What Have I Done? (14 page)

At approximately ten past eight Mark made his grand entrance.

‘Good evening one and all!’

He stood by the opened door and Kathryn noticed a flicker
of hesitation, correctly guessing that he considered bowing before deciding against it.

The assembled crowd nodded their heads and muttered incomprehensibly, honoured to be in the presence of their esteemed head, waiting to hear what wisdom would follow that dazzling smile and its flash of whitened, straightened teeth.

‘Right, gentlemen, shall we get started?’

Mark rubbed his palms together with Faginesque enthusiasm.

The masters took their positions around the kitchen table, each man’s status apparent by how close he sat to Mark.

‘Agenda item number one: the Excellence in Education Awards, which I may or may not have had a tip-off about today—’

Before he even finished the sentence there was a chorus of comment from around the table.

‘Oh well done, Headmaster!’

‘Bloody marvellous news, Mark!’

‘Much deserved, old chap, really much deserved!’

Kathryn, having heard enough, slipped into the sitting room and closed the door behind her. She crept silently over to the telephone table, opened the drawer and carefully removed the copy of
Tom Jones
that she had placed at the back, secreted away for just such an occasion. She picked up the novel and ran her fingers over its cover, feeling a small yet familiar surge of happiness, knowing that she could snatch a few minutes of reading until her services were required again. She knew the drill: fifteen minutes to allow proceedings to get underway, then back into the kitchen to serve canapés and dips.

Kathryn sat in the comfy chair in front of the window and dived in.

She fell into the pages happily and allowed herself to slip into the world created by Henry Fielding.

Reading was Kathryn’s greatest passion and her only escape. She had always known that it was a very dangerous thing; if a book was good enough, it could rob her of time and awareness, and would entirely consume her, forcing her to take every step with the characters, unable to pull away for fear of leaving them in limbo. This was how it was for Kathryn that night. And when she heard the sitting room door bang loudly against the wall, eighteen minutes had passed – not the agreed fifteen.

She dropped the book without regard for its welfare, caring not that the lovely Sophia would be tumbling downwards unprotected to land with a thump in darkness. Her husband remained by the opened door, saying and doing nothing, his expression blank. She tried not to catch his eye as she sidled past him and into the kitchen. Not one word was spoken between them.

Offering a muted apology to the guests, Kathryn quickly removed the cling film from her canapés and uncorked another bottle of chilled medium white. She waltzed around the kitchen distributing plates and napkins before circulating again with platters of goodies; all were eagerly received and consumed with the appropriate appreciation and thanks. Crumbs littered grey-streaked beards, and sauces and dips were dripped onto ties and lapels. A job well done.

It was gone eleven o’clock by the time all the guests had left. The dishwasher whirred away, the table had been wiped
clean, mats and coasters were restored to their drawers and the chairs pushed in just so.

Kathryn climbed the stairs and entered their bedroom. She walked with a measured pace, not over eager to reach her destination, but aware that any delay would only put off the inevitable.

It was a beautiful room. The high ceiling and ornate period coving complemented the magnificent wallpaper design of peonies and cabbage roses whose many shades of aubergine and purple petals looked so real you wanted their scent to invade you. Two large sash windows overlooked the sports field, although at this time of night the roman blinds obscured the view. The carpet was cream and topped with bottle-green rugs to give just the right amount of underfoot snugness. The antique bed was large and grand, with deep floral carvings in the mahogany headboard. It had belonged to Mark’s grandmother and was much admired, but Kathryn hated it intensely. She often dreamed of it being consumed by woodworm until nothing remained but a tiny pile of dust and a very fat worm.

For all its beauty, the room held fearsome associations for Kathryn. She was always taken aback when visitors made approving, envious comments: she fully expected them to inhale the misery that lodged in every nook and cranny and would not have been surprised to see the oceans of tears she had cried seeping from the walls and the mattress, forming pools on the floor.

Kathryn removed her shoes and skirt. She paired her tan leather loafers with their heels together under the old, overstuffed, chintz-covered chair that sat in the corner of the room. Her skirt she rezipped and folded in half before hanging over the back of the same chair. Her shirt she rolled into a ball and placed in the wicker laundry basket along with her
discarded pants and bra. She undid her earrings and pearl necklace, carefully placing them in the jewellery box on the dressing table. She brushed and flossed her teeth and combed her hair, removing all traces of make-up. Finally she slipped into one of five identical white cotton nightdresses that she owned. They were rather long, plain and Shaker in style, each with a Peter Pan collar and small ivory buttons at the base of pin-tuck pleats on the cuff and neck.

Kathryn then knelt at the foot of the bed, bowed her head and waited. Just as she had done every single night for the last seventeen years and five months.

She heard the creak of the top stair, followed by the telltale tap of wedding ring against wooden banister rail. Her muscles tensed as they always did at the familiar sounds; it made no difference how many times she had heard them. Finally she heard the bedroom door snap shut into the frame and the scraping of the old brass key in its lock.

The creep of fear plucked at her muscles, invaded her bones and pricked at her skin. Closing her eyes briefly, she shuddered involuntarily as her heart performed its customary jump.

Mark walked towards her kneeling form and stood behind her in his usual position, with his hands behind his back. His thighs almost grazed the back of her head. She could feel an almost incandescent heat coming off him in waves. His voice, as usual, was calm, lilting, almost soft.

‘Well?’ he asked.

Her mouth twitched and she swallowed as she tried to form the words. Experience had taught her that it was better to speak concisely, honestly and audibly… Much better.

‘I think four points.’

‘You
think
four points?’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed again.

‘Well you would be wrong. It is seven points.’

‘Seven?’

‘Did I ask you to repeat that figure? Did I tell you to speak?’

She shook her head. No, no, he hadn’t.
Don’t look and don’t speak.

‘Four points indeed!’

He gave a small laugh before tutting as though admonishing an amusing child.

‘I shall now tell you why seven points.’

He cleared his throat with a small cough and began.

‘Firstly, I would ask you to cast your mind back to this morning. When I gave you a flower, you did not raise your face to me with thanks, preferring instead to stare at the floor like an insolent teenager. Two points. You had also been chatting in an overfamiliar way with two of the pupils. Two points. When I asked you what was for supper you gave me some hesitant, irritating comment, “Chicken, blah blah, chicken”. One point. And finally, after being given specific instructions, you forced me to leave my masters’ meeting to call you to serve the appropriate refreshments, which were not only late but were rather average. This, Kathryn, embarrassed us both. Two points. Which makes a grand total of…?’

‘Seven points,’ she replied, in a small voice.

‘That is correct.’

He ran his fingers through her hair, gently stroking the nape of her neck. Bending low, he kissed the top of her spine and she felt the air blow cold against the wet imprint from his mouth.

Mark went into the en-suite bathroom to take his nightly shower, leaving his wife kneeling on the floor to contemplate the error of her ways.

Her legs went numb and, as usual, pins and needles consumed her feet and toes.

Fifteen minutes later Mark emerged, damp and lemon-scented. He sauntered over to the bedside table and flicked the button on his alarm clock. All set. He then walked to the wardrobe and selected a tie for the following day: cornflower blue silk with a yellow spot, very dapper. From the drawer of his tallboy he chose some cufflinks, silk knots of course, in a corresponding blue and yellow. He reached for his cologne, Floris No. 89, and daubed the citrusy top notes behind his ears and across his chin. Next, he slid open the lower drawer and removed the small square of waxy paper, which he unfolded to reveal the shiny steel razor blade. He pinched the blade between his thumb and forefinger and examined it in the lamplight.

‘Come.’

His outstretched palm pointed towards the bed as if calling a dog to heel.

Kathryn stood on wobbly legs. She knew what to do, she knew the drill; she had done it more than six and a half thousand times.
Six and a half thousand! Unbelievable. Unthinkable, but true
.

She lay face down in the middle of the bed with her nightdress raised to just above her bottom. At this point he always asked, ‘Are you comfortable?’ and she would either murmur or nod into the creamy silk comforter that yes, she was comfortable. She had learned through experience that there was no point in saying or indicating anything different.

Over the years, Kathryn had come to view Mark’s behaviour as ‘normal’, in so far as ‘normal’ meant something that occurred commonly, regularly, as standard, something that was routine, predictable, a benchmark; something that happened every day.

Mark had a method and rhythm to his cutting. He would never sever an incision that had not properly healed and he would cut in a pattern of lines, only millimetres apart, always
with precision, on a slight diagonal and always working from the outside in. The backs of Kathryn’s thighs were a dense matrix of lines and tracks, over six and a half thousand of them, in varying states of healing and recuperation.

Mark only ever made one cut per night – a single line – regardless of the number of points he had dished out. The points were not about quantity: they were a measurement of depth.

The points allocated ranged from zero to twelve. In all their married life Kathryn had never scored a zero and did not believe she ever would. Twelve points meant she would lose consciousness, but this was sometimes preferable to the lingering pain of a nine or ten.

She found it morbidly fascinating that her blood continued to flow. A thick, sticky trickle, night after night. Would she never run out? Would the day come when he would make his incision and there would be nothing? A barren source: used up, finished, gone, enough.

The cutting could take anything from three minutes to ten. Her blood would meander, warm and viscous, down between her legs and onto the white linen sheets. There it would form lake-shaped patterns; on a good day it might be Placid, on a bad day, Geneva. When he had done cutting, Mark would rape her.

Kathryn was not allowed to wash following this nightly ritual. In fact she wasn’t even allowed to move until her husband had fallen asleep. She would then wince as she shuffled across to her side of the bed; sleep would come to her eventually when the throb of pain subsided slightly. Sometimes she would cry hot, silent tears into her pillow, but mostly she did not, not any more. This too, experience had shown her, was futile; there was no one to see or hear those tears.

The alarm pip-pipped its irritating echo around the room; it was 6 a.m. Kathryn reluctantly opened her eyes. Mark was already awake and standing by the side of the bed, watching her come to. He reached out and tenderly took her hand as she slid off the mattress, still foggy with sleep. Her nightdress, as was customary, had dried and stuck to the bloody cuts on her thighs. She stood still and upright as he gently gathered the fabric in his free hand and, pulling it taut, yanked it from its plasma tethers. It woke her up.

He took her hand and led her into the bathroom. She watched as he turned the nozzle and allowed the shower to run into the tray.

‘Today, Kathryn, you have two minutes.’

He smiled and bent forward, grazing her forehead with a kiss. She raised her bloodied gown over her head and let it fall into a cotton heap on the tiled floor. Stepping into the current, it took a few seconds for her body to adjust to the temperature, which was as usual slightly too hot. But there was no point raising an objection. The fresh cuts always stung in protest, but that too would settle down to almost bearable.

She closed her eyes and let the water run over her face, washing away another night and heralding a new day much like any other. Reaching for the bottle, she squeezed out a blob of apple-scented shampoo, a little larger than the size of a fifty pence piece, just as her mother had taught her all those years ago. Now that the fifty pence piece had become considerably smaller, should she apply a little bit extra to compensate? Kathryn’s mind flitted to other things that had diminished in size since she was a little girl: Wagon Wheel biscuits, telephones, journey times to Cornwall…

Kathryn applied the shampoo to her hair and scalp, feeling it grow into a mound of froth. Mark stood on the other side of the glass screen, watching her every action. She closed her
eyes and scoured her scalp and hair, enjoying the sensation. Suddenly the water stopped running. She yelped slightly in surprise, the suds still in her hands and eyes.

Mark opened the door and she stood there dishevelled, slightly disorientated and covered in sweet-scented foam. Her hair looked like an uncooked meringue.