2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (17 page)

It’s like a five-second confession: imagine you’re just getting comfy in the confession box and you’re about to reach the mortal-sin punchline and the priest suddenly stands up and walks out on you. Think how that would make you feel.

Still, for all his communicative neglect, Ronan seems to bond well with Nicole.

I go back into the kitchen and turn off the knob.

The smell is that soggy, raw odour you get from recently docked fishing boats.

The final fish to take a nosedive into my Moulinex is the truly lovely oriental sweetlips. It is dark brown and looks like it’s just been covered in random round blobs of yellow paint. I chuck it into the mixer to join its fluid comrades. I switch on the button again and leave it for a minute. After this, I strain out any stray bits of skin or eyeball or fin with a fork.

Now I think I’ll give my darlings one last shake-up together with a carton of cream. I pour in the cream and add a sprinkling of herbs. I press the button and wait a full minute, to ensure a proper merging of personality. Now I pour almost a pint of the much creamier fish booze into the glass bowl.

I must say, I feel a sense of achievement: we have here the basic, raw ingredients of my first fish mousseline, fine and lump-free as a soup.

I cover the bowl with plastic and put it in the fridge. If anyone discovers it I’ll tell them I picked it up at the local deli.

I open all the windows and wash my hands with loo detergent from under the sink and dry them with half a roll of paper towelling.

Nauseated, I visit the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet lid, head hung low in my hands, I ponder the tragedy that is my marriage.

Trust.

It’s like biting into a golden apple, trusting to its healthy, juicy goodness – and finding a worm crawling between your teeth.

Trust takes people as they are, sparing itself the effort of endless analysis and suspicion and doubt. But Ronan? His is a counterfeit generosity, a bogus sincerity, a fraudulent benevolence. Beneath the face of the man I thought I knew and understood lies a disease of deceit.

And it’s making me sick to the gut.

I hear a door banging.

Feeling sordid, I stand up and flush my mouth with Listerine and wash and do up my face. In our bedroom, Ronan is lying on the bed with his hands behind his head. I must try to be normal.

“Afraid of bumping into my mother?”

“It’s safest in here,” he replies.

I sit down on the chair by the open window through which you can hear the piercing summery noise of kids splashing and shouting in the swimming pool below.

“Is everything okay, Julie?” he says, with unexpected concern.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Ronan,” I sing. “Apart from the fish-tank episode, everything’s fine.”

“That was a bit…” he begins.

“Extreme?”

“Yes.”

I don’t reply.

“I never cared much for fish anyway,” he comments, yawning.

“Thank you for saying that.”

“They’re in the Jacuzzi.”

“I noticed. Thank you again.”

“I’ve phoned the dealer. I’ll pick up another tank.”

The happy shrieking of the children in the pool is starting to dull my senses. I close my eyes. My eyelids are cold.

Ronan tells me he has to go to town for the afternoon.

I blink my eyes open again.

“I have to buy shoes,” he explains.

“Shoes.”

“Yes, my brown ones are wearing out. I thought I might have lunch in town, cruise the bookshops, buy new shoes – ”

“Why don’t we both go?” I interrupt.

“I enjoy browsing in bookshops,” he says.

“So do I.”

“Alone.” He smiles. “I’m a bit odd that way.”

Paternalistic prat.

“Why don’t I meet you later on then? We can both go shopping together.”

He stands up. “I’d rather shop alone. Women are always making impractical suggestions about style and colour, and especially about price.”

“What women?”

“Women in general.”

It drives him bananas, he observes.

“Okay, then, why can’t we meet after your bananas? I’d quite like a drink together, late afternoon…”

“Julie, I can’t organize my life to fit exactly into your routine.”

“Did I just say something wrong?”

He gets up and leaves the room. I follow him out, sticking my foot in the front door to prevent him closing it behind him.

I gaze deeply into his large brown eyes. “Where are you going?”

“I already told you,” he replies, staring into the space above my head.

There’s a taut, static tug of war going between the two of us, standing on both sides of the door. Me trying to draw him in and him trying to shut me out.

What’s the point?

I let him go. First, I extract a commitment from him to return here for seven so that we can spend the evening together like a proper married couple. Given that it is Saturday night.

Sighing, attempting to conceal his annoyance, he agrees.

It is, after all, proper form.

Once he’s gone I fetch a small plastic fishbowl and a fishnet from the broom cupboard and bring them into the bathroom where I fill the bowl with water. I fish out Nicole’s five surviving fish and drop them into the bowl. Not much room for them to do more than ogle each other like a quintet of stupid Sumo wrestlers. I place the bowl into a plastic bag and carry it down to my car, where I jam it behind the passenger seat to prevent capsize. I drive straight into the aquarist down the road and flog the lot for a ridiculously low twenty quid.

Then I call Nicole.

Yes, she confirms excitedly, she’s meeting Ronan at four o’clock this afternoon. But would I like to meet up for a drink first? I’m very welcome to come out to her place for lunch.

If I’d like to.

This is it.

Now is the time to end it all.

I
walk straight up the white gravel path of number two Cherbury Court and ring the doorbell. The new red stained-glass panel on the front door is pretty, though I must say I preferred the sailing boats. The door opens almost immediately. She’s wearing a long red dress patterned with diamonds in sewn gold – the one she bought at the shopping centre yesterday.

She gives me such a pleasant smile that I feel this spontaneous blinding urge to throttle her.

She puts her hand on my upper arm, a gesture of shy welcome. I can feel myself deflating like a punctured lung. It’s funny: when people are nice to you it’s a mighty tough job being a bitch.

And it’s even harder when in addition they possess face wounds that would make Frankenstein consider himself lucky. I mean, look at her! Her left eye is peeping out under a slight bulge, which is discoloured, as black eyes generally tend to be. Her thickly made-up face barely conceals heavy bruising.

Still and all, she doesn’t exactly look miserable. She manages, in her hour of woe, to look more upbeat than beat up, and this combination, which borders on the side of happy, is managing to cause me intense irritation. I’m thinking: is there something I should know?

“It’s really nice to see you again, Julianne.”

“Yes. How are you, Nicole,” I inquire, “after your beating?”

First she’s startled, then she shrugs. “Life goes on, I suppose.”

What an odd way to view life, mere hours after mincemeat has been made of your visage.

“Nicole, there’s something we have to talk about.”

I’m not in the least friendly.

“Oh?”

“Yes, about Ronan.”

Hearing this, Nicole smiles lovingly. She takes me by the arm and tries to usher me inside. I pull back violently.

“Julianne, is something the matter?”

“Where’s Harry?”

She’s frowning now, perplexed as a stranded walrus. “He’s gone out.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“In about half an hour. Why?”

“Half an hour? Good. I can wait.”

“Julianne, are you…”

“I’m fine.”

“You seem…”

“I said I’m fine.”

When my gaze returns from the hedge to Nicole, she is staring right into my soul depths with something bordering on real concern: “Is it…husband problems?”

“What did I just say?”

“I shouldn’t ask,” she reverses, shaking her head.

“Oh, feel quite free to talk about my spouse.”

“I’m sorry.”

Unlike Sylvana, Nicole is not the sort to lever gossip out of you with a pickaxe. Nor is she ‘the type to shove and kick to get her own way. “What’s his name?” she wonders nicely.

Names and addresses again.

“Shithead.”

Blank stare.

“He’s not in the good books right now,” I explain. “Is that okay?”

“I understand.” She nods vehemently.

Of course, it’s not that Ronan is not in the good books. Put simply, I want to beat him to a pulp, but one doesn’t admit these things in polite society.

“But apart from that he’s in wonderful form.”

“That’s good,” she replies, relieved.

“Yes, it’s very good. He’s shagging his mistress like nobody’s business.”

Tragic face on her now. “Oh, Julianne.”

I can’t believe this: a canvas of sadness has just descended over her face. She really does look sorry for me. With kindness and sincerity she peers softly into my soul, while I stand here festering like gangrene in my own private marital cesspit.

Now I feel like crying. I am pathetic.

“Enough about me.” I sniff, looking around for something to distract my attention. My eyes come to rest on the octagonal disc hanging just above the front door over the porch. “What’s that?”

“It’s a
Bagua
mirror. It’s to ward off negative influences.”

Wasn’t too effective in warding me off last Thursday.

“Before I hung it there,” she explains, “I felt these disturbances every morning when I got up…”

“You have neighbour problems too?”

“No – I mean psychic disturbances. I’ve been told I’m quite sensitive to psychic phenomena. I figured it must be the hospital over there behind those houses across the street. When I put up the
Bagua
mirror the disturbances actually stopped.”

“I get the picture.”

“Hospitals create a lot of negative energy because of all the suffering. A prison would be the same. The
Fu
dogs help.”

“You keep dogs?”

“
Fu
dogs.” She giggles. “On the gateposts, see?”

“You mean the stone dogs.”

“They’re supposed to deter intruders.”

They too seriously failed in their duties.

“And they also stop energy leaking out of a house.”

“Whatever you’re into.”

She opens the door wide for me to enter. I step up and in. The sun-drenched hallway has turned the curtain behind the front door into a bright orange flame. The atmosphere is warm and welcoming, from inside I can smell the burning of a scented candle: rose and gardenia, she informs me.

The missing bannister rail has been replaced, I notice. To my right, the painting which I triply dented has been removed and replaced by
Foetus
, stuck right in your face in the middle of her hallway. I lean over the small wooden table under the painting and inhale a new and younger jasmine plant with tiny yellow leaves.

“How pretty.”

“It’s the plant of friendship,” says Nicole, eyeing me almost prayerfully.

“Isn’t that nice.”

She shows me into the living-room. I halt at the door, flabbergasted.

The place is like new. It’s almost exactly as it was before I got to work on it last Thursday evening. It is elegant and clean and neat. I look around for signs of my recent rampage.

But I can’t find any. Was I hallucinating?

I move inside. Before long, I start to notice tiny differences. The drinks cabinet which I rendered into firewood has been replaced by one not quite identical. There’s a new TV set. There are two dark-green-leaved rhododendron plants in ochre pots, one on each side of the television. I was seriously under the impression that I’d decapitated them.

Of course I did. These are new. Replaced in record time. She informs me that they are narcotic, which is of course of interest. She also points out that they absorb some of the
chi
that creates rheumatism. Why does she insist on taking for granted that I know what the hell she’s talking about?

“What a lovely room.”

The phrase sticks in my throat like a chicken bone.

“Harry does all the work; I just come up with the colours. Colours are very important. They affect the way you…you know, the spiritual side of life.”

“Do you paint?” says I, diverting my eyes to the repolished floor.

“I do my best,” she replies.

“Don’t knock your talents.”

“I really love painting. I find it very uplifting.”

“I used to paint walls myself.”

Nicole stops suddenly. “No, I mean, I paint pictures.”

“Do you use rollers?”

More confusion. “No, I mean, I paint
paintings
, Julianne.”

“
Paintings?
” I just stare, like it’s incredible she’s chosen such a designation.

“You thought I meant painting walls?” She laughs. “I never paint walls. Harry does that. I paint paintings. Up in the attic.”

“The madwoman in the attic.”

“In my spare time.”

I move past the mantelpiece, above which I notice something different: a new mirror.

“So,” I drawl, “you’re an artist.”

“I wouldn’t say that. Maybe I’ll show them to you some time?”

I remember the nudes in her sketch pad. “That won’t be necessary.”

I inspect the rest of the room. The dinner table is covered with a new white tablecloth. I’m tempted to look underneath for any dents. On the table lies the book I saw her purchase yesterday:
Feng Shui and Sacred Space
.

Sacred space. I love it.

There’s a new glass coffee table in place of the old one – only less elaborate. On top of this there lies the same plethora of books and junk magazines I breezed through on Thursday evening last.

And the aquarium? It’s disappeared completely. Pedestal and all. In the front right corner now stands a large chrysanthemum in a white square box.

You would never know I was here just two days ago. How did they manage to clear it up and paint everything so quickly? Two days: that’s marathon cosmetics. The room is perfect. There may still be a slight odour of alcohol from the monsoon I created around the stone fireplace, but that piercing wine-vat smell has totally disappeared.