Free Rebuilding Coventry by Sue Townsend Page B

drawers and found a headscarf and a pair of gloves. He put them
on. While he was there he squirted himself with Tramp. He looked through
Coventry’s dressing-table drawers and found a stub of pink lipstick and slashed
the cloying stuff across his lips. He went back to the mirror and looked at
himself through half-closed eyes. But it was no good. However hard he tried he
couldn’t make Coventry appear in front of him.
    He
undressed and put her things away. As he did so he thought, ‘My heart is breaking.’
He could feel that organ, so long associated with love and romance, tearing
away from whatever kept it in place.
    ‘I
shall die of a broken heart,’ he said in a whisper to himself.
    He put
his pyjamas on over his underpants and got into bed on Coventry’s side. He
clutched her pillow to him as though it were Coventry herself. He moaned, ‘Coventry,
Coventry,’ into the depths of the curled duck feathers of which the pillow was
composed.
    It was
Derek’s habit before he went to sleep to talk Coventry through the happenings
of his day. Sometimes Coventry went to sleep before he’d finished. When this
happened Derek would lie at her side and look at her perfect face and
congratulate himself on having this exquisite woman for his wife.
    Sometimes
he would carefully draw back the sheets and blankets and Coventry’s nightdress
and gaze at his wife’s naked body. In doing this he was not activated by desire.
Sex had played only a walk-on part in their lives together. It had never been
centre stage. No, he was content to look and experience the power of
possession.
    He
couldn’t live without Coventry. She protected him from the world and its many
humiliations. He would probably die in his sleep tonight. His heart was
breaking into pieces, had come loose from its moorings. He could feel it
distinctly now, as it tugged and struggled to be free.
    He
imagined John, his son, phoning around to the relations. ‘Bad news. Dad’s dead.
He died in the night of a broken heart.’ Tears ran into the pillow as Derek
imagined the grieving relations, his orphaned children; his body inside the
coffin; his workmates wearing suits and black ties, standing at the open grave,
sorry now for the torment they had put him through on the shop floor so often.
    He
fantasized about the two-minute silence there would be at the next meeting of
the Tortoise Society. Bob Bridges, the chairman, would break the stillness by
saying: ‘Derek Dakin knew his tortoises.’ High praise from Bob, who knew his tortoises.
    But
best of all, when she heard of his death, Coventry would come back and throw
herself on his freshly earthed grave. She would blame herself and rip her hair
out and rend her clothing and refuse to move, until forced to by the
authorities.
    Derek
was almost disappointed when he opened his eyes and found himself still alive,
with the bedroom lights blazing and his face and teeth unwashed. He got out of
bed and crossed the landing. A light shone under the bathroom door. He tried
the door; it was locked.
    ‘Won’t
be long,’ shouted John. Derek walked impatiently up and down the small landing.
He straightened a few pictures of steam trains, then the bathroom door opened
and John came out.
    ‘God,
Dad, you look awful.’
    Derek
said: ‘I’m entitled to look awful, aren’t I? Your mother’s committed a murder
and run off.’
    ‘I didn’t
mean that, Dad. It was just a bit of a shock to see you wearing lipstick.’
    Derek
said: ‘It’s your mother’s lipstick. I was …’
    ‘Look,
there’s no problem. Don’t feel you have to explain. It’s cool. This is nineteen
eighty-eight. The lipstick is great and so is the perfume.’
    John
watched a great deal of American soap opera drama and knew what to say and do.
So he hugged his father and said again: ‘It’s cool,’ and shut himself in his
bedroom.
    Derek
went into the bathroom and removed the lipstick with a face flannel. When his
lips were rubbed clean he came out of the