I = chapter eight

The Piano teacher

Chapter 8
by
Kim West

As a consequence of the rose bush incident, Elsie's usually agitated
state escalated to new all time highs. She shrieked her news to Ronnie,
as she rushed inside.

"There's a private detective watching them you know Ronnie."

"Yes dear."

"It's a woman. She's been there over a week now."

Elsie chuntered on, as Ronnie scratched his backside.

"Actually, she's asked me to help her."
Ronnie looked surprised.

"Yes it's true. She wants me to keep an eye out."

Ronnie nodded.

"Well I hope she'll pay you," he muttered.
"Hmmm."

Elsie immediately grabbed a glass from the draining board and placed it
against the wall and, note pad in hand, took up her vigil.

"You'll have to get your own tea tonight."
There are times like this when Ronnie looks at her sometimes out of the
corner of his eye, as if he were a crazed knife thrower about to
perform a spectacular decapitation. Of course, only the closest of
observers would catch this look. It's accompanied by a fleeting twitch
of the head and a barely imperceptible sigh. Just for once he looks as
though he might crack, and there it is, a gypsy knife thrower's
wildness in his eyes. His veins pulse and his fingers convulse. It's
over in seconds, this brief orgasm of revenge fantasy. Now he has
packed it away again for a very rainy day. He has packed it away for
his very own Armageddon, if no one gets there before him. Ronnie boils
the old battered kettle for his Cup-a-Soup and sets to grating cheese
for his toast. He carefully places two pickled onions on the side of
the plate and then a large blob of Colman's mustard next to them.

"You'll be up half the night again with all that," she bleats. "Don't
expect me to resuscitate you. I can't leave my post now."

Ronnie's toasted his cheese, brewed his Cup a Soup, set out his tray
carefully and taken these through to the front room to watch the
News.

"It's all turned out the way my mother said. Selfish to the last,
that's what he is. A brute."
Elsie mutters to ostensibly to herself, but as usual, loudly enough for
him to hear. There was a time long ago, when he would have taken her up
on this, even wooed her round, but now he prefers to let it lie.
Anyway, what he can remember of those halcyon furtive joys of brief sex
was nothing compared to a bit of peace and quiet, a pickled onion or
two and a thick coat of mustard on his cheese on toast.

As evening draws in, his insane wife nods off with her head against the
neighbour's wall. Her note pad slithers to the floor, the abandoned
glass resting on her lap.

Across the street, that car is there again, and seated in it he can
make out the figure of the watching woman, caught in a pool of
streetlight. Television Blue fills his front room with its dull glow
and Ronnie watches; other worlds, men and women in suits and ties,
floods and famines, mothers and children.

It's only a little part he has to play.

Only a little part.

That wonderful music is drifting in through the front window. The old
man is playing a Chopin waltz and Ronnie hums along. He dozes off,
eventually waking to the fanfare of the Nine O'clock News. So, pulling
himself away from he reveries, he wanders through to the kitchen and
finds that his wife has been dribbling again at her listening post. He
mops her chin with her apron, takes the glass and her notebook from her
lap.

"Come on Elsie. Let's get you to bed old girl,"
he mutters as he scoops her up in his arms and carries her up to her
bedroom. Like a rag doll over his shoulder, she barely stirs.

"What a sleeper she is. She's always been the same," he chatters, as
with the utmost care and gentleness he props her up on the bed edge,
undresses his sleeping wife and places her in between her sheets.

"Good night sweetheart," he whispers in her unhearing ear. Gazing at
her peaceful form it occurs to him that his wife is always at her best
when she is asleep.

Then it is his routine. At this time, on an evening when she has fallen
into one of her deep sleeps he will sit out in the back porch and
smoke, come rain, hail, thunder or lightning. He has a secret packet of
Dunhills and a box of matches tucked under the bench. He can hear the
old piano teacher saying goodnight to his pupil after their stroll
around the garden next door.

The sound of the girl's footsteps recedes and the back door closes.
Ronnie hears the sound of Edward's key as it is turned in the lock and
there is a sound of a car pulling away. The girl's father collects her.
Ronnie sighs heavily. He will smoke three cigarettes and then he will
walk to the bottom of his garden and check the back gate, which is
always shut. After this ritual he will walk around the outside of his
house and check all the windows. He will come back in through the front
door and close all the inside doors, as he passes through them. Then
the back door will be locked and bolted, the kitchen curtains closed
and then he will move upstairs. Ronnie takes the greatest of care to be
quiet, for him this is a precious time. He washes and grooms his body
meticulously, takes out his best pyjamas, throwing his clothes upon the
floor and he gets into bed with his wife. She will never know he has
been there. He has his own room and his own single bed, which is always
slightly musty. But tonight, for a few hours, he will lie next to the
woman he married thirty-seven years ago. He'll just lie there. If he
were to wake her she would have apoplexy, as she banned him from what
she called "bodily contact" after her gall bladder operation.

She shifts in her sleep and her thigh is suddenly in contact with him.
The thought of her waking and screaming, to find herself thus
compromised gives him a shudder, but now there is another thought of
touching her that is creeping upon him, and he has to keep himself
under immense control not to do so. Again she shifts and now, under her
nightie, her breast is against his shoulder. It feels like soft dough.
My god he'd like to grab at it and he'd like to heave himself on top of
her with his hand over her mouth and take his dues. He'd like to give
her a real pounding and see if that would shut her up for a next day or
two.

This is the way it always is for him when the sleep falls upon her so
powerfully. It's the only time he can actually be near to another human
being and certainly it's the only time he could bear to be near his
wife. Later, in the night, he'll return again to his own musty bed and
touch himself.

His wife will never know.