I Take You. Nikki Gemmell

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       I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in

      Eleven a.m. Saturday. Breakfast together, the yellow and black room at the back of the house. Cliff chewing loudly as he reads the FT, masticating his egg and toast, slurping down his coffee in a loud gulp. Connie cannot bear the sounds, he is oblivious. No one has ever pointed them out to him, she is sure. It is one of those moments of utter stasis between them when her future life comes hurtling towards her suddenly, a wall of acquiescence, stillness, rot.

      Cliff looks up as if he’s only just realized she’s there. Inclines his head. Engages. Reverses his wheelchair, a touch. Asks her to throw her silken kimono from Myla off one shoulder and come closer, right by him, to sit in the chair next to him, upright, one leg cocked: ‘Let’s see what that small fortune spent on yoga poses actually does for you, hmm?’

      Connie complies, winces, it hurts.

      He inspects, smiles a murmur, ‘Good good,’ snaps his paper for better viewing and returns to his reading. Connie relaxes her leg. ‘Play.’ Brusque, from behind the newsprint. ‘Cherish the family crest. Show me. I want to see. Hear.’

      Connie feels too stiff, raw. It hurts. She stops.

      Silence. Stillness. Her cage and she has constructed it, of course. With her obedience, her compliance, her truth. Cliff continues reading the paper, lost in his mergers. Connie now gazing out the window, thinking of Picasso, how he said that all women were goddesses or doormats and if they weren’t doormats at the start of the relationship then he’d do his level best to crack them into it. Herself? She’s never been any threat. It’s why his tight, moneyed family likes her, she knows that. One of those sweet ones who will not rock the boat; a pleaser, primed for a rubbing out; instinctively his family of strong women recognized it despite the slight niggle of a gold-digger, she can sense it; but she’s sure they’re like that with anyone who comes into their fold.

      ‘You will look after him, won’t you?’ enquired his mother, upfront, at the start. ‘Yes,’ Connie answered simply, ‘yes of course,’ even then. And she has ever since. No one’s ever been afraid of her cowardice, her compliance; they all take her to be the good wife. Look after him, of course, but what about herself? Who’ll look after her? She’s a girl, she’ll be fine, she can look after herself.

      ‘Where do we go from here?’ Connie suddenly asks into the morning quiet.

      Cliff puts down the paper. Wheels his chair close. Props her leg back sternly, then the other one, and brushes a touch, admiring his handiwork; his wife’s knuckles are white on the chair’s rim. He does not know this. He tells her he has a new client. His voice, signalling the start of the process. A young South American, from Argentina; not a talker, a possibility, there’s something cheeky and ready in him, her ‘type’. A pause. There’s a scenario … he’d like to try out. He toys with his new bauble buried between his wife’s legs. Her eyes are closed, giving nothing away. Cliff talks on. A business meeting here, at home. Not now, but when she’s healed, readied. He will ring for papers. His wife will volunteer to help, she is close, she knows where they are. She will enter his office, bundle in hand, wearing the shortest of her Chanel skirts, that red one, with the fringe, and her six-inch Louboutins. Then just as she hands them across the desk the papers will be dropped, the whole lot. She will bend, on all fours, and pick them up. Slowly. Searching. Her rump high and square to this stranger.

      His test.

      Which Cliff will watch.

      ‘No knickers.’ Connie nods, feeling the wave of complicity, the stirring, washing through her despite herself.

      ‘Of course. And most importantly – my lovely, lovely new trinket.’ He strokes it with his thumb.