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Only Human extracts
'Sometimes I wonder', Helen ventured, 'if we
might have more success if we moved again. Abroad maybe. Or to the
country.' A graceful, pale smile appeared on her face as
she spoke , and for a moment she seemed less careworn.
'Are you out of your mind!'
'You suggest something then.'
'I just wonder if we're beyond that.'
There was grave silence until Marjorie intervened: 'I wonder,
at this point, if it might be useful to think what it is that does
make you both still come here?'
'You see,' Helen spoke up, 'what people like
you forget is that Mark and I, we still have so much in common.'
Mark looked intrigued. 'We do?'
' Yes, perhaps we might spare a minute or two to see what
it is you two really agree about.'
'Let's think.' Helen laughed anxiously. 'We
both have a horror of children. Babies in particular. All the blood
and shit and vomit!' Helen giggled, wriggling her hands as
though those substances were lurking, with intent, in the air above.
'Well, quite.'
A minute passed slowly. It was understood by all that it was Mark
Braintree's turn to make some sort of offering. Eventually
he said with a little humorous sigh,
'We neither of us suffer fools, do we Helen?'
'Well, I know I don't. I've tried. I just can't
do it.'
Mark raised an eyebrow provocatively and made a sound that was
begun as a cough and ended an amused snort. It was meant to register
approval. He moistened his lips and looked on the verge of speaking
but instead he merely made a curt bow with his head in his wife's
direction.
'Well, it's true!' Helen protested.
'I don't doubt it,' Mark smiled. 'I've
no doubts on that score at all,' he added, smoothing a small
patch of skin on the edge of his cheek where there was a chicken
pox scar.
'Well good!' Helen bit her lip and her cheeks were
reddening and her pupils darted about jauntily in their moist sockets.
A strong smile opened on her mouth to echo her husband's.
The Braintrees excelled at this kind of low level strangulated flirtation.
They could keep it up for hours.
Marjorie looked on with interest and some affection. She was fond
of the Braintrees. She had clawed back couples in the past from
far bleaker brinks. This had even got her in to trouble once or
twice. 'It's not for us to provide the cement for unworkable
relationships Marjorie', cautioned Richard Adler the director
of the Wellbeck Centre where she worked, once casually with smiles
and apologetic nods, and once more formally where a brief note had
been scribbled to her on one of the Centre's pistachio green
correspondence cards. Marjorie had shrugged all this off, of course.
Besides she liked cement - its dark powdery ooze, its scent. And
you had to remember, all marriages were bizarre places, rife with
signs and codes and unimaginable sharp practise where the more insane
aspects of human nature flourished, were endured, tolerated, overlooked,
sought out and sometimes even admired. You did not need to be a
genius to see that people were more unhinged in their behaviour
with the very person to whom they were closest. It was the most
natural thing in the world. Of course, the little untouchable regions
that existed on the outskirts of a marriage or on its underside
were always going to cast their shadows. No one was immune to strain
and hollow feelings. But when they worked or even half worked! From
her own brief, rosy-hued experience Marjorie knew beyond doubt-
there was nothing like it.
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