The Pumpkin Eater's Wife

Chapter One

She entered the shadowy kitchen. It was okay; her eyes had adapted to the dim light. Coffee. It would clear her head. She didn’t want to eat, but that was nothing unusual. She hadn’t wanted to eat in months. Yet, she was acutely aware eating was necessary to keep her brain working and her strength up. She had things to do before she left the house for the last time. She found some yoghurt and made herself eat it. Tasteless.

The bulging backpack inside the old suitcase was ready to go, packed and waiting until the time was right. When the Elements came together. The binge. Getting him upstairs. Trying hard to waken him but failing. The fall. She had done her homework.

Was that a noise? She froze. Could he still be alive? She raced out into the corridor again and held her breath, her heart thumping. Silence. His body still, the laundry undisturbed. She bent down to feel for a pulse, the blood still dripping, now forming a dark mass at the foot of the stairs. She grabbed one far flung wrist. For a moment she thought she detected the flutter of a pulse, but when she pressed more firmly she could feel nothing.

She took a shaky breath. Dead. She turned back to do what she had to do.

Light started to filter through the kitchen curtains. No problem. There was plenty of time and she could use the extra light. With clumsy fingers, she took off her top and bra, shivering in the pre-dawn air. She filled the kitchen sink with tepid water, warming her hands until they worked properly.

Would they analyse the drains from the shower? From the kitchen sink? Thoughts buzzed around her head and she needed to calm herself. She had used plenty of water in the shower and meticulously cleaned the stall afterwards. No blood splatter at all, or none she noticed.

Jeanie put to one side the beige headscarf she had taken out of the front pouch of her backpack and picked up the brown hair dye wrapped in a towel. She had tried to match her original hair colour as closely as she could remember. Her normal colour, not the blonde she had been for years. Cheap and cheerful brown dye, but buying in the supermarket meant she didn’t have much choice. What if it turned her hair green? She told herself to stop catastrophizing.

One of the privileges of marriage to a man with enough money was having a gym membership and a good hair-dresser. Her blonde hair suited her. She had been fair-haired until she was about twelve, but then, like so many of her friends, it darkened with puberty. Her hair should probably be the warm brown of her early twenties, with a bit of grey. Her best guess was a hair dye called ‘light brown’. She hoped it would do the trick. Then she could let it grow out. Blonde no more.

She roughly cut the ends to collar level, catching as many bits as she could in a towel. But no matter. Her house. Her hair. She peered into the little mirror by the kitchen sink. Good. No longer the well-groomed Jeannette. More like herself, except for the haunted look in her eyes. She stared, then quickly looked away.

The dye job took the best part of an hour mainly because her hands seemed to need extra time and she was being careful about drips, and she found herself pausing frequently to listen for any odd noises from the foot of the stairs. But inside the house, all was silent. Outside, the discordant squawks of cockatoos were greeting the dawn. She blow-dried her hair without any attempt to style it. After parting it in the middle like she used to, she tucked each wing behind an ear. Brown hair. Definitely brown as she could see in the strengthening light coming through the window. Straight. The only people who would recognize this hairstyle on her, familiar as it was to herself, were family and friends who had known her before she married more than twenty years before.

She stared at her reflection. One idea broke through the strange agitated detachment she was feeling. It really does look more like me, she thought. After painting on some Jeanette-bright lipstick, she arranged the beige headscarf over her head, carefully tying it under her hair at the back. It mostly hid her newly darkened hair. The total effect was designed to give any neighbour who might be glancing out into the new morning a semblance of the Jeanette they knew.

Jeanie replaced the empty bottle back into the hair dye packet and put it in the backpack along with the bag containing her pyjamas and the damp and stained towel. She would get rid of them when appropriate. After she thoroughly cleaned the sink and surrounds with liquid detergent and Jif, she opened the tap and ran hot water for a full ten minutes, sluicing and rinsing. Draining the tank. Who cares? Not him. Not now. Not ever again.

She had trouble extracting the two notes from the front zippered compartment of the backpack her hands were shaking so badly. Written when she first conceived of the Plan; written with a firm hand. She hadn’t wanted a hastily scribbled note in wobbly handwriting. Today was Friday, so she put the appropriate one on the kitchen table.

Pete – Please run the sheets on the bed through the washer and dryer and don’t forget to ring the painter. See you on Monday probably. Latest Wednesday. Jeanette.

The other note, with Friday and Sunday substituting Monday and Wednesday, she replaced in the backpack to be disposed of later. The reference to doing the laundry was necessary and to the painter, a smoke screen. Pete never took any responsibility for the household. Ever. But it had a nice domestic ring to it.

The light grew stronger and Jeanie decided to go over the sink, the floor and the bench once more now she could see better. Lady Macbeth with a mop. The sky outside turned from amorphous white to the palest yellow and finally to a strengthening blue. She wiped everything again, just in case. There couldn’t be even a hint of hair dye. She scrubbed the whole floor so a clean patch near the sink couldn’t give anyone ideas. It took, maybe, another half hour. She was itching to get going to her new life yet wanting the timing to be right for leaving the house. The longer she waited, the more normal it would be but the more probable someone would catch sight of her. She glanced at her image in the mirror. The scarf was exactly the right colour her hair was only yesterday.

Why wait?

She decided.

Now.

She rang for a taxi.

Chapter Two

No way out. That phrase had bounced around her brain for … how long? Years, probably. No way out. She knew the natural question anyone would ask was why didn’t she just leave him? She had tried that. Once-upon-a-time. No, twice. The first time didn’t count because she had just gone over to the house of someone she knew and Pete had turned up not an hour later to drag her home. But the second time was for real.

It was after he had broken her rib. She had not been able to breathe properly. Impossible to sleep, the thing hurt so much. She’d sat upright in the recliner downstairs while her thoughts whirled. She’d glanced at the clock. Almost three in the morning and time for another codeine-laced pain killer. With care she raised herself from the chair and headed for the bathroom. She swallowed the meds and stood there looking in the mirror, seeing her bruised shoulders. She pulled the nightie strap down and touched her left breast gingerly. Red and swollen. She went back to the recliner and eased herself down. That’s when she had the thought. Why not? Just go. Walk out of there. Doubts battered her, so she made a deal. The laundry basket was in the bathroom. If there were enough clothes, she would go. If not, she would stay. She made herself climb back up the stairs to the bathroom. The basket was there. She opened the lid.

Ten minutes later she let herself out of the door, clad in a skirt and top, yesterday’s underwear and clutching her handbag. She had less than $100, but she could get more in the morning. She backed the Jag down the drive and inched her way along the street without headlights. Soon she was speeding towards Sydney, singing in spite of her rib.

She didn’t get there. She had been lost in thoughts of a new future when the police car motioned her over. He asked for her cell phone and grinned. Something about tracking and GPS. She was to follow him to the nearest station. It was all over. She had only been away from home for seven hours.

Pete had connections.

He broke a rib on the other side when she arrived home after he had waved off her police escort. Doubly hard to breathe, much less sing.

Chapter Three

Before the driver could get out of the car, Jeanie lifted the old suitcase into the boot of the taxi. Quickly, before any nosy neighbour looked too closely.

‘Roma station, please.’ To her ears, her voice was high and strained. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. She repeated to herself it was all going according to the Plan.

The station had fewer people in it than she expected. No matter. She headed for the ticket counter, buying a return to Sydney via Grafton. She arranged herself on a bench along with other weary travellers waiting for their trains. The bench was wooden, old fashioned and hard. Over the years, how many people had sat here watching the railway clock on the far wall? She defocused her eyes and relaxed each muscle group in turn starting at her toes and working towards her head. She hadn’t planned on everything taking so much energy, mental as well as physical, and she was in a state of nervous exhaustion. She started to sigh then caught herself and looked around. Nobody was looking; in fact nobody had given her a second glance from the time she came into the station.

She watched the second hand complete its final few seconds to the ten minutes she had allotted. She stood, stretched and headed for the women’s toilets dragging the suitcase behind her. She chose the larger handicapped stall and busied herself immediately, hoping no poor soul in a wheelchair with a bursting bladder needed to use it while she was there. She pulled off the slacks and top and put on a pair of zip-off travel trousers and a plain white t-shirt. Her clothes and shoes were shoved into the backpack along with the scarf. She put feet into an old pair of plastic clogs she used for gardening.

Now the case. Months before she had carefully cut through every fifth stitch on the front panel of the old suitcase trusting it would hold till she was ready. She put the case flat on the floor and stomped on the front panel. The stitching first gave way at the corner then spread as expected. She wiped wherever she had touched since cleaning it thoroughly some months before and tucked the case beside the cistern, its front panel flopping open. Wrecked and empty.

Jeanie used toilet paper to take off the smear of lipstick she had put on before leaving the house. When she washed her hands, she splashed water on her face like so many do and scrubbed it clean. She glanced in the mirror. Her real face. Only to be seen while moisturizer was being worked into the skin, then hastily covered in makeup. Never would Jeanette have allowed those imperfections to see the light of day. Nose a bit red. A broken vein on her left cheekbone and deep circles under her eyes. The remnants of a bruise on her left temple. Bit of brownish skin here and there. She smiled at her reflection. HER reflection. Again she had a surge of feeling. While it lasted, a wonderful release.

Would it work? Could she become Jeanie again?

The traveller in her sunglasses, trousers and t-shirt, backpack on her back, baseball cap on her head, made her way to the Sydney train. As it slowly picked up speed south of the city and the various familiar landmarks gave way to empty countryside, Jeanie’s stomach tightened and she had to fight nausea. She started to shake. It started in her hands so she tucked them under her bottom in case anyone noticed. Not that there were many in the carriage but the last thing she wanted was to draw attention to herself. The shaking spread until even her head was involved. Panic threatened to engulf her fragile hold on composure. At first she gritted her teeth and tried to regain control by tensing her muscles as if to fight it with whatever energy she had left. That only made it worse. She breathed deeply again and again and realized some things are best accepted. She let her head drop onto her chest as if sleeping and concentrated on fighting the tension by releasing her tight muscles. She filled her mind with her special scene of grazing horses, green paddocks and clean fresh air, her private version of Shangri-La. Miles out from Brisbane she finally regained the safe haven of detachment.

She cautiously opened her eyes, straightened in her seat and realized she was no longer nauseous. She dug into the backpack and found the paperback novel. Months ago she had chosen a murder mystery. She almost smiled. A bit too close to home now.

It was with some relief when her station came up. Grafton, not even half way to Sydney, but doing something, anything, was better than sitting still. She again headed for the women’s loos in the station. Deep in the backpack was a long black dress with a floral pattern in pinks and yellows. It hung from her shoulders, hiding what figure she had left. Over it, a long-sleeved muslin shirt. She tucked the baseball cap into the bottom of the bag substituting it for a battered cotton sunhat with a floppy brim. Flip flops. This latter-day hippy headed with other holiday makers to buy a coach ticket to Coolangata and then onto Byron Bay. As in the Plan.

Jeanie sat on the stone wall looking over the beach and out to sea. Incredibly blue. Incredibly normal. Typical Australia. The day was warming up even though her hands remained as cool as they had been when waiting for the taxi. She had an ice cream cone in her right hand, her sunhat pulled low over her eyes, which were hidden behind reflective sunglasses. She was one of a series of people eating or talking or walking along this stretch of the beach, as undistinguishable as the cars passing on the road. She didn’t want the ice cream, but a prop was a prop, and it fit the circumstances. She glanced down at her feet. White. Like when she had first arrived from England all those years before. She kicked off the flip flops and buried her feet in the warm sand. White and bony. It wasn’t true you can’t be too thin or too rich. Stupid statement. Frivolous. She wriggled her toes in a vain attempt to ground herself.

No matter how much she had planned, the actuality was surreal. Somewhere between a dream and a nightmare. She swallowed some of the ice cream and could feel it inch its way towards her stomach.

It was time to get out of the sun. The Plan had always been to hide in plain sight. She waited until a group of young people passed her. She stood up and trailed behind them, following them head down, out onto the sand, her backpack now dangling from one hand by a mid-point handle. Some of her camouflage group settled on towels, some headed for the sea, but she kept going, maintaining the same desultory pace, picking her way over the beach towards the campground. A row of regularly positioned rubbish bins marched along the seawall. She paused by one and buried the hair dye packet inside a McDonald’s wrapper. She almost added the stained towel, but, no. Too many things too close together. She tucked it back into the backpack. Time enough later.

The campground was perhaps the riskiest part of the whole Plan. She had been there before as Jeanette. Mind you, she had made sure Jeanette was as Jeanette as possible. High heels, leather jacket, red dress. Driving the Jag. No, this little hippy-type was night and day from Jeanette.

‘I’d like to stay for a while,’ she said to the portly man she remembered from her investigative visit. The man with the smile. ‘I understand you have a cabin way in the back of the property.’

‘Sorry, rented to one of the guys who’s helping me out this season,’ said the man with his smile. ‘But if you want seclusion and are a long-termer, we have a caravan just a bit further along from the cabin. In the new part.’

Jeanie’s heart sank. This was one of the Elements. Early in the season, so no one would want to be so far from the beach. But a caravan? Maybe.

‘Can I see it, please,’ she asked, her voice neutral.

Soon, key in hand, she was following his directions. The path wound through the bush and the older part of the campground, past the little cabin which had taken her fancy and into an unfamiliar part of the complex. Each natural bush clearing yawned empty but for a white power box, ready for caravans or those drive-yourself motor-homes, she supposed, in contrast to the smaller tenting sections nearer the beach. A new concrete ablution block was located in a larger clearing.

She walked around it searching for the caravan she had been told about until she spotted a roof just visible through some shrubbery. It was in its own clearing within the bush itself.

One small caravan, painted green to blend in. Her key fit.

It was perhaps eighteen feet long and eight wide, yet contained a complete house in miniature. She stood in the doorway and surveyed her new empire. The end by the door had a couch which could be pulled down into a biggish bed and the other end had two single benches that could be used as beds in a pinch, with a pull-out table in between. A complete kitchen with everything in miniature: gas stove, microwave oven, under-bench fridge. She opened what looked like a closet door opposite the kitchen area and found the tiniest loo one could ever imagine. The only thing the caravan lacked was a shower but the ablution block was about thirty steps away. She smiled grimly. The whole caravan would fit into her bedroom at home with room to spare.

She flung the backpack onto the couch-cum-bed. She’d negotiated a good deal from the fat man, as long as she stayed a month. A month was fine. In the Plan. Now to the business of settling in. She emptied what clothes she had into drawers. Examined what was supplied in the caravan. Made a list. She’d have to do some shopping. But first, the money problem.

Jeanie had been putting money into her backpack for a long time. Rolls of bills. Whatever came to hand. She knew she couldn’t access bank accounts once she was into the Plan, so it all had to be cash. Enough for a few months. She had collected a fair bit including a big withdrawal the day before. But even living simply takes money. Having the rolls of cash on the beach should have been a worry. Theoretically anyway, but she had done the worrying months before. Now she was in this curious sea of unnatural calm.

But the Plan said she had to make sure she was safe. She hitched the almost-empty backpack onto her shoulders, the rolls of money still weighing down the bottom of the bag. She stepped outside and carefully closed the door. Fresh air. Fresh smells of earth and trees. The caravan was in an isolated spot but nevertheless close to the trail from the gate. It was a green world with both low and dense bush and towering trees forming a complete canopy overhead, trapping muggy air underneath yet shielding it from the sun with dappled shade. Mostly quiet; at least devoid of human noise. She wandered further along the path, as if enjoying the native Australian birds and greenery in case anyone was watching, passing empty camping spots until the path petered out. Nobody. She returned to the caravan, as reassured as she could be. It was even quieter inside.

She fetched out the rolls of bills in their plastic bags along with the next two Pete letters, all needing to be hidden. She opened the zippered pouch she’d brought made of heavy plastic, waterproof and hopefully insect proof, and put all but one roll of money into it. Now, how and where was she to hide it? She dismissed inside the caravan as too obvious but had no idea where she would be able to find somewhere safe outside. Under the bush? A hole in the ground? How about underneath the caravan? She stepped outside. Still no noises of humanity. After one last quick glance around, she scrabbled in the soil and within a few centimetres found it was rock hard. A dead end. What else? She peered underneath the caravan and spotted the wheel arch. She could see a small ledge of some kind. Covered in grime, but a projection. Maybe, if she could wedge the money pouch between tyre and wheel arch, the little ledge would prevent the bag falling to the ground.

She came back outside with the plastic pouch and paused to listen. Birds and the faint soughing of a breeze high in the trees. Still nothing remotely human. She bent to her task and pushed the pouch up and onto the ledge before standing up to see if anything showed.

‘Good, you found it,’ the fat man said as he rounded the bend in the path. Jeanie’s heart lurched as she spun around. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ he said as she swayed on her feet. ‘Just checking it’s all okay. Now, don’t be shy about asking for anything, hear?’

Jeanie nodded and shook her head appropriately.

With a little wave, he retraced his steps towards his office and Jeanie let out the air trapped in her lungs. She stumbled onto the steps of the caravan, her eyes unseeing. Breathe. Breathe. Still and quiet. No rush. Patience. Breathe. The fine tremor in her hands was getting worse.

Sitting on her step was too public for Jeanie in her present state. She had to get inside. Even though she doubted her knees would support her, she re-entered the shadowy depths of the little caravan. As she shut the door, the world stopped. The fine tremor in her hands coarsened and spread up her arms to her shoulders and her neck. Her legs weakened until there was nothing left to hold her upright. She collapsed onto the couch, vainly trying to bring herself back to the efficient automaton that was taking her away from a living hell. But it was impossible. Panic was rising. She needed to do something. Anything. She had to protect whatever was left of the old Jeanie; the Jeanie of some twenty years before. Her heart skipped a beat. Was anything left? Or was she just the shell? A hard carapace covering emptiness? She tasted iron and realized she had bitten her lip. She pushed one hand hard against her mouth to stop the bleeding. She knew about that. Stopping lips bleeding. It didn’t hurt. Nothing physical hurt but everything else was screaming. She was one mass of aching confusion. She curled into a tight ball on the rough bed, using one knee to press against her bleeding mouth. She hugged her legs. Hard. To keep the shaking in check. She couldn’t lose control. Not now. Not at this point. Her mind was filled to overflowing with the enormity of what she had done and she could see no way clear. She was consumed with fear.

Jeanie had always had an image that helped settle her down when things were crazy, when she was so distressed she wanted to launch an attack herself, when Pete was accusing her of things she knew nothing about, when he hurt her. But striking out only made matters worse. She knew. Bitter experience. In utter contrast, she could escape to a peaceful rural scene welling up on command from a deep and barely accessible place within her own mind. Green paddocks, rustic wooden fences and blood-bay horses with black manes grazing in the late afternoon light. Hills and trees and grass. Utterly quiet except for the rhythmic chomping of the horses. The odd insect buzzed its way from wildflower to wildflower.

She brought it all to mind now. Concentrated on the nearest horse, with his shiny coat and big brown eyes. His horse-smell, his very presence. The feel of the low sun on her back. Soft air. Jeanie felt the old magic and her whirling thoughts slowed as the now familiar lack of feeling spread from the middle of her being to put its pall over every thought, every movement. Once again she welcomed it. It might prevent her from feeling normally, but it was an internal panacea that allowed her some sort of function. She stretched out her legs and her tongue probed the inside of her lip. It would be swollen later, so she had better get busy. She had no food.

On the way out of the campground, she knew she had to behave as Rebecca White should behave so she waved at the fat man’s bald head seen through his window on the world, forcing a smile. Probably checking people coming and going. She walked over hot pavement to the local supermarket. Hardly super, more a family grocery. Even in a such a small shop, the choice was bewildering and nothing appealed. She wondered if her appetite would come back. If she would ever have a full night’s sleep again. If her hands would again be still. Whether feeling would once more be part of her being. Would life become real? Could it?

Chapter Four

It had taken Jeanie by surprise when all the Elements came together. She had waited so long and she had tried so many times, the original planning seemed forever ago. She had carried out the Plan a thousand or more times in her mind, and four, no, five times unsuccessfully, so when the time came, there was no decision making. She was an automaton.

The binge had started in the late afternoon. Whisky, a signal, because he only drank whisky for one purpose. He sat, morosely watching cavorting figures on the television in their lounge room while Jeanie cowered in the kitchen. Finally, she heard a snore, the second of the Elements. If she left him there, he would progress from a drunken sleep to a natural one and waken in the morning, either still within the binge and grabbing for the whisky bottle or, miraculously, fully recovered. The snore galvanized her into action.

‘Come on, Pete. Time for bed,’ she said as she pulled on his arm. This was a dangerous manoeuvre, perhaps the most dangerous. One Attempt had resulted in loosened teeth and a jaw so sore, she couldn’t eat solid food for more than a week. But this time he mumbled, half opened his eyes and was led to the stairs. Another tricky bit, getting him to climb up. But being upstairs was a necessity.

He collapsed onto their bed, shoes and all.

Jeanie waited. His snoring started within a minute. She calculated when he had last filled his glass with good Glenfiddich whisky. Maybe twenty minutes? How long before all the alcohol was absorbed? An hour? Probably more. She would give it two. Her own tiredness had vanished now she was set on course. She went over and over what she had to do next. She removed the sheepskin rug at his side of the bed. She pushed back the bedside table to give a clear space, then slowly undressed and pulled on her nightclothes. But she didn’t sleep. She waited. Her eyes were glued to the digital numbers of the clock. At 2:06, she turned to face her husband’s snoring body. She took a deep breath and softly shook his shoulder.

Wait.