Tonight

He is in the bathroom. She is in the kitchen, at the sink. He is in the bathroom and this can mean only one thing. There is no way out of tonight.

She stands at the sink, beneath the kitchen’s fluorescent light that gives off a low-level hum, an electrical white-noise hum. She stands still, hands plunged into red hot water, turning puce with the heat, but she is frozen, staring out into the dim twilit garden.

A light goes on in one of the terraced houses across the backs from where her house stands. Jim & Annie’s house. The light seems out of place, somehow, like the light in a Magritte painting seen once in a gallery far away from this kitchen, this suspended animation. Jim is moving around in the kitchen across from her. A new light goes on upstairs and her head moves instinctively to find its source: Annie in the bedroom. She stands there in her kitchen, beneath the fluorescent light, motionless, illuminated.

He is in the bathroom. She knows what he is doing. She doesn’t need a light to go on, doesn’t need to see.

She looks down at her hands, red and burning in the water, but she can’t summon the energy to move them. She simply stares at them.

Annie leaves the bedroom in darkness and there is a brief moment when she cannot be seen. Then she reappears as if by some conjuring trick, in the kitchen with Jim.

Jim and Annie. 45 years married. She stares across at them, thinking of the number. A 4 and a 5, side by side.

“She’s just standing at the sink, Annie. Do you suppose she’s alright?” Jim is trying not to watch Jane framed in brilliant light at her kitchen window. He has been worrying about her for weeks now. Been watching her slowly diminish.

Here she is, suspended in time, in her kitchen, 5 years in, waiting for the inevitable. She hears him in the bathroom overhead, the heavy tread of his footstep across the floorboards, the creak of the loose board by the door.

Her mouth is dry and tastes of metal. She wants to spit that taste out, that taste of dry blood and fear. She takes one hand from the soapy water and slowly pulls down the blind at the kitchen window.

“She’s pulling the blind, Annie. There’s something not right in that house, you know, love.” Jim moves from where he hopes he has been observing Jane unobserved and crosses to the window, looking out across the yard to the house where the kitchen is obscured by a pale cream blind. Annie, behind him, opens and closes cupboard doors, going through the evening rituals she has been performing for almost 45 years of marriage. She lets Jim’s mutterings wash over her. He’s always fretting about something and nothing. Jim leans against the sink unit, his arms braced, supporting his upper body’s weight. He leans and peers out across to the other house, unknowingly mirroring the posture of a young woman on the other side of a blind awaiting the inevitable.

She is standing now, her hands out of the water and positioned on the sink unit, either side of the sink, her arms braced and taking the weight of her upper body. Her head is bowed, her eyes are closed.

He is in the bedroom now, looking for something.

She has been in this kitchen forever, it seems. She doesn’t remember arriving there, or ever having left. She only remembers this interminable waiting.

He possesses her now, has branded her with the rose-print tattoo from his too-strong grip. It grasps her arm and holds her there, permanently bound.

She straightens up and continues with the washing up, losing herself in the mindless monotony of lifting some item, a glass, a plate, from the suds, and rubbing at it with the ineffectual brush. She places a glass onto the drainer, not looking at what she is doing, judging things by feel, and the glass misses and falls to the floor.

Jim sighs and pushes back from the sink unit, standing upright, shaking his head. The drawn blind across the way worries him, he doesn’t know why. The blank way she seemed to pull it down, he thinks. Not as though she had thought “Oh, the blind needs drawing.” Annie is still fidgeting in cupboards behind him. He turns and watches her. “Shall we watch the news a bit, love?” he asks her bent back.

She has been living this ageless waiting moment every Friday for the last 18 months. A sudden change in the way the wind was blowing. Abuse starting with his own body and spreading indirectly to hers. Abuse starting in the bathroom, sneaky and insidious. Abuse culminating in the bedroom, having crossed the kitchen floor in red rage and white fury. Abuse masked by words of love and desire, so that she no longer knows what love means.

Her hand closes round another item in the soapy water. She stands there holding it, her head facing the window as though she is looking at something, but her eyes are closed.

He is taking too long to come down the stairs. He is taking too long. The agony and the ecstasy of waiting becomes almost more than she can bear. But she knows now that she can bear anything, and it is only a matter of time. Tonight is as inevitable as every other night like it. No more, no less. There is nothing special about tonight.

Her hand is still gripping the thing it has found beneath the suds floating on the hot soapy water. Her hand is making a bid for independence.

Jim sits in his armchair, Annie in hers, one slightly to the left of the tv, the other slightly to the right. Annie takes up her knitting. Jim holds the tv remote in his left hand and stares at the screen. He is not watching. He is thinking. Annie is knitting, not watching either, but her eyes make no pretence of it. Jim has a bad feeling in his stomach, but he doesn’t know how to express it, so he ignores it as best he can.

She washes the knife she has been holding for an age now. She finally lifts it from the water and passes the brush over its blade, rubbing the worn nylon bristles over the flat surface of the blade, first one side, then the other. Her hand has been subdued and now places the knife onto the draining board, flat and reflecting dully on its side, one edge shining keenly beneath the fluorescent light.

Her hand dips in and out of the water now, selecting items at random, without feeling or thought, working through the things used during the day that now need to be cleaned. Cleansed.

She is standing there at the sink, head slightly bowed, the light catching the different shades of brown in her hair, when he comes to stand in the kitchen doorway.

She carries on with her task, giving no sign that she is aware of his presence. She wills her body not to become rigid, compels it to remain in as natural a pose as possible.

She is thinking of autumn 5 years ago. She is drowning out the clamour of now with memories of the past. She hears him walk across the kitchen towards her.

Autumn 5 years ago is in her head. Playing like a film she might watch. She contemplates it from the inside of her mind, lets it play on the screen that she can pull down just behind the focus of her eyes.

Jim has dozed off in front of the tv. Annie knits on, trying not to mind that Jim’s hand is clenched strongly around the tv remote, stopping her from changing the channel. Annie knits on and tries not to think about what might be going on in the house across the backs from theirs. She is knitting a cardigan for their Julie’s littlest. She thinks what a shame it is that there are no children in that house across the backs, then shakes her head. She knows that whatever is wrong in that house won’t be solved by children being there. Jim snores, rumbling like a poorly tuned engine in the distance. Annie clicks her tongue in time with the click of her needles

He rubs the back of his hand underneath his nose, grinning and swagger-swaying before her. She is facing him now, her back to the blinded window. He strokes the back of that same hand against her cheek, grinning the while. His hand falls palm down against her shoulder, moves across, his thumb finding the notch below her throat, his index finger her collar bone. He pushes the palm of his hand against her sternum. She feels her heartbeat too high in her chest, feels her lungs constrict. He maintains the pressure as he pulls his hand down against the bone, down between her breasts, his hand cupping, then passing down over her belly and finally catching his fingers in the belt loop of her jeans, pulling her towards him.

His mouth finds hers, she tilts her head to one side, closing her eyes, autumn 5 years ago playing in her head. She tries not to notice the residue clinging to his nostrils. Her lips move with his, he bites gently on her lower lip. Gently then harder, and then harder still and the taste of metal returns.

Autumn 5 years ago, and a place where the kiss was gentle and whispered a promise.

He is tugging at her clothes now, and she does not resist him. She knows better than to say no. Knows where no will get her. She leans back into the sink unit, lets her hands rest against its surface, lets her fingers remind her that she placed a knife on the draining board moments earlier. Lets her fingers move away from that temptation.

He has lifted her t-shirt so that his hands are touching her flesh. Autumn 5 years ago and the time when his feverish hands against her skin were an intensity she almost could not bear. He is unfastening her jeans and she is trying not to tell him no with every fibre of her being. He tugs and pulls, and fumbles then with his own fly and she thinks she might get off lightly tonight if she can just stay liquid enough to seep around his edges.

And there, the searing roughness, heat and white light in her head chasing autumn 5 years ago away and she begs him no, please god no. But he is on a roll now and she knows she has been a fool to implore.

His hand finds her hair, pulls her head back so that she stares up into the fluorescent light and she doesn’t know if it is the light that is blinding her or the pain.

Annie snoozes over her knitting, Jim sleeps on in his armchair, the tv’s blue-ish light flickering over them both.

He grunts. Her head is still forced backwards by his hand pulling on her hair. Her eyes are closed now. Her throat is snapped too far back for her to make a sound. Her hand finds the knife again somehow and closes around it. He is never going to stop tonight. He lets go of her hair and her head slumps forward. She tries to swallow.

Annie snorts and wakes herself up. She tuts to herself and looks at Jim deep asleep across from her. She packs up her knitting then stiffly gets up from her own chair. She switches the tv off and Jim stirs slightly, muttering, then settles back into sleep. Annie goes upstairs for a blanket, brings it back and tucks it around her husband. 45 years. She looks at him and smiles, shaking her head.

He is putting himself away. She is sticky, damp silvering her inner thigh.

There will be more later. For now he has finished. But there is always more later.

She fastens her jeans and pulls her clothes straight. She opens cupboard doors and drawers, drying and putting away the things she has washed up. Her mind is blank.

He is in the living room now. The tv is on. He is laughing inappropriately at something. Canned laughter seeps through to the kitchen. Canned laughter so false, rubbing it in, adding the insult to the injury he brought her, downstairs from the bathroom.

She waits a heartbeat or two, then joins him in the living room.

There is no way out of tonight.

© J R Hargreaves 2003