Sticks and Stones 8

The next day was a nightmare.

Maddy wouldn’t go to school because someone had spread a rumour that she’d peed her pants in class. Griff couldn’t go, either; he was still too asthmatic after all the turmoil with Alan, me and his father.

We just tripped over each other all day.

And then I noticed.

One bottle of the wine I’d brought back from Andorra had gone. Then I saw the half-empty bottle of Sangre de Toro on the side.
I marched up to Suzie and stopped her in her tracks.

‘I thought you weren’t going to drink that wine till I got back,’ I spurted.

‘Oh, come on, Jim,’ she replied, as if she’d been waiting for me to notice. ‘It’s only a bottle of wine.’

‘I asked you to keep it back for me so we could drink it together. A gesture, no?’

Suzie swallowed down her pride. ‘I really didn’t think it was such a big deal,’ she offered with a cough.

‘Come off it, Suze,’ I replied, gobsmacked by her carelessness. ‘I asked you not to drink it with him, so you drank it. You can’t expect me to let that go.’

My fingers clicked loudly as the moment soared. The fury I felt was intolerable. The betrayal over a bottle of wine seemed like a fate worse than my girlfriend’s infidelity.

‘I opened a bottle and then we ran out and..,’ she said.

‘So,’ I intercepted. ‘You drank the Sangre de Toro yourself, did you?’ I was on fire.

‘Yes, I think I did,’ she replied, fear invading her voice. She wasn’t a good liar. Then, adjusting her vocal cords, she added, ‘Look, I can’t remember! Why is it so important?’
But the damage had been done, and I was furious.

‘You told him, didn’t you? That I didn’t want him drinking that particular bottle.’ I felt like grabbing hold of Alan and throwing him about, just as Michel had suggested at the hotel. Alan had set the children against me and now he was working on Suzie. It seemed only a matter of time before he had Clara in his grasp, and that was a fate worse than death.
Suzie kicked me out that night after I told Griff and Maddy to fuck off. Any remnants of shame left in me had been extracted with the wine and I goaded Suzie with my bull’s blood-based argument that she had betrayed me. I told her she would pay the price of her actions.

I was sinister and ugly, wrapped up in pain and loss, and I deserved to be thrown out. All this on the day southwestern Europe experienced an almost total eclipse of the moon.

That night, Monday, I went to see Maf. We talked in various bars of my latest fracture and then I took him home and went to stay at a small hotel in Graulhet.

After I’d smoked a joint in bed, the feelings of loss became so great that I called Suzie and threatened to make her life hell if she didn’t tell me whether Alan drank from the bottle of Sangre de Toro.
She tried to reason with me but I couldn’t see a way past it unless she told me what happened. I knew how sad and lonely and confused and hideous and uncompromising I was being, but there seemed no way of letting dogs lie. I had to know. I would make Suzie understand the pain she was causing me by throwing idle threats over the phone to her. She would pay, I told her, hating myself as I replaced the handset, suddenly wishing I could call back and say sorry and sleep well and don’t worry and I’ll get over it.

But no, I remained as stubborn as an ox, trembling before his killing, my blood bubbling in my mouth as the stake went deeper through my heart, unable to withstand the pain-threshold I had imposed on myself by allowing someone to destroy my family life from within.

Nothing seemed real at this time. I left the hotel in the morning with a joint to help me on my way, but it only served to highlight the stress-factor.

I arrived back at my preferred hotel in Lavaur and was greeted by Michel.

‘Elle t’a futu dehors encore?’ he asked with his nose up for me. (‘She kicked you out again?’)

‘Mais oui,’ I replied with my hands up.

That was Tuesday lunch, my lowest ebb for years, so things couldn’t get worse.

I spoke on the phone with Suzie, but she could still sniff the traces of wine and betrayal in my voice. I couldn’t let it go, and most women would have let me go at that point. But not Suzie.
She’d been up all night with Maddy after my threatening phone call, fearing that I’d come and smash the house up. I tried to assure her that this wouldn’t happen, if only for the children’s sake, but she had allowed the children to stay away from school and said they all felt like prisoners in their own home now.

‘At least you’re in your own home,’ I said.

However deluded I was at this time, it was still me out there looking around streets for apartments to rent and not Suzie.

Everything that was mine was at her house, from where I had been ignobly exiled. I felt like a fugitive running away from myself, but I couldn’t do that, and so I did what I always do; buy a little notebook from a Maison de la Presse and go to a quiet bar to write words down.