‘What do you mean?’ Sally had demanded unwisely.
‘Well, it’s a well-known fact that gypsy men live off what their women earn,’ Daphne had responded self-righteously.
‘Oh, Daphne,’ Sally had protested. ‘That’s not fair-Joel’s not that sort of man. He would never…’ She had stopped, unable to go on.
It wasn’t the money he had spent on the magazines, she wanted to tell Joel, not really, but the words were stuck in her throat, the anger she felt refusing to subside. He was walking towards the kitchen… and away from her, ignoring her.
He paused in the doorway and turned round.
‘I didn’t buy those magazines, Sally, I was given them,’ he told her bleakly. His pride wouldn’t let him tell her that he didn’t have the money in his pocket to buy them.
She never seemed to think, when she was doling out money to the kids and banging on about not wanting them to suffer because he was out of a job and it being important to them not to lose face in front of their friends, that he might feel the same. How did she think it made him feel, having to refuse to go out with his friends because he didn’t have any money in his pocket—or any chance of earning any, from what he had learned at the Job Centre this morning?
Sally swallowed guiltily.
‘Did you go down to the Job Centre today?’ she asked him, avoiding looking at him.
‘Yes, and there wasn’t anything… not that I thought there would be.’
‘Oh, Joel, please stop feeling so sorry for yourself. You could find work if you wanted to… I’ve just told you, Daphne wants some decorating doing. We need the money,’ she told him exasperatedly. ‘The tyres on my car are practically bald… I daren’t keep on driving with them. We’re so lucky that I’ve got my job…’
‘Are we?’ Joel turned on her. ‘I don’t feel so damn lucky having a wife who can’t stop ramming it down my throat that she’s the breadwinner and I’m just another useless mouth to feed… not like the kids. You don’t begrudge what you spend on them, do you? What is it you really think, Sally? That you’d be better off without me… that you don’t really want me around any more?’
‘No,’ Sally protested. ‘You know that’s not true.’
‘Isn’t it? Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.’
Sally looked away from him. Please don’t let him start on about that again. She’d tried to explain to him over and over again that she was just too tired to make love. She had so many other things on her mind, so many other problems, so many other demands on her, draining her, sex was the last thing she wanted.
It angered her that he could be so selfish, so lacking in understanding and awareness. Sometimes, lying there stiff with resentment, feeling his hands on her body, she’d itched to tell him just to get on with it and get it over so that she could go to sleep, but she had held back, remembering how it had been between them when they were first married, when the children were small, when her body had come alive at the smallest touch and their lovemaking had been so urgent that they had very often not even made it upstairs.
Joel watched her broodingly. He could see from Sally’s face that she knew what he was getting at and that she didn’t want to pursue the subject. Didn’t she realise how bad it made him feel when she turned away from him, when her body received his in a cold, unmoving silence, her lack of response filling him with a fear that to him completely demeaned him as a man? He was showing her how vulnerable he was, how much he needed her… how much he ached for the comfort of this intimacy with her; the knowledge that he was still important to her; that she still wanted and needed him; that, despite the fact that he had broken all the promises he had made to her about always looking after her and the kids, she understood and still loved him. Yes, he was showing her how vulnerable he was, and all she was doing was turning her back on him, telling him that he was as little use to her as a man as he was as a provider. That rejection struck deeply to the heart of his manhood, hurting him far more than her angry, bitter words. He could feel the ache in his throat, the pain that filled him.
‘You might at least get in touch with Daphne and find out exactly what it is she wants doing and how much she’ll pay you,’ Sally said quickly, anxious to get off the subject of sex as quickly as she could.
Joel’s mouth tightened.
‘You find out,’ he told her. ‘She’s your damned sister.’
‘But you will do it… ?’ Sally asked him.
He looked bitterly at her. ‘Do I have any bloody choice?’
Shakily Sally went over to the phone and dialled her sister’s number. She was working an extra shift today; one of the other nurses was off sick and Sally had leapt at the chance to earn some extra overtime, even if it did mean she’d have to go without sleep.
‘You’ll have to do the shopping this afternoon. I’m going back to work,’ she told Joel as she waited for her sister to answer the phone.
‘Oh, and don’t forget it’s Paul’s computer club tonight. I’ve made out a shopping list and I’ll leave you some money. You’ll have to run me to work as well, Joel.’
She started nibbling on her bottom lip, worrying about how long it would take her to earn enough to pay for those new tyres.
‘Oh, Daphne, it’s me… About that decorating you wanted Joel to do…’
Silently Joel walked out of the room. Didn’t Sally realise what she was doing to him? For God’s sake treat me with a bit of respect, he wanted to say to her, but how could he? How could he ask for something he no longer had any right to?
Sally hadn’t even mentioned to him, discussed with him the fact that she was thinking of working an extra shift. What had happened to the girl who had stood there in the playground looking up at him so adoringly, the girl who had loved him so ardently and passionately?
That Sally was gone, he acknowledged, and in her place was a woman who looked through him rather than at him, who treated him with impatience and irritation, who no longer bothered to include him in any of her plans… her decisions.