New Writing
Martin Byrne is 31 years old and lives in East Belfast. Originally from Omagh, Co. Tyrone he has been writing stories for “as long as he can remember”. His work has been broadcast on Radio Ulster and in an anthology of short fiction published by the BBC. He is currently finishing work on his first novel which he hopes to find a publisher for in the near future.
Watching Judy
He darted outside at speed, lowering his eyes as the flare of daylight blinded him for a second.
It was lunchtime but this shabby city-centre street was the sort that people didn’t linger on, but still David kept his head down and his package clamped firmly in his armpit. It would be easy to think that he had just stolen something and was making his escape and to be truthful, the feeling was not dissimilar; he always felt that tremor of guilt, underlined by a small sharp thrill. It was impossible to leave the “adult shop” without feeling a little grubby. Even the plastic carrier bag; plain, thick and as black as crude oil, had a hint of the obscene about it. His collection of these films was becoming more like a library and the bottom drawer of the desk in his home office was quickly filling up. The boxes piled on top of each other, their explicit cover photography, all oiled skins, gynaecological close ups and oversized appendages merging, twisting and mingling with each other, creating the sense of some grotesque orgy happening in miniature in his bottom drawer.
He hurried for the car park at the bottom of the street, got to his Saab 9-5 quickly and stashed the bag under the driver’s seat. He would look forward to getting home later; perhaps if Judith was going out to one of her evening classes he might have a chance to enjoy his new purchase. He wished he could go home straight away but tried to savour the restless anticipation he was feeling. Lunchtime nearly over, he started heading back towards the office and out onto wider, brighter and more populated streets.
As he approached the coffee shop on the corner the bitter scent of brewing espresso sneaked towards him through the crowded street. He had just started fishing in his pockets for loose change when Judith walked out, just yards ahead of him.
He stopped dead in his tracks and had the immediate sense that he had been caught red-handed. He checked that he had indeed left the black bag back in the car. Could she have been following him? Had she found his stash at home and staked out the porn shop waiting to catch him in the act? She hadn’t said anything about coming in to the city this morning when he had left for work? And normally a trip to the city centre would be an adventure which he would have to listen to the minute details of for about an hour that evening; the traffic, the cost of parking, the rude sales staff in that shop that she hated (but for some reason went to every time she came in to the city). Perhaps she was going to “surprise” him at work and had gone to the office to ask him out to lunch. He dismissed this entirely, Judith was not spontaneous. But her sudden appearance in this street, in his street, where he went to work every day was so jarring that he felt quite light headed. Judith grasped a paper cup of coffee in one hand and started trotting off up the street away from him. Where was she going? It wasn’t his birthday anytime soon so she couldn’t be in shopping for a gift for him, Christmas was just past and they had already decided to give the kids money for their next birthdays. Feeling safer in the knowledge that he had definitely locked his desk drawer after his last visit and that the slick black bag was safely hidden under the front seat of his car, he started walking after her.
There was no doubt that it was Judith. If that slightly porcine profile wasn’t enough, her graceless tread was a dead giveaway. She always walked like she was wearing shoes much too large for her. He could hear it now, above the background hum of city traffic, the click and scrape of her heels on the pavement. He used to think this was adorable, he always told her it was like she was a little girl wearing her mother’s high heels until she had entered her 40s and suddenly she looked like her mother and it wasn’t funny anymore. To think, she often chided their eldest daughter for her posture and here she was click-click-scraping along a busy pavement in the city centre, like some sort of sleepwalking trannie. What she was even doing wearing heels was anybody’s guess; she usually never bothered making much of an effort. Her bulk too was an easy identifier. It’s not that she was fat, not anymore, not the way she was after having their second daughter, my God! But she was what people would often euphemistically refer to as well padded, big boned or Rubenesque. He loved that one most of all, it’s what he would say when she was pulling and stretching out some top which she had optimistically bought earlier in the day and complaining of how big she had become. He would sit on the corner of the bed, barely looking her way but telling her that she wasn’t fat, just Rubenesque. Whoever thought of that one was a genius. David was no waif himself, a result of too many hours at his desk working to pay for their detached suburban home and the set menu of meat, two veg. and gravy which she set down before him every night.
He continued to follow her, keeping at least a hundred yards back. It felt thrillingly voyeuristic to have her walking around completely oblivious to his attention and his mind wandered back to the thick black bag under his driver’s seat. She stopped now and looked in the window of a shop. He paused too, feeling faintly ridiculous as he darted into the doorway of a shop to avoid detection. After a short while she shook her head, smiling wistfully and continued onwards. As he started walking again he could see that she had stopped at a bridal shop. He glanced in at the white lacy dresses in the window. No doubt she had been remembering her own wedding day. Fondly recalling how she had looked, how happy she had been. She really had never looked better in all her life and certainly never since.
She had been a plain girl when they had met. A little on the chubby side, he supposed looking back, but he couldn’t remember ever thinking it was unsightly back then. She had introduced herself as Judy and fluttered her eyelashes like some silent movie starlet. She wore little make up, just the tiniest hint of lipstick, some eyeliner and her hair was always held back in a neat functional ponytail. David had tried to convince himself that she was a naturally pretty girl and her unfussy nature was sophisticated, chic even. It had taken a few years for that idea to wear off. It was when the children started arriving that he supposed everything had really changed. Not just the fact that they had actually started calling each other “mummy” and “daddy” in front of the kids (God – he remembered laughing at his own parents doing this!), it was the fact that they rarely spoke to each other without the kids being there. If they weren’t then the conversation consisted solely of chatter about what the kids were doing. And, David couldn’t remember exactly when it happened, but at some point within the first ten years or so Judy had become Judith.
Judith was a very different creature to Judy. Judith never wore make up. Judith muttered under her breath constantly while doing household chores. Judith was surprisingly right wing. Judith was a prude. After she had borne their last child, their third, it seemed like Judith had felt she had fulfilled her wifely duties and that was that. Especially over the last few years it seemed that Judith was always too tired at bedtime for anything other than a quick chapter of whatever pulp romance novel she had picked up in the supermarket that week. No surprise she was so tired really, considering she spent practically every evening at some further education college arranging flowers or embroidering something. He tried not to take an interest and this arrangement seemed to work well for them both. She had long ago stopped giving him updates on what so and so had said at the book club or wine tasting class or whatever that night’s distraction was.
He heard in the distance her ring tone and could see her shuffling to a stop and fishing deep into that ridiculous, oversized bag she dragged around with her. She was chatting now and looking around for street signs. Perhaps her sister was in town and, typical of Judith and her petty suburban competitive streak, she would insist on meeting her in some fancy restaurant where the waiters’ accents were almost as pretentious as the menu. He heard her laugh gushing out across the street (unusual), and watched as she trotted across the road towards the Europa Hotel. Just like Judith, she always thought that hotels had some sort of innate glamour. He stopped then, thinking about his route back to the office and whether, if Judith was going to be tied up for a few hours nattering to her sister, could he perhaps nip back to the house and put on his DVD? She looked round once as she walked up to the hotel entrance, he noticed then that she was wearing make-up. A man was standing outside the door and Judith walked right up to him. They embraced. Kissed briefly and went inside. He could see through the tall lobby windows that they had both just walked up to the reception desk.
David couldn’t believe his eyes. He crossed the street and peered in through the lobby windows. Whoever this man was he was younger than Judith, only by a few years but still younger. David could see them walking away from the reception desk, his hand at her back. Judith, laughing, flushed and obviously nervous as they walked toward the lifts. What had she got herself caught up in? He pushed in to the lobby, and stood just out of the swing of the revolving doors and could feel the outrage rise in him along with the dawning realisation of what might be happening. Some shifty younger man preying on his wife and she too naive to see it! It occurred to him that he should rush over to them, demand an explanation of this man but he felt suddenly bashful, the squalid memory of his recent purchase pulsed at the back of his mind and made him hold back. The brass doors swept open before them and they stepped in. As the doors swished closed he saw the man lean in to kiss her gently on the neck but she quickly, urgently, turned to him and their lips met, pushing together greedily. In that tiny second before the brass doors sealed shut, he saw her, he saw Judy for the first time in years. And as they closed, he could see only himself in that uneven hazy reflection, stunned and trembling. He turned, left the lobby and started walking back to the car park and the glossy black bag which waited for him in the darkness of his empty car.
