The second weekend Hortensia tried again. Once in disguise, she parked the truck some distance along their street and observed from her post. Peter’s car rounded the corner, paused at the gate as it swung open, entered. He had the woman in the car with him. Like a cat who traps its mouse, then ignores it, Hortensia drove to the inn and slept. On Saturday she returned before dawn. They stayed in all day. Occasionally Hortensia would stretch her legs around the block. Her scheme was helped by a nearby mosque and a large community of Muslims in the adjacent neighbourhoods. No one asked her any questions.
Hortensia waited till the clock struck 9 p.m., then she let herself in through the gate. Peter’s car was parked in the driveway. The lights were off in the front portion of the house. None of the garden lights were on. Switching on the lights was the kind of thing she or the housekeeper would do, but would never cross Peter’s mind. The house was a long rectangular bungalow. A succession of rooms, each more intimate than the last. A low hedge had been planted right along the external walls of the house, a thick necklace of a bush with broad, deep-magenta – almost brown – leaves. She bent low, trailed her fingers through the plant, walked down the length of the house. At their bedroom window she gathered up the skirts of the black gown and pushed her body through the hedge, parting the soft branches. There were no curtains here. She’d decided not to have curtains on account of the high walls, on account of the lovely garden. A touch of lace would suffice, she’d thought, and there it was now. White, finely holed and incandescent, which could mean only one thing. When she’d asked the mercer for lace without metallic threads he’d gone ahead and ignored her. How had she missed it? The realisation distracted Hortensia for a few seconds but then she heard Peter’s voice.
Although the room was lit, it was difficult to see anything clearly through the lace. It was more like watching shadows. Someone was lying on the bed. She could see his back, the rounded cheeks of his bottom. Peter naked, an unfamiliar state. His voice again. But she couldn’t see the woman. Maybe there was no woman. Maybe she’d invented the whole thing. But then she heard her voice. A figure walked into the room, said something, Peter laughed. He continued to laugh as she climbed on top of him, stretched out, flattened her breasts against his shoulder blades. Now it was her bottom Hortensia could see, her back. She said something again, he laughed again. Was that his laugh? Was that what it sounded like? They continued talking, his voice muffled by the bedding, her voice muffled by his skin. Hortensia needed to pee. Nothing more seemed necessary than to lift the abaya and squat. She did so, aiming, acquiescing to a little splatter on her Nikes. The release caused a sigh, but Hortensia was also thinking: what was the point? What was the use of marking her territory when it had already been usurped?
As she watched them it didn’t feel dirty. She felt righteous, she felt that she was conducting an important task that demanded rigour and integrity. Her job was to watch as closely as her situation permitted. She wanted to remember everything. She wanted to be able to recollect it, to be able to draw it, if such a time was ever called for. She wanted to see how Peter would hold the woman, how he would kiss her.
She stood almost through the night. All three rested very little. When light threatened to begin to show up in the skies, Hortensia crept away. Outside the compound, back inside the truck, she rubbed hard at her vagina until she thought it would catch alight. Then she lurched out from the truck door and threw up into the grass verge.
At the age of thirty-one Hortensia James started to hate. It took her some time, the way certain fads stutter before they really take off. She wrestled it for a while, resisted. She understood that hate was a kind of acid and she preferred not to burn. Also hate was unpopular and, back in those days anyway, she’d still wanted to be liked.
This longing slowly left her, though. She went from resenting just Peter, to the housekeeper, the driver, the market woman. People were slow, simple-minded; they all harboured ill intentions, seemed determined to be unhelpful, especially when their jobs required being of service. They didn’t answer questions properly, spoke as if they had been trained all their lives to frustrate whoever addressed them. Hortensia’s foul temper kept her mouth in a line, her brow knit, her teeth pressed together and her eyes cutting. She got good at chopping the legs off people, with no knife, with only words. She was always angry and while, initially, she noticed it (worried that it shouldn’t be there), it slowly became what was normal. She developed headaches. She tied a block of concrete to her ankle and let it drag her down. Hating, after all, was a drier form of drowning.
Hortensia looked at where their portrait had once hung, hiding that stain. It would forever confuse her, how love could turn such a corner. Because there had been something once, a real thing, precarious like only love can be, but tender and sweet.