Justine

Tony Rogers moved away from the bathroom door where he had been watching his wife lying in the bath. He was a numb man. Standing there, he was suddenly aware that his youth had gone. He had the idea that he had wasted it.

Tony thought of himself as largely amoral. ‘I am largely amoral,’ he told himself at least once every day. The only real moral standard he had ever had was the truth. And here he was, laughably trapped in a marriage based on deceit. Trapped by his indecision.

He hated his wife. She lay there in the bath, half-submerged, and he knew that he could push her under. His hand over her face. His hand that would cover her face, pushing her under, holding her under, keeping her under as she struggled and jerked beneath the surface. He sighed.

His wife, who was older than him, had no qualms about lying. She was entirely amoral; a woman whose standards and ideals had eroded long ago. When he had come along, into her life, she had known him as the last exit from her spinsterhood. She was prepared to say anything, do anything, to get her own way.

Nine months after a drunken fumble at his barren bachelor flat; three months after the hasty registry office job, she produced a son and heir. Alcohol and an uncharacteristic willingness on his part to believe that she didn’t want children, that she’d had her tubes tied, was all that it took.

Immediately she had given birth to it, she laid total claim to the child, and he had just looked on and let it happen. Mugged by circumstance, there was nothing in him that was interested in fighting.

He had now spent five years as a second class citizen in his own life. Five years of feeling practically invisible, except for when friends came round, or they went out for dinner. Then he became an indulgence, someone his wife referred to in the third person, while looking directly at him. Someone about whom his wife made vaguely lewd remarks.

Four months ago, four months before this morning that saw him standing outside the bathroom wishing his wife were dead, Tony Rogers had met another woman.

She had been taking photographs of the Art Gallery in the city centre. He had been standing on the corner of the street opposite, watching as she leaned over her camera in her jeans and t-shirt, as she moved towards the building to take light reading after light reading, as she looked through the view-finder and clicked frame after frame, oblivious to everything around her, to the people moving in and out of shot, and especially to him. He had never seen such concentration. It was nothing he had ever felt. About anything. He had felt old and grey in his almost-forty skin just watching her.

She was golden. Everything about her was. Her skin was the colour of acacia blossom honey. He hadn't even known that he knew what acacia blossom honey looked like until he saw her skin. He must have stared at it once in the supermarket. Her hair was golden, short and tousled by the passage of her hand being run through it every so often. He had watched her for a while, then crossed the street to stand beside her. She had looked up from the camera briefly and smiled at him. Her eyes were a golden tawny brown. He smiled back. It was like smiling at the sun. Her skin seemed to shimmer in the dull Manchester light. He had stood there, smiling and looking at her, as she carried on taking pictures.

He had looked at the building she was capturing on film. It had recently been cleaned. For months it had been covered in scaffolding and a curious sort of tarpaulin sheeting that looked like brown paper. He remembered that. Tony rarely noticed things, but he remembered the tarpaulin that looked like brown paper.

A voice had cut through his reverie. The woman was speaking to him, asking him the time. He had looked at his watch and seen that it was 1.30, and he should have been back in the office half an hour ago. He had looked at her, eyes slightly panicked and pleading. She was looking at him blandly.

"Oh, sorry,” he had said. “Yes. It's 1.30."

"Thanks," came the reply.

She had already turned away from him, begun to pack her things away. His palms had been damp, clenched inside his overcoat pockets. She had folded the tripod and swung her camera bag over her shoulder and set off up the street to the centre of town. She was so tall, so young and beautiful, and Tony was sweating at the sight of her.

He had returned to the office and spent the afternoon at his desk, daydreaming about the girl, wondering when he would see her again. He had known instinctively that it was a when and not an if. He would make it a when.

That night he had made love to his wife as usual, drunkenly. Drunk was the only way he could bear to touch her these days. This night, though, had added intensity. He was imagining a young golden body beneath him, wondering if she was golden all over. He had entered his wife as though he could split her in two, as if he could release the golden girl and make her appear in his bed in place of his wife.

Tony could hear that his wife was out of the bath now, stooped over the sink, brushing her teeth. He heard her dry retch. She had probably pushed the toothbrush as far back as she could to clean her back teeth. Too far. He heard her spit out, and imagined the pink-swirled foam landing in the basin.

Tony sat on the bed and listened to her, imagining her forty-something naked body, beginning to sag and wrinkle. He looked down at his own almost-forty body. He was developing a paunch. He sucked it in. His chest expanded. He could hardly breathe. He released it again. His wife came into the bedroom and saw what he was doing. She glared at him, a mixture of pity and hatred.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Nothing." He sounded sulky, even to himself. Like a misbehaving teenager who had been caught doing something he shouldn’t by his mum.

He continued to stare at his stomach, sucking it in and letting it out, trying to ignore his wife as she moved around the room, getting dressed.

"You should work out if you want to get rid of that," she told him.

"I don't need to work out."

He sucked his stomach in again and stood up, holding it in.

"See?"

His wife was bending over in front of the mirror, pulling her tights up. He looked at the reflection of her body in the mirror. In a strange way it looked a little like Mr Topsy Turvy, or the Inspector from the Pink Panther cartoon. Her bra-less breasts hung down like his nose and the crease between the swell of her belly and her spare tyre was like a lop-sided smile. She straightened up and stuffed her breasts into a bra. Tony turned away.

He had returned to the Art Gallery every lunchtime for a week before he had seen the golden girl again. She had been going up the steps, wearing black jeans and t-shirt, her feet encased in sandals. Her toe-nails had flashed - bronze or orange, he couldn’t tell. He only knew that he wanted to lick them. He had followed her into the Art Gallery and through the rooms, breathing in her perfumed wake. She had smelled of something sweet and heavy. Her t-shirt held the lines of her body.

"Are you following me?"

He had jumped at the sound of her voice. "I'm sorry?"

She was standing in front of him, hip cocked, arms folded, giving a good impression of someone in control. Tony had seen the faint tremble to her top lip, though.

"I said, are you following me?"

He had swallowed, staring into her eyes. "Yes," he had said, the truth being all he could think of.

"Oh."

He had held out his hand towards her. "I'm Tony."

She had taken his hand and shaken it. "Hello," she said, but she had not offered her own name.

He had looked down at her feet. "Orange," he said.

She had looked down too, then back up at him.

"What?" Sharpness to her tone; impatience.

He had looked into her eyes again. "They're orange,” he’d said. “Your toenails. I wondered if they were bronze."

She had looked back at him, impassive. She had no need to talk. But eventually, after a pause, "I'm going now," she said, and moved off through an adjoining gallery.

Tony had stood alone in the empty room for a few minutes, imagining himself as Basil Fawlty, imagining himself bouncing on his haunches in frustration and embarrassment. Then he had returned to his office and spent the afternoon replaying the scene a hundred times, sure that he had blown it.

He had eventually encountered her a third time at the Art Gallery, in front of Ford Maddox Brown’s Work, and she had taken pity on him then. She was sitting cross-legged and bare-foot on the blonde-wood bench opposite the painting, flicking through a magazine.

"We must stop meeting like this," he had said to her, grinning like a fool.

She had looked up at him impassively. He wished it were limpidly, but he knew that it wasn't.

"Must we?" she had said, before she rolled her eyes away from him again, and back down to the magazine.

"Can I take you somewhere for a drink?" he had asked.

"I dunno," she had replied, continuing to flick through the magazine. He had stood and watched her until she reached the end. Then she had flicked through it again from back to front. It had taken an agonizing age. Her hair was curlier than he had remembered. He wanted to reach out a hand and touch it. She smelled of something sweet and heavy still; sweet and heavy and dripping.

"Only coffee. I'm not trying to pick you up," he had said.

She had gazed at him, almost wistful. He wondered if she was short-sighted.

"Aren't you?" she asked him, and her voice had been full of laziness and ennui.

"No. I just... I... Well, yes I am."

"I see." She had gone back to flicking, the pages rustling against each other, regulated by the flick of her thumb.

There was a pause in the conversation, and she had continued to flick through the magazine, not looking at the pages but mesmerised by the action.

"So can I?" he had asked, eventually, the silence beginning to get to him.

She had put the magazine into her bag, which was slung across her body, and had pushed her feet into the shoes that he hadn't noticed on the floor before her. She had stood up and faced him.

"I'm not going to sleep with you," she had stated simply. "Just so you know."

"Okay," he’d said. “Okay.”

He had followed her meekly out of the Gallery.

She had taken him to a small café a short walk away, across the park. He had walked alongside her, imagining envious glances from the men they passed. He was relieved that they were going for a drink together. He had given himself the afternoon off work. He hadn't thought about what he would do if she had said no. He had a disturbing thought that he might simply have followed her.

She obviously knew the staff in the café, which was cluttered and basic. She ordered two coffees at the counter and he paid. He had felt a little bit like her uncle. He wondered if he looked like a dirty old man to the others in the café.

She had sat at one of the square wooden tables. He had carried the coffees over and sat down opposite her.

He hadn’t known what to say to her, now they were there. Now that he had her alone. He couldn't believe that he was sitting there opposite her. He was aware that he was smirking. She was largely ignoring him, staring over his right shoulder into the middle distance, elbows on the table, both hands around the coffee cup, her lips resting lightly on the rim.

"I don't know your name," he had blurted.

The café had seemed too quiet in that moment, when the words exploded from him. Why was no-one else talking? She had moved her eyes, nothing else, and looked at him.

"Justine," she had said over the top of her cup of coffee. She had dipped her gaze as she blew over the surface of the coffee and took a sip. Her elbows stayed on the table. Only her wrists moved.

He had been silent for a moment, racking his brains for something else to say.

"What do you do, Justine?" was all that he could come up with.

"I work in the bookshop on Deansgate," she had said.

Tony had only had a vague idea where the bookshop was. He had the feeling that it was a huge place. He had never been in. He had given up reading books in his twenties. They didn't seem to add anything to his life. He had reasoned then that, if he was going to waste time on reading, he could just as easily waste it on doing something equally as empty and devoid of meaning. He had decided to become a workaholic, in his own small way, working late and eating TV dinners, spending his weekends in the office. He had moved firms more than a few times. It was another pastime of his. Then he had made his last job move and met his then future wife, who was working in the same open-plan office. He hadn't stood a chance. He had thought that he was in control of the situation. That it was all just a bit of fun. Office sleaze. How wrong could he have been?

He stopped speaking just as he realised that he had been speaking, telling Justine about his life. She had looked bored.

"Don't you have to be getting back to work?" she had said, reaching across the table and taking hold of his wrist, twisting it so that she could see his watch. "It's gone 2 o'clock."

"I've got the afternoon off,” he had said. “You?"

The last word he had said too brightly. It had grated on his ears as it fell from his mouth.

She had held his wrist a whisper longer than she needed to. Her fingers felt firm and cool. When she let go of his wrist, he could still feel the ghost of her touch. He had wished he could feel it always.

She hadn’t replied, but merely drank her coffee.

The fourth time Tony had seen Justine had been in the bookshop. He had wandered along Deansgate one Saturday until he found it. It stretched for almost an entire block opposite Kendal’s, and yet he had never paid that much attention to it. Just another black-fronted, faceless shop.

Justine was on duty at one of the sales points. She had been laughing. Her smile animated her face and inhabited her eyes. She was talking to another member of staff.

Tony had given himself the pretext of buying a book for his wife as he strode along Deansgate looking for the shop. They were going on holiday. Well, a long weekend to the north of France. He was planning to bring back as many bottles of pastis as he legally could. His wife, no doubt, would return laden with rustic wicker baskets and pieces of lace work. Authentic local produce churned out for the tourists. The pastis would be his reward.

He had positioned himself, unobtrusively he hoped, in the fiction section of the shop and pretended to browse. He browsed only those shelves which allowed him to keep Justine's sales point in view.

She had caught sight of him casting sidelong glances in her direction. Quickly he had pulled a book from the shelf and opened it. He had moved his eyes blankly over the words.

"Hello."

At the sound of her voice, he had looked up from the book in fake surprise.

"Oh hello! Justine!" His voice had been too loud and people had turned to look. "Hi! I was just trying to choose a book for my wife!"

Justine had taken the book from him.

"Has she read much Primo Levi?" she had asked, looking at the front of the book. "Is this the kind of thing she goes for?"

She had looked at him blandly. He had smiled sheepishly in response.

"Actually,” he had said, “I'm not sure what she reads. We're going away for a few days and I thought I might surprise her with a book to read on the beach."

"Well, Primo Levi would be an interesting choice for beach reading.” Justine had moved along the shelves. “Have you thought of something along the lines of Joanna Trollope or Mary Wesley? Maeve Binchy perhaps?"

Tony had begun to feel as though he had come shopping for underwear at Christmas.

"What would you recommend?"

Justine had replaced the book on the shelf. Her golden arm brushed past him. Something sweet again. Heavy and dripping. She had walked to a different section of shelving.

"What sort of person is your wife?" she had asked.

A bitch, he had thought. A cow. I hate her. I don't want to buy her a book. I want to take you to bed.

"Oh, fairly normal, really," he had replied.

"A lot of women like Joanna Trollope. And Sue Limb. They're fairly low-risk, present-wise I'd say. Or you could try Isabel Allende." She had pulled a book from the shelf she had walked him over to and handed it to him. He read the title. Eva Luna. The cover had a young Latin American woman on it with a flower in her hair.

"That looks good,” he had said, eager to get this over with. “I'll take it."

"Okay. Anything for you?" She had taken the book from him and was looking at him.

"No. I don't read," he had said.

"I see." She had led him over to the sales point by now, and was standing behind the counter, by the till. "£6.99, then, please."

He had taken out his wallet. "Can I see you again?" he had asked, giving her a £10 note. She took the note from him and gave him his change and the book in a bag.

"The receipt's in the bag," was all she said.

All through the weekend in France, Tony could not stop thinking about Justine. He had presented his wife with the book on the ferry.

"Eva Luna?" she had said. "Why did you buy me this?"

"The assistant in the shop recommended it."

His wife had looked at him suspiciously. "Yes, but why did you buy me a book, Tony? We're supposed to be spending time together as a family. Not reading books. Besides, I've brought plenty of magazines, if I do decide I want to read."

"So you don't want it then?" He had been tempted to reach out and take the book back from where it was hanging limply from his wife's hand.

She had lifted it up and looked at the cover again. "Well, I suppose I might read it one day. If I have time." She had dropped it into her bag. "What time do we get into Calais?"

Tony had looked at his watch. "In about half an hour, I think."

"Just time to have a look at the tax free shopping, then." His wife had taken hold of the boy's hand and walked off to the onboard shop. Tony had watched the bag that held the book that Justine had sold to him as it bounced against his wife's hip and he had wished he were a million miles away from this place. He went up onto the deck and stared over the rail at the murky English Channel.

Back at work four days later, Tony had tried to remember how he had survived the weekend. His head was still pounding from the amount of pastis he had drunk. His eyes refused to focus as he gazed at the flickering computer screen in front of him. What was he doing with his life? Why was he still with that hag of a woman? It wasn't even as though he was there for the child's sake. The child was already developing the long-suffering sighs and looks of pity that Tony's wife used. He probably wouldn't even notice if Tony walked out of his life for good. The only person who would suffer would be Tony himself, as he had no doubt that his lovely wife would take him for everything she possibly could. His life was so pointless as to be farcical. Tony had looked up at the clock on the wall of his office. Lunchtime. He knew instantly where he was going.

He had left the office and made his way to the café, hoping that Justine would be in there. He was hurrying slightly and feeling distinctly out of breath. He needed to do something about his level of fitness, he told himself as he had pushed open the door of the café and tried to regain his breath. He had looked round for Justine and his heart had sunk as he realised that she was not there. He thought about simply leaving again and returning to the office, but the person behind the counter had seen him and smiled. He had to go in and order something, then.

He sat at the smallest table in the corner, by the toilet, and ordered a sandwich and some coffee. He didn't even have a newspaper with him to read. He had stared at the Formica table top as he munched his way through the sandwich. He half wished he believed in a god or karma or something so that he could explain the way he was feeling. It was all so unfair, he thought. So bloody, bloody unfair. All he had wanted was to see Justine and feel better about his life for 40 minutes. And now she wasn't here and he didn't even have a stupid booming voice telling him that it served him right. He had finished his coffee and got up to go. He paid at the counter and opened the door to leave. It had started to rain while he was engrossed in the table top and he had pulled up the collar of his jacket before trudging through the city centre back to his office.

He had been soaked through by the time he reached his building. He’d had to turn up the heater by his desk to dry off. He worked late into the evening, and was still there at 7.30 when his boss had called into the general office on his way home.

"Tony! Still here? Catching up after the weekend?"

Tony had mumbled something non-committal, knowing that Derek never listened anyway.

"Listen, Tone,” Derek had said, “there's a conference in Dublin in a couple of weeks. We really need to send someone along to give a presentation at one of the seminars and nobody else is available.”

The unasked question, the unspoken order, had hung in the air.

"When is it, Derek?" He had reached for his diary, knowing that the date didn’t matter. He wasn’t being asked if he could go.

"I'll get the dates to you tomorrow,” his boss had said. “You're happy to do it, then?"

"Yes, that's fine, Derek. Not a problem."

"Great. See you tomorrow."

His boss had disappeared home, and Tony had put his diary back into his desk drawer before closing down his computer. It was years since he'd been to Dublin.

He had drunk a bottle of red wine with his meal when he got home. He had eaten at the dining table on his own. How many times did you have to do a thing before it became a habit? He couldn't remember. Perhaps eating on his own was about to become his habit. His wife was in the living room watching some dreadful home improvement programme. Tony remembered his flat when he had first moved to the city. It had had very few soft furnishings. He felt quite nostalgic, even though he knew that it had been depressingly miserable living there. He sighed and pushed another forkful of green beans into his mouth.

The next morning at work, Derek had come into his office.

"Tony,” he’d said, “this conference I mentioned last night. It's in three weeks time, on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. You might as well attend the whole thing, come back Saturday. Want to take the wife?"

Tony was flicking through the pages of his diary to find Wednesday in three weeks time. Derek’s question had stopped him in his tracks.

"My wife?" he had asked.

"Yes, why not. As a sort of thanks for stepping in. She could do a bit of shopping while you're at the conference. I know Fiona would have loved it if I'd been able to do the thing this year."

Tony's mind had gone into overdrive. The half formed plan he barely knew was in his mind sprang fully to life. If anyone went to Ireland with him, it wouldn’t be his wife.

"That's very kind, Derek,” he’d said. “I'll check with her tonight of course, but I can't see her turning a chance like that down. Thanks a lot."

"I'll get Lynda to sort out the flights and the room bookings, then."

He had tried to ring Justine that day, to ask her over the phone. She had been too busy to speak to him. The bright perky voice at the other end of the line had told him to try ringing again the next day.

It was the same story on that day, as well. Too busy to speak. And now here he was at Saturday, waiting for his wife to take the child out to buy him some new shoes. He hadn’t been invited on this shopping excursion. Not that he wanted to go anyway. He wanted them to be gone, so that he could go into town. So that he could ask Justine to her face.

Tony was on needles and pins, waiting for them to leave, and his wife hadn’t been able to resist some barbed comment about his fidgeting. When they did finally go, he gave them half an hour, to be sure that they wouldn’t turn back for some forgotten piece of nonsense the boy couldn’t live without. Then he caught the tram into town.

He walked the long stretch of Deansgate from the G-MEX to the bookstore, nervously thinking of the ways he could ask her.

As he entered the store, he saw Justine catch sight of him. She blanched, and hurried away from where she was shelving books. She dropped the pile she was holding onto one of the central displays. The books just missed the edge, and scattered around the feet of a middle aged woman.

Before he could follow Justine across the shop, the duty manager had him in an arm lock. He was tall, the duty manager. Tony had seen him before, watching him as he had talked to Justine. He was the type who dressed all in black, lean and toned under his crisp black shirt. Tony could feel how toned right now, through the strength of the arm lock.

He tried calling to Justine, but she was standing across the store from him, with a group of colleagues. They were all looking at him, horror and disbelief all over their faces. Justine looked frightened.

“Justine!” he shouted. “Justine! I need to ask you something!”

She turned away then, and disappeared somewhere. Out of sight. Perhaps into a back room. He didn’t know. He was too busy being manhandled out of the store by the duty manager, who deposited him on the street.

“Justine!” he shouted again, but the door to the shop had closed behind them and his shout filled only the air around him in the street.

People stopped to look. Tony tried to unruffle himself, to straighten his coat, his hair. He walked back towards the store entrance.

The duty manager barred his way.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, with a sarcastic stress on the word sir. “You are no longer permitted to enter these premises.”

“What?” said Tony. “Why?”

“I think you know why, sir,” the duty manager replied. “If you are seen in here again, or if you try to contact Ms Phelps again, we will involve the police. Harassment is a serious matter.”

Tony stared at him. He was young. Arrogant. He was probably fucking Justine. That was probably what this was about.

“Are you fucking her?” he asked him.

The duty manager looked at him. “Sir,” he said. “I suggest that you go home, or continue your shopping elsewhere today. If you do not move away from these premises, I will have no option but to call the police.”

Tony Rogers looked at him for a moment, trying to work out whether he could take him, whether it was worth the effort, then he slowly walked away from the store, shaking his head sorrowfully as he walked back towards the tram.

It was a motion echoed by the shake of the duty manager’s head as he watched him go.

“As if,” he said. “As fucking if.”

© J R Hargreaves June 2006