17

Cup Final Saturday 21 May 1983

The last straw had been Roy the Slob. True, he could be loving and

attentive — that was, after all, why Chaite had married him.

Roy, for his part, had not exactly married Chaite for her money ... but he had certainly been cognisant of the comfort it would afford them. The start of Chaite’s third year at college had been shattered by the death of both her parents; this had not only left her with a third share of a considerable estate (making her, in her better moments, feel like something out of Jane Austen) but had driven her into the arms of Roy, a third year, third class, social scientist ... that Chaite had gained a first class degree in history and fine arts was no small achievement in the circumstances.

Chaite kept the exact amount of her fortune to herself; she thought that it should make no difference to her and Roy; she could support them both while they took their time to find jobs they would enjoy. Roy made no excessive demands; they bought an old cottage with a few acres of land at Stanfield, and spent a year or so living very simply, pottering about, doing it up.

In a desultory way, Roy had tried to find a job without wanting particularly to succeed in the quest. Chaite had joined James Sellis in the Autumn of 1981, and revelled in the long hours of hard work while Roy was still (she thought) trying to find a job in between slow reaches of home improvement.

spend most of his time at home either in bed or getting drunk and snoring in front of the television.

Today, it is the Cup Final. Chaite has been drudging in the washhouse, and has just hung out a load of washing. The line has snapped. Chaite has snapped. She’s absolutely livid with everything, not least Roy to whom she runs, interposing her body between him and the television, standing consciously like a fishwife, arms akimbo: ‘Now the bloody clothes-line’s broken, and your fucking shirts are all in the dirt. You’ll come and mend it NOW; otherwise ...’

Roy is slumped in the chair with his can of Newcastle Brown; he glares at Chaite balefully and says not a word as the television chants and roars.

Chaite runs out to the kitchen; goes into slow motion. The crowd chants and roars; she hears the snap and hiss as Roy opens yet another can.

She picks up the German cook’s knife Cepha and Rupert brought them from a trip abroad; she grasps it tightly in her left hand until the knuckles become white; then, looking at it as though it were something she was nothing to do with, and keeping her eyes on it as if she were guiding it by remote control, she walks slowly, zombie-like, to the room where Roy sits drowned in that noise.

How she hates that noise, and all it seems to stand for for. This is where it’s going to STOP. She enters the room and, just as Smith scores the first goal for Albion, she STABS the knife through the back of the chair — surprised at how easily it goes through; she pulls it out and stabs again ... and again ... and again ...

Roy slumps forward on to the floor. The can falls; Newcastle Brown fizzes into the carpet.

The television chants and roars frenetically, but Chaite hears it no more. Still staring at her hand grasping the knife, now in horror, she turns and blunders from the room, through the kitchen, into the garden, dodges into the workshop. There she stands, gasping for breath, her heart pounding: the only thing she can see is the knife grasped in her left hand, the only thing she can think of is that she is a murderess, and that the murder weapon has somehow fastened itself to her.

Inside the house, Roy rises slowly from the floor, stone cold sober; he turns off the television. SILENCE! What does the Cup Final, or its result, matter now? What has got into Chaite? Where is she? What will she do next?

He tiptoes gingerly from the room in case Chaite is hiding somewhere, sees the open door to the garden, sees the door of the workshop ajar ... and sees, reflected in the greenhouse as it were Pepper’s Ghost, Chaite standing catatonically inside the workshop still grasping the knife.

Then, to her disembodied amazement, Chaite sees the dead Roy coming from the house; he looks around cautiously — as well he might; he is not to know that all Chaite’s anger and force are spent; all he knows is that she must be madder than Lady Macbeth. First he must secure her, then fetch help.

He stands, unsure whether to call out or to remain silent; whether to move slowly or fast. And still Chaite stands, powerless to move.

Now Roy lunges forward and slams the workshop door shut. His sudden movement unfreezes Chaite; as the door shuts, she springs towards it in an attempt to escape, trips, falls flat on her face. The heavy door closes, crushing her wrist. Chaite yells and passes out.

Roy does not notice what has happened. He flicks the hasp and drops the podger through the staple, feeling nothing but immense relief that Chaite is safely — he thinks — contained inside the workshop. He has no idea what has come over her; he will leave her to cool off ... or should he call a doctor to calm her down?

No ... people ought to be able to work out their own problems, not go running for the doctor at the drop of a hat. Yes ... he’ll wait for Chaite to cool off — judging from the silence, she seems to have calmed down — later, he’ll go and let her out, and they’ll go to the pub and have a few drinks and carry on from where they left off — except that he’ll change his habits ... a bit — after all, the football season’s now over (apart from the replay, in which he’ll take little interest).

In a daze, Roy wanders back to the kitchen. His thoughts turn to Newcastle Brown, but he finds the idea revolting. He decides to leave Chaite for half an hour or so — unless she starts to call out.

But after a few minutes he can bear it no longer; he walks slowly and quietly to the workshop and taps on the door.

No reply.

He tries to see through the window, but the angle of vision is inadequate; the interior too dark.

 He throws open the door.

Chaite lies unconscious.

Roy has some idea that you don’t move people when they’re unconscious. He picks up the knife, and tosses it out of sight; then he dashes back to the house and phones for an ambulance.

All this is happening in methodical slow motion, in a dream.

In no time, and in infinite time, he hears the sound of the ambulance, and a loud knocking on the front door. Although there are but two of them, the ambulance men seem to fill the house.

‘There’s been an accident ... [he said] ...

She’s in the garden. In the shed’

They go through and size up the situation.

They kneel by Chaite with a first aid kit; then return to the ambulance for a stretcher.

Roy takes some comfort from their calm; ‘they’ve seen the lot’ he thinks.

The bandaged Chaite is laid on the stretcher; carried to the ambulance; inserted.

‘Perhaps you’d like to travel with your wife, sir ...’

‘My wife ...’

Roy locks the house and climbs into the ambulance.

Roy is too shocked to think of anything apart from the fact that the only way to travel in a speeding ambulance must be lying on a stretcher ... before he falls to irrelevantly wondering about the state of cleanliness of his underpants.

They arrive at the hospital.

Chaite is taken away on her stretcher. Roy is led into a cubicle.

He starts to shiver and weep uncontrollably, unashamedly.

He has failed miserably.

His marriage has failed miserably — has not his wife tried to murder him ... and is she not now going to die?

It’s all his fault.

A nurse comes and peers at him; a doctor comes and feels his pulse, looks at his pupils with a pen torch.

He still shakes and weeps.

A nurse comes in with a clipboard and tries to extract details of names, addresses, dates of birth, religions ...

Who’s his doctor?

What’s his hospital number?

What’s his wife’s hospital number?

They make numbers seem like the most important thing in the world.

It all seems to lack relevance; he can almost remember who he is — but why should anyone else be bothered?

The nurse bustles in commandingly with a little plastic cup: ‘Drink this’

Roy sits up, slurps, falls back with a sob and a sigh.

In another cubicle, the casualty officer has called the consultant; they are examining Chaite’s wrist.

There’s some remote chance of repairing her.

Quickly, yet unhurriedly, she is undressed and prepared; the crushed wrist cleaned; the wedding ring removed; X-rays taken; dressings applied.

Chaite is delivered to a room in the orthopaedic ward.

Roy feels better when he wakes up.

What happened? He was watching the Cup Final on the television ... she crept into the room and started to stab the back of his chair piercing the cushion repeatedly, but he was untouched. Was she mad? She couldn’t really have wanted to kill him ... or could she? Was she really that fed up with him? He could never really believe that she hated football as much as she said she did. And yet she had, apparently, tried to kill him.

That’s it! He had stopped her vicious onslaught by pretending to die, toppling forward off the chair and lying motionless on the floor, waiting to see what would happen. E’en now, he could hear the Newcastle Brown fizzing into the carpet, taking complete precedence over the Cup Final, in which he had lost all interest. Presumably his act had put an end to hers; she’d left the room ... and now he remembers what happened after that ...

Enter a casualty officer, white coat and stethoscope flying: ‘Feeling better? ... [He goes through a gamut of doctorly motions] ... How did it happen?’

‘How did what happen?’

‘The lady whose hand was injured?’

‘Will she be all right?’

‘She will, but I’m afraid I can’t guarantee her hand ... [Roy’s faith in the medical profession ebbs] ... I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait and see’

Roy sinks back; his eyes fill with tears again.

It feels like the end of the world.

‘Can I see her?’

‘I’ll ask nurse to find out’

Delegating thus, the doctor leaves the room assertively.

Perhaps he should have risen up and fought her for the knife ... but there had been so much fighting.

It hadn’t been what he had expected of marriage.

Perhaps he should have ... things should never have reached that pitch.

The doctor reappears: ‘Your wife’s asleep — and she’s going to be drowsy when she wakes up. It’d be best if you could come back tomorrow’

Roy now discovers that he doesn’t mind not seeing her.

He cannot think what he would say to her.

He’s glad not to have to force himself to speak to her — and not to have to suffer all that she might say — or not say.

Traumata might draw some couples together, enabling a fresh start. Roy realises that this is the end of their road.

He finds the public telephone and calls for a cab.

He waits for what seems an unconscionable long time; black eyes, bloody noses, limping limbs, a passing show of damaged humanity moves before him, accompanying friends and relations sit whispering or staring vacantly into space.

He is both appalled and relieved that he feels numb and neutral — if not positively negative — about her.

He tries to think himself into a different frame of mind, and is ashamedly overjoyed to find that, try as he will, he can’t.

The cab appears, the driver mercifully silent.

Roy arrives home, pays off the cab, goes indoors.

He moves slowly round the house, looking at everything as though he hasn’t seen it before.

He goes to the workshop and examines the door, clears up; soon there is no sign that anything untoward has happened.

He retrieves the knife, wraps it heavily in several newspapers, seals the bundle with sellotape ... and wonders what to do with it. He decides to hide it in the rafters of the workshop — for the time being, at any rate.

He goes back to the house.

He has already determined that nobody will know what happened unless she tells them.

In the living room, he takes the stabbed chair; puts it outside ready for the dustmen who will come on Monday.

He clears up the tins and deranged newspapers, runs the carpet sweeper round the room, arranges the furniture.

He packs all his clothes and the few belongings which are really his and about which he cares.

He goes to the kitchen, turns on the radio for company, and makes himself a desultory omelette.

He eats it slowly, washing it down with neat Cinzano, his mind a complete blank.

He drinks most of what’s left of a bottle of whisky and snores the night away cramped on the sofa.

He awakes feeling like nothing on earth.

Suddenly the events of the previous day hit him; he goes to the lavatory and is sick.

Now he’s sure that his world has come to an end.

He showers, changes his clothes, and writes a note to her, which he leaves — ironically, he thinks — on the television.

He thinks that he’ll have a couple of days to try to get back to normal — if there is ever to be another normal.

If he decides to return, no one will ever know that he once contemplated leaving.

If he doesn’t return, that will be that; the note on the telly will explain it all.

He loads his suitcases into his car.

He secures the house.

He gets into his car, starts the engine and drives away.