Be Careful What You Wish For

He had the wrong hands. Murderer’s thumbs, flat at the ends. He had the wrong hands and she could not forgive him that fact.

She looked at them every opportunity she could. Big, meaty chunks with short fat fingers and thumbs that looked as though they’d been caught in a vice for days.

She longed for elegance, pined for grace, yearned for fingers long and slender and gentle.

His hands had none of those qualities.

It was the only thing about him that was wrong. Unforgivably so, she meant. There were other things, but they were all things she could find it within herself to gloss over, to forget, to let go of. Not his hands, though. It wasn’t even as though they were craftsman’s hands. Not sturdy and manly and full of strength. Not possessed of a beauty of their own. They were just big. And wrong. Even a boxer’s hands could be said to be prettier than his.

She did not know what to do about it. When he touched her, she tried to think of a different pair of hands, with more elegant fingers, and less brutal thumbs. And then she felt disloyal. It wasn’t his hands that she loved him for. It was the other things about him that she loved. His wit, his eyes, his smile, the things he came out with that both infuriated and delighted her. But somehow it was always his hands that she thought about.

The more she tried not to, the harder it became to stop. The more she pretended that it did not matter, the more often she thought about them. Such big hands. Such big thumbs.

She would be talking to him, about the most inconsequential thing, or about the most important thing. They would be having a conversation. Then suddenly she would think about them. Or he would make a gesture that brought them into view. From that point on she would be trying to see them again, thinking about them. His big meaty hands with the murderer’s thumbs.

You’ve heard the phrase “a thumbnail sketch”? You could fit Constable’s painting of the haywain onto one of his thumbnails.

She berated herself daily, hourly, minute by minute by second by tiny increments of time for thoughts like that one. Was she really so shallow? Really such a body fascist? It would appear that she was.

There were times when she wanted to cut his hands off. She really thought that looking at his severed wrists would be preferable to seeing those hands every day.

She wondered about whether it was possible to pay some unscrupulous surgeon to carry out a hand transplant. Maybe, if he had a hand transplant, his own hands would come back, and those murderer’s thumbs would press into her throat and choke the life out of her. Like in The Beast With Five Fingers. Or maybe, if the surgeon was unscrupulous enough, he would attach those hands to the arms of some injured innocent, and the hands would track her down that way.

She watched too many bad horror films.

Those hands. And those thumbs. She wondered why. She played with the bread knife for a moment, then put it down and picked up the plate with her sandwich on it. She took it over to the table and opened up the paper. She began to read. All the horror in the world, and she wanted to cut off his hands with a bread knife.

She was glad that the children hadn’t inherited his hands. Mainly because they were girls, but also because she didn’t know how she would have coped with three pairs of murderer’s thumbs to avoid looking at. But the girls’ hands were normal. It was just his that weren’t.

The phone rang, and she put down her half-eaten sandwich. She walked through to the hall and answered the phone.

“Mrs Main?” said the voice on the line.

“Yes,” she said.

“It’s the foreman at the factory. I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident. Your husband was cleaning one of the big machines, and the safety switch wasn’t properly engaged. I’m afraid his arm got caught in the mechanism and he’s lost one of his hands at the wrist.”

“Goodness,” she said. “Which hand?”

There was silence for a moment as the foreman tried to think of a response.

“I’m not sure, Mrs Main,” he said, “but he’s been taken to the Infirmary. They’re going to try to reattach it.”

“Goodness,” she said again. “Technology’s marvellous, isn’t it? Thanks for letting me know.”

She hung up, and returned to her sandwich and the paper.

Before she resumed reading, she looked out of the window at the sunlit garden and the birds flitting from branch to branch of next door’s tree.

She must be more careful in future. More careful of what she wished for.

© J R Hargreaves 2006