“Yes, darling.”

“YES, DARLING.” Of course I’ll sew on your button. Bring you your slippers. Make you a sandwich. Pour you a beer. Relieve you of your stress after a hard day in the office.

When what he really needed was someone to stand up to him. Tell him that he couldn’t always get what he wanted. That women are not there to be treated as slaves.

But Geoffrey always knew he was going to get his own way. And I’ve always regretted standing by and letting him get it.

He was hardly every there, showed no consideration whatsoever. Off at the pub of course, most nights, with those dolts from the factory. Beer and whiskey and cigarettes on his breath when he came home.

Well, it was no wonder that things turned out the way they did. You can’t expect a woman to live like that: ground down, put upon, just a servant to a man’s every whim.

It began well enough, of course. They’re always nice enough in the beginning. Quite romantic, he was, in his way. Although he always smelt I thought. He never learnt; no matter how often you pulled away from him when he threatened to kiss you. I would often have to force myself to think of something else, to stop myself from retching as he pecked me on the cheek.

It wasn’t long before the nasty little habits started to form. Lid off the jam jar, toast crumbs in the butter dish. Toilet seat up and drips all round it on the mat. Men just haven’t the cultivation, you see. They don’t think like that, do they?

Bob Watkins from the night-shift told me in the Royal Oak one Saturday, in his cups, that Geoffrey had been having a bit of a fling with Anita in accounts. Well, at first I laughed. He just didn’t seem the type. More of your couch potato in slippers, is how I saw him. Slumped in front of The Bill with a Newcastle Brown Ale or a documentary about the latest scandal, with a cuppa and a plate of corned beef and mustards. Not that little Anita isn’t attractive. She’s got a nice little behind on her and I’m not saying she wouldn’t have been his type, in his youth. But men get too idle and podgy for that stuff. They’re too lazy and tight-fisted to do all that chatting-up and Chinese meals and vodka and Britvics just to get a leg-over. Oh no; Penthouse girls or some of that sex-line grunting with a box of Kleenex was more his style, I’d say.

We’d go away for weekends, to Bexhill-on-Sea. He’d stay in, watching the racing. He just didn’t seem to bother or to notice that anything was awry.

That was my main problem with him, of course. He was so damned unobservant. I could have stood in front of him in a see-through negligee or with one of those Taiwanese sex-toys from the Ann Summers catalogue and he’d never have noticed. “Move over a bit, Marge. News is on in a bit,” he’d have said.

Then he started getting violent. He’d drink in the Oak after hours and something was getting him frustrated. Whether it was the job; or perhaps Anita had given him the push-off; or perhaps he really did want kids, after all. Anyway, he’d come home all creased brows and clenched fists and behave completely irrationally. Complain about his sandwiches or make some ridiculous argument out of what was on telly.

At first, I just put up with it. He didn’t seem capable of doing any serious damage, to me. I took him for just another bloke throwing his weight around when he’s had a few too many beers. Well, how wrong can you be?

He started with a black eye. Then it was a sprained arm and bruises on the legs. After the broken fingers I decided, right: this has got to stop.

Marriage is a funny thing. It turns into the exact opposite of what it started out as. Pure hatred, he was showing. And why? What had changed? The job was the same as ever. Geoffrey was earning more money than he’d ever done. The payments on the bungalow were up to date. There was enough left over for two weeks on Ibiza and a proper pig-out at Christmas. The monthly social-club do and lock-ins with Mike at the Oak every night. As I say, the odd weekend at Bexhill-on-Sea and occasional night out to the Pizza Hut or Lee Ho Fook on the High Street. What was his problem? If he’d wanted kids that bad he could have talked about it. Gone to see a doctor – something; anything! There’s a solution to every problem.

Mind you: I found one and look where it’s got me.

*

My Dad had been a chemist. I still had his books and a little apothecary chest he’d held onto after he retired. I knew where it was in the attic, so I went up for a poke about one Sunday. Geoffrey was at bowls, so it would have been a good opportunity to do something for myself, but I thought, no. I let myself steep in nostalgia instead.

The old chest was full of woodworm. There were lots of little glass jars and phials etched with Latin and chemical names which meant nothing to me: Benzene hexachloride; Ethylene chlorohydrin; Lasix; Trichloroethane.

I noticed a little brown pot marked nux vomica. I’d done Latin in school, but I’d never been any good at it. Vomit nut. That seemed to have potential. You see, I was only out for a bit of revenge at first; I didn’t plan on anything dramatic.

I took the chest down to the kitchen and thought about it for a while.

*

Geoffrey was in the Oak on the night I went to her. Ruth looked lovely. She let me in and we made love on the sofa. She was as passionate as she had always been. But, after an hour or so, she reminded me that Geoffrey would be back from the pub soon and would literally kill her if she didn’t have his sandwiches and a beer ready for him when he came in.  I told her to go down to the basement and bring up a crate of brown ale and, in the meantime, I’d make the sandwiches.

In the end, it had turned twelve when Geoffrey came in. But at least he seemed to be in a reasonable mood. I stood behind the sofa, nervously kneading a cushion. Ruth was tidying and re-tidying her hair at the kitchen door. She was shaking.

“Hello, Marge!” said Geoffrey, apparently surprised to see me, “What are you doing here? Ruth, where’s my bloody paper? An’ get me some sarnies, will you!”

Geoffrey slumped down in his chair, belched and opened the Sun. “Ooh, not many of them to the pound, eh Marge? Deary me!”

He reached for his corned beef and mustards. “Gor blimey, Ruth! Bit too much bleeding Colman’s tonight. You trying to burn me gob off?” He flicked on the TV and settled down to watch some awful boxing match, greedily gobbling down the sandwiches and gulping his Newcastle Brown, with the mustard in a ring around his disgusting slobbery lips.

“What’s new in the Oak then, Geoffrey?” I asked him, watching Ruth smoothing her dress at the doorway.

“Nothing,” said Geoffrey, coughing; almost choking (I thought at first) on a piece of corned beef fat. He gulped down some more beer.

Well, it all got quite dramatic after that.

Quite suddenly, Geoffrey’s face became stiff and the tendons stood out on his neck. His arms and legs began to spasm. I looked at Ruth, who was putting on the kettle for her cuppa. The spasms got worse and his back arched against the back of the chair. He started clutching at his throat.

Suddenly he dropped his plate. Ruth, probably thinking that Geoffrey had fallen asleep in a drunken stupor again, came running in from the kitchen to clear up the mess.

By this time, Geoffrey was jerking on the rug, face in a terrible grimace and eyes bulging.

“Call a doctor, Ruth, I’m f­ucking dying,” he gasped. You see – even in death he had no blasted dignity.

“Yes, darling,” quavered Ruth, and ran for the telephone.

“It’s too late, Ruth. He’s not going to make it,” I whispered to her in the hallway.

Ruth stared at me, flabbergasted. She didn’t know what was going on. She just kept staring as the truth dawned on her and let the telephone receiver slip out of her hand. “You stupid, crazy bitch,” she said. “You stupid, crazy bitch! You’ve killed him.”

If she’d kept her calm I’m sure we could have got away with it. And I wouldn’t be sitting in here today. Surrounded by criminals and lunatics. But she went and lost control, didn’t she. Ruth, you poor cow. I loved you so much. Why couldn’t you see that it was the best thing that had ever happened to you?

*

They told me that victims of strychnine poisoning can be saved. Provided they get medical attention quickly enough. They can pump their stomachs and give them some charcoal stuff. Of course, Geoffrey didn’t stand a chance.

Ruth unfortunately got quite hysterical then. Started shouting and running about. I went to the hall and got the little wooden apothecary chest out of my bag.

Ruth was kneeling over Geoffrey. His back was arched in an impossible curve. She was trying to loosen his collar because his neck was so swollen. Only the very back of his head and his heels were touching the ground. He was wheezing horribly.

“For Christ’s sake, Marge! What have you done? You’ve killed him! You’ve killed my husband. Please do something!” she was saying. “Oh, my love! Geoffrey, please don’t die… please don’t leave me. Do something, Marge, for pity’s sake!”

*

Well, there was just no hope for her, you see. Even after all the beatings and the broken bones and the psychological torture, the poor woman believed that she couldn’t live without him. It was as if she had forgotten everything that we had been through together. She had forgotten how much I loved her, how much I needed her. And of course, I wasn’t prepared to accept that.

I loved Ruth, but she wasn’t very bright.

“Do something, Marge, please do something,” she kept saying.

I stretched my arms to raise the wooden apothecary chest, bringing it down with a sickening crunch and a splintering and a tinkling of glass on her poor head as I said the words she wanted to hear; the words she though Geoffrey had wanted to hear; the last words she was ever going to hear:

“Yes, darling.”
 

—0O0—

(“Yes, darling” was first published in issue of 2 Britain’s Really Quite Cosmic [RQC] magazine in winter 1995.)

Email me the title of this story and I will send it to you as a PDF file, free of charge: chrisb[at]xtra[dot]co[dot]nz