Opal spent most of the next week trying to distract herself from the rage that was simmering inside her. Sometimes it was manageable, or even advantageous. One particularly aggressive game of doubles at the tennis club left her opponents wondering if she was going through ‘the change’ a little early, and Deborah, her partner, mopping the torrents of sweat from her brow between sets.
Other times, though, it was overwhelming. Opal would find herself in the most random moments – picking out some stems for a bouquet, or zipping up a skirt in a changing room – when suddenly she was overcome with the urge to scream. On both those occasions she politely made her way out into the street, hurried to her car, shut the door, and indulged. What she might once have called her ‘rational self’ was aware that a passer-by could hear her wails, and see her wailing, through the thin glass windows of her sunshine yellow Datsun Cherry. Her ‘irrational self’, who was now firmly at the helm, didn’t give a fuck.
In the evenings when Martin called, she didn’t answer. Although she had taken to sitting on the bottom step and staring at the telephone until it rang out. As the week went on, she noted that the number of rings became fewer.
In her mind’s eye, Opal pictured Agnes in something sheer and pink, lounging on that beautiful cream chenille sofa that they had picked out together in Milan, in that first year after they married. Martin had said that it ‘wouldn’t make sense’ at Fairfax and so it had remained in Marylebone.
‘Come back over here, darling, and finish your martini,’ Agnes would call, coquettishly, as Martin would not so reluctantly put the receiver down.
Well I tried,he’d think valiantly as he slid in beside Agnes and snaked his tongue into her ear.
She was torturing herself; that’s what Deborah said every time Opal dared to voice snippets of her deranged inner monologue. And she was, but she also had to admit to herself that there was something thrilling about the whole situation. This kind of feeling, this passion, this hatred that was coursing through her, it was the most alive she’d felt in years.
On Thursday, at her weekly painting class, she’d felt a long-dormant spark flicker within her as her brush stroked the canvas. And with it, an eager compulsion to discolour the male figure in front of her. The result had been a garish rendition of man: ghoulish green with his disproportionately grotesque cock hanging in a deep languid purple between his legs.
Poor Maude, the elderly widow who hosted the life drawing class, hadn’t really known what to say when she’d done her rounds. Deborah had blushed, a girlish smirk on her face, but Opal had felt exhilarated. She took the canvas home.
The next day, she unearthed her easel from the garage and dragged it across the gravel into the house. She set up in the orangery, and spent the day feverishly painting. It was only when the light began to lower and soften that Opal realised how long she’d been there. She hadn’t eaten and when she did finally get down from her artist’s stool, her left leg had gone numb.
It had been years since she’d painted like that. She took a few steps back and admired her work. If anything, it was even more off-putting than it had been in its earlier incarnation. To look at it soothed her. By seeing its reflection, her writhing spirit found peace.
In something of a daze, Opal went back into the garage to find the stepladder, back across the gravel, and through to the front door. She positioned it carefully between the double staircase, and made her way up. At the top, she realised that the portrait of her great-uncle Herbert was likely to be quite heavy; the ornate frame alone would probably topple her. She was there now, though, and in fact when she reached for the painting, it was surprisingly light. When she’d made it back down she inspected it to find that all that gold embossed wood was in fact hollow. If that wasn’t some sort of on-the-nose metaphor for the Fairfax estate finances, she didn’t know what was.
She leant Uncle Herbert against the left-side staircase and ran back to the orangery. She had decided that she would call this piece ‘the cock’. It was quite a bit larger than Herbert, so more cumbersome to get up the ladder, but the mix of adrenaline, hunger and artistic pursuit realised was intoxicating. When it was hung, she scurried back down and out the front door.
She must have looked mad standing there. Barefoot and paint-splattered, hair in a messy pencil-secured bun, one arm of her fuzzy black angora cardigan hanging off her rightshoulder. Dusk was falling, and for the first time that day, it occurred to Opal that Martin might be on his way back from London tonight. As she hadn’t spoken to him, she had no way of knowing.
That thought, of Martin, of considering his timetable as her own, irritated her, and so she dismissed it. Standing before the double-fronted burgundy doors, she felt suddenly nervous. And then she pushed through. She was still then, all her frantic energy falling away as she marvelled at her masterpiece. Martin was going to hate it.
It was gone nine by the time she heard his car pull up. She was sat at the kitchen table gnawing at a chicken leg that she was holding with her fingers. She laid it down as she heard the crunch of his shoes on the driveway, and she took a large gulp from the wine glass in front of her. She was disappointed to hear that he was heading towards the side door that led into the kitchen rather than going through the main entrance. She’d have to wait a little longer for his reaction.
‘Oh, Pol, you’re still up.’ He looked tired, worn out, and for a moment Opal felt bad for assuming that he hadn’t been putting in long hours at the office. He dropped his briefcase by the door, took a wine glass from the cabinet and collapsed into the rocking chair at the end of the table.
‘It’s only 9.30, Martin. I’m notthatold and boring.’ Opal was sure that the deeper meaning of her words would rouse him in some way, but he shrugged and wordlessly reached for the bottle of Bordeaux. Maybe he would get angry with her for having raided the cellar and opened one of his ‘specialoccasion’ bottles on a random Friday whilst she was home alone. She found herself hoping he would shout at her, and then maybe she could shout back. But if he did notice the particular vintage he was now gulping, he didn’t mention it.
‘How was your week?’ Opal asked placidly.
He looked straight at her then, his grey eyes piercing. She felt a shiver run down her spine. It was almost intolerable to live with such anticipation. Was he about to confess?
‘Do you actually care?’ he said instead. And Opal’s rage boiled anew at the idea thathewas feeling sorry for himself.
‘Well, now that you ask, I don’t suppose I really do.’ Her tone was cold, cutting she hoped, but instead of withering, Martin burst out laughing.
Opal cocked her head to the side, studying him. His teeth were turning yellow around the edges where they met his gums, she noted with some satisfaction. In part she did this to stop her anger from getting to her.
His laughing died down to a chuckle. He stared down at his glass of wine and shook his head slowly. ‘Pol, I don’t know what’s gotten into you these last few days. Is there something you want to tell me?’ That grey gaze of his trained on her face once again.
Her pulse quickened. ‘No, Martin, but is there something you want to tellme?’
The silence settled between them, and in a way it was so very familiar. It was the same silence that had sat between them, sometimes less obvious than it was right now, but always present, for the past six years. Ever since they had lost Emma.
Opal had never given that much thought to actually having a child. It was strange really, because for as long as she couldremember she had assumed, in that way that one assumes they will grow old, that they will breathe air and wake up in the morning, that she would be a mother one day.
Step one, get an education. This she hadalmostdone; she’d only been a few exams short of a degree, but when step two had come calling earlier than expected, maybe she had thought of it as a fast-track option. Get a husband. And then step three was get a house. That had been simple enough, what with Martin’s salary and her trust fund.
Step four, though, had proved harder than the rest. Getting pregnant. It had taken them around three years in the end. They’d started trying in earnest just after her twenty-seventh birthday. It was she who’d put it off for so long. They’d already been married six years, but Opal wanted to enjoy herself. She’d built herself a nice stable future, but she’d imagined it would wait patiently for her while she enjoyed her present. A whole year travelling around Europe for their ‘honeymoon’ and then flat hunting had taken the best part of the next. Martin was very focused on climbing the corporate ladder at Robert Fleming’s and then next thing she knew she was within touching distance of thirty.
Her mother, Saffie – short for Sapphire – had seemed very relaxed about the whole thing. Something that despite herself Opal found irritating, as though her mother was waiting for her to come to the same conclusion that Saffie had years earlier. ‘Children only hamper one’s life; they cut one’s adventures short. Hold out as long as you can!’
