Angle of the Rain

We're all discussing topics around the dinner table while Denny
serves up the fish. The first course, tomato and basil soup, came in
little rustic bowls, with little nodules of rustic bread, but it tasted
like the stuff Mike bought from Tescos last week, Tescos Finest mind
you, but Tescos all the same. Then Jenny said, keep your knives, and I
thought o-oh no dishwasher, and started dropping hints about my eczema
flaring up again. Then I caught myself scratching the crevice between
my index and middle finger when Jason started spouting off about being
a poorly paid civil servant. Try getting a job in the real world I
thought. See how many days off you'd get if you worked for yourself.
Then Denny came in carrying the fish on a green and silver glass plate,
and Karen started clapping. And I thought that green was the one colour
you shouldn't paint your dining room because it puts people off their
food.

So here we are, two glasses of red jolly, passing plates to each other
as if we were Keystone Cops putting out a fire, instead of six adults
pretending to know each other. Slap! Another wedge of white flesh slops
onto green glass and Jason touches my arm. He gently brushes the hairs
on the mid point of my forearm, then moves to cup my awkward elbow when
I turn, so it looks as if I've started talking to him. Cunning bastard,
he knows I've been choosing not to look at him all night. I think my
lip-gloss has probably all gone by now and a straggle of fringe has
crept into my eyes, but it's too late to brush it away. He reeks of
perfume as ever, but this time it's One. Trying to fool himself he's a
young man again, or rather, fool every else. 'I was just saying to
Michael,' he says - and the way he pronounces my husband's name makes
it disposable - 'Just saying, what a marvellous sunset tonight. Did you
see it Lisa?' I was reading. 'You still have time to read?' Edward the
Blue Engine. Three and a half times. 'Ah, yes, very good. Do you still
do the voices?' Spiders of red spin across my cheeks, because the
voices that I used to read aloud for Jason where not suitable for
children of any age. 'Does she still do the voices Michael?'

The fish has already got around to Mike, and being Mike, he's started
already. His answer is accompanied with a shower of white flakes, and
when Jason and Karen laugh, I'm not sure if they laugh with or at him.
He behaving like this because he's angry with me and he knows it winds
me up. Just because he can't see what's in from of his eyes. And maybe
that makes me a spiteful cow, maybe it does. 'I saw the sunset this
evening,' Jason says, stroking a finger of each hand down his knife and
fork, as if he's the first man to see a sunset in all history. Karen
sits up to attention; master is about to speak. How can he make it
sound as if what he's going to say will be the most important
observation on sunsets there has ever been? The chatter dies away and
every turns, even Denny, poised halfway through pouring the
sauce.

'I was in the bedroom, helping Karen change. A wall of cloud ran
parallel to the window dropping hatched rain that shook the bushes. But
then it moved on, leaving the sky behind livid. I have never seen
colours like those before. I wanted to take a photograph, but I knew if
I went to find the camera it would go. So I stood there, watching the
colours bleeding together, trying to fix them in my mind, until Karen
called.'
'I can't stand to be left in that toilet for too long,' she says, no,
she apologises. If I were her, I wouldn't ever apologise, to anybody,
especially not to Jason. 'Well,' says Jason, 'you all must have all
done that. The moment you wished you had your camera. And you
didn't.'
Jenny picks up her glass says, 'In eighty-eight I saw Michael Hutchence
in Littlewoods in the city. Looking through the trouser sale rail.' She
puts her glass down neatly in front of her plate, and sits back.
Everyone bursts out laughing, Denny half drops the sauce jug. 'No I
did. It was him. It was him, wasn't it darling?' 'Yes, it did look like
him,' says Denny, wiping the scum from his fingers, and pulling at face
at the rest of us. 'Well I think it was,' and she crosses her arms.
'God I used to fancy him,' Karen says, and looks at me, but no, I
thought he needed a bath and good haircut. 'Yeah, but you're a
hairdresser, you would say that.' Thanks Denny. Better than, what is
it, a drain maintenance engineer or whatever it is. Call it whatever
you want, you still end up shovelling other people shit. Sorry, that's
the wine before dinner talking - I didn't say that out loud, did I?
Faces looking back at me, blue and brown and hazel eyes, pupils wide
under the dimmer. 'Didn't say what out loud?' asks Jason, and they wait
for an answer.

While I've got their attention, I quietly say, I want to talk about
guns. I think they should legalise them. 'Hey,' says Mike, leaning over
the table, but he can't reach past his plate. 'Where did that come from
Lisa?' asks Denny. I want to have a gun. Mike and I where talking that
in the car, I don't like the way this county has gone downhill. I don't
feel safe stopping at traffic lights. I used to be afraid on my own at
night, now it's daytime too, even with Mike. I said I wanted a gun and
Mike said? 'I said you couldn't have this county swarming with guns.
There'd be a bloodbath.' 'But why are you saying this Lisa? The fish is
going cold. We haven't even toasted.' Jennifer raises her glass; 'to
fre?' I want to talk about it, now. We talked about Karen's bladder for
ten minutes. She told us all about emptying her bag. Now I want to talk
about guns. She wouldn't be in that thing if she'd had a gun. 'Lisa!'
No Denny, I have to say this. Isn't it true Karen? 'You know it wasn't
that simple Lisa.' Wasn't it? If there had been a handgun in your
bedside cabinet, when you heard that man in your room, you would've had
time to take it out, wouldn't you? You could have stopped him. If you
had the choice again, you would, wouldn't you? She shakes her head,
eyes glassing over - I shouldn't say these things, but I need to. I
can't stop. 'I couldn't kill somebody.' You wouldn't put a bullet in
the bastard's head? A little bubble stretches over the corner of her
lips. How about now Karen? If he was standing here, in front of you
now, knowing all the pain he put you through, and you could squeeze,
and bang and no recriminations? 'Why are you saying this?' Wouldn't
you? 'No.' You would. 'No, no I couldn't. I couldn't.' Crumpled into
her chair, newspaper for kindling, stars fall from the end of her nose
into the plate on her lap. And all the while I can feel Jason staring
at the veins in my neck.

I fold my arms. I'd like to say Grace. And at this point, everyone
should shout, 'Grace!' but nobody does this time. I slug the rest of
the wine. Sorry, I think I've had too much. But I'm not sorry, because
I can hear Jason gently panting. He always liked a good performance.
But I don't look at him. I look at my husband across the table. In my
head, I'm saying to him loudly, I've proved my point. Not about guns or
any of that nonsense, but about the man sitting next to me, the man
never raised a word in his wife's defence. Mike turns his head away in
disgust, while Denny put an arm round Karen's shoulder, and Jenny rolls
her knife over and over in her food.

Sunsets are good, but they happen all the time and only an idiot would
think about them for longer than a moment. Some things never fade. They
just scab over and scar. Some things, like anger, don't diminish. They
fester and grow. All the tender evils Jason inflicted on me; did they
fester after Mike rescued me? Could they have taken him over on that
still autumn night, after he came to our house and I turned him away?
Karen swore she must have forgotten to lock her front door, but she's a
city girl, a deadlock and chain girl. Mike doesn't think Jason's
capable, nor did the police or anybody else. He said it again in the
car over here. 'If Jason did that to her, why wouldn't she say
something? She loves the man. It's quite obvious she worships him. Even
if she'd suppressed it somehow, deep down, she'd know, wouldn't she?
And he's devoted to her too. Look at the way he looks after her, day
after day, all those days off work. Never hear him complain. How could
he hurt her? It's ridiculous. You're just jealous. Isn't that it Lisa?
Or you just can't bear to see someone else happy. You're a spiteful
cow.'

How can you formulate the gravity of someone else's relationship?
Behind closed doors, all the words and blows and mind games don't play
by the rules of the world outside. When it does spill out, it's one
person's word against another's. The truth is our opinion of what
happened. Our opinion is based in our faith in the person speaking
those words. And if that person is trusted, worshipped, even by their
victims, then where does the truth lie then?

While the others are distracted, Jason bends against me. His breath
rolls over my cheek, tangy and spotted with basil. I still worship him.
He still makes me alive in a way Mike cannot. But have to put feeling
aside for the task ahead. He hisses, 'I need a haircut soon.' I think
of the temperature of the hand shower, and lathering his hair. I think
about watching his eyes in the mirror as I move behind him and lukewarm
blades close to his thinning patch. I wonder how long it will take for
him to confess.