents’ attention throughout the cheerless meal that followed.

When dinner was over, Wendy shooed Bruce from the kitchen and dealt with the various dirty pans herself while the children got ready for bed. When she finally went to join him in the sitting room, she found the fire smoking and her husband fast asleep in one of the armchairs, his head lolling at an uncomfortable angle. Though she flapped a magazine about and chinked a glass, hoping for some sign that he was looking forward to the sort of passionate night an absence was supposed to engender, Bruce slept on, eventually waking with a half-hearted apology, admitting that he was all in and heading upstairs where he wasted no time in shedding his clothes and resuming his slumbers.

Wendy could not help but reflect that she might just as easily have spent the evening alone and taken a good deal less trouble about it. She eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep in which she dreamed of being at a 50/50 dance with Bruce, who unaccountably turned into a different man, who went too fast when they played a foxtrot and refused to let her go when she tried to pull away, instead thrusting his face towards her as he attempted an unwanted kiss, his hands everywhere, groping her until she woke up with a little sob. It was dark and she lay still and quiet for a long time, fearful of a resumption of the dream if she went back to sleep, eventually dropping off again as the first hints of daylight crept around the edges of the curtains.

She was eventually drawn out of bed by the sounds of movement on the landing. Leaving Jamie unsupervised in the kitchen was a recipe for disaster, so Wendy dragged her dressing gown around her and descended to organize her son’s breakfast. Bruce appeared soon afterwards in search of coffee and the papers.

‘I was just wondering what you wanted to do today.’ She greeted him brightly and felt crushed when he gave a pseudo-groan.

‘Do we have to do anything? Don’t forget I need to be on the road again this afternoon.’

‘No, of course we don’t have to do anything. I just thought you might like to do something … well … nice. All of us together, because we’ve been apart all week.’

‘Well, at the moment my idea of something nice would be a cup of coffee and a quiet hour with the Sunday papers.’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’ Actually, she thought, I’m not sorry. Why am I apologizing? It isn’t my fault that the car went wrong or there was a sodding traffic jam.

In a repeat performance of the weekend before, Wendy and the two younger children stood outside the house to wave Bruce off. It was less than twenty-four hours since his arrival. He hugged each of the children in turn and then pecked Wendy’s cheek.

‘It was hardly worth it, was it?’ she said lightly.

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Bruce turned away and climbed into the car.

Feeling as if she had been slapped, Wendy laughed, trying to show the children that it was just a little joke between Mummy and Daddy. Bruce reversed the car down the drive and the children trotted after him, readying themselves for a final wave from the front gate. Wendy followed a pace or two behind them. Once out in the road, Bruce put the car into forward gear and waved his hand as he moved off, but she knew that the wave was for the children. Back in the kitchen, she contemplated the wrecked weekend while she burned the muffins intended for the children’s tea and snapped at Katie because her bedroom was untidy again. Had any of it been her fault? Of course not. Was it her fault that he worked so far away? Or that the initial interest in The Ashes seemed to have dried up? A lull in the market, the agent said. None of it was her fault. It was very unfair.

Even so, she felt moved to apologize to Bruce, and was ready to issue some platitudes for the sake of making up this quarrel, which they hadn’t exactly had, so when he had not telephoned by eight thirty on Monday evening, she dialled his parents’ number.

The phone was answered by Bruce’s mother, who greeted her without enthusiasm and said she would call Bruce to the phone. Her mother-in-law did not ask after her or the children. Wendy wondered how much Bruce had said about his unsatisfactory trip north, or how much his mother might have picked up, merely from his manner and general mood.

‘Hello?’

Now that he was on the phone, all the useful, well-intentioned phrases she had rehearsed seemed to have stowed themselves in some locked box in the back of her mind. In their place came the sort of polite, mechanical conversation which one can only have with people to whom one is entirely indifferent or with whom one is very cross. Bruce offered her no help, enquiring after the children, the weather and what they had all eaten for tea. Neither of them raised the spectre of the weekend and, after three or four minutes, he reminded her with sickening politeness that they ought not to stay on the line too long because of the phone bill.

‘No, of course. Goodbye then, Bruce. Love you.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘Bye-ee.’ As she said it, she heard the click of the call being ended. She must not be upset, she thought. The telephone in his mother’s house was strategically placed so that anyone’s conversation could be heard pretty well all over the house. Naturally Bruce wouldn’t want to have any kind of private discussion or intimate conversation when he knew that his mother was probably hanging on every word.

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