Flowers

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I think the main reason why I didn’t put a pan scourer in the meat pie was that he wouldn’t have been able to eat it. Not enough would have gone down his throat to choke him. If I had been here he would have called me a fucking useless bitch and thrown the plate at me, complete with meat and two veg. Before today, no matter what food I cooked or how well I cooked it, he might have screamed his disgust and I would have accepted the bruised face and the slime of warm food down my blouse. No, more than that, I would have got in the way of the plate. I would have welcomed it. That’s what I deserved for being a useless bitch. And it would have saved him getting even madder for missing me and spoiling his newly decorated wall.

 

Above the skirting board, the house is spotless. He paints it every minute he’s in the house. The TV might be on but he just listens and catches sight of an occasional piece and then rapidly turns to finish off an edge of white against yellow or some other equally boring colour scheme. Then he might re-varnish the balustrade. The pots and cover sheets are left on the floor randomly around the house which I suppose is an advantage in a way. I can’t be hit for not cleaning the floor when he can’t see it. But the pictures are my responsibility too.  

 

‘Come here Alison,’ he said one evening a few days ago. When he says it quietly like that my heart starts to beat deeply and my stomach rolls up into a tight ball. ‘What do you see?’

‘Do you mean the picture, dear?’

‘Yes, the picture. What about the picture?’

‘Well it’s the Sunflowers, Van Gogh.’

In an instant the calm vanishes and the screams begin.

 

‘I know it’s the fucking Sunflowers you stupid bitch. It’s not straight is it? Look. A quarter inch off the vertical. I spend my life making this place look good and you can’t even keep the fucking pictures straight. What am I supposed to do, lie on the floor to get a good look at them? Useless cow.’

 

The back of his hand came sharply across my face. There have been many days like that but there aren’t going to be any more.

 

The walls might be pristine but the floor is where everything is dumped. Not just pots and sheets but all his clothes, wherever he decides to drop them. I tried first of all to ask him to put things away but the broken noses, the purple cheeks and the split lips soon put a stop to that. The floor was my job he said. He did enough keeping up the rest of the house. This morning I found two bills in his trouser pocket, one for flowers, twelve red roses, and another for a restaurant. It’s practically a cliché. But then I doubt he would have the imagination to think of anything else. The bills are dated a couple of days ago when he was very late home. He’s often late home, something I relish, but business meetings and dinners do not require red roses.

 

It’s not so much that they prove anything. There might be some explanation other than the obvious. But I’m not looking for proof. For fifteen years I’ve accepted the violence, the humiliation, the enslavement because… because of what? I suddenly find it difficult to know why. But really, deep down, I know. He looked after me, gave me a life style that I never thought I’d get. I suppose I must have thought the price was worth paying. Who else would have me? But the thing is, and I’ve never told anyone this, he is a good lover. After he’s finished hitting he makes it up to me, lies me down, caresses me and all the pain and the anguish can disappear.

 

But this morning came the moment of realisation, like a switch turned on in my head. Everything is clear now. If I take the pain, then it’s only me who should get the reward. If someone else is sharing my rewards, all else is pointless. But then a second switch. Even if I’m wrong, so what? The pain is too high a price to pay. Maybe I deserve better.

 

I’ve packed a couple of suitcases, called a taxi and I don’t even know yet where I shall ask to be taken. I’ve made the meat pie. Most of the filling is paint stripper.  And he never once, in fifteen years, bought me flowers.