Page 58 of The Flowers of Bay C
‘Happy?’ she says, wrapping splashes of great derision around the word as if it is foreign to her, as if she cannot imagine what it even means.
‘Yes. Happy. And there’s been times this last two weeks, in here, with these women… there’s been times I’ve seen you smiling, like your old self, like the Violet I once knew.’
‘Oh, what, so you want your young model Violet back? The one before COPD? The one before Covid?’
He strokes her arm. ‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I’ve just seen some kind of, I don’t know, spark or something, in you, like you’ve been recharged somehow. I reckon this little outing would do you the world of good.’
Violet looks away, pouting.
‘You should go,’ he says softly.
‘You tell her, Brian,’ Kat says.
I sit amazed at this Brian I haven’t seen or guessed at, out of the old shell of seriously henpecked husband, out of the old cliché of husband who is useless without wife. This Brian has something about him, something Violet may have tried to clobber out of him over the years.
Maybe the Violet he is talking about is in there somewhere, too.
I think again about Marcus and how he used to talk me down instead of up. Brian is patently not perfect, but he is on her side, he is for her, he wants her good. Of course, Marcus always told me he wanted my good, but it turned out my good was not good enough.
???
I’m in a bar on our honeymoon in Tenerife. I’m tired and hungry; we’ve been out on a boat trip around the south of the island, feeling the warm breeze on our faces. It’s been a little taste of heaven, a time out of time when my body behaved as I wished it to, and I feel hopeful about the world and my future with my newhusband. I know I’ve made the right choice, marrying Marcus, because he always wants nothing but the best for me, and no one has ever wanted that before. He picks out the outfits I should wear because he has a good eye, he knows what suits me and what doesn’t, he only wants me to wear things that flatter me. I still can’t believe that someone cares this much about me. I have a stunning figure, he tells me, I should show it off more, show a little more leg and wear lower cut tops to enhance what I have. I’m a little on the skinny side, he says, a little loose in places, but some more sessions at the gym will sort me out, will make me a better version of myself, a version he is even more proud to be seen with. Perhaps a little cosmetic surgery at some point. It’s not that he’s not proud to be seen with me now, of course, I know he is because he says so, he says that other men envy him when they see him with me; it’s just that I could be even better.
‘Are you wearing that?’ he says, wandering into the bar in a loose evening suit, crisp white shirt with unbuttoned collar flashing an enticing hint of deep tan. He’d been in the shower when I got myself ready and shouted through the door that I’d meet him down here. I wanted to be sitting here on a stool, sipping at a cocktail and looking alluring in my short summery dress and sandals. I’d pinned a purple flower clip in my hair and thought I looked exotic and mysterious, all flushed with happiness and sunshine, a brand-new bride head-over-heels in love.
‘What do you mean?’ I say, wilting under his gaze like fresh spinach chucked in a pan of boiling water. I flinch at the slightly sardonic upturn of his mouth.
‘Well, it’s hardly flattering. It’s a bit loose, to be honest.’ He takes hold of my arm and grabs my cocktail, downing it in one gulp. ‘Let’s go and get you into something else, shall we? I was thinking that red dress I bought you, the one with the zip, you know.’
I go with him, of course, because I always go with him. He’s right, you see. He knows what suits me better than I do, and he knows the dress I am wearing is too loose, too flowing, too floral; it skims my curves instead of clinging to them. The red dress squeezes the very bones of me and makes me breathless, but I know it looks good because he stands back, tapping his finger against his mouth with a satisfied – and somewhat lascivious – look creeping through his eyes. ‘Hmm. Much better. Now, the shoes. Those sandals don’t really go, do they?’
They don’t, of course. He’s right, as ever. It’s lucky that he bought me some red stilettos to go with the red dress, isn’t it? I push my feet into them and ignore the nip at my toes, trying to stand tall and stately and model-like. He stands there and inspects me, dissecting every part of me, still finding me wanting. I can see it in his eyes, hooded with disappointment. I’ve not tried hard enough. I should have been more careful with my make-up. I should have styled my hair differently. I should have been a different woman.
‘You should take that flower thing out. It doesn’t go with the look.’ He grabs hold of the clip and yanks it out of my hair, throwing it on the floor. I wince. ‘Now, how about you put it up in a knot? More classy, with that dress. Yes, that would work.’
He stands and stares while I brush out my loose brown waves, flecked with new blonde lights in the sun, and twist my hair into a tight knot, securing it with a gold barrette. I glance in the mirror. It looks severe, dragged off my face like that, tightening my skin and giving my eyebrows a slightly quizzical look. I tease out a few tendrils at the front and twirl them around my fingers.
‘Now some lipstick. That new scarlet one I bought you, not the light pink one you wear. You need something dazzling.’ I dig out the lipstick, an expensive brand I’d never normally buy, and slick it on to my lips. I look like a vampire, I think, with my slightlyharsh looking hairdo and the scarlet slash across my mouth. I look like one of those slutty women with guitars in that Robert Palmer video.
I like the flowery dress more.
He stands back, assessing me with inscrutable eyes. ‘You’ll do,’ he says, taking my arm and swinging me round, then pushing me towards the door. I totter on my heels, almost banging my head on the wall, and he laughs. ‘Clumsy kitten. You could do with some deportment exercises. Stand up straight, like you’ve got a book on your head. That’s it! You’ve got it. Now just see if you can keep it up, you look so much better!’
He keeps his hand on my back as we travel down in the lift, rigid against me, digging in whenever I slouch.
‘This is my new wife,’ he says to the bartender, who smiles politely and pretends that he didn’t just half an hour ago serve a cocktail to a smiling girl in a pretty dress with a flower in her hair who looked a whole lot like me.
???
‘What are you wearing, anyway?’ Kane’s harsh voice cuts through my memory and jolts me anew with my stupidity. I can see it all too clearly, now, when I listen to Kane, when I see how he looks at Jodie, when I take apart the meaning in his words. I can justify myself a million ways: I didn’t have a father I looked up to, or who showed me how men should respect women. I didn’t have an upbringing bursting at the seams with love and fun and joy. I didn’t know how to be in a relationship, how to assert my own needs when they seemed so very unimportant next to my need to please this man who showed so much interest in me, how to be my own person when that person seemed so lacking. I look at Jodie, now, shrinking under Kane’s gaze, and dig my nails into my palm,furious at myself and Marcus and Kane and a little bit at Jodie for being so sparkly and joyous yet so ebbed away by this man who doesn’t love her at all, at least in any healthy way.
‘I… I know I need some new pyjamas,’ Jodie says, twisting her hands together. She is sitting on the edge of her chair, shivering a little, Kane sprawled out on her bed like a great big St Bernard flopping over every corner, stabbing furiously at his phone.
‘You look like a chav,’ Jake says to him.
I look at his tracksuit and almost laugh out loud.
‘You look like a twat,’ Kat says, and this time I do.
