"Are you busy today?" she asks. "Could you pick up…" - something – her dry cleaning. None of Pete’s clothes require it these days. The hours between the two school runs are so short when you have somehow taken on running the house.
Pete’s demeanour is as ever unperturbed. Life swashes round him day to day, family hours are kept, complex, routine. Two large and one smaller girl come and go on their round of school, judo, music and terpsicory, and pre-pubescent socialising. When had they given in to a mobile phone for a nine year old for heaven sake?! Pete can’t remember it being discussed. Paid for from their allowances. Making allowances seems to be Pete’s life. Rachel’s life he feels is not nearly as accommodating. Her employers don’t acknowledge the balance between life and work, the seesaw is all tipped up at one end and work is the heavy weight in Rachel’s existence. There was the shock of the twins and what Pete refers to as the dark years, through which Pete and Rachel both tried to work. So after their youngest Lally came along, more or less of her own volition (for neither Pete nor Rachel had wished for her), they agreed that Pete would, for a couple of years, work from home so that Rachel could go back to work. From then on, and not in a planned way, Pete has gradually let childcare and family routines invade his days. And now Pete’s own earnings are at an all time low. His face still wears the look of slightly surprised amusement with which he has greeted every event of his adult life. He has established a shed in the garden and set it up with electricity and heating. Whilst the girls are at school and late at night he plays his guitar there and sings Beatles songs to no-one. He mostly wears socks without shoes indoors, and pads about, making lunch boxes, loading the dishwasher, picking up dirty washing, and in between he surfs the internet, investigating quantum physics and the history of the blues. He is prone to talking over - much about both these subjects although no-one close to him cares about either. The twins tease him and in return he calls them the Terribles. Lally is busy making it clear that she’s not his baby anymore, and he calls her Lally, the Third.
In the dark realm of their bedroom Pete and Rachel move about each other in a half light. She comes and goes in the glow from the landing, moving through her late night routine of undressing, washing, clinking her rings into the saucer with the roses on it, removing her make-up and putting on her dreams. She reads, a book a week, her shoulder turned away from Pete towards the bedside light. Pete washes less than Rachel, a bone of contention. She is a sweet bed companion, he not always so. He lies most evenings looking at the curve of her back and thinking about reaching out to her, but seldom does. The quota of subtle rejections compared to the rare – and getting rarer – comings together discourages him subtly. The centre of their shared bed has become a desert terrain, undulating shifting dunes of distant, arid shoulders, backs and thighs, with few oases.
Tonight Pete had showered and brushed back his over-long hair. He knows it irritates her that he too seldom has it cut. Somewhere in himself he feels like irritating her. He lies as usual looking at her skin as she reads her book. Its text is visible to him in the lamp light, he catches a few words, like radar static: "…falling, tumbling together beyond time, beyond themselves, down long deep caverns of light and dark, their bodies danced…" Pete judges that she might be aroused by this nonsense, perhaps her skin will be receptive to touch, will not flinch from him. He lays a hand on her hip, and stills it there, awaiting a sign. She covers his hand with hers and goes on reading. Her fingers knead his for a moment, absent mindedly. Then she tucks hers into his palm, like a child holding hands. He waits for her to pull him towards her but she doesn’t. After a minute it’s he that gently pulls his hand away.
"Do you still want to invite Rob and Clair for Sunday?" he asks. Beyond thought he feels her breathing still for a moment. Then:
"No…they’re going to his Mum’s next weekend."
"Oh?" There’s a long pause, too long, and a tiny grain of the desert between them lodges itself in Pete’s heart.
"I saw Rob at the station yesterday. He told me." Pete finds himself still, listening for the wind of her breath to pick up, for the dunes between them to resume their murmur and gentle shifting. She is still apparently reading but the page doesn’t turn. Then the sands begin to run and fall away. She pulls herself upwards in the bed and turns to him.
"Pete…" The sand fills Pete’s mouth, he chokes. He rolls away and stands out of the bed.
"Forgot to brush my teeth," he says, leaving the bedroom.
"Pete." She rises and follows him, stands behind him, puts her hand on his spine between his shoulders as if protecting the place she is about to wound. "This isn’t enough. Is it." He fills his mouth with foam so he can’t speak and brushes and brushes as if with his vigour he can keep it at bay. He sees himself in the mirror, his brow high, his eyes wide with fear. She waits for him to finish and in the end there’s no way but to swill and spit. "This is not your fault," she says. "it just happened. I didn’t mean to fall in love…" The blow strikes home. The wail of the wounded rises up from within him.
"What are you saying?" He can’t find breath, words. " Don’t…don’t…" He thinks if he can stop her saying it it won’t be true. "We can talk about this."
"It’s too late." She turns away.
And then, how all the clichés tumble from them, the landscape ripping apart between them. Pete sits with his backed pressed against the head of the bed as Rachel catalogues his short comings, her disappointment, her feelings of being unloved, her yearnings for touch, for mastery, for being understood and for being cared for. Pete has only wordless misery to parry, no way to fix it, no instructions to follow, no chords to play.
"Tell me what you want?" she asks at some late hour of the night. He looks at her numbly, dumb. And then…reaching into himself for a last play, a last ditch, last pitch:
"You," he finally says. And inside him swirls a great riff of grief, lacking words to say the rest. Much later he’ll find them all, say them to himself a hundred, hundred times: My life, as it is, my family intact, the children un-hurt, the world un-shattered, the future as I imagined it, having middle aged adventures with you when the girls leave home, getting old together, loving you all my life.
She waits for words from him but when they don’t come she turns, not towards him, but away.
"I can’t… I just can’t do it," she says.
And in the morning as the sun rises Pete gets out of bed and walks out, away and up the hill, pushing his feet with his heart, trying to beat it out of himself, the feeling of being torn through his breastbone, through the centre of his being. He finally comes back to himself to find he’s a couple of miles from the village and from home. He stands a while and thinks of his children, still asleep at this hour, un-knowing yet of what they must always know and bear, needing him to still be their Dad in what ever way he must do it now. He turns, and begins to walk home.