Those six weeks provided me a sordid balance: I had Donna waiting in the forest and still had a home to return to afterwards. I had it both ways.
I began writing these pages in the first of those six weeks. My daily regimen. I suppose I was hoping they would help me make my decision. The unhappiest people in the world must be those with too many decisions to make. Even one is too many. In my case, Tilda or Donna.
Donna pressed me only slightly. She said, ‘Promise Neutral Motor Inn is temporary?’
I promised. And I did mean it when I was with her, though I avoided giving an exact timeline.
The excuse I used was Tilda’s health. Towards the end of the six weeks she got so thin. She didn’t eat, stayed in bed as if wasting away. Surely this time it had to be the cancer. How could I leave her in that predicament?
‘You can’t,’ Donna said, tears in her eyes. ‘This could drag your leaving on forever and ever.’
‘It’s not my fault.’
‘I know it’s not.’ We pulled up our clothes and lay in sun-leaf dapples. The only obvious utterance to make was: maybe Tilda will die and leave the way clear. We bit our tongues. Neither of us was going to reveal that we were capable of such a statement.
Anyway, it wasn’t cancer. It was me. Tilda didn’t need Roff to confirm that for her. She’d put the whole heartwrecking puzzle together.
Chapter 73
Donna would park her car at the sundial area. I always left the Commodore out of sight up a narrow track half a kilometre from Neutral Motor Inn. In all the years I had run up the track I had never seen another person. It wasn’t our cars that gave us away. Nor did I ever call Donna from home—the phone bill didn’t spring us. Yes, I overused the Hastings Road phone box in broad daylight but I couldn’t help it: when you’re in love you simply have to hear your loved one’s voice constantly. I called from the office three or four times but I made sure everyone was out on a tea break.
It was the underpants I bought from O’Connor’s Manchester. I believe I set out to sabotage myself. Brand new underwear after years of the same old saggy ones. I was ashamed of saggy ones with Donna. I replaced them with bright blues and purples—four pairs, tight-fitting with bulgy Y-front pouches.
I didn’t take care to rinse off the stains before throwing them on the wash pile. Surely it was sabotage—my way of telling Tilda without actually telling her. I was letting dried wetnesses do the work for me.
I was standing at our backyard oleander, running the filter end of a cigarette around my mouth to simulate Donna’s nipples. It was here I had first seen the crease of her bottom. I smiled at how far we had progressed from that to Neutral Motor Inn. I lit the cigarette and had just drained the dregs of a vodka and ice when Tilda walked up behind me. Her arms were crossed tightly. Her hair was frizzing loose from her plait as if it had been picked at. There was such a narrow-eyed strain in her face you’d have thought she was lifting a heavy invisible weight. She said, ‘Have you got a problem with your water works or something?’
‘Ay?’
‘What else would leave these kinds of stains?’ Her fist threw me the purple underpants I’d worn yesterday, which was a Donna day.
I held cigarette smoke deep in my lungs for courage. Let it stream out of me like a long, calm purge. I did not answer.
The weight in her face got heavier. ‘It’s Donna Wilkins, isn’t it?’
Here it was—the smithereens. I filled my lungs for more courage. ‘Yes,’ I said. A pitiful whimpered yes. I was so scared. Scared of life itself for being so different with that yes—so wild and shattered and free.
Tilda locked her two fists into one and threw her head back and made an awful vomiting sound. ‘I am such a fool,’ she said to the sky. She took one lunging stride towards me, eyes and nose teeming. ‘Get out. Get out of this house. Get out of my home.’
I attempted a consolation sorry but she covered her ears to keep sweet-talk out of her mind. ‘Get out!’
Plenty of windows would have heard her. I headed to the back door to get out of sight of neighbours.
I ran up the stairs, stood in the bedroom, thinking: What do I need? What do I need? I need clothes, of course. My cheque book—it was a joint cheque account with Tilda—I had the right to keep my half of our money. My typewriter, I needed that. Toiletries—razor, toothbrush. Take a flannel, some soap, a towel. All would fit easily into the Commodore boot. If I needed to I could sleep on the back seat overnight.
Then panic hit me. I could go to Tilda and undo the yes. I could lie that I was joking. Or I could beg with many apologies and congress with her until she wilted and changed her get out to please stay. Oh, I was scared of life all right. So scared I slowed my packing hoping she’d come and save me with kisses of tender absolution. I piled belongings on our bed and folded and shoved and slowed.
Eventually fearlessness straightened me. Donna’s face, her two breasts were restored to my brain; her voice, her I feel love like you do too to my ears. I was in such a penduluming madness—packing, slowing down, terrified, ecstatic, Come save me, Tilda one minute, I’m on my way to you, Donna the next—I did not smell smoke until the air was faintly foggy with it. Even then I sniffed my fingers to check it wasn’t cigarette stink.
It wasn’t. It was fire. The fog was denser the further around the hallway I investigated. It was coming from the bathroom. Smoke was blacker there and petrolly in its stench. It burst up out of the bathtub, curled off the top of rearing flames with chunks of half-burnt newspaper. Tilda was feeding the tub with splashes from a turps bottle. The invisible weight was still in her face but she had a sneery smile now, as if achieving something.
A paper chunk broke up and blew my way. I stomped it to ash on a patch of threadbare carpet. Another chunk smoked and crumbled onto the lino at Tilda’s feet. She yelled for me to ‘fuck off’ when I tried to stomp it. She held the turpentine out like a liquid threat, gave it a shake to warn me off. I saw my Donna underpants, every pair, burning in the tub.
Tilda let me stand and look at them. She smiled wider and said, ‘Every drop of the bitch’s cunt juice is going to burn. Fucking burn. Every rancid trace of her. It’s like burning her, that’s what it’s like. Wouldn’t that be justice and beautiful to burn her to fucking bits? Tell me you want that. Tell me she deserves it.’
At which point the smoke got into her breathing and she gagged and threw the bottle into the tub and coughed her way past me to gulp fresh air. Flames flicked faster; half the shower curtain was melted. I turned on the shower head by dabbing the taps open with my thumbs—the steel was stinging hot. My arms had to bear a few seconds among flames before the taps were open enough and water ran. I yanked the window up as high as it would go and used a towel to fan away smoke.
Surely neighbours would have called the fire brigade by now. How was I going to explain a burnt bath? I fanned and thought up excuses: an art experiment with burnt clothing as a medium. I kept the water running to rinse the tub down into a minor-looking incident. I didn’t know where Tilda had gone. I concentrated on fanning and throwing my sodden, flame-chewed undies out the window. I scooped ashy newspaper into the toilet and flushed.