The Night Following by Morag Joss Read Free Book Online

take him long to deliver himself of the reasons why he was leaving me. He had tolerated years of “emotional neglect”and now (and apparently coincidental to my discovery of the condom wrapper) he had had enough. I didn’t take in the details of what he told me about his new living arrangements, which were, of course, intricately bound up with the circumstances of the driver of the waiting jeep-ette. I was too taken aback by the realization that he thought that all of this was happening because of his affair. My hammering his yellow Saab convertible pride and joy to bits, his insistence that
he
was leaving
me:
these were what he thought important. Because his affair hadn’t crossed my mind for hours, I said I simply didn’t understand why he was getting so worked up. I suppose that was what made him slam the door on his way out.
    I climbed upstairs to the landing window to see him go. The front path was empty. He must have paused under the porch, maybe to wipe his eyes in the silence after the slam, more likely to check he had everything he needed. Suddenly I couldn’t bear to watch, and I closed my eyes. Then came the sound of his feet on the path and the trundle of the cases. Of course he was in a hurry to be gone. Of course they both must have been; I heard the car start before the opening and closing of the trunk and the passenger door were quite done with. I opened my eyes only at the burr of the engine at the end of the cul-de-sac, when they would be out of sight. I imagined the disappearing wisp of exhaust as they turned onto the main road and I knew that to Jeremy, as he was driven away, I was invisible now, not just physically but in the sense of ceasing to be anywhere at all, even in his mind. To Jeremy, I was not present, nor sentient; I was barely living. I was nowhere. I did not stand at this window, I did not listen, or grieve, or wonder.
    But I stayed there for a long time, collecting and ordering in my mind the scrape of feet and squeak of wheeled luggage, the cough of an engine, a slammed car door, the distant mingling of traffic and birdsong above the roofs of the cul-de-sac. Sounds overheard have a deliberate music, a pacific and sequential logic that’s absent from the noise of unwitnessed behavior. Jeremy’s departure played sounds that I might want to remember one day and run over in my head, like a tune.
     
27 Cardigan Avenue
[date]

Dear Ruth

Did you see the car before it hit you?

This may sound harsh but Carole misses the point. I didn’t ask her inside the last couple of times she visited and again yesterday she’s on the doorstep.

This time saying she’s a bit concerned.
SHE’S
a bit concerned??? I try to tell her I
STILL
have somehow to establish whereabouts of the pressure cooker so I’m
MUCH
too busy to sit about talking to her. She says if I don’t want to talk, would I like her just to sit with me a while. Well, what’d be the good of
THAT,
forgive me for asking. That’d be an even bigger waste of time (see what I mean about missing the point?). She forgets there’s a great deal to be sorted out. Especially given the suddenness. This whole situation is all up in the air and somebody has to get a hold on matters. I have to raise my voice to get her to see that.

Next and don’t ask me how, she’s over the threshold, saying the pressure cooker seems to “represent a more important loss”and does it have special associations, and I shout yes, associations with Irish Stew start to finish in thirty minutes, veg. in under two. Or has she never heard of
TIME AND ENERGY SAVING?
When did you use it last? I seem to remember it was a wedding present.

Well hoping it turns up

Arthur
     
    On the day after the accident I awoke to a morning full of dangers. In the shower, water broke around me like beads of wet glass on stones and my throat stiffened with steam and soap fumes. I emerged with something undesirable still clinging. I got dressed and went downstairs masquerading as a