2000 - The Feng-Shui Junkie (18 page)

“There were bloodstains on the couch. I tried to remove them, but there are still traces left.”

“Did you stab Harry or something?”

She laughs, shaking her head, then quietly informs me that the room was ransacked last Thursday evening by intruders.

“You’re joking.”

Me the great big innocent.

Sighing, she tells me she walked in the front door and everything lay in ruins before her eyes. I can just see it: Hannibal returning to a devastated Carthage.

“I was really upset,” she mourns. “I mean, they didn’t even steal anything. The only thing they took was a manual about babies and a small book on
Feng Shui
.”

I turn to admire the view of the front garden.

“They smashed our lovely coffee table and especially our antique drinks cabinet. There was glass and alcohol everywhere.”

“Flying cocktails?”

But there’s no response from behind me.

She just doesn’t get it, does she? She thinks her
Bagua
mirror and her
Fu
dogs will protect her.

There’s one born every minute.

“Break-ins are a regular feature of modern life, Nicole,” I observe, concentrating on the robin redbreast poking about on top of the bird stand. “One must take precautions. You need to double-lock your doors and bolt your windows…and of course, fortified glass is to be recommended.”

“I suppose so.”

“You keep a lovely garden.”

“They were probably just young gurriers.”

Suddenly, despite the depression weighing me down like leaden cannonballs, I want to burst out laughing. I very nearly do, as well. The poor gurriers have come in for quite a knocking recently. It’s sheer prejudice, straight out of Ronan’s mouth. It’s like the vibe that goes: if you are, say, a travelling person then you’re automatically a congenital kleptomaniac knifing rapist. It’s so bizarre.

“Really, though, you have a lovely garden.”

“It’s based on a Japanese design,” she says quietly.

“Tell me more.”

“Did you know that the Japanese were the first people in the world to cultivate a garden for aesthetic reasons alone?”

Aesthetic: where have I heard that word before?

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“They thought gardens were sacred places where you meditated and destressed. So when we first moved in I was careful to get the vibrations right, I made sure to have something from the element of fire – the lantern outside. And water – in the fountain. And metal – in the statue, and there’s plenty of wood. I had it all done myself – Harry’s not great on gardens. I made sure to have lots of curved shapes. Don’t you love the bird house? Our hedges were evergreen, which was lucky. Deciduous hedges are inauspicious.”

“That’s a point.”

I can hear her footsteps behind me and the doors of the drinks cabinet opening. She offers me a drink and I turn round. A black cat streaks across the floor, eyeing me with knowing menace. It’s almost as if he spied me last Thursday evening, and it’s making me nervous.

“Max, say hello to Julianne.”

“He wouldn’t know me,” says I.

The cat glares at me accusingly.

Nicole pours herself a Cointreau. I tell her to pour me one of those. Handing me my drink, she shakes her head and sighs.

“Poor Max. He was affected, too. His box of cat biccies got soaked from all the bottles of alcohol thrown at the fireplace.”

“Don’t tell me you fed him alcohol-soaked biscuits? No wonder he’s behaving strangely.”

She laughs at this point. “They destroyed your dinner, Max, pet. Aren’t they animals?”

He should know.

Nicole bends down to feel him but he evades her long thin fingers, slinking back out of the room, leaving deadly vibes hanging in the ether.

I swing round to the garden again. Gardens. What can I ask her about gardens? I trawl for a relevant topic of conversation, but she beats me to it.

“We had an aquarium over there beside you.”

“A fish tank?”

“It was beautiful. They totally destroyed it. There was glass everywhere.”

“How could anyone do such a thing?”

“I know.”

“People have no respect any more.”

“We had a clownfish…”

A skunk-striped clownfish, she means.

“…and an oriental sweetlips, and a few yellow-bellied devils and – ”

“What strange names.”

“When I came in they were lying all over the floor.”

She falls silent. I turn round again. A reverent, sad expression has overcome her. I can see that despite everything Nicole is essentially a good person.

“Do you know what Harry did?”

“No. What?”

“He stood on two of them. They were squashed like pancakes.”

“Fish cakes?”

Bad joke. Still, I can see her point. Although my personal record with fish would hardly qualify me as Honorary Secretary of the ISPCA, nevertheless I am not so cruel that I would actually stamp on the poor things. This was Harry losing his temper at beings a hundredth his size. I mean, how would you feel being trampled upon by King Kong’s huge sweaty foot in the middle of Fifth Avenue? What an awful bully.

“Do you know what he did to the clownfish and the oriental sweetlips, after he stamped on them?”

“No.”

“I didn’t want to say this, because every time I think of it it makes me so angry, but I will. He dropped them in boiling water.”

She looks furious.

I burst out laughing; I simply cannot help myself. I immediately apologize to her and try to explain that I’m only laughing because what she said reminded me of something I once did as a naughty child many years ago.

She looks like she thinks I’m making fun of her. “Don’t laugh, Julianne,” she pleads. “They were in the pot, all puffed up like jelly. It was horrible. His excuse was that it saved him a trip to the fishmongers.”

“Some people seem to get a kick out of hurting poor defenceless creatures.”

“Harry refuses to buy another aquarium. He acted like it was my fault.”

Mournfully, she fetches a cloth from the fireplace. “Basically’ – she sighs, dusting the mantelpiece lethargically – ’he likes to make out I’m stupid.”

Nicole? Stupid?

“I wish you could meet him. You’d see what I mean.”

The idea that if I met Harry I would see what she meant irks me. Okay, she’s proved her point that Harry is a bastard, but there are life alternatives open to her other than attempting to net Ronan for marriage: she could try moving out and getting her own place, and doing what many normal women do – meet single, unmarried men, for example.

“Will he be back soon?”

She consults her watch and nods. Then she throws her cloth back into the fireplace and slumps down on the edge of the couch next to the bloodstain. “Ronan’s great with fish,” she says mournfully, clasping her hands together in front of her.

“Excuse me?”

“He loves tropical fish.”

That’s what she thinks. I know Ronan. Tropical fish bore him to tears. It’s a typical strategy of his: he simply figured that flattering her fish was the Ml motorway into her knickers.

“I gave some of the surviving fish to Ronan,” she says.

“You think that’s fair?”

Pause.

“It’s the best chance they’ll get,” she replies.

“I don’t mean fair on the fish, Nicole. I mean fair on his wife.”

“But she loves tropical fish.”

“How do you know that?” I laugh.

“He said so.”

“I hope he’s right. For the fishes’ sake.”

“Oh God, don’t say that.”

They’re safe, I crave to tell her. In a glass bowl.

Me: “She’s a total saint to be fostering your fish like that.”

No reply.

“She sounds like a caring kind of person,” I add.

“Ronan told me he loved me again,” she says suddenly.

“Did he, now?”

She nods.

“He loved you.”

“He loves me.”

“When did he say that?”

“Last night. After you left me in the hospital he came in.”

“And he told you he loved you, in the hospital?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Julianne,” she pleads. “Sex had nothing to do with it. He said that to me even though I looked the worst in the world…don’t you see?”

I see. This is as bad as I’d thought.

She stands up and refills her glass with Cointreau. And I don’t mean a simple measure. I mean bite-size. She’s clearly addicted to the stuff. She refills my glass too, then sits down again and runs her fingers through her voluminous hair.

Suddenly she stiffens and becomes alert and rabbit-scared. She’s heard something.

The door opens.

Nicole practically spits the next mouthful of Cointreau out through her eyeballs. She attempts a speedy self-composition, then stares at the floor just as he enters the room. I calmly turn my head for a full frontal close-up of her beater.

A
t once I can see why Nicole would fancy him.

He is stocky, firm-jawed, broad-foreheaded and good-looking. His sturdy nose locks into the thick bone of his eyebrows. He doesn’t so much move across the room towards the drinks cabinet as pace. Like a leopard. He is commanding, uncompromising, territorial, shorter than Ronan, but physically strong. Very possibly, he’s not too bright either.

I flash him my installation smile.

His expressionless, hard-shell blue eyes glance off me like a bullet off granite and lock on to the drinks cabinet towards which he’s moving. What is it about them? I shiver involuntar-ily.

Nicole and I watch him as he pours himself a Boru vodka.

Now is my chance; it will be over in seconds.

Nicole’s head is bowed in vulnerable humility. Submissive-ness. Can I do it to her?

Yes, I can.

After all, has she not branded me a thieving hooligan? A pesterface spouse? A jealous neurotic? An unfit wife?

Oh, and another point: has she not tried to steal my husband?

And I’m supposed to show her mercy?

I
can
do it: face her down, kick her in the teeth, shove her in the gutter and leave her for Harry. She deserves it.

He turns round and glares at Nicole.

“This is Julianne,” is her pathetic attempt to introduce me.

“How do you do,” he says ignoring me.

“How do you do,” I reply, trying my best to sound bored.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened,” he says to her, sipping.

“Harry – can we talk about that another time?”

He sniggers, swirling the vodka in his glass. “Has Nicole told you about her fancy man?”

Nicole lowers her head.

“Are you talking to me?” I ask.

“No, I’m talking to the wall.”

“Slight problem.”

“What?”

“The wall’s not responding. Seriously, though…”

He turns towards me.

“
Harry
!” Nicole beseeches. “We already discussed that issue.”

“Did we?”

He’s still staring at me.

“I already told you the truth,” she insists.

He turns back to her. “The truth being?”

He’s just used the gerundive, he can’t be as thick as all that.

Nicole, begging: “There
is
no one else.”

He swirls his vodka again, examining the glass fastidiously.

“There really isn’t.”

Dear, dear – she’s as bad as me for lies.

My heart is thumping like a monkey in my chest. Have I the heart to do this?

I have.

I turn to Nicole, suddenly ruthless, and open my mouth to speak.

I close it again.

I turn back to Harry, who is still examining his glass. And back to Nicole who is guiltily sipping her Cointreau as if it’s stolen property, her frightened eyes flicking up and down at Harry’s massive form, her slender fingers wrapped nervously round the stem of her glass.

I can’t decide.

Suddenly he turns on me: “Do I know you?”

I blush. “Not at all. Why?”

“Your voice.”

“They tell me I speak like Demi Moore,” I reply, secretly shitting a condominium.

“Would you leave my house, please,” he says. Since he has addressed the floor, it’s unclear whether this is meant for me or for Nicole. Or for both of us.

Nicole: “How, how do you mean?”

“I’ve thought about this,” he says calmly, “and I want you out of my house.”

Nicole: “Who?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“You’re not to be trusted.”

“But…”

“
Now
!”

Dear dear! It was so much more pleasant before Harry interrupted our little conversation about
Bagua
mirrors and
Fu
dogs, and rhododendrons and coffee tables, and the four elements and fish cakes, and Ronan’s pitiable wife.

He points to the door. “Out of my house, you two-timing bitch.”

She starts sobbing.

“There’s no need to talk to her like that,” I suggest.

“I’ll talk to that slut whatever way I like.”

“She’s not a slut.”

I bite my lip. Did I just say that?

Harry is glaring at me now. “Oh, she’s not a slut, is she not?”

Nicole herself has no opinion on this fairly crucial point.

“Even if she is a slut,” I respond, “she’s not
your
slut.”

His head turns to me. He shouts: “
What do you think I hit her for? Jump-starting the car?
”

“Well, now, that’s logical.”

“Julianne – 
please…
” says Nicole.

Harry flushes. “The two of you. Get out. You can make yourself useful and help her pack her bags.”

I will let him get away with this – just this once.

He turns and fills up his glass again. “I want you both out in half an hour. Oh, and I want the rest of your stinking fish out of my bath.”

“But I have nowhere to put them.”

“They’ll go down the toilet otherwise.”

A man after my own heart.

“But they’ll die.”

“And I want your ridiculous canvases out of my attic.”

It’s odd, the quarters from which you least expect moral support. He sniggers.

“What are you laughing at?” demands Nicole, offended.

“You hardly expect me to hold on to that shite,” he observes.

I feel like telling him that we are totally at one on that issue.