It was the smell of cheap perfume that gave the game away.
Sitting at the breakfast table, Kerry watched her husband eating his toast. In just three bites, half of one slice had disappeared, unnoticed by him. She sat at the table watching him and thought about the other woman’s scent seeping from the folds of his clothes.
She took a bite out of her own toast. She’d buttered it too soon and now it was limp and almost unmanageable. She rolled it, buttered side inwards, to try to firm it up, and thought about how Freud would have a field day with her actions.
She smiled to herself, eating her rolled up toast while the all-pervading cheapness that emanated from her husband moved around her like mist coming in from the sea.
Her husband put down his newspaper and picked up his coffee cup. She stopped playing with her toast and left it for dead on the plate in front of her. The speckled brown of the wholemeal bread looked lonely against the white of the plate. She wondered why she didn’t ask him about it. Why she had no real curiosity about whose perfume it was.
“Are you still okay to drop me at the station this morning?” he asked her. “On your way in to work, I mean?”
Kerry looked at him, puzzled, as though she had forgotten who he was.
“I’m playing squash tonight?” He posed the question as though she was stupid to have forgotten.
“Sorry,” she said, smiling soothing oils over the threatening wave of impatience. “I’d forgotten.”
She finished her tea and went to find her bag. She pulled on her coat and unlocked the front door, waiting for her husband to appear behind her.
She drove him to the station, the journey punctuated by murmured snippets of conversation. Did you…; have you…; I might be late… She dropped him outside, pulling into the bus lane, provoking the blare of a horn and a flash of headlights from a bus making its way to the stop in front of the station.
Avoiding eye contact through the rear view mirror, she pulled away again, holding up a hand to the bus driver behind her by way of apology.
She was going to be late. She was still thinking about that perfume, its vague familiarity, as she drove. Knowing that he would soon be at work, starting his day, presumably with the cheap-smelling tart in attendance, she wondered why she wasn’t more affronted. She didn’t bother to think that it was clichéd of her to automatically ascribe the cheapness of the scent to an office junior, a secretary or assistant. Somehow she knew that he didn’t have it in him to go to a prostitute; that would be too proactive. She had been married to him for long enough to know that seeking out sex was too much effort for him.
She lined up the possible candidates in her mind, and wondered briefly if it could be Denise, his PA. She seemed comforting. She hoped that it was comfort he was seeking, and not some mid-life crisis thing with one of the on-the-ladder work experience girls.
Julia, one of the curators at the house, was getting out of her car as Kerry pulled up beside her.
“Morning!” they said to each other in chorus.
“Busy day ahead?” Julia asked her.
“We’ve got that bunch of live interpretation actors coming in today,” she said. “I’m supposed to show them the facilities. You?”
“I’ve got to condition check the music room this morning,” Julia replied.
Kerry was barely listening. The women reached the staff room without noticing that they had signed in for work and their day had begun. Julia made them both coffees while Kerry pulled bagels from the freezer to defrost for lunch.
She was thinking about the perfume on her husband’s clothes. Julia put a mug of coffee on the work surface beside her.
“There you go,” she said. “Get that down you before your actorly ordeal starts.”
“Thanks, Jules,” she said.
She took the coffee through to her office. She sat at her desk and played her voicemail messages. In the time it took her messages to play, she cleared her inbox of spam. There was nothing urgent, just the usual nonsense.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Kerry said, frowning because nobody at this place knocked before entering a room.
A tall enough man stuck his head around the door.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Paul. Are you Kerry?”
“Yes?” Kerry said, still frowning, her statement-as-question demanding to know who was asking and why.
Paul came fully into the room, holding out his hand to her. Kerry half rose from her seat to shake his hand, still frowning, unsure of who this person was.
“I’m one of the actors,” Paul informed her, seeing the look of confused suspicion on Kerry’s face and smiling. “I’m early, I know, but the woman at the door said you wouldn’t mind if I came straight through.”
“Oh! Right!” Kerry’s face relaxed. She offered the man a seat and asked if he wanted a coffee.
“I’m good, thanks,” he replied, sitting down on the only other chair in the cramped office.
“How many of you are there?” Kerry asked, searching for the sheet of paper that would tell her the answer among the pile of letters and memos on her unkempt desk.
“There are just two of us doing the interpretation. Anna is nearly always late.”
Kerry looked up at him. “Anna?” she said.
“The other actor. She plays my wife in the interpretation.”
Kerry located the memo telling her just that.
“Listen,” Paul said. “To save time, would you mind showing me round now? I can tell Anna where everything is when she gets here. It would save us waiting around until she does.” He smiled. “I’m sure you have more important things to do than hang around waiting for a pair of lovies to get organised.”
“Sure,” said Kerry. “Whatever you want. What did you say your name was again?” She looked down at the memo to try to find it.
“Paul,” he said. “Paul Roper.”
He had stood up and was leaning towards her over the desk, looking at the memo with her. He put his finger on his name.
“There,” he said. “You see?”
He had dark hair and dark blue eyes. He spoke with a slight Scots accent. Kerry smiled at him.
“I’ll show you where you can keep your stuff,” she said.
She walked ahead of him back along the corridor and out into the house. She knew that she looked good today. Her jeans hugged her hips perfectly, and she made certain that she added some extra sway to her walk.
Behind her, Paul smiled. The tiny red head was cute, he told himself. He found himself wondering what she tasted of.
“So what do you do here, Kerry?” he asked.
She turned slightly to look at him and slowed her pace. Paul took the opportunity to draw level with her.
“I’m an education and outreach officer,” she told him.
“Oh right,” he said.
She laughed once. It came out brittle, more brittle than she intended. She thought about her husband and wondered.
“I try to fit the house’s history to the national curriculum,” she explained. “Key Stage Three, mostly.
“Cool,” Paul said, trying to sound like she was the most interesting speaker he had ever heard.
“I’m married,” Kerry said.
Paul didn’t speak for a moment, then “Sorry?” he said.
“In case you feel like you need to flirt with me or anything,” Kerry replied. “You don’t have to pretend that you’re interested.”
“Oh,” Paul said. “Okay.”
Kerry led him into another back of house area.
“You can get changed in here later. Leave your stuff in here, too. I’ve got a spare key for you.”
Paul put his bag down on one of the tables and removed his jacket.
“This is one of the classrooms,” Kerry explained trying not to notice that Paul was well toned underneath his shirt.
“This is great,” Paul told her. “Thanks Kerry.”
“Okay. I’ll take you round the rest of the house now, show you where you’ll be performing. It’s not far from here, so you shouldn’t get too lost.”
Paul’s phone rang in his jacket pocket.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll just get that.”
He checked the display. “It’s Anna,” he said, and answered the call.
“You’re kidding?” he exclaimed. “How long? For god’s sake, An, we’ve got a job on today!” He paused, listening to what the other actor had to say. “Well, just get here as soon as you can, okay?”
“Anna?” Kerry asked when he’d switched his phone off and put it into the back pocket of his jeans.
“She’s banged her car into another car. She’s going to be late. I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You said she would be late anyway.”
“Well, yeah. She will be here in time for the performance, though. Don’t worry about that.”
“That’s not my worry,” Kerry said. “I’m just showing you around.”
Paul smiled, put his hands into his jeans pockets and shrugged his shoulders up towards his ears. “Shall we do the tour, then?” he suggested.
Kerry locked the door behind them and handed the spare key to the actor.
“What time are we on?” Paul asked her as they walked through the house.
Kerry looked at her watch, as though he’d asked her what the time was then. “You’ll be in the study from 11 this morning, and then this afternoon you’ll be in the music room,” she said.
She came to a stand-still. In front of them was a doorway with a red velvet rope across to stop visitors from entering the room. Behind the rope was a gentleman’s study, with a large mahogany desk, bookshelves, a chaise and two armchairs.
“This is the study,” Kerry said.
They stood in silence and looked at it.
“Nice,” Paul said.
Kerry looked up at him.
“Next room,” she told him, deadpan.
“You’re cute, you know?” said Paul.
“I told you,” Kerry replied. “I’m married.”
It wasn’t far to the music room. Kerry checked her watch again. It was coming up to 9.30. The house would be opening in half an hour. She wanted to be sure that this actor knew what he was doing and where he was going before visitors started to trickle in.
When they reached the room, Julia was crawling underneath the spinet.
“Hi, Jules,” Kerry said.
Julia poked her head out between the legs of the instrument. “Oh, hiya Kerry,” she said. “I’m just checking for woodworm.”
She disappeared from view again.
“That’s Julia,” Kerry said to Paul. “She’s one of the curators here.”
“Cool,” said Paul.
“How is that cool?” Kerry asked him, screwing up her face slightly in disbelief at the man’s lack of vocabulary.
Paul shrugged. “It’s just a word,” he replied. “People use it when they don’t know what else to say.” He paused. “I’m trying not to flirt.”
Kerry looked at him. She wondered how people ever managed to have affairs. She wondered how they found the time to flirt and blind themselves to other people’s short-comings.
Paul suddenly leaned towards Kerry and kissed her. Kerry didn’t say anything or react, so he did it again.
“Listen,” he said, “can we go for lunch or coffee or something later? In between performances or something?”
Kerry grinned despite herself. “I’m married,” she said to him.
“So you keep saying. Whatever.” Paul grinned too. “Married doesn’t mean you can’t have lunch with someone.”
“Or coffee. No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
On impulse, Kerry took Paul’s hand and said, “We could do coffee now, if you want to treat coffee as a euphemism for something else.”
“What do you mean?” Paul asked her, allowing his hand to stay where it was, relaxing into the mutual grip of the thing. He was smiling
With a deft movement, Kerry interlaced her fingers with his and began to walk back through the house, the way they had just come, towards another set of back offices.
“I mean,” she said, pausing before a door marked Staff Only, “we can have coffee if you like, while we wait for your colleague to turn up. We can sit in my office and talk about lesson plans and our Key Stage Three resources for the teaching of History and Citizenship. You can tell me all about your interpretive performance and what it’s like to be an actor.”
“I’d rather we didn’t,” Paul said, squeezing her hand and interrupting her.
“Euphemism it is, then,” she said, punching a code into the keypad and opening the door.
Behind the door was a strangely cold passageway and, almost immediately in front of them, another door. Kerry took a bunch of keys from her pocket. She selected one and unlocked the door. She smiled at him as he walked past her into a room that was, apparently, filled with junk.
“What sort of euphemistic coffee are we having?” Paul asked with mock innocence.
Kerry laughed that same brittle laugh that was almost a bark. “The usual kind,” she said, moving closer to where he stood, having locked the door behind her.
“Which is?”
Kerry looked at him.
“Instant, of course.”
With the door closed and locked behind them, Kerry started to remove Paul’s clothes, walking him backwards to a large bed that stood among the apparent junk. She had successfully removed his jacket and his jumper, and was working on his shirt.
“What is this place?” Paul said.
“Store room.” Kerry was fumbling with his belt and the fly of his jeans. “It’s where we put things that need repairing.”
She gave up trying to undress Paul and started on her own clothes. Paul took the hint and completed the process of disrobing himself. Kerry got onto the bed and pulled him down beside her.
“What do we do now?” Paul asked her.
“You shut up,” she replied.
Later, as they lay side by side on top of the bed, neither of them was self-assured. Paul had an awareness that, while the sight of a naked woman’s body was a thing of beauty and grace, the sight of a man’s naked form was laughable. He lay rigidly beside Kerry, trying to seem nonchalant, with his hands behind his head and his legs crossed at the ankle.
Kerry just lay there, staring at the ceiling. They didn’t speak. Neither of them knew what to say. Kerry was wondering why this had seemed like a good idea, this whim to see what it was her husband did with whoever his cheap smelling mistress was.
Paul was wondering why he had done it, too.
Suddenly, unable to bear the silence any longer, Kerry started to talk.
“This bed,” she said, “was built in the mid-19th century by Gillow & Co. Its mattress has recently been restuffed and its frame re-roped -”
“Re-roped?”
“New ropes put on. Shut up. I’m talking. Its frame re-roped, and now it is waiting to go back on display in the green bedroom.”
“So I just fucked you on a genuine antique.”
“Congratulations. You have contributed to the history of this item of furniture.”
Paul turned towards Kerry. “Neither one of us is famous, though,” he said, smoothing her hair away from her face. “I don’t think our contribution to its history will be celebrated.”
Kerry didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look at him. She just lay there, suffering his hand’s movement across her hair.
“Are you really married?” he asked her.
“Yes, I’m really married.”
She got up and started to dress. Paul watched her. She picked up his clothes and threw them at him.
“Maybe your colleague is here now,” Kerry said.
Paul looked at his watch, then started to dress. “I need to go and get ready for the first performance,” he said.
He sounded panicked. Kerry laughed. She sat on the edge of the bed and began pulling her boots on.
“I think my husband is having an affair,” she said, keeping her back to Paul.
Paul paused in his re-dressing, stuck for something to say in response. Kerry looked at him over her shoulder.
“The funny thing is,” she said. “I don’t think I care.”
© J R Hargreaves January 2007
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