Read Online Unchained Melanie by Judy Astley - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Judy Astley
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body, active mind was the thinking of the generation that might have vanquished Hitler, but now feared senility invading by stealth.
Melanie’s mother whisked away their coffee cups, donned her rubber gloves and briskly swished the crockery around in the suds-filled bowl in the sink. Gwen had never got the hang of modern detergents. Melanie had marvelled over many years at the great alp-like crests of soap suds that resulted from theprolonged squirting of the Fairy bottle. ‘It’s hard water,’ Gwen had argued, when Mel had tried to tell her that you needed the merest gentle splash of liquid these days to get the same results as twenty years before. Change of any sort alarmed and unsettled her. Just now Melanie could feel her confusion about her husband’s behaviour. Howard was doing something different, something that was just for himself. He hadn’t consulted his wife, hadn’t invited her to join him for these morning drink sessions. It was almost as if he had been her tame pet, but had started reverting to the wild and behaving in a way that didn’t respond to the old well-tried training techniques.
‘Have you talked to Vanessa about Dad?’ Mel asked. She could imagine her sister’s reaction and had to stop herself smiling: Vanessa was of the ‘Stop it at once!’ school of behavioural therapy, applied with no expectation of argument to her pair of seemingly angelic (but to Mel’s mind rather suspiciously quiet) children. She’d quite easily use the same strategy on her father, as if he was a naughty child who would keep climbing over the gate and making for the dangers of the main road.
‘Vanessa’s got her own family to deal with. I’m only mentioning it to you because you
haven’t
. Well, not any more.’ Gwen sighed, as if the goings-on of the world were suddenly an exhausting mystery to her. She peeled off the pink Marigolds, folded them neatly and placed them next to the yellow plastic scourer in the china sink-tidy, taking refuge in small, familiar kitchen rituals.
Mel bit her lip and tried to feel that she hadn’t been mildly insulted. Something was her fault. Losing Roger was her fault. But it was only her mother (oh, and ofcourse Vanessa) who made her feel he’d been ‘lost’. It was too dramatic a word for their reasonably contented separation. ‘Losing’ was for something that left you with real, heart-clutching emptiness. Like her son, that tiny, barely formed baby with skin the colour of fury, so thin that between the tubes and dressings she was sure she could see right through him. Time to go, she decided, getting quickly out of her seat, time to get back to Tina Keen and the mutilated teenage hooker stuffed under the café stairs.
‘I’ll have a think about Dad,’ Mel said as she briefly kissed her mother’s powdery cheek. ‘I’ll ask him if I can come to the pub with him one day and see what he’s up to. Perhaps he’d just like a bit of time to himself.’
‘To himself? Whatever for?’ Gwen said as she opened the front door to see her daughter off the premises. ‘You get plenty of time to yourself when you’re widowed. It’s not something you go looking for, Melanie, you’ll find that out for yourself one day.’
It was cold in the aircraft’s Club Class section, which cancelled out any extra comfort that the legroom and not-bad food gave. Roger could swear there was a freezing draught whistling in from the window beside him. Leonora slept peacefully, stretched out beneath her airline blanket as if she was in the best kind of bed. In fact, he thought, as he checked his watch for the hundredth time, for the price of this upgrade he could have bought a bloody excellent top-of-the-range mattress.
The cold Atlantic blast was aiming at his left calf and making him shiver. Roger wasn’t a happy flier at the best of times, always expecting the big tin tube togive in to gravity and plummet to earth. He could see drops of something (not rain, could it be rain?)
Melanie’s mother whisked away their coffee cups, donned her rubber gloves and briskly swished the crockery around in the suds-filled bowl in the sink. Gwen had never got the hang of modern detergents. Melanie had marvelled over many years at the great alp-like crests of soap suds that resulted from theprolonged squirting of the Fairy bottle. ‘It’s hard water,’ Gwen had argued, when Mel had tried to tell her that you needed the merest gentle splash of liquid these days to get the same results as twenty years before. Change of any sort alarmed and unsettled her. Just now Melanie could feel her confusion about her husband’s behaviour. Howard was doing something different, something that was just for himself. He hadn’t consulted his wife, hadn’t invited her to join him for these morning drink sessions. It was almost as if he had been her tame pet, but had started reverting to the wild and behaving in a way that didn’t respond to the old well-tried training techniques.
‘Have you talked to Vanessa about Dad?’ Mel asked. She could imagine her sister’s reaction and had to stop herself smiling: Vanessa was of the ‘Stop it at once!’ school of behavioural therapy, applied with no expectation of argument to her pair of seemingly angelic (but to Mel’s mind rather suspiciously quiet) children. She’d quite easily use the same strategy on her father, as if he was a naughty child who would keep climbing over the gate and making for the dangers of the main road.
‘Vanessa’s got her own family to deal with. I’m only mentioning it to you because you
haven’t
. Well, not any more.’ Gwen sighed, as if the goings-on of the world were suddenly an exhausting mystery to her. She peeled off the pink Marigolds, folded them neatly and placed them next to the yellow plastic scourer in the china sink-tidy, taking refuge in small, familiar kitchen rituals.
Mel bit her lip and tried to feel that she hadn’t been mildly insulted. Something was her fault. Losing Roger was her fault. But it was only her mother (oh, and ofcourse Vanessa) who made her feel he’d been ‘lost’. It was too dramatic a word for their reasonably contented separation. ‘Losing’ was for something that left you with real, heart-clutching emptiness. Like her son, that tiny, barely formed baby with skin the colour of fury, so thin that between the tubes and dressings she was sure she could see right through him. Time to go, she decided, getting quickly out of her seat, time to get back to Tina Keen and the mutilated teenage hooker stuffed under the café stairs.
‘I’ll have a think about Dad,’ Mel said as she briefly kissed her mother’s powdery cheek. ‘I’ll ask him if I can come to the pub with him one day and see what he’s up to. Perhaps he’d just like a bit of time to himself.’
‘To himself? Whatever for?’ Gwen said as she opened the front door to see her daughter off the premises. ‘You get plenty of time to yourself when you’re widowed. It’s not something you go looking for, Melanie, you’ll find that out for yourself one day.’
It was cold in the aircraft’s Club Class section, which cancelled out any extra comfort that the legroom and not-bad food gave. Roger could swear there was a freezing draught whistling in from the window beside him. Leonora slept peacefully, stretched out beneath her airline blanket as if she was in the best kind of bed. In fact, he thought, as he checked his watch for the hundredth time, for the price of this upgrade he could have bought a bloody excellent top-of-the-range mattress.
The cold Atlantic blast was aiming at his left calf and making him shiver. Roger wasn’t a happy flier at the best of times, always expecting the big tin tube togive in to gravity and plummet to earth. He could see drops of something (not rain, could it be rain?)
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