What's Playing On Your Mind?

WHAT'S PLAYING ON YOUR MIND?

Jack could hear Laura's slow and heavy breathing. Almost snoring, but
not quite. If he woke his wife up and asked her to quieten down she
would tell him where to go. There was no way to ask the question
nicely: Could you sleep more quietly? Or: Could you stop breathing the
way you breathe? Both of these were sure ways to start a row. Yet the
sound irritated him. Made him want to shake her and demand that she
stop, once and for all, that half snoring noise, peculiar to herself,
that grated his nerves and kept him awake at night.

He tried to ignore her. For a while the silence of the house was in
Jack's ears. The kids were asleep in their respective bedrooms. The
rubbish was in the metal bin outside, the plastic lid set tightly on
with two bricks, either side of the handle, to prevent the foxes from
dragging rubbish into the front garden and scavenging. The washing up
was done. The surfaces wiped. Plugs removed from sockets. Windows
locked. Chains on latches. The dog, Fritz, was asleep in a soft basket
in the garage that was now converted into Jack's gamesroom.

It had a full size snooker table. This was the realisation of a
personal dream Jack had kept since he was in his mid-teens. The
gamesroom was his own place. Barring the dog, anyone going into this
section of the house had to have a good reason to be there. He would go
to the local pub, drink a couple of pints of bitter, then walk home,
lock himself in the room and play frame after frame by himself. He had
no talent for snooker, but that, for Jack, wasn't the point.

Tomorrow, the family were off for a fortnight in Spain, sunning
themselves at a seaside resort about an hour's drive from
Barcelona.

The hand for the seconds on the alarm clock ticked. Then he understood
the ticking was from his wristwatch on the bedside table by his head.
He listened, concentrating, and he decided that wasn't right either.
Finally, he distinguished between the seconds ticking by on both his
wristwatch and the alarm clock. Fractionally, they were out of synch
with each other. He wondered which one was correct, and if it
mattered.

The family would be awake in two hours. Five AM. He would drive them to
Stanstead airport. The oldest of the boys, Tim, would cry and protest
because he liked his sleep. Stewart, younger by 18 months, was
different and would do what he was told to the letter. Not a whisper of
protest or complaint from the lad.

Jack thought about earlier in the day. He had gone for lunch in an All
Bar One off Cornhill with the office manager, Maxine.

"Where are you going on holiday?" she asked him.

He told her the name. She didn't know it. He described the location and
as he spoke he realised it could've been just about any sunny resort in
Europe.

"Very pleasant," she said. "I wouldn't say no to a holiday myself. A
break would be nice."

"It'll be good," he said, sipping a half pint of diet coke.

"You don't seem too sure," she said.

"Well, it's kind of funny isn't it?"

"What is?"

"Being away."

Maxine lit one of her Silk Cut Lights, using a folder of matches she
had taken from a glass bowl at the bar.

"It'll be strange, won't it?" he said.

She let out a short, smoky laugh. Coarse and, he thought,
bullying.
"Oh please," she said, "drop the performance."

"What performance?"

"You know exactly what?I'm not daft so don't talk to me like I am. Next
you'll be telling me you'll be leaving her."

Jack attempted to speak. She carried on, saying, "Don't insult my
intelligence, alright?"

"I'm not insulting your intelligence."

"Well then what are your telling me, go on, what?"

He dithered. As she watched him as he said "You know?" and "I, I don'?"
and "You know I really?", he again saw this bullying aspect in her that
had escaped him before. When she was a school kid, he imagined her as a
real troublemaking bitch. The kind his elder son was presently trying
to deal with at school. His son Tim refused to stand up for himself and
the girl in Tim's class had spotted this and was relentless.

Jack looked at the dark red lipstick on the cork speckled cigarette
butt. Maxine stirred the ice cubes in her vodka and cranberry with a
black straw that she bent with a finger as she raised the glass to her
mouth. She had him and he knew it.

"Okay, I'm talking out of my you-know-what. So you're right. You must
be," he said, smiling. "You must be," he repeated, mainly for his own
benefit.

"Thank you," she said.

He thought about it and said, "I don't know what's going on in my head
anymore."

"I'll tell you," she said, picking up the menu. "I'm having
toad-in-the-hole with a side order of mash and you're paying."

She lit another cigarette.

She did have toad-in-the-hole. He had a steak sandwich. They shared the
mash.

He paid.

As he lay in the bedroom, beside his wife, whose breathing now verged
on outright snoring, he felt conscious of his own body. His toes.
Ankles. He tensed his calf muscles and buttocks, hearing gases gurgling
in his stomach. Maxine lived with her boyfriend, a South African. She
hadn't mentioned him much. The first was the night Jack and her had
tried to sleep together after someone's leaving party at the office.
"My boyfriend's in South Africa for a month," Maxine had said as the
bell rang for last orders.

They hailed a cab to her flat in Ealing, fumbled on her sofa,
undressed, and he couldn't get hard. Guilt? Nerves? Afterwards, when
defeat had been accepted, he apologised to Maxine as she lit a
cigarette. "Maybe it's the booze," he said. "Maybe," she replied.
"Don't worry about it."

But he did. He hadn't slept with anyone except his wife in 11 years.
For half of those 11 years, he had visualised himself with other women.
The landlord's wife in the local especially. For all of that, being
with Maxine was unnerving. The touch. Smell. Perfume. A different face
had made him feel a stranger to himself, and he hadn't liked the
feeling.

If he moved in the bed, then Laura would awaken and then he'd obey his
conscience and tell her the truth about what he had done. Jack and
Maxine. Snogging at work. Groping in the office. Going for drinks. His
wife, he knew, suspected, but she passed off her suspicions in a jokey
manner, making it easy for him to avoid the issue.

"I think you must have a fancy woman at work," she said.

"Me? Who'd have me?"

"True," she replied. Both of them laughing, more from relief than
anything.

In two hours alarms would beep. Lights go on. The toilet would be
flushed. Water running. Flakes of sleep wiped from eyes. The kitchen,
he thought, will smell of hot tea and buttered toast.

Maxine had close friends at work. She promised Jack she had told no
one, but he didn't believe her. She wasn't the sort to keep a secret.
That meant the office knew about how he was the man who tried to cheat
on his wife, but couldn't get a stiffy?

Although he didn't have that problem when he went back to Maxine's
place a week after that first failed attempt.

"If at first you don't succeed..." Maxine had said, grinning.

He felt aware of his insides. A pressure in his mind.

Laura and Jack had gone to Tim's school to speak with Tim's form tutor
about the bullying. Laura did the majority of the talking. Jack looked
at the young teacher's breasts, waiting for them to burst out of a thin
white cotton shirt. He wanted to prise apart each button. The teacher
asked him a question and immediately he understood they both knew what
he was looking at. Women, he thought, always knew.

Including his wife, who, later that evening, said, "Were you looking at
Tim's teacher's boobs?"

"As if," he said.

"I could've sworn you were."

"No," he said. "No, I wasn't at all. You know I don't like women with
big chests."

She didn't answer.

(There was a marathon in the Sahara desert. Heralded as the toughest
race of them all. A test of endurance, stamina. He wanted to do that.
Prove himself. Use the muscles in his body. Prove he could meet such a
physical challenge.

He wasn't sure what he could do anymore. His job, yes. But that wasn't
him. Not now. It had been, once).

"Are you awake?" said Laura.

"I'm just drifting off," he said.

She moved. Sitting upright, half yawning but without the whining sound.
"You are awake," she said.

"I'm alright."

"What are you thinking?"

"Nothing. Honest."

Laura was the first person outside his family to ever say she loved
him. The best part was, he knew she meant it as she was embarrassed
afterwards, turning bright red. She hadn't been able to stop herself
from saying it.

Weirdly, not even this detail felt like it mattered.

"Is it the flight making you nervous?" she said.

"No, not at all. I can't wait to get on the beach, be away from the rat
race."

"Then what's playing on your mind? Something is. It's like, well,
everything seems to annoy you."

"It doesn't. I just can't sleep."

"You said you were drifting."

"I am drifting. There isn't a reason for every little thing."

"I'm not saying there is."

"It seems like you are."

"Have it your way."

"You're making it this way."

"Fine."

She was angry. He sensed it. He himself wanted to shout. Confess.
Blame. He continued to lay there, very still. He thought about the
stars at night in the sky above Spain. Shooting stars. Satellites.
Laura gulped. A watery, smacking sound. Instinctively, before he knew
he was doing it, he had touched her face and felt the wet warm lines
trailing down her nose and cheeks.

"You don't love me," she said.

"Don't be stupid," he said.

"You don't. I know you don't."

"I do."

"Why are you staying with me?"

"That's a dozy question," he said, looking at her.

"Sometimes, I just don't know," she said.

"Where has all this come from?" said Jack, kissing her, drying her wet
face with the edge of his pillow case. "Please stop crying," he said,
kissing her cheeks, the wetness of her eyes. He wiped her again with
the pillow's edge, sensing her smile because the pillow had become a
joke sized handkerchief.

He told Laura he loved her, cuddling her, squeezing her.

"Promise," she said.

"I promise," he said, telling himself this, genuinely, - cross my heart
and hope to die - was the truth.