An Illusion of Commitment
by Ash Haslett Cuff
The bedroom was small and stuffy with a bed shoved into one corner and a chest of drawers into the other. Jules lay on the bed, covered to her neck by a beige sheet, smiling quietly and admiring the room and its contents: the thin mattress that lay on the floor, the stack of books in one corner and the stained, cracked window that looked out on the busy streets of North London full of the rumble of buses and fast cars.
The cream walls were bare except for two creased maps of the City and the Underground with faint pencil marks jotting notes and lines across the spangled metropolis. The room smelled of must and tea, a scent that reminded her of excitement and danger and possibility. There was a pleasant buzz in her stomach as she thought of where she was now compared to only a few months ago. She felt that she’d reinvented herself; the mild woman she once was had been replaced by someone new and animated and passionate. Everything about this room, this situation, was so different from the quiet suburban streets she had grown accustomed to.
And ‘accustomed to’ was the whole problem.
She recalled a particular evening with her husband a little while back. They’d had a conversation that, in a twisted sort of way, was her whole reason for being where she was now
She and her husband Daniel had been sitting at the table, the only sounds the dishwasher and the occasional clack of a mint against Daniel’s teeth. The spacious kitchen was lit by a fluorescent bulb above their heads. To an outsider the scene may have looked more like a police interrogation than a married couple in their own kitchen.
“Are you fine with this?” Jules had asked, breaking the silence that stagnated over their heads.
“With what?” he’d replied, his lips barely moving.
“With… with this?” She gestured around the room, at the recently cleaned dishes sitting on the counter, the magnetic notepad hung on the fridge, the three cookbooks neatly lined up by the stove. “With our life?”
“Huh?” He dragged his eyes towards her, his expression distant.
“You know, how life has progressed, how our jobs have gone…”
“Yeah, I mean why wouldn’t I be?” He leaned back in his chair, frowning slightly.
“I just don’t know if it’s enough.” Her hands were twisting nervously around each other.
“Not enough? What do you mean not enough? What more do you want?”
“There’s nothing really that I want exactly…” She fingered the coaster that sat in front of her, picking off bits of cork.
“Then what is it? I thought you were satisfied.”
“I am satisfied, but that’s exactly it you see, I’m satisfied and I’m bored.”
“What do you want?” he’d asked again, a hint of impatience creeping into his voice.
“I want something more.” She chewed her chapped lips feverishly. “I want excitement, I want to go on an adventure, break from our regular routine.”
“We went to Glasgow last month, what more do you want?”
“Oh for crying out loud, Glasgow isn’t an adventure! Anywhere where your blasted family lives is not an adventure.” She dropped the coaster impatiently.
“You know we can’t afford to travel,” he said glumly, staring at a spot past her head.
“Dan! Can you stop fussing over money for once? We’ve been married for seven years and not once have I thought ‘oh that was exciting, I’m so glad I married someone so cultured.’”
“Jules, I’m a janitor, from Farnham!” He chewed his mint furiously, his gaze snapping back to her.
“All I want from you is a little, well, a little spirit.” She leaned forward, her hands finally still, lying flat against the table.
“All right then, where do you wanna go? Brazil? Japan? India? You name it and we’ll go.”
“You’re not serious.” Jules’ face fell almost comically.
“Dead serious. You take charge now, Jules. You plan and you somehow find the money to pay for the bloody trip and off we go. I leave everything up to you. I’m going to bed.” He stood up, his chair skidding halfheartedly a few feet across the freshly washed floor.
Jules looked after her husband for a moment before letting her gaze drop back to the table, her fingers beginning to tap restlessly again.
Traces of the memory skittered away as the bedroom door opened and Mathew Currie entered the room with two mugs of tea, dressed in an undershirt and a pair of trousers in a questionable colour. He handed Jules one of the mugs and took a seat opposite. She took the cup gratefully, noting the chipped handle with satisfaction: she’d never have kept a cup like this in her own kitchen. As a private detective, Mathew’s lifestyle held no shortage of wonder to Jules and with every new revelation her preoccupation with him grew.
Currie looked passively at her, his dark hair ruffled and a day’s worth of stubble growing on his chin. Jules thought that he looked dauntless and lazily arrogant as he leaned against the wall, mug in hand.
“I met with Daniel today,” he said bluntly. He was not much of a talker, especially after any acts of intimacy, and Jules looked up in surprise, nearly spilling her tea.
“Who?” She fruitlessly attempted to regain her composure.
“You know who. He’s your husband.” Mathew’s voice held no accusatory note; it was as bland as if he were remarking on the taste of the tea.
“Fuck.” She put her cup down on the floor and ran a hand through her hair, blowing out her cheeks. Mathew said nothing, looking at her stolidly. “Well, yeah, I’m married. Why did you talk to Daniel?”
“He’s hired me.”
“You mean he—”
“He suspects you’re cheating? Yes.”
“And he has no idea it’s you?” She laughed humourlessly.
“Not a clue.”
“And you took the job of tracing me?”
“He’s paying me.”
“How much?” He named the price and she visibly paled.
“We can’t afford that.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “How the hell does he think he’s going to pay you that much when he can’t even afford to fix the stove?” She picked up her tea again, scowling.
She could imagine how the meeting would have gone; her pale, awkward husband in front of Mathew who, though no Clark Gable himself, seemed suave and sophisticated next to Daniel.
Mathew Currie was by no means a handsome nor a particularly passionate man. He was of average height and build, a little on the gaunt side, with a face you could forget in a matter of moments. His eyes seemed to pass through you as if you bore little significance in his life. He was a phlegmatic, quietly indifferent man in whom Jules sensed a kind of distant, cold apathy she found particularly appealing. He was the kind of man a woman could sleep with once and the next day she’d forget the colour of his hair, the sound of his voice and, eventually, his name. But she wouldn’t. No, Mathew had some sort of strange effect on her life, almost an awakening in which he’d made her realize how mundane her life truly was and how much she still had to try.
She knew very little about him. His most noticeable attribute besides his lack of noticeable attributes was his smoking habit. He went through dozens of cigarettes in a day and he smoked like he did everything else in life; with a kind of detached sense of duty. In Jules’ mind he rarely slept or ate, preferring to fill his stomach with tea (three sugars, no milk) and a quantity of hard mint candies.
She smiled grimly as she pictured Daniel’s hands wrapped nervously around a pint, his sweaty palms leaving marks on the glass as he faced Currie, stumbling over his explanation like a dull child forced to recite a poem.
Currie must be used to men such as Daniel, snivelling and guilt-ridden as they self- righteously told their tales of how they’d been wronged. Daniel would describe her habits, her job and her social life, explaining how happy they’d been for the past seven years, how nice everything seemed. He’d then, with perhaps some prompting from Mathew, confess his suspicions, clarifying that at first he’d believed himself to be jealous and making things up. He had been sure his wife would never betray him like that, but that his doubts had grown as time progressed until he was almost certain about it, though he lacked the confidence to confront her. The meeting would be stilted as Daniel sat there and sweated, a part of him imagining that he was in trouble, that somehow all of this was his fault.
When he was finished his tale, Currie would just smile coldly, name a price and because Daniel was Daniel, he’d hand it over with his thanks. They’d shake hands, Currie’s soft, long fingers fighting the urge to recoil as they were met by Daniel’s rough and clammy ones.
“Why?” Mathew suddenly asked, curious despite his usual attempts to stay aloof.
“Why what?” Jules shook herself from her thoughts, looking at her lover.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You’ve seen him, he’s about as complex as a block of cement and doesn’t look much better.”
“And I was really the best substitute?”
“You’re, well, you’re more interesting and,” she sucked her lips in, looking for the right words, “I could never feel attached to you, never feel obligated to do anything for you. There’s no commitment and no illusion of commitment.”
“And with Daniel there is?”
“Yes, he’s my husband and I said some stupid vows that make me want to commit.”
“Do you want to commit?”
“I want to want to,” Jules replied honestly. She’d never considered her marriage this way and it made her uneasy to acknowledge these facts.
“But you don’t want to.”
“No, because Daniel is… you’ve met him, you know what I mean. He’s not really the type of guy I could imagine myself living with forever.”
“You could get a divorce.”
“Yes but…”
“But if you did that you’d have nobody to help support you, nobody to prepare for. You like routine and Daniel provides that.” He stated this as a fact, like it was something he’d seen a dozen times before.
“Am I that transparent?”
“It was an educated guess.” He took a large swallow of tea, folding his long legs under him carefully.
“What will you tell him?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. There was a gentle silence between them in which Jules watched Mathew and mulled over her predicament which had gone from thrilling to disquieting in a matter of moments.
“We should break it off,” she said reluctantly.
“Yes.” His eyes were dull and unresponsive and Jules longed to lean over and shake him, to elicit some sort of emotional reaction from him.
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t care,” he spoke quietly, his mouth barely moving as he looked at his cup.
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” She paused, watching him closely, hoping for some sign of regret or contradiction. When none came she placed the mug back on the floor with a ceramic rattle, sighing.
“Do you want to?” He asked her and whatever traces of longing she’d imagined she’d heard in his voice were gone.
“It’s such a mess.” She looked back at him through her sparse eyelashes, avoiding the question.
Five years ago her expression could have been described as full of coy lament but now it held only weary resignation. Mathew could not say or do anything that would bring her comfort nor did he look like he particularly wanted to. He watched her with dispassionate curiosity, taking another sip of tea.
“You should go. I’ll figure out what to tell your husband later.”
“Fine. Do that.” She pulled her slip towards her and shimmied into it, the sight of her naked body doing nothing to Mathew as he continued to drink in stolid silence.
“I’m going now,” Jules said offhandedly, though she watched Mathew closely out of the corner of her eye.
“Watch the steps, they may be slippery,” he said, taking another sip of his tea.
Jules felt the sting of tears as she stumbled out of the bedroom, nearly tripping down the stairs in her haste to leave the tiny, cramped flat.
Once out on the street she slammed the door as hard as she could, tears and rain trickling down her cheeks as she made her way up the pavement.
She wasn’t so foolish as to think herself in love with Mathew, but she had enjoyed his company and she’d thought, naively enough, that he may feel something more than what his usual passive exterior let on. She’d convinced herself that maybe, just maybe, he’d like her enough to provide more than a temporary respite from her husband.
“Bloody idiot,” she shook her head, falling against the wall of the bus shelter and shutting her eyes.
The bus arrived and Jules got on and found a seat in the back, attempting to regain herself on the long journey home.
You’re not a sixteen-year-old girl anymore, she thought bitterly. You can’t afford to have crushes on impossible people.
It had been silly on her part to hope that her relationship with Mathew had meant anything to him. The cool, dispassionate nature she’d come to crave had betrayed her. Mathew hadn’t cared for her, perhaps he was incapable of caring for someone and it was her own fault she’d gotten so tangled up in all of it. She let her head drop against the cool window, the low hum of the engine and the patter of the rain mixing with her thoughts.
She got off the bus wearily and made her way back to her house, its squat grey exterior filling her with the familiar feeling of guilt, defiance and dejection that the thought of her marriage evoked in her.
She cast one last look behind her, a part of her hoping to see Mathew’s lanky figure leaning against a wall.
But the street was empty.
She took a deep breath and unlocked the door, ready to keep the illusion alive.