That was Tuesday. Wednesday was Ludmilla Wishart’s thirtieth birthday and the first caller was her friend, Carmen Gandolfo, who sang Happy Birthday down the line as Ludmilla was about to eat her muesli. Ludmilla blinked back a couple of tears: Carmen was good for her, large in body and spirit, a real tonic. Plus it mattered that even though she knew what Adrian was like, Carmen had called her at home, not work.
They exchanged a few pleasantries, Carmen apparently slurping coffee or tea. ‘I’ll call in at your office later with a little something.’
‘Size doesn’t matter,’ Ludmilla said, ‘so long as it’s expensive.’
‘On my salary?’ demanded Carmen. Another slurp. ‘So, what have you got planned for tonight?’
Ludmilla said in a guilty rush, ‘Adrian’s taking me out to dinner.’
‘Darl,’ Carmen drawled, putting a lot of doubt and disapproval into the word.
With a whine that she hated, Ludmilla replied, ‘I can’t leave him, you know that. I’m scared he’ll hurt himself if I do.’
‘Utter bullshit.’
‘Please, Carmen.’
‘Get him into a MENS program. I can set it up for you.’
Carmen worked as a counsellor with the shire’s community health service. MENS-Men Exploring Non-violent Solutions-was a behaviour-change workshop for violent or abusive husbands or partners. Ludmilla knew there was a snowball’s chance in hell of Adrian entering such a program. He wasn’t some uneducated labourer but an urbane, highly educated professional; and he’d hardly ever hit her.
‘Please,’ she said miserably.
Last time they’d had this conversation Carmen had said, ‘It’s your funeral-and I mean that literally,’ but this was a birthday call, so Carmen steered the conversation onto cheerier matters. Ludmilla was soon laughing and buoyant, but glancing at the kitchen clock anxiously and keeping an ear open for Adrian, who was in the bathroom down the hall, scraping his electric razor over his lean chin. She didn’t have much time. She thanked Carmen for the call and was rinsing her cereal bowl at the sink when the phone rang again. Her mother said, ‘How’s the birthday girl?’
‘Hello, Mum.’
They chatted for a couple of minutes, then Ludmilla’s mother said, ‘Is that gorgeous husband of yours taking you somewhere nice tonight?’
Ludmilla had tried confiding in her mother several times in the past few years, but she simply failed to listen. She adored her son-in-law. Adrian could do no wrong. Bolstered by her conversation with Carmen, Ludmilla said the worst thing she’d ever said about her husband: ‘Mum, Mr Adorable punched me in the stomach last night.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly.’
‘I’m thinking seriously of leaving him.’
‘You’ve always been a complainer, Ludmilla. A marriage requires work. You need to try harder.’
Ludmilla realised with a start of fear that Adrian’s razor had fallen silent. She murmured urgently, ‘I’d better go.’
And there was Adrian, standing in the doorway, both hands behind his back. He cocked his head: ‘Your mother?’
How much had he heard? ‘Yes,’ Ludmilla said. She added reassuringly, ‘It was a quick call.’
To her relief, he nodded. Ludmilla couldn’t win sometimes. If she made a call, he’d see it as money they’d never see again. If someone called her-especially if they spoke at length-he’d feel that she’d removed herself from him. Often he’d time her, glaring pointedly at the Longines watch she’d bought him. He’d time her, calculate the distances she’d driven, count the money she’d spent on groceries.
His grins used to melt her. He grinned now, saying ‘Ta da!’ and bringing his hands out from behind his back.
He flourished a birthday cake at her. Chocolate, three candles for the thirty years, a scalloped edge and other fancy bits, ‘Happy Birthday’ scrolled across it in white icing.
Then Ludmilla frowned, looked more closely at the icing. ‘Hippy Birthday,’ it said.
Her face crumpled. ‘Adrian!’
‘Just a joke…’
‘I’m not fat.’
‘Ludmilla, it’s just a joke.’
‘I’m not fat,’ she wailed, touching her hips.
He was deadly quiet and serious now. ‘We have to face it, darling, your thighs are bigger.’
She collapsed into her chair at the kitchen table. ‘I can’t go on like this.’
Adrian was bright and shiny from the bathroom, groomed to within an inch of his life. He stood behind her chair, dug his fingers into her neck and murmured, ‘The only way you’ll leave me is in a coffin.’
She gasped, jerked away from him.
‘Mill,’ he said reasonably, ‘I could snap your neck, you know I could. Listen,’ he said, moving around now and crouching beside her, one hand stroking her between the shoulders, the other on her knee, ‘I apologise, I went too far.’ Suddenly hot tears spurted from his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. You mean the world to me. It’s all the pressure, the disappointments, am I good at what I do, why aren’t I getting any recognition.
‘Oh, Ade,’ she said, crying too now.
‘I shouldn’t take it out on you, I know I shouldn’t.’
Ludmilla knew that Adrian was chronically depressed. Although he’d had plenty of freelance drafting and design commissions since their marriage, for which he earned reasonable money, the jobs had been small-married friends getting him to mock up preliminary drawings for a house extension, for example-or otherwise disappointing, like the shire commissioning him to design a public toilet block for the Waterloo foreshore only to reject it, calling it too outlandish. The larger commissions, the offers of a partnership with a prestige firm, had been elusive. Meanwhile there were certain types of people, the legions of the vulgar, whom Adrian Wishart could not possibly work with, and standards he would not compromise. Ludmilla felt for him sometimes. It was hard for truly creative people.
‘I know,’ she sniffled, squeezing his hand.
He hugged her affectionately, sprang to his feet and briskly went about getting himself some breakfast. She envied the way he could recover from setbacks. Then the news came on, the police still investigating the assault on the Landseer School chaplain, a car bomb in Baghdad, some footballer arrested for drunk driving-’Your honour, consider the terrible pressure my client is under,’ Adrian chortled, making her smile.
Then he patted his lips. ‘Forgot to say, I’m playing squash tonight.’
He said it every year. And every year she said, ‘You are not, mister. You’re taking me out to dinner.’
Mock astonished, he jabbed his chest. ‘Moi?’
‘Yes, you,’ Ludmilla said. Inside, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Completely slipped my mind.’
‘It did not.’
It was almost like love. They ate their breakfast in a warm glow and when Ludmilla next got up to clear a plate away, she heard the whiplash snap of his fingers. She turned: he was holding up his coffee mug for a refill.
She fetched the pot. Just as she was pouring, the phone rang. Ludmilla didn’t know who, apart from Carmen and her mother, would be ringing at this hour. She glanced anxiously at Adrian; he glanced pointedly at his watch.
She swallowed and picked up the handset. ‘Hello?’
It was Carl Vernon in Penzance Beach, sounding deeply distressed about the old fisherman’s cottage on Bluff Road.