CHAPTER NINE
‘Just once in all our married life I asked you to come somewhere with me, and you couldn’t—’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Juliet!’ Ken Davenport interrupted exasperatedly, unhooking his braces and letting them fall on the floor. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? I had to go to that dinner. Larry Wright was retiring. He’s been a colleague for more years than I care to remember. It was expected of me,’ he blustered.
‘And I’ve been your wife for more years than I care to remember, and I expected you to be by my side after all the times I’ve been by yours.’ Juliet was so angry her voice was shaking. ‘Larry Wright is a pompous little toad. You don’t even like him.’ She stood in front of her husband, eyes bright with anger, her two hands clenched tight by her sides.
‘That’s neither here nor there, and it’s precisely why I had to go. I didn’t want any of that shower saying I wouldn’t go to his retirement dinner because I didn’t like the little bastard. Now, for God’s sake, give it a rest.’ Ken had had enough. He wasn’t used to angry tirades from his wife. And, by gum, he wasn’t in the humour for it now.
Juliet was whiter than the Jo Malone candles reposing on her armoire. ‘How dare you talk to me like that? Just who do you think you are, Ken Davenport? That’s all you damn well care about, isn’t it? Your image. How you’re seen. The great consultant striding through the hospital corridors making life and death decisions—’
‘I bloody well do save lives, and don’t you forget it,’ thundered her husband, purple-faced with indignation.
‘You fool,’ she snapped back, disgusted at his arrogance. ‘Don’t you know, haven’t you realized after all this time that your gifts are God-given? He’s the one who decides who lives and dies. Why He chose two pompous asses like you and Larry Wright to be His assistants is beyond me.’
‘That’s it. You’ve gone too far. I’m sleeping in the guest room. I won’t put up with this nonsense a minute longer. What’s got into you? Were you drinking?’ He was mottled with rage. He grabbed his maroon silk pyjamas from under his pillow and strode out the door, his shirt-tails hanging over his trousers.
‘No, I was not drinking. I’m saying what I should have said years ago. And don’t bother coming back, stay there and do me a favour,’ Juliet hissed, outraged at his drinking slur.
‘And let me tell you something before I go . . .’ Ken turned and came back and stood in the doorway. ‘You’re acting like you’re bloody Picasso. Get a grip on yourself, woman. It was just an amateur art exhibition. I’m sure young Melissa could do just as well,’ he said cuttingly, before turning on his heel.
Juliet sat down on the side of the bed, shocked. That last biting insult had been meant to hurt her. Her outburst was one of temper, a natural reaction to her disappointment. He’d had a few moments to think of something deliberately wounding and demeaning. He’d wanted to put her down because she’d had the temerity to lose her temper and be herself for once.
Juliet took some deep breaths in an effort to calm her racing heart. She wasn’t used to confrontation. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d raised her voice to her husband. She was such a wimp really, she thought in self-disgust. Aimee was always telling her to stand up for herself and do what she wanted for a change. This night that she’d been looking forward to for so long had turned into a disaster. Ken had ruined it for her.
And what was even worse, she thought with a sickening feeling as she took her gold earrings out, she’d let him dictate the way she lived her life for forty years, and that was unforgivable. She’d wasted her life on him. God, how fed up she was of being the dutiful little wife. How fed up she was of cooking and shopping for things he liked. How wearing it was, going to his functions and listening to him pontificate. Ken had an opinion on everything, and to hell with anyone else’s. He was such a bore.
She slipped out of her silk blouse and black palazzo pants, folded them neatly and placed them on an antique chair beside the window. She’d have her housekeeping assistant, Gina, handwash them in the morning. Gina came in three mornings a week to clean and wash and do various other chores. ‘Our housekeeper gives me a hard time for smoking Havanas in the house. It’s my one little indulgence,’ Ken liked to boast at parties, letting people know he could afford both a housekeeper (he never mentioned that she was part-time) and expensive cigars. He was such a pompous prat. How could she have ended up married to the likes of him?
Juliet wrapped a light robe around her and sat at her dressing table smoothing cleansing cream on to her face. She didn’t look sixty-four. She’d kept herself well, but that didn’t negate the fact that she was in the last third of her life, and what had she to show for it? Three children, and a husband who took her totally for granted. She was merely an appendage to her larger-than-life spouse. His docile little woman who stood dutifully by his side, saying the right things, entertaining his friends when required in their elegant, detached Dublin 4 redbrick home. The perfect wife, who had no life of her own.
Her one escape had been tennis and the social scene at the club. Ken had never played, his passion was golf, so it was the one place she was assured of not having to listen to him or take a back seat. She’d had to give up playing because of a knee injury, which had persisted despite intensive and expensive physio. Her friend Chloe had invited her to come to a silk painting class just a few months ago, and she’d taken to it like a duck to water. It had sustained her and given her pleasure and helped fill the big gap the loss of her tennis had left.
The group exhibition tonight, that included four of her paintings, was her first. It had been her chance to shine. Assuming that Ken was coming, she’d told her classmates that her husband and family would be there to support her. Several of them knew Ken. Some of their husbands had been his patients at one time or another. Several of them moved in his golfing circles. And a few had used Aimee’s company to cater for their parties and weddings. But tonight wasn’t to have been about Ken and Aimee and their achievements. Tonight was about her, she’d thought with a hint of pride.
Her husband’s non-appearance had been a real slap in the face. He was going to Larry Wright’s retirement dinner and it was her problem that the two events were on the same night, he’d said tetchily when she’d shown her disappointment. He was sorry for double booking, but there was nothing he could do. By his subsequent hurtful jeers, her husband had yet again put her down and exposed his disrespect for her.
Juliet bit her lip as she acknowledged this undeniable fact. Mostly, in their marriage, it had been subtle: ‘Oh what would your mother know about that?’ to the children, or ‘My wife’s biggest problem nowadays is whether to go to the beauty parlour or the hair salon . . .’ This at a dinner party when the subject had been the problems of working mothers trying to get to crèches in time to pick up their children. This had caused a ripple of laughter, and she’d sat there with a fixed smile on her face, wondering what he would have done if she’d stood up, poured a jug of water over his head and said, ‘Don’t be such a Neanderthal, you idiot.’
Tonight, though, he hadn’t been subtle, he’d been vicious, because she’d had it out with him. She knew why he’d been so obnoxious. She hadn’t lived with him for forty years without getting to know him very well. Ken was feeling guilty, and he didn’t like it, and attack was the best form of defence. Juliet rubbed her eyes wearily. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter. She was tired and fed up and she’d just lived through a life-defining moment. It was hard admitting that she felt a complete and utter failure. She’d always known that Ken was a selfish, self-centred egotist, and she’d accepted it for the big house, the clothes, the jewellery, the affluent lifestyle and the kudos of being Mrs Ken Davenport, wife of the eminent consultant heart specialist.
She had never felt so disappointed in herself as she did at that moment. She walked over to the big queen-sized bed they shared. She was looking forward to sleeping in it on her own. Juliet stepped over Ken’s scarlet braces. Typical of him to choose scarlet. He was such an attention-seeker. Well, they could stay there until he picked them up; Juliet was done picking up after him. The worm had taken a long time to turn, but it had turned well and truly. From now on, he was on his own. Life, what was left of it, was going to be all about her. She got into bed and stretched her four limbs to the corners. It felt good. Very good. Maybe her husband’s non-appearance at her little art exhibition was the best thing that ever happened to her. The straw that broke the camel’s back might be the key to her liberation after all these years.
Mind racing, heart palpitating, Juliet Davenport lay wide-eyed in her big marital bed and began to make plans.
Ken Davenport lay in the unfamiliar double bed in their elegantly appointed guest room, seething.
How dare his wife rear up on him in the manner she just had. How dare she belittle his undeniable gift as a surgeon by trying to make him feel he was God’s lackey? He had worked bloody hard to get where he was, and his skills had been honed over many years of time and effort. What had got into the woman? She knew better than anyone the politics that went with his position in the medical world. Other surgeons and doctors referred patients to him; it was all about keeping up professional façades, no matter how you felt privately about an individual. It was imperative to show professional courtesy, and that was what going to Larry Wright’s retirement dinner had been all about and Juliet damn well knew that.
She was right, of course, that the other surgeon was a self-important, unctuous little toad but, notwithstanding, he had a list of patients who needed a new cardiac surgeon, and Ken wanted a slice of that list. Some of Wright’s patients were well-known talking heads, authors, playwrights and TV personalities whom he wouldn’t mind having on his client list. Ken had several such patients himself, but a few more wouldn’t do him any harm. He’d have to think about retiring in the next few years; the more dosh he made now the better. And his wife should know that. How did she expect him to keep up their expensive lifestyle? The two big cars? The villa in Spain, which cost a bloody mint. He’d paid out a fortune in Spanish taxes the previous week. And what about Gina? She didn’t come cheap either. Did his wife not know how lucky she was? Did she not stop to think that he might like to retire? And then he wouldn’t have to lick the arses of the likes of Larry Wright and the rest of them.
Sometimes he envied the deservedly well thought of and renowned retired heart surgeon Maurice Neligan, whose column he never missed in the Irish Times. How liberating it must be to write what he truly felt about the medical world and the health services, without constraint, now that he was no longer practising. Ken certainly agreed with him about the current health minister and the disaster that was the HSE. Far too many chiefs and not enough Indians. It was a disgrace.
Ken frowned in the dark, turning and twisting. That particular minister should have resigned long ago. She kept insisting that she wanted to sort out the health services, but it was clear she wasn’t capable of it, and it wasn’t about what she wanted but about what the department needed. But if you put your head up too high above the parapet you suffered for it. He had to play the game, incompetent minister or no.
Women – they were the bane of his life. Wanting . . . needing . . . making demands. Juliet’s silly little art exhibition was not high on his list of priorities, but he knew well why she was mad with him. He hadn’t supported her when she’d asked him. In fairness, she was always at his side when he needed her, attending numerous functions and dinner parties and always immaculately groomed and elegant. She could carry herself anywhere.
He wasn’t used to feeling guilty, and he didn’t like it one little bit. What a damn shame she had had to give up playing tennis. That had kept her more than occupied and tired her out after her matches, so he hadn’t had to give her too much attention, which had suited him down to the ground. He could snooze in his chair in peace with a brandy by his side after a hard day at work, while she was off whacking a ball around the tennis court and yip-yapping with the other privileged wives who played with her. Juliet had a very comfortable lifestyle, thanks to his hard work. But, in her behaviour tonight, there wasn’t any recognition of this fact, or any gratitude, he thought, working himself up into a fine state of self-pity.
He wasn’t used to the shrew who had verbally attacked him, and he hoped mightily that she’d get over her strop sooner rather than later so that things could go back to normal and he could sleep in his own bloody bed.
Aimee sat at her laptop writing her letter of resignation to Ian, her boss. But she didn’t want to hand it in until after she’d had the termination. She really needed to make the arrangements, and she was dreading it. But it had to be done before she took up her new position. Roger and Myles would hardly want to employ a pregnant woman. Most employers dreaded the words ‘pregnancy’ and ‘maternity leave’, and she could perfectly understand their position. She’d hired a PA once who hadn’t told her she was pregnant, and Aimee had wanted to slap her when she’d finally spilt the beans and applied for her paid maternity leave. Aimee had then had to endure a temp, who was hopeless, until the other girl came back and, after that, things went rapidly downhill, as she took off at the drop of a hat when the crèche rang or when the child had a temperature or whatever. It had been totally unsatisfactory, and Aimee had been more than relieved when the girl had left.
If she kept this child, she’d have the same sort of problems that her ex-PA had had to contend with, and she just couldn’t face it. Aimee closed her laptop and switched off the two big lamps in the dining room where she’d been working. She felt sick to her stomach, and she didn’t know if this was a symptom of her pregnancy, or stress and tension. She caught a glance of her reflection in the big bevelled mirror as she walked past it on her way to her bedroom. She looked haunted, she decided gloomily, seeing the reflection of two shadowed eyes, deepened by the dark circles under them, staring back at her. And she felt haunted. Haunted by the speck of a child inside her who lay secure in her womb unaware of what was about to befall it.
She supposed it was a guilt she would carry all her life, knowing that she’d terminated her own child’s life, but she could live with it, she’d have to. Whatever route she went, there would be consequences she didn’t want. This was no win-win situation; this was a complete and utter catastrophe in her life. Decisions had to be made, unpalatable as they were. If guilt was to be a new companion, so be it, she decided grimly, switching off the hall light and walking down to her bedroom.
Barry was asleep, snoring his head off, arm flung across her pillow. Haven’t you the life, Aimee thought bitterly, went into the bathroom and was quietly sick.